The new 20' By 20' Room gaming blog has a suggestion for a very fun-sounding collaborative world-building exercise, "Lexicon."
The basic idea is that each player takes on the role of a scholar, from before scholarly pursuits became professionalized (or possibly after they ceased to be). You are cranky, opinionated, prejudiced and eccentric. You are also collaborating with a number of your peers -- the other players -- on the construction of an encyclopedia describing some historical period (possibly of a fantastic world).
The game is played in 26 turns, one for each letter of the alphabet.
You then, through individual entries and cross-citations (some of them on later letters, which entries you are, in turn, not allowed to write yourself), develop an encyclopedia for the world/era in question. The encyclopedia ends up with (players * 26) entries, all fully cross-cited.
Damn. Sounds like a fine way to build an interesting world that they players would then get to play in. More work for the GM, perhaps, but also less.
Or just a fun exercise in and of itself.
Hmmmm.
(via Random Encounters)
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For a bright shiny nickel, were I not already into the campaign, I'd offer it up as an exercise for my own Spycraft players. "These will be the deep dark secrets that you know of ..."
It really is a cool idea. Sort of like what ARIA does for world building.
I can't post over there today; Typepad is real slow.
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