Worldbuilding
As far as I can tell, the word 'worldbuilding' has two similar but distinct uses. One meaning refers to the process of developing an invented world, imagining and recording your ideas about its geography, history, etc. The other use of the word refers to how a book/movie/tv show goes about revealing this information to its audience. In this usage, the world being 'built' piece by piece is the perception of it inside the audience's mind. This post is mostly about the first meaning.
Nerds love worldbuilding, and they also love writing blog posts about world-building. Even more horrible are posts like this one, because I will be talking about talking about worldbuilding.
I think the conventional thinking on the subject goes like this- the ultimate goal is for the audience/players to feel engaged in the world. For that to happen, it needs to feel real. To feel real, it needs details.
Different writers focus on different kinds of details. Some get concerned with geography and demographics (for this population in this climate, you would need this many acres of farmland per household.)
More often, you see a focus on societies and histories, "My family moved here from this nation two generations ago, but I was raised by my grandfather, which is why my hair is this color but I pronounce TH sounds like this and why I use this lunar calendar instead of a solar one and my shirt is made of cotton."
The above can be summarized down to "to make your world interesting, write interesting stuff" which is some pretty goddamn inane advice to give. What I want to focus on now is identifying and understanding the elements that make a world interesting to me.
1. Ongoing conflicts, multifaceted conflicts.
Military, cultural, religious, personal, any kind of active conflict, especially complex ones. I think this is a big chunk of why Eberron works- its just a spaghetti of dozens of overlapping conflicts.
2. History that is relevant to the present.
Ancient history I don't care about. Vanished ancient civilizations are a mainstay of both science fiction and fantasy but how often do you actually give a fuck about them? History, be it ancient or recent, that directly impacts the world as it exists today is great. Once again Eberron does this. A Song Of Ice and Fire is dominated by the events of 10 years before the first book. Harry Potter too.
Nerds love worldbuilding, and they also love writing blog posts about world-building. Even more horrible are posts like this one, because I will be talking about talking about worldbuilding.
I think the conventional thinking on the subject goes like this- the ultimate goal is for the audience/players to feel engaged in the world. For that to happen, it needs to feel real. To feel real, it needs details.
Different writers focus on different kinds of details. Some get concerned with geography and demographics (for this population in this climate, you would need this many acres of farmland per household.)
More often, you see a focus on societies and histories, "My family moved here from this nation two generations ago, but I was raised by my grandfather, which is why my hair is this color but I pronounce TH sounds like this and why I use this lunar calendar instead of a solar one and my shirt is made of cotton."
I used to fall into this second camp. It feels very satisfying to invent these tiny little details and nuances because they are exactly the kind of detail that many fantasy novels don't have, or at least didn't used to. Would a FAKE world have an explanation for why the stones in this particular street come from a different quarry than the rest of this part of the city? I don't think so, buddy.
I've been playing Pillars of Eternity, the 2015 kickstarter game made in the style of baldur's gate/planescape torment, etc. They went whole hog on the detail-oriented world-building philosophy. I keep encountering in-game books talking about the 'feast of something something' and the time this one group migrated from here to there and how this nation has big ships but these other guys have faster ships and oh gee they invented a new calendar with new month names and oh my god I absolutely do not give a fuck about any of it.
I've changed my mind on world-building over the last few years because of games like POE that worked so hard at it and got me to care so little. I've come to three conclusions:
1. Belief stems from emotional engagement, not the other way around. Worlds that catch your interest will feel more real to you than realistically written worlds you don't care about.
2. Only the quality, not the quantity, of a piece of world trivia contributes to emotional engagement. Hundreds of dry facts don't combine to make something interesting. 100 x 0 = 0.
1. Belief stems from emotional engagement, not the other way around. Worlds that catch your interest will feel more real to you than realistically written worlds you don't care about.
2. Only the quality, not the quantity, of a piece of world trivia contributes to emotional engagement. Hundreds of dry facts don't combine to make something interesting. 100 x 0 = 0.
3. Being well thought-out doesn't make you more engaging.
There's plenty of fantasy settings that didn't put any thought into how having a bunch of wizards running around would actually work. And I've seen plenty of settings where they went to great lengths to explain exactly how wizardry works, it interacts with society, why wizards don't destroy the economy by making gold out of thing air, etc etc etc. It was all very logical and intelligent and it didn't make the story any more interesting.
The above can be summarized down to "to make your world interesting, write interesting stuff" which is some pretty goddamn inane advice to give. What I want to focus on now is identifying and understanding the elements that make a world interesting to me.
1. Ongoing conflicts, multifaceted conflicts.
Military, cultural, religious, personal, any kind of active conflict, especially complex ones. I think this is a big chunk of why Eberron works- its just a spaghetti of dozens of overlapping conflicts.
2. History that is relevant to the present.
Ancient history I don't care about. Vanished ancient civilizations are a mainstay of both science fiction and fantasy but how often do you actually give a fuck about them? History, be it ancient or recent, that directly impacts the world as it exists today is great. Once again Eberron does this. A Song Of Ice and Fire is dominated by the events of 10 years before the first book. Harry Potter too.
3. Being Sorted
"Everyone just wants a tribe"- Nicole. Factions, Houses, etc. I'm also lumping in here the daemons from His Dark Materials, which feel similar. Pretty much any element someone could make a facebook quiz about.
"Everyone just wants a tribe"- Nicole. Factions, Houses, etc. I'm also lumping in here the daemons from His Dark Materials, which feel similar. Pretty much any element someone could make a facebook quiz about.
Is that it? No of course that's not it (you idiot). But I am tired so I am going to come back around to this in another post.
Ted
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