Worldbuilding

[Flinch]

Originally Posted by Believe

Cool thread.

I think about different fantasy worlds all the time. I have one I've worked on in my mind for quite a while. I don't think I'm quite good enough at writing to really be able to flesh it out into an entire living world. But this thread inspires me to perhaps give it a try. I like the idea of a Wiki for your world. It sounds like the best way to make a world that branches out in different directions (ie: Can describe the area, and easily describe all the towns in the area, with pages for each town that describe the history.)

The thing with world building is you don't necessarily have to be a good storyteller (although it certainly helps), as you can approach your worldbuilding from a number of perspectives. I TA'd for a Fantasy Fiction course where the final project was a world building exercise and it was fascinating the different stuff people were coming up with. Some folks handed in stuff that sounded like an encyclopedia entry, others were more like something out of a D&D splatbook. One chick handed in a pseudo-epic poem, which I thought was really cool.

I'm a big steampunk fan and I'm also a big fan of post-apocalyptic type stuff, which was my basic premise. So I took the apocalyptic event and started throwing a bunch of 'what ifs' or 'if, than...'

and that led into a bunch of other ideas, like different races, and then cultures and I just find I'm getting more and more spread out with what I'm doing.

I know some people like the start in one corner and work out the details as you need them, but for me and how I think/operate, that seems like a perilous way to go about it. Not saying it's bad, just that it's different.

Orson Scott Card actually has written a book that I found to be pretty useful for worldbuilding, How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It's got some good points to keep in mind, and was on the syllabus for the course I TA'd.

[Hake]

I guess the first thing I would do is to draw a map. Land, seas, mountains, canyons, ice, forests, deserts, lost civilisations, nuclear zones, etc. From this, I would imagine where would people did settle down, put some cities, and think about the past, politics, wars, religion, alliances, rulers, heroes, ecology, animals, exploration, etc. Another good way to build a world would be to study history to make sure you understand the main mechanics of our world. Or you could play some civilisation game, put a random map, and write down everything that happens, could be fun

[Believe]

Well I started a wiki to work on my world (Google actually has a really cool wiki/website maker http://sites.google.com). I think it's helped a lot. I've been in-between a lot of ideas and this really helped me settle down on some of them. I think I have a good basic premise of the main characters (I'm designing it with a game in mind, not that I ever plan to make it). It's probably not completely original, but it seems somewhat original to me. Perhaps when I get further along I will post it up for criticism.

Edit: Okay maybe I'll give a little summary...

Edit 2: Okay I took it down. Too self conscious about it :P

[Flinch]

Don't be worried about criticism or being self conscious.

If you have a good idea, people will let you know. If it's not a good idea, people will give you ideas as how to make it better.

I'd like to share some specifics with my stuff, but I'm trying to turn it into something I might be selling somewhere down the road and copyright being what it is...

If you want some constructive criticism sometime I'd be happy to do so.

Another possible area of discussion: game worlds or fictional worlds that you either love or hate. Doesn't have to necessarily be anything epic like Middle Earth or anything like that.

Krynn, from the Dragonlance books, is one that is really well fleshed out and has that post-apocalyptic feel to it, which is one of the reasons why the novels interested me so much.

The gameworld from FF6 is another one that I particularly enjoyed, even though it's ridiculously simple and is incredibly sparse on details. I just found that when I was playing, I could go along and fill in the blanks. Same could be said of Ivalice and Final Fantasy Tactics, before FFXII and FFT:A lamed it all up.

[Drajakur]

I have three basic questions I ask myself when creating worlds for fantasy campaigns or other fledgling video-games that I've been a part of developing (on a casual basis of course).

1. Does it make sense? I like everything to be tied to an underlying logic; almost like a set of physical laws which tie particular events together. If there is magic, why is there magic? If not, why not? Why and how do people come to know what they know? Is there a historical or supernatural explanation for it? Or neither? I actually think that this is my forte because of my 'real-world' training.

