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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7330582" data-attributes="member: 82106">Drats, I let this thread get 10 days ahead of me <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 have no idea what the intervening 284 posts have said, so I'm probably just putting my foot in it, but...I don't think there's GOT to be anything more to it than sheer fun and interest in doing it. I mean, I've come up with 100 ideas for different places to set a story, but yet as a rule I run most of my D&D games within the same setting that has hosted them since roughly 1976 or so. Granted, its evolved a BIT in 42 years, but the whole point of it is simply the sheer history of it and existing plots, locations, past events that can be referred to. Maybe its just the doing it just to do it. Now, from a story telling kind of perspective? In a game where, as we play it today in our groups, there's considerable input from players, shaping of things after the fact, dramatic changes, etc. I mean, I don't consider anything in 'my setting' to be particularly canon unless its been revealed to the characters and played through and become part of an established narrative. Even then we've elected to retcon a few things, or maybe even just 'mythologize' them in a way that fits them better into modern play (since a lot of the early stuff was pretty different from what we do nowadays).I guess my point is, I'm not sure the old-style world building really serves a central game purpose anymore. There's value in imagining some structure, ala DW's fronts and such, but those are intended to be very loose and nonspecific, so they're only worldbuilding in a pretty different sense from the old time 'flesh out the details of every building in the town' kind of thing.Its just an exercise, a craft unto itself. I would point to the fact that a vast array of authors, good and bad, have done the same thing, particularly F & SF ones obviously. It is clearly an activity of intellectual interest at the very least.</blockquote>

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