Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Reynard]

You'd think that someone like him would be a bit more mature.

Why? We write to get noticed, to make people think, to cause an effect. Maybe he hasn't published anything recently. Maybe he needed to *cause* something, so he decided to go with something obvious and controversial. in other words, maybe he was trolling.

As ashamed as I am to admit it, there have been times when I just felt the need to get some reaction, any reaction to some thought. After what I consider "good" or "smart" thoughts get ignored, sometimes I go for the easy path and say something stupid, just to geta reaction. I would be surprised if any of us that regularly visit and post on the internet haven't done the same thing.

There's something very addictive about message boards, I think. In fact, I have been trying recently to make myself stop visiting them. The time I spend on these (and other) boards could be used to do so muchmore. But here I am, posting on this thread so that the Dungeon/Dragon Piazo thread can grow.

 

[Mallus]

Provocation in order to create thought is one thing, but it's clear his intent wasn't to do that...

It was to me.

...it was just him screeching 'look at me, aren't I smart?!'

No-one posting to this thread was guilty of that. Nope. No sir. (in his defense, his blog post was much shorter than some of the posts here)

You'd think that someone like him would be a bit more mature.

Or you'd think people on an Internet forum would a little less thin-skinned. Wait, no you wouldn't.

Personally, I think Harrison's post was a great jumping off point for a discussion about the role of the kind of intricate counter-worlds you find in a certain kind of fantastic literature (and I'm as guilty of anyone for not trying to push the thread in that direction).

Is it enough that they be places to explore in and of themselves, or should they put to a use to a finer --at least a more controlled-- use as tools to explore our (collective) selves?

 

[Jim Hague]

It was to me.

Then you're seeing something I'm not, clearly. Thanking people who click through his blog for '15 minutes of notoriety' strikes me as attention-hogging (to be relatively polite) of the worst sort.

Or you'd think people on an Internet forum would a little less thin-skinned. Wait, no you wouldn't.

Gosh, I am so terribly sorry to have said anything mean about some writer you're fond of, to impugn his motives with his own words. Wait, no, I'm not.

Personally, I think Harrison's post was a great jumping off point for a discussion about the role of the kind of intricate counter-worlds you find in a certain kind of fantastic literature (and I'm as guilty of anyone for not trying to push the thread in that direction).

Is it enough that they be places to explore in and of themselves, or should they put to a use to a finer --at least a more controlled-- use as tools to explore our (collective) selves?

Unfortunately, his post is tainted by the messenger. I got more out of the link to Vincent's blog posted uphtread than out of Harrison's self-serving little fit.

 

[danzig138]

My guess though is that if a GM creates something, they are going to want to show it off,

I have no doubt that this problem plagues some GMs. For me, this isn't the case. When I work on world and setting creation, I do so knowing there's a great chance that they players won't encounter a majority of it. Heck, even in a pre-existing setting (Greyhawk), they won't hit a bunch of it. But knowing how the things they don't interact with directly interact with each other helps me to determine how the things the players do interact with will work.

And yeah, if the players are only able to look at the, what was it, amusement park, and not affect any kind of change, that's a fault of the man in charge of the game.

 

[Mallus]

Thanking people who click through his blog for '15 minutes of notoriety' strikes me as attention-hogging (to be relatively polite) of the worst sort.

Unlike the other quiet, private people who maintain blogs because they cherish their anonymity?

Gosh, I am so terribly sorry to have said anything mean about some writer you're fond of, to impugn his motives with his own words.

I don't mind that you insulted a writer I respect, that's par for the course when my friends and I discus the arts. As is drinking, and sometimes, threats.

What's irritating is people's refusal to get over his manner and see he was saying something potentially interesting. Really, haven't you ever heard writers or artists talk about their work, and the works of their peers? Usually someone gets a table flipped over onto the them... (well, if their name is Clement Greenberg)

Unfortunately, his post is tainted by the messenger.

Did he shoot your cat or something?

..self-serving little fit.

Self-serving fits seem all the rage around here lately. I guess I'm just accustomed to a certain level of bluster and swagger when its comes to discussing literature (or games, for that matter).

 

[Jim Hague]

What's irritating is people's refusal to get over his manner and see he was saying something potentially interesting. Really, haven't you ever heard writers or artists talk about their work, and the works of their peers? Usually someone gets a table flipped over onto the them... (well, if their name is Clement Greenberg)

There's a difference between being provocative to get some ideas going and attention-whoring. If an allegedly intellgient, talented writer has to stoop to, well, a publicity stunt, I start questioning whether they have anything worthwhile to say, or whether their attitude comes through in their works. Just for grins, I read the first Virconium book earlier this week, and it seems very much like the latter in Harrison's case. You stir the pot to get the ingredients mixing, not to show how supposedly well you stir the pot.

Did he shoot your cat or something?

No, but his being a preening, attention-mongering prat doesn't increase my respect for him.

