Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Baron Opal]

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

For a sci fi story? Absolutely. For preparing a background for a RPG? Hardly.

Where this is applicable is that you don't want to spend too much time over-preparing. Creating parts of the world that will never be seen is wasted effort. However, many referees love the act of creation that worldbuilding is, along with wanting a firm underpinning of the physics and metaphysics of the setting to create an internally consistent world.

For a story, your characters and their actions require the most effort. The background is simply the background. For a game, the characters aren't under your control and require a background to react against and to define themselves against.

In short, apples vs. oranges.

And now, to read the thread.

 

[Ourph]

For a story, your characters and their actions require the most effort. The background is simply the background. For a game, the characters aren't under your control and require a background to react against and to define themselves against.

While I 95% agree with this, I think it's important to note that in some very good fiction the world or parts thereof may actually BE "characters". Not in a traditional sense, but in terms of their importance and centrality to the story. I would argue that this is the case in a lot of Stephen R. Donaldsons writings (both fantasy and scifi).

 

[apoptosis]

I'm going to go out and say that I think the Harrison is more correct than not. Here's the point:



He's not saying that an author should do no world-building behind the scenes, but that extensive world-building in the narrative of the story is bad and should be subordinate to the narrative.
I don't think this means that the story shouldn't offer glimpses of the world around the narrative or construct the world's reality as it relates to the ongoing story or even provide the necessary context to the story. Those are elements of the world that directly support the narrative, rather than existing to build the world in the eyes of the reader.

I agree with this completely, and I also thought that this is what he was trying to say. Often writers so badly want to show you the world that they created that the book becomes a rather dull imaginary history or verbose atlas. The narrative and story should explore the world and not the world be the focus of the narrative.

THis is coming from someone who really enoys worldbuilding, but realize that many authors really do too much of it within their fiction. While there are authors who you read that invite you into a world that seems to be a complete facade with no detail, I tend to see more and more writers wanting the reader to really know their world, and the story suffers from it.

On the other hand for RPGs, totally different medium and worldbuiliding can be a lot more advantageous.

 

[Prophet2b]

I find it interesting that this series of books has now been used as an example by both sides of the argument.

Sure, there are cases gone horribly, horribly wrong, like the Wheel of Time story, where the author seems unable, or unwilling, to break off the travelogue and get down to advancing the plot...

Haha. Well... While I find it tiresome at times, too, Jordan's books are incredibly popular - and for good reason. My point was that their popularity stems from the fact that the world is so absolutely, stunningly real. I don't see how any other author could keep so many readers so intrigued by (as Set said) a "travelogue" alone - because he can't. It's the world that intrigues and keeps people wanting more.

That's my opinion, anyway. You get a sense that what is taking place is both a culmination of everything that took place before, and yet also only a small part of the whole. There is something else, beyond the story. There are myths and legends and histories and lands all to be explored that won't get explored by these people. That sense and feel could not be there without such incredible world planning.

Those who don't like the series I won't argue with - it's definitely not for everyone. But I think Jordan has enough readers that he's still a good example of at least popular and very successful fantasy writer who is as popular and successful as he is because of the world. Without the world as it is, his story would be horrendous beyond imagination.

 

[apoptosis]

I actually think that Jordan is a great example of someone who concentrates on worldbuilding to the detriment of the story.

 

[ThirdWizard]

World building is not verisimilitude and verisimilitude is not world building.

You can have one without the other in both directions. This is true of D&D and this is even more true of fiction. A writer can make allusions to things that don't even exist in his mind as fleshed out concepts and still create provocative fiction. You can tease readers with far away places and concepts all the while creating a very real "living and breathing" world, without ever actually writing out anything about those far away places or societies or anything else you mention in your writing.

Why? Because no one is going to call you on it in fiction, because they can't. They aren't there. If you create a scene with your hero visiting an alien bar where he notes some aliens trying to pedal something called "worm sand" because he wouldn't go near it after what it did to a friend of his, you don't have to know what it did, who the aliens are, or what his friend's name is. And, if you aren't going to mention it in your work, why detail it at all? It adds verisimilitude without work. That's always a good thing.

Later, if you find it would be beneficial to the story, you can go back and expand on it. I'm of the school of thought that says it is better to not have it defined for this exact purpose. What would be best for the story, I think, is often not what you originally created, because now you can tailor it to a specific plot thread that might not have even existed when you originally created it.

I do this all the time in D&D. I create lots of things that are just throw away at the time, but keep them in mind for the future. When I find something that fits, I weave it back into the adventure and it looks like I had that planned all along. For example, I recently had an NPC that the PCs work with often dissapear, no one knowing where he went, though he said something about important business. I had no idea why he was gone. I just knew that at some point in the future, I would find a place for him to jump back into the story dramatically. And, now I have.

You can do this for all kinds of setting elements. Just because there's an NPC who the PCs interact with from a distant country doesn't mean you have to define things about that country, and it certainly doesn't mean you should design anything about the country from a writing perspective (as opposed to D&D). You can note some oddities about him and move on. When the PCs finally go visit the country, then you can expand on it, but there's little reason to do so before then. That goes triple or quadruple for writing.