2. Has it been done before? Of course no one makes a world that is totally original. That isn't even the point. But there has to be enough creative difference between what I'm doing and what has been done before in order to make the mental investment worth it.

3. Is it boring? Boring worlds with unending detail are of no value to me. I come across these all the time in fantasy novels I read. Lots of detail, no drive. I always try to make things I find not boring. Of course this is a matter of taste - but here there are benchmarks too.

[Chrisb3]

Originally Posted by Flinch

The gameworld from FF6 is another one that I particularly enjoyed, even though it's ridiculously simple and is incredibly sparse on details. I just found that when I was playing, I could go along and fill in the blanks. Same could be said of Ivalice and Final Fantasy Tactics, before FFXII and FFT:A lamed it all up.

Actually FF always annoyed me because it is too sparce for my tastes really. Never enough towns or farms... how do these people eat!? It must be all fish cause all they have is harbours. FF9's one small farm was the worst. And then big castles without anyone towns to rule or residential areas such as Doma in FF6.

Speaking of FF9, don't put temples or libaries on the mysterious forgotten/unexplored continents if you are going to fill them with families of random town npc's the player has seen before.

[Rezz]

Points of interest concept in world design. You don't flesh out shit that doesn't matter to the story or the concept at hand, same deal as running a pen and paper game or writing a novel. You don't describe in detail every farm you come across, only the ones where something tangible to the story happens. Just like you don't describe npcs that have no point to the story (brief references to characters that set a tone or lend themselves to the feel of the scene not withstanding). No author/designer puts dialog that is meaningful on every theoretical npc/non-integral character in a story or game or fleshes out all 500 people in a town of 500. Only the people that actually matter get real description or even mention, the rest get hit with standard "the townsfolk went about their daily tasks in muted acquiescence" type descriptions at best.

That said, when I create worlds for stories/games, I tend to do the map->history->where are they now type design method. Currently I'm building a world for a pen and paper game I'm going to be running after 4th ed DnD gets off the ground. I'll toss the info into a wiki after I get a bit more stuff to actually put up as the concept would translate to some other platforms readily enough (at least imo).

I'm a bit miffed at George R. R. Martin tho =/ I started working on my game world a few months back. Just recently I started reading A Song of Fire and Ice and I'll be damned if the entire concept of the Wall doesn't directly overlap with my "Great Barrier" concept. Same purpose, different creation/use in the world, but it's damn close. Gonna be a hard sell on that without getting mad shit from the Martin fans.

[Faille]

Most martin fans are so starved for new content they would probably look forward to anything similar!

[Flinch]

Originally Posted by Rezz

Points of interest concept in world design. You don't flesh out shit that doesn't matter to the story or the concept at hand, same deal as running a pen and paper game or writing a novel. You don't describe in detail every farm you come across, only the ones where something tangible to the story happens. Just like you don't describe npcs that have no point to the story (brief references to characters that set a tone or lend themselves to the feel of the scene not withstanding). No author/designer puts dialog that is meaningful on every theoretical npc/non-integral character in a story or game or fleshes out all 500 people in a town of 500. Only the people that actually matter get real description or even mention, the rest get hit with standard "the townsfolk went about their daily tasks in muted acquiescence" type descriptions at best.

That said, when I create worlds for stories/games, I tend to do the map->history->where are they now type design method. Currently I'm building a world for a pen and paper game I'm going to be running after 4th ed DnD gets off the ground. I'll toss the info into a wiki after I get a bit more stuff to actually put up as the concept would translate to some other platforms readily enough (at least imo).

I'm a bit miffed at George R. R. Martin tho =/ I started working on my game world a few months back. Just recently I started reading A Song of Fire and Ice and I'll be damned if the entire concept of the Wall doesn't directly overlap with my "Great Barrier" concept. Same purpose, different creation/use in the world, but it's damn close. Gonna be a hard sell on that without getting mad shit from the Martin fans.

Look at it this way: George RR Martin ripped off the Great Wall of China with The Wall.

