Groups

What is a world without variety? Now you could build it yourself, but there is nothing wrong with a little group input. If this is a role-playing group, I think its perfectly fine to allow players to help build the world.

More people means more variety. How boring would a world be if everyone you talked to in Generic Outpost #1322 had the same one of 3 ambitions? How awkward would it be to find out you'd accidentally named a tavern "The Soggy Cat Turd" because you used Google translate instead of your friends actual knowledge of the language. Or describe a clearly unstable building to your architect buddy. Maybe someone is into Feng-shui, let them help with the layout of the throne-room. Bluntly put, your friends are resources who can add to the variety and expertise of your world.

I truly believe in the power of brainstorming to get a story started. Different people have read different books, seen different movies, lived different lives. All this has the potential to make the adventure awesome. 

If you must write alone, there's still no shame in asking for friends' expertise and creative insight.

Getting Started

While this blog will mostly focus on developing a world for tabletop campaign setting (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons); many tools we'll be discussing over the next several weeks can be applied to any type of story-telling.

Some of the major topics include world, culture, and character development. I'll probably throw in some examples from games I've played and books I've read.

We'll also be comparing/contrasting a few tabletop systems early on, but those should only take one of the 16 weeks I plan to run this blog.

This week we'll be discussing different things to consider about the people you may or may not be working with, and tools to convenience each other.

I look forward to getting started on this quest of personal improvement in story making.