Project History

From Towers

Categories: Project

This is an attempt to document some of the history of this project, which I hope lasts for many years. Many times I have worked on a project for a long time and wished I'd kept better track of how things progressed. This is me applying that hindsight to this project.

Inception

I started this project the first time in early 2004. Because of dissatisfaction with my current fantasy setting for the two D&D campaigns I was running, I began developing a setting that I would enjoy more.

I had thrown together hastily a setting called The Vise in August 2000 so that my friends and I could take the D&D 3rd Edition rules for a spin. The setting was small and narrow in scope and never was intended for extended play. Somehow it continued for four years until some of the characters had reached 17th level and had split into two different but connected campaigns (one focusing on combat and adventure and the other focusing on politics and role-playing).

First Wiki

Wiki proved to be a useful tool. I installed mediawiki and started recording design goals and ideas. Over the next few months, I wrote what became the Cosmology page and drew the map of the world on graph paper. Later, I had the map scanned and traced it in Fractal Mapper. The computer that hosted my first wiki also hosted FiranMUX (http://firan.legendary.org/), and that game had outgrown the box so we moved it to Saga, a new co-located machine. It wasn't until much later that I could install mediawiki on Saga, so my old wiki sat on a box that wasn't plugged into the network.

Second Wiki

As I discussed the end of the two D&D campaigns with my players, the Political Group got curious about what came next and was quite encouraging about the new world. I spent a week installing the latest (and improved) version of mediawiki on Saga. I did have an old backup of the wiki database, and I eventually got that imported into mediawiki to mine for text. With a week of vacation time in September 2004, I got the beginnings of a site up for the setting.

The design goals were still helpful to remind me of the world I wanted to create. I altered them a little to reflect my new priorities. Wizards of the Coast had published the Eberron Setting and much in it reminded me of my world, so some things had to change. Particularly, Eberron had capitalized on the popularity of mechanical constructs and steampunk ideas, so I casually erased these from my setting (for now, anyway). I also had been pushing towards a world with a Renaissance feel. While a good D&D-type world set in a fantasy Renaissance would be very interesting, the world had other plans for me. The Towerlands "insisted" on a feudal hierarchy so the Ren-feel ideas got relegated to the distant cities.

With this wiki project, I wanted to collaborate with the people who would play in the setting. I twisted their arms till they registered accounts and harassed them to participate in discussions (or at least keep up with changes). Feedback is what makes me drive forward and get work done. My creativity needs an audience. It's part ego, part insecurity, part need for social contact when I create.

At the end of September 2004, the bare bones of the world were in place and I invited a handful of people outside my play group to look at it. Eventually, I announced it in my LiveJournal...