 

[Banshee16]

I think he's hit the nail on something, however.

There's a significant proportion of any fan base that desires everything to be laid out, explained, catalogued, referenced, indexed, and explored. From my experience writing Dragonlance game material and fiction, I've come face to face with this from some of the folks who I work with. Fans come from reading the books and want it all to be explained in some Holy Grail of a game sourcebook. They want all the stats, they want all the population figures, commerce, mundane information, motives, relationships, adventure hooks, charts, and so forth.

I wrote a short story for the most recent Dragonlance anthology, and I didn't name the town it took place in, or the names of three of the characters, because it was from the point of view of a half-ogre afflicted with feeblemind and it was all he could do just to focus on what was happening around him. No sooner had some of the regular message board folks read it, they wanted to know all of those details. I didn't have them, and I didn't really see a need to give them.

So are we on two sides of a divide, here? Do we all need the statistics, charts, solved mysteries, and so forth? Or is that just a thing some of us want?

Cheers,
Cam

I'd suspect it's a mix....I think as a GM, overarching details are important...you should know what the local kingdoms are, in the area where the PCs are active...who are the rulers? How do people dress? Are they nice? Tyrants? Repressed? Those details give players enough information to start building an opinion, and knowing how to act. Do they need to know exactly what people eat, or how many cobblers are in this town, or how much money the king has in his stash? Likely not.....unless they want to kill the king, and take his stuff.

I think the point the author was making was to not lose sight of the forest for the trees. As a writer, you can't be so focused on the details of an imaginary world that you forget that you're trying to tell a good story. But as a GM, you need to have consistent details so that you're not just making things up as you go, without any form of internal consistency........ie. it's a bad idea to have one adventure where the PCs are acting against an evil king, because you want them to be the resistance for a few modules....and then turn around and have the king be an old, benevolent ruler who's about to die, 5 adventures later.....that's a lack of consistency. What happened to the evil overlord? The two are somewhat mutually exclusive.

At the same time, it's no sense making the family tree of the last 10 generations of that king's family, unless you want to interact with him.....ie. have some long lost relative try to kill him, in order to take the throne.....or maybe have a PC be related to him.

Banshee

 

[Imaro]

I just have a quick question for all you world ad-hockers, what do you do if your players go off on a tangent. I personally like for my worlds to be consistent and to a point(cause it is still fantasy) logical. Has your ad-hocing ever led to a situation where you didn't remember something you alluded to, or later wanted to change your mind about? IMHO I find this disconcerting as a player or as a GM. My players have asked for information and went about doing things in ways I would've never pictured and my worldbilding has always allowed me enough info to make it work. On a side note isn't keeping track of all these side notes on things that don't exist extra effort as well?

As for changing things once you've built your world...who says you can't? If this was true no one would houserule and change published settings, but it's done all the time. At least with the world built it gives you more ways to see a coherent way to implement the changes you want to make. I really think some people on this thread are equating world-building with rigid, uncompromising GM and they're not the same. A Gm can be just as rigid and uncompromising with any aspect of his game and they're two seperate issues.

 

[edgewaters]

I just have a quick question for all you world ad-hockers, what do you do if your players go off on a tangent. I personally like for my worlds to be consistent and to a point(cause it is still fantasy) logical. Has your ad-hocing ever led to a situation where you didn't remember something you alluded to, or later wanted to change your mind about?

...

As for changing things once you've built your world...who says you can't? If this was true no one would houserule and change published settings, but it's done all the time.

Aren't you being a little inconsistent right now?

If a prefigured preplanned world where everything is nailed down STILL needs to be changed (and is thus inconsistent), what are you worried about?

IMO consistency is actually easier with a less detailed world. Everything has come up in play and is easier to remember, sticks in the mind better, than the contents of a binder full of rambling essays. And you should have notes which perform the same function as the essays.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

IMO consistency is actually easier with a less detailed world. Everything has come up in play and is easier to remember, sticks in the mind better, than the contents of a binder full of rambling essays.

I personally find this untrue. True, perhaps, if the worldbuilding is done in 'rambling essays,' but this is the digital age; a reasonably competent computer literate person (say, good enough to consistently get to and post on a message board ) can do worldbuilding in MS Word or Wordperfect and generate an index for it that will allow him easy reference; with a smidgeon more expertise or a copy of any commercial HTML editor, he can hypertext up his world document and make it even easier to reference.

As to the original quote, I think it takes a subjective viewpoint that applies either to the author's own preferences or to a certain subset of speculative fiction, and then applies it to the whole.

Me, I *hate* detailed worldbuilding in books. Bores me to tears. Howard gave a more vivid picture of the Hyborian Age in a paragraph than most fantasists, operating in the Tolkien mold, do in a whole novel, and Howard also developed the world as he went along, leaving plenty of empty space for storytelling...

But Howard still did worldbuilding OUTSIDE THE STORIES (and, subtly, in them). He wrote out a rough history that allowed him to reference ideas consistently, to tie his Conan yarns in with earlier works and with Lovecraft's mythos, and to give hints of the wider world or even map it out.