It's a pretty common trope in fantasy fiction, though. The High Clerists Tower in Dragonlance is the same sort of thing, on a smaller scale (which could be seen as a take off of Helm's Deep from LotR.) I think there's something in the Forgotten Realms that's got the same vibe.

To me, the Wall has always seemed like Australia in the Arctic :P

[Believe]

Whew. Well after putting all this thought into my world. I think I just thought of a basis for a REALLY cool world. Sort of a Fantasy-EVE type world. I think it could be really cool, and it's got my idea with swarming with so many ideas. Which also kind of sucks because I have so many other things going on right now in my life

[Gaereth]

One of the things about world building, for writers and for gaming, is that each person is going to approach it differently. There is no right or wrong way as long as there is forward progress. If you spend all your time wrestling with the merits of 3 armed hookers and ponies and don't move forward then you need to look at your process.

Some people sit down and start the story at point A and then just write frenetically until they hit Z and let the story build itself. They then go back and clean up all the loose ends, tighten it up, etc, etc.

Some folks give themselves a basic flow chart with ideas and directions and know the start, middle, ending before a single word is put onto paper.

Some people build a huge tapestry of their story, full of notes, places with history, people with backstory, flora and fauna, politics, religion, and everythign in between. Then they plop and interesting story into the world and watch where it goes.

There really is no right way to do this kind of stuff. Just be honest with yourself about your forward progress and keep at it.

[Darkko]

I always have problems trying to flesh out my cities when I'm world building. Creating a continent with mountains, and rivers, and such is easy. However, when i start trying to layout a city it becomes difficult. I think its because I want to make it as detailed as possible but that often becomes pretty difficult. With all the streets, important buildings, districts, harbors, etc there is a lot going on in the city. Anyone use programs to create their cities rather than pen and paper?

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Darkko

I always have problems trying to flesh out my cities when I'm world building. Creating a continent with mountains, and rivers, and such is easy. However, when i start trying to layout a city it becomes difficult. I think its because I want to make it as detailed as possible but that often becomes pretty difficult. With all the streets, important buildings, districts, harbors, etc there is a lot going on in the city. Anyone use programs to create their cities rather than pen and paper?

I find Adobe Illustrator to be pretty good for it. Photoshop would work as well I'm sure, though I feel Illustrator gives a little bit better control over simple lines and shapes which is all I use for city maps.

Basically, I'll just craft the relative shape of each building (which I have generally predetermined) and make those in Illustrator first, then plot out a boundary for a certain district, such as the marketplace. I'll then fit in the buildings wherever looks good, unless there's an important reason or lore item that makes me have a specific place for one. Then I often create some "filler" shapes to represent any buildings that are not important to the story, such as apartments or homes, etc. The great thing about using a program vs. pen and paper is all of these shapes remain editable and movable, so if you decide it doesn't look right or want to change something up, you just drag it elsewhere.

If I want to actually add art to the map I'll import it into Photoshop and use a texture + mask to make it fit directly over the shape. It doesn't always look perfect, but for the purposes of a pen and paper game or whatever it's certainly good enough.

[Varadox]

Originally Posted by Flinch

Look at it this way: George RR Martin ripped off the Great Wall of China with The Wall.

It's a pretty common trope in fantasy fiction, though. The High Clerists Tower in Dragonlance is the same sort of thing, on a smaller scale (which could be seen as a take off of Helm's Deep from LotR.) I think there's something in the Forgotten Realms that's got the same vibe.

To me, the Wall has always seemed like Australia in the Arctic :P

It's actually based on Hadrian's Wall in England. Not that it matters much, I guess I just wanted to geek out there for a moment.

[Darkko]

Good advice, I'll give that a try sometime soon and see if that works better for me. I also found this website. They sell tools to help create worlds, games, etc. ProFantasy Software - City Designer 3 - map making for game, historical and hobby mappers costs like $40 iirc. It kind of looks interesting.