I think we're in complete agreement on most points. I'd like to underscore though that it wasn't my intention to complain about the way that folks do things but rather to throw up some ideas on what might lead to the kind of burnout that Ascension was describing, a kind of burnout that I've experienced at times too.
I agree, but I've also found that it can be rewarding to give a gaming party more than just what it wants. This may be what "people expect and enjoy from a gaming session," but it also often ends up being the same thing in effect as Ascension's realization that it's the same map over and over again. In this case, it ends up being the same routine of go in, whack 'em out, steal their treasure and get out again. People do enjoy that, as you say, but only for awhile. Then the excitement evolves into ho-hums and they get out of fantasy RPGing and into something else.
But I also have seen alternatives. The most fantastic is a group of five accountants (one female) at a German nuclear power plant company who have been playing red box D&D (vintage 198X) for nearly 30 years. All five are on or over the threshold of age 60 now, and they still play regularly. Who could imagine German nuclear power plant accountants playing D&D at all, much less for 30 years? I've seen their gaming material, and I understand why they keep going. They write all their own material, with each taking turns being DM and author. Their challenge is to make each new adventure more intriguing, surprising and interesting than the last. Their maps all are handmade sketches, most graphically dull but all with a logic of their own that even an accountant can relate to.
Agreed on all points.
The get-out clause for magic is too easy an out too often. The point I was trying to make (and didn't very clearly) is that the world, region or whatever that you're mapping needs to have its own logic if it veers from the logic of the real world. In our case with Jörðgarð (TM), our original goal - a challenge from our own viewpoint - was to start out with some of the really wild world logic found in mythology and to try to make a sensible, logical fantasy RPG setting out of it.
If you read the Eddas, you learn that at the top of the world near Ásgarð stands the great ash tree of life. The squirrel Ratatosk is busy gnawing away at it, and the hart Eikthyrnir is eating its branches. A huge stream of water flows out of Eikthyrnir's antlers into Hvergelmir, feeding the spring, which overflows at 11 different points forming the 11 great rivers. Making a river flow upstream is nothing in comparison to trying to make something sensible and usable out of this. To sum things up, we dropped Ratatosk and Eikthyrnir but decided to keep Hvergelmir and the 11 great rivers.
To make something with its own logic out of this, we need to make clear to our users that this world was made in a different manner from our own real world and that some things function differently but according to their own rules with their own logic. So it goes somewhat beyond the question of whether we just want a mountain with 11 rivers flowing from a single mountain spring. Your reaction that it's "not realistic" is not quite correct. It's very realistic in terms of its own realities, just like halflings and dwarves and elves are very realistic in terms of the virtual realities of most fantasy RPGs.
I agree with you, but in the more extended sense of realistic being logical rather then only a replica of the real world. I think most folks will accept alternate virtual realities if they make a sense of their own. After all, that's what they already are doing in accepting the real-world-unreal realities of their fantasy RPGs.
Agreed and agreed again. However, I think this underlines my point about the willingness of most people in our field to accept other realities. I don't think any worlds that any of us here might create ever will have the faithful following that Prof. Tolkien's Middle Earth has. Nor will any of our maps ever be so absolutely adored as his simple handmade maps of Middle Earth.
Well, sure, laziness can be one of the causes of the kind of burnout that Ascension was describing. Laziness is the main reason why I end up having to redo things at times that I had checked off as being done. But it really isn't necessary to make one's own graphical objects. The three members of our projects group all have hundreds of textures available on our machines and a library of symbols (objects) the topples the 15,000 mark. We made only about 1,000 of them ourselves. Our objects and all of the others available to us are available to everyone for free downloading and are okayed for personal and commercial use. I consider many of them to be of much better graphical quality than the symbols (objects) that one gets with CC3, Fractal Mapper 8 or Dundjinni, and I also consider them to be of much better graphical quality than the add-on symbols and art packs that one can buy from the manufacturers of Dundjinni, Fractal Mapper 8 or CC3. The material is there. It's the laziness that leads to the problems.
Happy weekend!