Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Mallus]

... like the previously mentioned story by Joyce, 'The Death'.

It's "The Dead", as in: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Wait, you were just playing with me, weren't you?

But, you can have all sorts of atmospherics and details that are unrelated to world building and which weren't created by a world building creative process and where just thrown in on a whim of the author's creativity without much apparent thought as to what they imply. (China Meiville, I'm looking at you.)

I find that 'what they imply' doesn't always matter, sometimes exotica is enough (see, I don't necessarily agree w/Harrison, I just found what he said intriguing). Tales of 'darkest Africa' for a culture that's already lit the real Africa up, found it not to our liking, and shut the light.

(Incidently, this is precisely why Star Trek is a horrible example of 'world building', because with the exception of Klingon language, almost nothing in the 'story' was created by a world building process. Hense, all the various inconsistancies, retconns, unresolvable contridictions, abandoned story elements, and so forth.)

And yet for all that Star Trek (and the Federation) is well-loved by an enormous fanbase. Kinda like LotR.

 

[Mallus]

I read the first Virconium book earlier this week, and it seems very much like the latter in Harrison's case.

I'm not sure what you mean by that (but at least you've read one of his books so we can have a proper discussion).

The Viriconium stories are odd. They're not straight fantasy or science fiction, or rather, they are to start with and then stray into Calvino territory. It's like he's trying to work through what his imaginary city means to him, what he can use it for, whether or not writing it a valid literary goal. He's not trying to make a single place, rather he keeps recasting it in different roles. It's a writerly piece, about process. It's not going to satisfy you if you're looking for a "solid" alternate world to spend time in.

What did you think of it?

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

He did shoot your cat. My condolences.

 

[Mallus]

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.

That's the spirit!

But the problem is that, boiled down, the original post is something controversial, but hardly interesting.

Hey, a honest disagreement about the content of his post. We can't have that.

When I read the words 'great clomping foot of nerdism', I didn't feel anger, I felt recognition. I recalled the days when my perfect book had both a glossary and a map. It goes without saying it was set in the far future or in the time of the elves (thus I loved both Dune and LotR). I had a passion for the minutiae of made-up things and places. This is what I looked for in literature. It was somewhat later I discovered most people don't...

I'm very interested in figuring out why what appeals to the boy still appeals to the man. Why does the mere mention of the 'Holtzmann suspensor-nullification effect' or 'Minas Morgul' bring me pleasure? Is it simply the promise of a thrilling world of wonder? One that's somehow improved by extensive mapping, by survey, by the kind of atomizing that would seem to demystify it. What the Hell is going on? What's the allure of of BS science (spice gas, tetrion particles, wave-motion guns), constellations full of faux stars, and highly-detailed systems of magic (another important criteria I looked for).

It starts to look like a toybox full of autism.

Harrison comes out swinging and says 'this is a waste of time'. Part of me agrees. It's the reduction of the fantastic --which ought to be chock full of myth, fear, primary process badthink-- to fetishism. Tell me something about the human condition, or the expanse of human conception. Don't putter around drawing out the sewer map of Hobbiton.

And yet I'd probably buy the sewer map of Hobbiton. (or at least the latest Star Trek Technical Manual). It's a conundrum, hence my interest.

Ok, rant over. I probably shouldn't have been posting while listening to the new NIN album (it's good. Quelle suprise!)

...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.

I have plans to drink whiskey tomorrow night with a bunch of my more literary-minded buddies, where I intend to bring up Harrison's blog entry. Maybe they'll be a fight! (I can see the headlines now: Nerd throw-down in South Philly!)

I will do my best, sober and otherwise, to bring it back.

That's the spirit... err, spirits!

 

[Hussar]

I agree with much of what Mallus is saying here.

Just a point about world building and Star Trek and Star Wars and other serial stories. Something to not forget is the sheer volume of material we have to work with. Between all the incarnations of Star Trek, we have what, 1000+ hours of televison shows and movies? I'd be surprised if it wasn't close to that.

Of course there's a huge amount of detail about the setting. Even if you only spend 10% of the time developing setting, that still leaves us with over a hundred hours of dedicated world building. That's a HUGE amount. It accretes.

But, if you move in a bit closer and look at any given episode, you don't see huge amounts of world building. Most of the episodes have maybe 5 minutes of exposition detailing the background of this or that element and then get back on with the plot. Take Klingon's as a good example. It isn't until well into TNG that we see a Klingon death ritual, despite seeing lots of dead Klingons previously.

Why then? Because it fit with the plot of showcasing Worf's character. If the whole Stovokor (sp) and shouting to the sky thing had been introduced somewhere else, it would have been extraneous. Is it world building? Yup. But, it's world building in service to the plot.

Howard has been held up a few times as a world building posterboy. Yet, that's after the accretion of several short stories (never mind the horde of novels and whatnot that have come after). Within any given story, you don't see a whole lot of worldbuilding beyond what is needed by the plot. We don't hear anything about Kush until Conan goes there or meets someone from there. Again, world building is done in service of the story.

I agree with TheShaman that there is no correlation between world building and beating the players over the head with it. However, there is a correlation between bad DM's beating their player's over the head with their setting. In other words, developing a setting is fine, so long as it takes a back seat to the game. When the DM performs a half hour monologue detailing the history of Elven Tea, it's a bad thing. ((Yeah, wrongbadfun and all that, but, seriously, could you REALLY see a half hour monologue on Elven Tea as a good thing? ))

 

[LostSoul]

In other words, developing a setting is fine, so long as it takes a back seat to the game.

