[quote=@Ashgan]
One of the bigger differences between NRPs and regular ones is that every player does a significant amount of world building. This is relevant if we’re looking at the general tone an RP is trying to go for. In a traditional RP, the gm predetermines the tone of his setting right off the bat. Maybe he’s going for heroic, light hearted fantasy. Maybe it’s a realistic, grimdark setting. Maybe it’s a pessimistic cyberpunk vision, or an optimistic “where no man has gone before” space opera. Point being, the GM picks whichever sort of vibe his story wants to transmit in general (I acknowledge that light hearted stories can have dark moments and vice versa) and sticks to that when designing the various components of his world. Or a good writer does anyway.

[u][i]But when you establish little or no prevailing tone in advance other than “it’s space, yo”, [/i][/u]then every player will do whatever they like the most, which means that you will almost certainly end up with nation concepts that hit completely different tones and feel like they don’t belong in the same universe. This is, of course, a high degree of personal freedom given to players but it is likely to lead to a game universe that will not feel internally consistent, which in turn can have an unsatisfying effect on players. If we look at warhammer 40k, for instance, we can clearly see that, even though every race is pretty diverse from one another, they all suit the general tone of doom and gloom 40k is going for, of a universe on the brink of catastrophe. It's this internal consistency that's difficult to accomplish with a multitude of writers.

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This is such an awesome point I thought it worth mentioning again.