I'm putting together an online database where people can share ideas for interesting things to put in their game worlds. The core of this database will be very short ideas, mostly suggestions which other people can use to spur their own creativity; I'm afraid it won't be very good if you're looking for full-blown adventures or campaigns. However, if you're looking for some inspiration for that new world you're working on, I hope that this will help you out.
I've found a decent-looking database program, dbman http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/dbman/ ), and I'm ready to begin configuring the World Creation Idea Bank. I thought I'd go over what I'm planning to do in case I've made some bad assumptions or have some flaws in my reasoning. Please contact me at ghoyle1_at_airmail.net if you have any feedback on the database or design. Note: I'm not quite ready to accept submissions yet, so please hold off on sending me ideas right now. I'll make an announcement and post an URL when I'm ready to go.
TYPE OF SUBMISSION (Choose one): Plot, Character, Setting, Theme, World, Campaign, Society, Magic, Technology, Religion, Miscellaneous. I felt that each idea should fall into one of those categories; if it's an Other, there'll be a space for you to fill in more descriptive keywords later on.
GENRES (Check all those which are applicable): Universal, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Historical, Pulp, Superheroes, Horror, Modern, Other. There's so much diversity that I only tried to go for very broad categories here. I felt that there could be a lot of subcategories, too, so again, put things like Cyberpunk and Steampunk in the "keywords" box. The Universal choice is for those ideas which can be made to fit in almost any genre, like the "36 Dramatic Situations".
KEYWORDS: See the above. This could also include descriptions of your idea which are not included in the idea proper (such as "dungeon crawl", "espionage", etc.).
IDEA: A SHORT idea, ideally just a short paragraph of description. The purpose of this site is to give viewers the nugget of an idea which they can expand and elaborate on their own. I'll provide a space down below for posting contact info and URLs in case you want to post your idea on the web somewhere, and have a link to it here. I'm considering setting a maximum length of 500 characters here, so brevity will be a virtue.
SOURCE or INSPIRATION: Credit where it's due. A space for you to mention where you got your idea, if it's not original with you.
CONTRIBUTOR NAME and EMAIL: if you want people to know who you are and how to reach you.
URL: Plug your website here, especially if you have a more fully-developed version of your ideas.
That's it so far. If you have any feedback, please let me know ASAP!
Guy
I'm looking forward to baseball season. I always sit in General Admission, and I take my Uncle Bob with me so he can save my seat, because nobody wants to sit next to a dead guy.
(Richard W. Lipp)
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