What if the game is about exploring the setting? In that case, intense worldbuilding is probably a good idea.

 

[Hussar]

What if the game is about exploring the setting? In that case, intense worldbuilding is probably a good idea.

Really? Say we're doing a "Deepest, Darkest Africa" sort of campaign where the players are intrepid explorers cutting their way through vast tracts of jungle. Sounds like a fun campaign to me.

Do we really need massive detail about every animal, plant and monster they meet? Or can they just meet "Random meat eating carnivore #25" once in a while? Sure, some parts will need to be expanded, that's simply good gaming. But, again, it takes a back seat to the action of the game. A ten page treatise on the cultivation habits of the lizardfolk that the party will meet once is not the makings of a good game.

 

[Raven Crowking]

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.

Not unlike the vehement, almost fanatical, responses of some when J. Swift suggested Scottish landlords eat their tenant's babies? Did that mean that he was onto something?

Or, if I say "3.5 Sucks" and I receive vehement, almost fanatical, responses, does that mean 3.5 actually sucks? Or does it mean that I am wrong, and a lot of people want to tell me so?

I think the latter is more likely than the former, don't you?

 

[Raven Crowking]

But, again, it takes a back seat to the action of the game. A ten page treatise on the cultivation habits of the lizardfolk that the party will meet once is not the makings of a good game.

Once again, world-building and introducing a monologue of info-dump are not the same thing. If the question is "Is a monologue of info dump a good idea?" then I imagine that this thread would either be really short, or filled with examples of how people agree that, in general, it is not.

World-building is development of coherent setting, nothing more.

Or, let me put it this way, is there anyone on this thread who thinks both that

(1) World-building is a good thing, and
(2) Great monologues of info-dump are a good thing?

Is there anyone on this thread who thinks both that

(1) World-building is a good thing, and
(2) World-building is not the development of coherent setting?

Is there anyone on this thread who thinks that great monologues of info-dump are a good thing?

Is there anyone on this thread who thinks that develepment of a coherent setting -- mind you, we're not talking about an immutable setting here -- is a bad thing?

I would imagine that, apart from terminology, there is far less controversy involved here than some might think.


RC

 

[GlassJaw]

I tried to read through this thread but got tired of all the defensive and "utter crap" comments. Get a grip people.

I think the overall premise is sound, regardless if it's applied to a sci-fi novel or an RPG campaign world. The best advice I would give someone creating a campaign and world scratch is this:

1. Only create what you need.
2. World outline, don't world build.

If the players aren't going to be near Enchanted Fairy Forest, why spend any time populating it? The most you should do is write a very short description of it, almost like a placeholder.

Remember, while they compliment each other, the adventure's the thing, not the setting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Once more, world-building doesn't mean "intrusion of reams of information in the narrative" -- it means the necessary work to establish the setting that the narrative requires.

It would seem that professional authors disagree with your definition. "Necessary work" would seem to mean "writing." "Worldbuilding" is surrounding the writing with detail the reader never encounters. Even if it never gets onto the page, even if you end up discarding 90% of it...that useless detail is "worldbuilding" in the words of one professional writer of science fiction.

In D&D, there *is* an analogue (if there isn't, I wouldn't have expected this thread to go on for 8 pages ). The "necessary work" is entirely what the PC's encounter or are likely to.

Insofar as the thread is concerned for D&D, "worldbuilding" is composing reams of information that are largely irrelevant to what is happening to the PC's at the time. For instance, detailing Country X's government when the PC's are mired in Country Y.

It is, in fact, focusing on what is a minor detail to the point where it's a big deal. This is the "great clomping foot of nerdism," demanding a place for everything and everything in its place and placing this world up on a pedestal that claims it is worthy of this attention. It is the obsessive attention to detail that places knowledge of this detail as an end in and of itself, with little reason to care about that detail other than obsessive knowledge. Verisimilitude can certainly be maintained in absence of exhaustive detail, and, indeed, usually is.

What that misses is making the reader (or the players) *care* about it. It becomes a useless blob of intro text, irrelevant to their experience, important only to the creator as an excersize in creating.

Worldbuilding is unavoidable, it seems. You are always going to create more than you need. By writing triumphing over worldbuilding, the suggestion is that your world bends to the need of the story, or your players (the adventurers), that you avoid writing about the world when it doesn't matter to the group at hand and that whatever you write about the world *becomes* relevant to the group at hand. Worldbuilding is coming up with a government for Country X. Good writing is making that government relevant to the PC's mired in Country Y. Even if it means changing background details about Country X, Country Y, or the intervening Very Big Ocean in the meantime.

It seems to be suggesting the economy of creation. A writer should always be concerned with the story being told over the world it is told in. A DM should always be concerned with the adventures being had over the setting it occurs in. What's going to make this more fun, what's going to give me an interesting scene, a nifty encounter, a breathtaking combat, an epic BBEG?

I think D&D certainly has different requirements than writing, and the breaking point is going to be different, and that's part of what I was hoping to explore in the thread. I mean, neither the author nor I said "don't do worldbuilding." Just that your desire to make something compelling for your audience should always triumph over your desire to work out the fiddly bits of your pet setting.