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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 8643232" data-attributes="member: 59082">Which one? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />I love world-building - and if I'm honest, it is more of a primary hobby (or art-form) to me than RPGs, and they essentially exists as two distinct "streams" that sometimes meet (or it could be said that my engagement with world-building creates separate sub-streams, one being stories and the other game settings). It didn't start that way - I discovered D&D and started reading fantasy novels around the same time (early 80s), and world-building was an eventual out-growth of that. But starting in the late 80s, my main or "mythic world" began to separate--eventually completely--from RPGs, and I developed other "game worlds" to play D&D in (as well as still other worlds for other story ideas).My "mythic world" is (or feels) quite real. It seems to exist in its own right, and I feel less that I am "building" it, as in constructing it from scratch, and more that I am gradually seeing it in greater detail, like putting a puzzle together over many years. In other words, I feel like I'm more the chronicler of a world that exists in its own right that I'm gradually "seeing," and less like an architect of something that doesn't exist until I put pen to paper. So in terms of your question, it definitely feels like it exists outside my conscious awareness.But I haven't used this mythic world as an RPG setting for maybe three decades. At this point, it is very far removed from anything D&D. In fact, I remember the moment when I realized that the race of beings that I called elves were not actually elves, but something different. This happened a lot, and gradually, over time, the world took on its own life. I could use it for a D&D setting, but it would essentially require a whole new set of races, classes, and sub-systems and really, when I play D&D, I tend to prefer a relatively "classic" approach, so I've developed D&D settings to use when I DM. This "game world" uses the building blocks of D&D lore and riffs off them, but stays relatively traditional. It doesn't feel as real as my mythic world, but it also doesn't have to. Where the mythic world feels like it could be an actual world out there in the cosmos that I'm "receiving" data on through my imagination, my D&D setting feels more purely constructed - something that I have put together from various elements from D&D canon, various books and other media. In a way it is an attempt to make the archetypal D&D fantasy setting with some personal twists.Actually, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has a taxonomy of imagination that describes the difference quite well:My mythic world seems to be largely the product of what Coleridge calls secondary imagination, while my D&D worlds are more the product of fancy. In fact, there is an ongoing tension in the process of creating the mythic world - I have to constantly keep "fancy" at bay, or rather hear through the noise of its meddling to get at the "signal," if that makes sense. Sometimes I come up with an idea that doesn't feel quite right, and gradually the "true" idea emerges underneath it. It is almost like some ideas start as a "fanciful placeholder" and are eventually replaced with a product of secondary imagination.On the other hand, my D&D setting is more the product of fancy in that it is intentional built to serve a distinct purpose: to play D&D in. In a way it is much easier, because I don't have to worry about the "true" idea - I just put together bits and pieces that serve the main purpose of the world: to be a setting for D&D game play.As an aside, I think most RPG worlds are largely the products of fancy, and our common cultural view is that fancy = imagination, and even that Coleridge's secondary (let alone primary) imagination is just a bunch of quasi-mystical woo-woo, even pretentiously elitist. To that I would say, woe is us. In fact, I think this is a limiting factor on a lot of art, and why most film studios and authors (and game designers) tend to just regurgitate and re-skin endlessly.To quote Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with that! A game world is essentially a back-drop for game play. And the setting of a film or book is meant to serve the story. But it does end up feeling like the vast majority of fantasy worlds that are put forth are mostly just re-combinations of already existing bits and pieces, rather than living and breathing worlds that feel like they exist in their own right.That said, occasionally some film or book or RPG seems to tap into a deeper wellspring, and even worlds built on fancy still sometimes have elements of Coleridge's secondary imagination. To some extent, I think that the degree that a world has its own unique signature and vibe (that is, is original rather than derivative), often at least correlates with the degree to which its creator tapped into secondary imagination.I am not equating novelty with originality, but that the latter has something to do with something existing outside of the "fixities and definites" of the mind, as if its origin is elsewhere. Meaning, I'm using "origin" as coming from the depths of imagination - not derived from pre-existing cultural artifacts.</blockquote>

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