World-Buildling Magna Carta

Whether he intended to or not, one of my favorite bloggers Berin Kinsman started something. He takes a writing exercise from Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! and applies it to fantasy RPG world-building:

In the book No Plot? No Problem? author Chris Baty discusses creating two “Magna Cartas” before tackling a fiction project. One is a list of things you like about the genre, what makes you want to read it (or, in the case of a roleplaying game, play it or run it), the things you’ll want to include. The object is to keep you focused on the things that will make it fun to work on. The other Magna Carta is for things you dislike and want to avoid. You make this list to remind you where you don’t want to go, cliches to resist and paths of least resistance to avoid traveling. It’s a process I apply to worldbuilding and campaign building, and a topic I cover at length in the forthcoming Worldbuilding 101 book.
Because I’m currently working on a 4th Edition D&D campaign, partly as a practical lab to test my Worldbuilding 101 principles, I created a Magna Carta. Here’s what I came up with. Note that there are some system-related things in there, because I will avoid creating encounters that I dislike or find hard to run, and do more of the things I think are fun.
Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Likes

Heroic PCs with a purpose other than kill and loot

PCs with back stories and NPC connections

Villains with actual goals and motivations

Political intrigue and conflict between like-aligned powers

Setting-based consequences to PC actions

Skill challenges

Monsters as PCs and NPCs

Scary monsters that are actually scary

Magic affecting the economy and ecology

Period-appropriate technology — stuff that actually existed

Conflict between faiths and ideologies
Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Dislikes

Yet another Lord of the Rings knockoff

All-combat adventures

Illogical treasure (how’d the monster get that? Why didn’t they use that magic item against the party?)

Kitchen-sink ecologies and economies - everything and anything exists without consequence

Too much anachronistic tech

Absentee gods that grant powers without reward or consequence
All of this is written in my purple drakeskin journal, of course, to be referenced and amended as I go along.

noisms of Monsters and Manuals fame followed up with his own:

Likes

Non-European influences

Capricious gods, spirits and suchlike

Characters who relax the way people relax in the real world (sex, alchohol, drugs)

A cold-hearted universe

Ancient ruins

Mutations of some variety, and/or fear of mutation

Good old British fantasy malaise/fatalism

Dwarves having disproportionate influence
Dislikes

Elves and their imitators

Anachronistic real-world modern-day politics/beliefs

Characters who kick ass all the time or who are overly awesome

Magic item economies

Gods who dispense quests

Giving new names to traditional fantasy races to try to appear innovative. If it's an orc, call it an orc, for God's sake!

Not to be outdone, I came up with my own:
Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Likes

Dying Earth

Intrigue and conspiracies.

Episodic sword & sorcery REH stuff.

Vancian magic

Religions that have differences other than which deity they worship.

Non-European influences (yeah, I stole that one) and semi-European influences -- especially Aztec, Mayan, Timurid, Khazar, etc.

Making the cryptozoological (i.e. Cameroon Flashlight Frog), Yeti, etc.) and extinct live (i.e. aurochs, mastodons, etc.) and making the living (i.e. horses and their ilk) extinct.

Golems

Telmarines

Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Dislikes

Middle Earth. Don't get me wrong. I loved JRRT. But I loathe his imitators.

Dragons. Maybe it was Dragonlance overkill. Maybe it was having to wade through too many Pern MUSHes when trying to find a good MU* back in the day. But I prefer my Dungeons sans Dragons.

Anarchronisms. I'm not talking about a flintlock or a pocket watch in an otherwise medieval world. I'm talking laser guns and tricorders. I hated Expedition to The Barrier Peaks.

Epic quests. I don't mind quests so much, but there's life outside of "The Quest Is The Quest." Right?

Idyllic Celtic/Proto-Wiccan cultures

Elves and those like elves.

Japanese stuff. There is an excellent game called Legend of the Five Rings. If you have a yen for Japanese stuff, go play that.

Orcs that don't have snouts.


Speaking of orcs, Tony DiTerlizzi has a great post explaining the evolution of an orc he drew: http://diterlizzi.com/blog/2009/04/24/back-in-the-saddle-again/.