Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Raven Crowking]

I don't think it's a matter of "getting" it so much as developing a tolerance for it.

Just because you enjoy reading the Bible doesn't mean you can't quietly admit that reading the book of Leviticus is comparable to chewing bubble gum studded with broken glass.

Ah, but there is no part of the work that is comparable to chewing bubble gum studded with broken glass IMHO. Indeed, my appreciation of how finely crafted LotR is increases almost annually, as I usually reread the book once a year. I would say that Tolkein did exactly what he wanted to do with this work.....although, of course, that doesn't mean that what Tolkein wanted is going to resonate with everyone.


RC

 

[molonel]

Ah, but there is no part of the work that is comparable to chewing bubble gum studded with broken glass IMHO. Indeed, my appreciation of how finely crafted LotR is increases almost annually, as I usually reread the book once a year. I would say that Tolkein did exactly what he wanted to do with this work.....although, of course, that doesn't mean that what Tolkein wanted is going to resonate with everyone.

I'm confident he did do exactly what he wanted to do. But he even said, at one point, that he was sometimes more preoccupied with the world behind the story rather than the story itself. He said he would have preferred to write the entire thing in Elvish:

http://www.elvish.org/articles/EASIS.pdf

(That quote, I believe, is from his letters.)

Now, while I'm sure that would have been endlessly fascinating to him as a philological exercise, it would have made a damn poor book for the rest of us unfortunate souls.

Sometimes, he gives in to that temptation, and those are, in my opinion, the weaker parts of his books.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Sometimes, he gives in to that temptation, and those are, in my opinion, the weaker parts of his books.

Different strokes for different folks.

 

[molonel]

Different strokes for different folks.

Sort of. When you're writing a story, you have to take your audience into account unless you are simply writing the book for yourself. C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, particularly with their exercises where they would read their work aloud at the Eagle & the Child, had a very positive influence on Tolkien and his writing. They reminded him that although all that history and linguistic nuance is fascinating, the reason we read fantasy stories is to hear yarns or tales of the heroic. Tolkien openly embraced the term "escapism" to describe his work, and distinguished between the "escapism of the deserter" (or cowardice) and the "escapism of the prisoner" (or the heroism of imagining possible worlds).

Now, where the line is for "sufficient detail" and "mindnumbing distractions" is different for everyone. You are absolutely right about that.

But there is a line, and sometimes Tolkien crosses it in his writings. It's why his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is so awful, filled with philological quirks like "eek" for also. It's why most of his historical-mythological material is such a mindnumbing chore to read. It's got all sorts of worldbuilding goodness. But the characters are more like mosaics than characters who smoke pipes or blow smoke rings.

 

[rounser]

So, is creating the adventure a different beast from worldbuilding, or is creating the adventure an element of worldbuilding?

What usually falls under the heading "worldbuilding" - as the term is used outside of this thread - doesn't contain any encounter-level type stuff (borne out by what is published in setting bibles i.e. lots of macro stuff).

Rare is the DM who starts "worldbuilding" by designing a CR 1 goblin deadfall somewhere on a 10ft grid map - 99.9% would refer to it as designing an adventure. D&D would probably be a lot more fun if this is where DMs started work, but generally they don't - they start with macro level worldbuilding. They start with goblin migrations, or deciding that there's a nation of goblins with hobgoblin overlords or something, and the encounter-level deadfall may never get made.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But there is a line, and sometimes Tolkien crosses it in his writings. It's why his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is so awful, filled with philological quirks like "eek" for also.

Again, in your opinion. Not in mine.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Rare is the DM who starts "worldbuilding" by designing a CR 1 goblin deadfall somewhere on a 10ft grid map - 99.9% would refer to it as designing an adventure. D&D would probably be a lot more fun if this is where DMs started work, but generally they don't - they start with macro level worldbuilding. They start with goblin migrations, or deciding that there's a nation of goblins with hobgoblin overlords or something, and the encounter-level deadfall may never get made.

I can't speak about what the average DM does; if anything, EN World has taught me that there isn't any hard-and-fast rule about that. What I can do is describe my own method, which I think qualifies as world-building.

My own method is bottom-down, top-up, bottom-down.

I'll start with creating the adventure setting that I want play to begin in. This might mean a dungeon, wilderness encounter tables, a village, whathaveyou. As a result of the choices I am making, I will do some top-down work. I decided I want encounters with tribesmen; who are these tribesmen? I placed some spider-cultists; who do they worship, and why?

From these questions, I create a short player briefing on the area. It might include new options based on my decisions (such as the Lakashi tribesmen in my Lakelands, that came from a desire to run a "tribesmen" encounter). I might create some extra crunchy bits that PCs can play with (Totem Spirits of the Lakashi). When the PCs decide to go from Long Archer (initial setup) to Selby-by-the-Water, I start the process over again.

When working on the first part, I decided that there were "Lake Monsters" (pleisiosaurs) because I liked the Loch Ness image of them. When working Selby from rough to ready, I added "leatherwings" (small pteradactyls) that largely take the place of pigeons and seabirds. This in turn, perforce, makes me think about the place of dinosaurs in my world, and I decided that there are larger, more common reptiles in the warmer south....a detail that piqued the interest of at least a few players.

And so on, and so on. What is done at the "bottom-up" level drives what is done at the "top-down" level, and vice versa.

I've never actually seen anyone approach worldbuilding in a different way, although I am sure that people do.


RC

 

[molonel]

Again, in your opinion. Not in mine.

I challenge you to read Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight back-to-back with W.S. Merwin's translation, or John Gardner's (if you can get ahold of it) and tell me honestly that you think the former is honestly a better, more readable translation. Tolkien was a first-rate Gawain scholar. They still use the text and bibliography he and E.V. Gordon put together in graduate seminars (preferably with the 1967 updated bibliography by Norman Dabis), but the only reason his translation is still in print is because, well, it's Tolkien. Not because of the quality of the translation.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I challenge you to read Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight back-to-back with W.S. Merwin's translation, or John Gardner's (if you can get ahold of it) and tell me honestly that you think the former is honestly a better, more readable translation. Tolkien was a first-rate Gawain scholar. They still use the text and bibliography he and E.V. Gordon put together in graduate seminars (preferably with the 1967 updated bibliography by Norman Dabis), but the only reason his translation is still in print is because, well, it's Tolkien. Not because of the quality of the translation.

Sure, if you provide the other two translations.

OTOH, I have about six translations of The Epic of Gilgamesh, and a few translations of Beowulf, so I am likely to enjoy multiple translations for different reasons in this case as well.


RC

 

[molonel]

Sure, if you provide the other two translations.

They're in the mail. Should arrive any day, now.

Though, honestly, if you're interested, there are these buildings called libraries.

OTOH, I have about six translations of The Epic of Gilgamesh, and a few translations of Beowulf, so I am likely to enjoy multiple translations for different reasons in this case as well.

For Beowulf, I prefer the dual-language edition of Howell D. Chickering for overall quality, but there is no denying that Seamus Heaney's translation is probably the most interesting and poetically solid one out there right now. The prose translations, with near universality, both suck and blow.

John Gardner was working on an interesting translation of Gilgamesh at the time of his death. His translations varied widely in quality, but that one looked like it was working out to be one of the good ones. Akkadian cuneiform, though, is even more unknown to us than Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old English or Latin, and its poetic devices and pronunciation more alien than many other languages, so prose doesn't really lose anything since, poetically, we don't know what we're losing, or what we've lost.

In any case, Tolkien's scholarly work on Sir Gawain was invaluable and ground-breaking. His translation, meh. Having read it a couple of times, I'll never read it again.