 

[Reynard]

What's irritating is people's refusal to get over his manner and see he was saying something potentially interesting. Really, haven't you ever heard writers or artists talk about their work, and the works of their peers? Usually someone gets a table flipped over onto the them... (well, if their name is Clement Greenberg)

Well, sure, that's what we want. If someone is not getting punched in the face by the end of the night, you weren't having a right discussion of the subject at hand. 9To those of you who think I am joking: you're wrong.) But the problem is that, boiled down, the original post is something controversial, but hardly interesting. I mean, the writer is either saying that bad writers are bad writers (in which case he is right and not the least bit controversial) or that worldbuilding, as a genral thing, is bad (in which case he's controversial but not the least bit right).

A much better thesis to go with is something like "Aliens in sci fi are pointless because they all represent something human anyway." That, I think, would make a hell of an interesting and controversial statement, especially if made by a respected sci-fi writer. It is a wild idea, but one we've all had, and suggests a million things about a million works that exist or are yet to be made.

See, here's the thing. We ariters are raised to think that to be writers, we also need to be wusses (please import another, much harsher word at the end of that sentence to get the full meaning of my statement). Such wasn't true in the past, and is probably a function of modern society in general. nonetheless, there was a day when it was perfectly acceptable, expected even, for a couple writers sipping whiskey on the Spanish coast to get into fisticuffs over some aspect of the craft. that day is sadly gone, though I will do my best, sober and otherwise, to bring it back.

 

[apoptosis]

I have no doubt that this problem plagues some GMs. For me, this isn't the case. When I work on world and setting creation, I do so knowing there's a great chance that they players won't encounter a majority of it. Heck, even in a pre-existing setting (Greyhawk), they won't hit a bunch of it. But knowing how the things they don't interact with directly interact with each other helps me to determine how the things the players do interact with will work.

And yeah, if the players are only able to look at the, what was it, amusement park, and not affect any kind of change, that's a fault of the man in charge of the game.

What you describe is what I think is an advantage of world-building in a game. I think world-building outside of the adventure can be effective in allowing your game to have a real living feel to it (other things happening offscreen that can potentially impact the character).

I think one of the problems with world-building in GAMES usually is that the GM is so invested in his world that he designed that he doesnt want it to change. He wants the world to stay the way he made it and the result is that the characters cannot really impact the world.

I think the problem of world-building in fiction is NOT this problem, but is somewhat related to another world-building issue in a game (though i think it is less of issue in gaming) and this is the info dump that can occur when the GM badly wants to relate his world creations to his players.

This is the problem that occurs when world-building becomes the point of the narrative in fiction and this is what I felt from the original post, Harrison was warning against (with a lot of hyperbole)

I agree that the overall point is that boring writing is bad (an obvious statement that is made when any specific fiction writing technique is critiqued). But Harrison is specifically saying that writers should focus on the story and not the world. World-building as a focus of a story is boring and there are a number fantasy writers who fall into this trap.

 

[Abisashi]

You stir the pot to get the ingredients mixing, not to show how supposedly well you stir the pot.

From reading interviews with Harrison, and some of his other blog entries, I think it is clear this is his actual intent, and I don't think he was using excessive wording to voice his moderate opinion - he really, truly hates worldbuilding. As an example, see bolded text (and note that you are apparently naive).

January 18th, 2007
Readers who think my article “What It Might Be Like to Live in Viriconium” has something to do with licensed settings have, I suspect wilfully, missed its point. I don’t care one way or another if people invent, sell or play games based on fictional “worlds”, though I don’t quite see why they bother. What I care about is the naive idea that a world exists on which a game may be based. When you engage with a novel, it is an engagement with words. What you engage is not a world but the motives of the author, mediated by some more or less effective technical tricks (actually, even that is a faint hope you both have, a shared lie, an over-dignified description of an ungainly struggle with the text’s promises). Something like this holds for every medium–cinema, theatre, dance, games & telling stories in the dark when you are eight years old–up to and including the built environment, which simply isn’t there in the same sense as the natural one, & exists, literally, to “tame” the real. & there are always “the successive phases of the image”, too, I suppose, the fourth of which reduces readers, writers, game-players and mall rats alike to the status of solipsists masturbating in separate darkened rooms.

The Viriconium stories, as the article says, were written to: emphasise the various problems involved when fiction begins to lay claim to the quality of being a “secondary reality”; make difficult a naive or domesticated reading of the text; & maybe shake the fantasy reader’s confidence in very the idea of the constructability of worlds. I wouldn’t try that again, nor would I write anything like “What It Might Be Like to Live in Viriconium”, now 11 years old & showing its age. The water needs diverting much further upstream.

This isn't the most representative quote, but I don't want to spend too much time looking.

 

[FireLance]

Really, i think he made a little rant, didn't think about it or its implications much, and got a bunch of us boring, nerdish clods in an uproar over it.

I, personally, do not care who he is or what his intentions are. However, the vehement, almost fanatical, responses of some of the posters in this thread make me think that he's on to something.