Hallo conlangers!

On Sunday 30 March 2014 22:30:09 Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier 
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> > 
> > On Sunday 30 March 2014 18:33:17 Jim Henry wrote:
> [...]
> > > Tolkien's world doesn't quite meet its original intention of being
> > > plausibly our own.  All the better, as far as I'm concerned.  But it
> > > does seem as though it were a sibling world, equal in dignity and
> > > reality, but not ours.  Tolkien made a foreign land, not a theme park,
> > > as Lewis did.
> > 
> > By that token, most contemporary fantasy worlds are theme parks ;)
> 
> I would say that the Malazan world of Steven Erickson is definitely not a
> theme park.

I did say, *most*, not *all*.  But I don't know that particular
world.  (I am just looking it up in Wikipedia.  Apparently, it
is a vast setting originally made for a pencil-and-paper RPG.)

>       Otherwise, much as I love fantasy and fantasy worldbuilding,
> many of the worlds do not hold up to close scrutiny.

Indeed.
 
> I used to divide imagined universes into two categories: closed and open.
> Closed universes might be very detailed, maybe even too detailed, because
> they didn't have room in them for my imaginary planet, my world just didn't
> fit the rules of the world in the story. Open universes, on the other hand,
> did have room for my world and for lots more than what appeared in the
> story. Some of these universes got that way because they were just made up
> on the fly and were not necessarily very detailed. I generally prefer the
> open universes.

I also prefer open universes, though I would not define such
terms as "open" and "closed" with reference to a particular
world to fit in.  An open universe would simply be one which
leaves room for one's own creations, but there are different
degrees of openness.  Many con-universes are open for some
kinds of conworlds and closed for others.
 
I once was a big fan of genre crossovers, and considered such
RPGs as TORG or Shadowrun cool.  But I have grown out of that.
If you throw too many things into the mix, you get an amorphous
mass where anything goes and nothing makes sense.  There *are*
combinations that are interesting, but it is difficult to
balance them such that it works well.

Also, my experience with collaborative conworlds is mixed.
Many soon lost momentum; some I quit because the whole thing
was heading to a direction I wasn't comfortable with.

--
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http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1