SEdmison wrote:That's a point that I admit to not having considered at the time, but I'll be more aware of it this time around. Part of what is tricky is that everyone shows up at different times, and with different scales of displays, so as a theme coordinator it can be hard to know exactly where to put everyone. In your case, you did tell me ahead of time about what table space you would need, but just as a general observation, let's say that I know ahead of time that I have two builders who have each built base8 or CCC sections and want to anchor a collaborative section. In that case, I can put them together. On the other hand, let's say that we put out the call for collaborative build sections, and one guy shows up with a ton of stuff, and then 2 or 3 or 4 other people each show up with 1 32x32 baseplate each. Maybe part of the expectation in that case just needs to be that we will make on-the-fly adjustments, and that we might separate out otherwise compatible sections into smaller displays in order to accommodate difference in scale of contribution, scale of buildings, color palette, style (old-school Castle versus LotR versus whatever). So if we start out with the idea of connecting some sections together, get them in place, and find that someone's not happy, then we adjust.
(Of course, much of this can be prevented with enough planning and communication up front, but there will always be the newcomer, lurker, or person who just doesn't feel comfortable contacting the coordinator ahead of time.)
Good wisdom. The more participation we get in the collaborative displays, the easier (in some ways) this adjustment will be. A few big contributors, some medium contributors, and some minor contributors? Group the minor contributions as best as possible.
We could also think about some large signage that would help the public understand this is a collaborative display (though many of the public would ask me what portion is mine - the old name bricks from old conventions also help, I've seen members of the public noticing them along the front of my display and get the idea of what portion is mine). The tricky part would be if one or two people contributed a MOC that gets put in the middle of a large contribution (adding a couple buildings to my town for example). The trick there would be to find good ways to call out the separate contributions (and for everyone to be comfortable that to some extent those individual MOCs become part of the big display section).
Frank
SEdmison wrote:
So, returning to the topic at hand, I'm interested to hear people's take on simplicity versus complexity in the standard. For instance, if we changed the water standard to be one plate or tile high, that would allow people to use translucent blue or clear tiles to create more realistic-looking water, but of course it means that we can't cover as much of the table as quickly by just throwing down blue baseplates. Personally, I would be amenable to having the standard apply to pre-built sections, but to bend the rules for situations like covering ground. (So if you need to fill a large area, you can throw down green, blue, or tan baseplates and just have a bit of transition back up to the baseplate-plus-brick height where it connects at the edges.)
My suggestion is to allow both, and make it clear which sections of water are plain baseplate, and which are baseplate plus one plate.
It's just a matter of grouping similar styles and making transitions that aren't too glaring.
With regard to scale, can we decide that 1 story of a town building should be, say, 5 bricks tall or 6 bricks tall or whatever, so that whether I'm building a small house or a guildhall, when we throw our buildings together that they look about right? I don't care a whole lot on the particular number; here I'm more just asking whether folks like the idea of having a number. I think that just by imposing some sort of standard to the height, that the length and width will tend to work itself out (and that some differences in the sizes of buildings is actually quite acceptable, because the buildings in a town are not all cookie-cutter templates anyway).
I wouldn't worry too much about the height of a single story. There's lots of variation in the real world. I think a building with much more than 8 bricks for the height of a single story will likely be a large scale building (like a ballroom, guildhall, great hall, whatever), otherwise the minifigs would look too out of scale. Large scale buildings can either be judiciously used, or grouped together in a separate town (maybe near someone's 5'x5' castle, while the smaller scale buildings are grouped together in villages near the smaller castles).
Actually, the thing I'd maybe most like to see is enough table space (with someone supplying enough green baseplate and brick if needed) to separate out when we have too many castles, such as what happened to the right of my display in BrickCon 2011, like in this picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/squidgeyflint/6204670530/
Frank
As to complexity of the standard, I think Base8 actually is a pretty solid standard and will allow for a lot. I added a 16 brick high cliff definition because I needed to gain height fast, it's a simple extension. I also added some different river widths to better use the various river base plates. Again, a relatively simple extension.
So let's propose some alternate color palettes, and we can work some transitions so older modules can be mixed.
Let's also add an optional water standard that uses baseplate plus plate or tile, but also acknowledge that people may want to do different things with water, and as long as they cooperate with their neighbor or make a transition, or make their water self contained, things will be fine. Some folks will want to do SNOT brick water for example - that won't as easily transition to base plate or base plate plus tile/plate water, but it could look great if it doesn't have to connect to the other water.
I should write up my new cliffs and river widths. Hmm, also maybe my wharf height (I'd love to see another building or two added to my wharf scene sometime).
Frank