This prompts me to think of Sinai and Wild Cards and a few other "shared universe" projects. Wild Cards was amazing at first. I was fascinated in paying attention to the authors of each chapter and the change in tone in the depiction of the same character by other authors (even though at first the authors seemed to mostly just introduce their OWN characters). After a while, I got disappointed when it looked like most of them were "playing fair," but the creator of "Fortunatis" was doing the shared-universe-writing equivalent of "power-gaming" with his own chosen hero, while tearing up others' creations in comparison. (E.g., please forgive me if my memory is fuzzy on this point, but I recall how Golden Boy's wife, even when pregnant, could not be immune to Fortunatis's charms while Fortunatis's writer was at the reins - and Golden Boy would suddenly become a jerk in order to "justify it.")
Er, I digress. The other thing I noticed was that as it went on, the "mythos" got more cluttered, the conflicts and powers bigger, and it looked a lot harder to introduce "smaller" characters to fit in.
Similarly, on Sinai, at first the world was a blank slate. Then, when I got a chance to do things, I kept filling in large parts of the map ... or even starting a world map to begin with. We had struggles over how to portray the Temple: early PCs wanted to solo-roleplay or coop-roleplay with it as the cackling bad guys and Darksiders as misunderstood "loveable rogues." I wanted some sort of Law-vs-Chaos thing going on, where the Law could be FOR you or AGAINST you, depending; it wasn't necessarily good or evil. Later on, some folks (and I contributed to this) started to portray it as more benevolent ... and it was suddenly a break if it turned dark again. Once more precedent had been set, it was harder to strike off in a new direction.
Plus, it meant more of a learning curve for someone new to play, and more creators to consult if you wanted to GM something with someone else's creation.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-05-18 10:28 pm (UTC)Er, I digress. The other thing I noticed was that as it went on, the "mythos" got more cluttered, the conflicts and powers bigger, and it looked a lot harder to introduce "smaller" characters to fit in.
Similarly, on Sinai, at first the world was a blank slate. Then, when I got a chance to do things, I kept filling in large parts of the map ... or even starting a world map to begin with. We had struggles over how to portray the Temple: early PCs wanted to solo-roleplay or coop-roleplay with it as the cackling bad guys and Darksiders as misunderstood "loveable rogues." I wanted some sort of Law-vs-Chaos thing going on, where the Law could be FOR you or AGAINST you, depending; it wasn't necessarily good or evil. Later on, some folks (and I contributed to this) started to portray it as more benevolent ... and it was suddenly a break if it turned dark again. Once more precedent had been set, it was harder to strike off in a new direction.
Plus, it meant more of a learning curve for someone new to play, and more creators to consult if you wanted to GM something with someone else's creation.