The problem is that this game is so wide-open when it comes to setting creation that the group can spend a lot of time just coming up with the idea for the setting and the central conflict, let alone detailing those things.

For quick setting creation you really need to answer the following questions:

1-Where does it take place?
2-What is the conflict?
3-When does it take place?
4-Who is involved in the conflict?
5-Why do those people care about the conflict?
6-How do the main characters intend to go about resolving the conflict?

That’s pretty much it. Everything else is color.

another thing is the brainstorm, I think the setting questions can be set up in a way that draws more out of the brainstorm then just using the brainstorm as a way to get started.

My understanding of stories is such that what makes a “powerful” story is totally dependent on the characters involved, how interesting those characters are and the conflicts between those characters.

Setting creation can’t just be about creating a world. It has to facilitate the creation of not only the heroes, but also villains, allies, love interests, heroes’ relatives and other NPCs that the characters (and players, through interaction with these characters), really care about. I don’t think the setting creation rules do that in enough detail.

Interesting characters the players care about + Conflict + Unexpected outcomes = Powerful stories

Setting creation, at this point, has lots of stuff to create a cool world but not enough to facilitate the creation of interesting NPCs that the setting players can work with to drive conflict.

Also, in this case, interesting NPC = a character that is not only interesting in and of him/herself, but also somebody that the heroes have some kind of personal connection with, for good or for ill.

The setting creation rules only ask for brief sketches of critically important NPCs and their relationships to the characters.

Anyway, that’s my take on what’s missing.

What I like about the captions you quoted was the intensity.

“Your presence drives men to destructive madness and blights the very earth. You have power, sure, but it is monstrous, and attempts to seek understanding or companionship run a decent chance of creating abominations that seek your destruction.”

Implies a specific character role in the game. If the group played a game set in a library, and all the characters are library patrons or employees in the modern, ordinary world, I don’t think having characters that are monstrous and blight the earth would be possible.

However, this part:

“There are steps to go through, an arc to follow, and an endpoint which is poetically painful.”

Is possible in many games that aren’t comedic (or at least only comedic). In a universal game, this is hard to emulate. Unless you have specific mechanics that facilitate narration that leads to these kinds of circumstances in play, which is usually because a game has some kind of built-in path or story structure that can lead to this, you’re not going to get this in every game.

Those things on Rob’s journal are very specific and I don’t think lend themselves to a ruleset that can emulate any kind of setting, lighthearted, serious, or whatever.