Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Hussar]

I would also point out that the article doesn't say that all world building is bad. What it's saying is that the plot should be first and world building second. Tolkein is a perfect example of this. LOTR and The Hobbit do have lots of world building bits, but, in the end, they are damn good stories.

Compare to the Similarian. Here's a book that's pretty much all world building with bits of plot tossed in. I know that some people hail it, but, for me, it was a terrible grind to get through. BORING. It got to the point that I just didn't care.

And, Thoughbubble touches on this, this is the danger for DM's when world building. His three problems do happen in campaign settings. We see DM's react with shock and horror if you start deviating from setting canon in published settings. Heck, look at the reactions to different writers about the Planes and you see how seriously some people take setting.

As a DM, I'd rather focus on plot than setting. Most players IME don't really care that much about the setting. Getting them engaged in the setting is hard enough without trying to bore them to tears about extraneous details. I've seen advice on this board that says not to even bother trying to engage players in the setting. I wouldn't go that far, but, really, setting is in the back seat to adventures in my game.

 

[edgewaters]

Had this advice come from a more respected author - Orson Scott Card, Terry Goodkind, Anne Bishop, Diane W Jones, to give a few examples - I probably would have given it far more consideration. As it is, it comes from a name I have never heard before, and I can only wonder whether this might be a reflection of his style in his works. Are his settings so bland, so outlandish in their composition, so lacking in coherence, that they have failed to gain recognition, failed to sell?

Uhmmm ... quite the opposite, lol.

An extraordinarily well-respected writer. A writer for writers, you might say. You're probably not familiar with him because he did relatively little work in the fantasy field.

 

[rounser]

Boy, this quote has touched a lot of nerves.

Yes, IMO it's touched upon a sacred cow in desperate need of being sent to the abattoir. Or needs it's importance at least knocked down quite a few pegs.

Dungeoncraft, Wolfgang Baur's Adventure Rules and this author all seem to be pointing out something that IMO should be obvious, but runs so contrary to D&D culture that few can see the forest for the trees. I suspect that the reason this cow is so resilient to slaughter is just how invested people are in their worldbuilding - to admit that most of it's a waste of time in terms of actually running the game would undermine the excuse for (in some cases) hundreds of hours of work.

It being enjoyable in it's own right is probably excuse enough to worldbuild, but pretending that it's actual game prep is mostly wishful thinking in many cases. For all practical intents and purposes, game prep for D&D is making the adventure (which includes encounter-level worldbuilding, but so few people do this as part of their worldbuilding that it's the exception that proves the rule), not detailing thousands of years of history or the cultural mores of elves.

 

[Wraith Form]

Sooooooo...by this logic Tolkien is a boring nerd?

I don't know if you've heard, but actually he's dead.

And without trying to piss on the thread, as Hobo indicates, I think it says a lot that we have no idea who M. John Harrison is. (Except Edgewaters up there.)

 

[EditorBFG]

I think what Harrison basically means by "worldbuilding" in fiction is the equivalent of boxed text in a module.

Some groups want the GM to read the boxed text. But I don't know a lot of them personally. While I think adventures should be written with detailed room descriptions for the GM-- boxed text is useful in that regard-- I also think the GM should describe things organically as the game proceeds rather than forcing players to listen to the literary stylings of the adventure writers.

Same thing with world descriptions in fiction. The writer needs to understand his world with as much or as little detail as is necessary to propel the story and maintain consistency. Tolkien's worldbuilding was his hobby, but the descriptions he includes in the actual narrative of LOTR are necessary and stylistically appropriate. Starting writers need the advice Harrison is dispensing; seasoned authors, I think, choose what they want to tell the reader with the accuracy of experience and know the rules well enough to break them.

I see prose with too much world description all the time.

EDIT: By the way, I think all this debate about Harrison's validity as a successful author is tangential and irrelevant to the discussion. We're evaluating the statement itself, not debating the literary merits of the writer who made it. There are almost certainly bad or talentless writers who can teach a good creative writing class, and I know for a fact there are brilliant writers who cannot give writing advice worth a darn (and they usually know it; art is something they do rather than talk about). So Harrison's qualifications, other than perhaps being a published author who was asked for such advice in the first place, are immaterial.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I tried reading one or two of his books at the local bookstore yesterday...

What a waste of half an hour...

 

[Hussar]

On the thought that world building leads to better stories.

Ballocks.

Grimm Fairy Tales. Zero world building. Probably some of the most enduring stories in the English Language.

People mentioned Dune. Really? How much world building is there in the first book? Beyond a few throwaway lines. I always thought Dune worked in a whole lot of ways, but, travelogue? I gotta read that again. Dune is driven by plot, not by setting.

Actually, honestly, in pretty much any really famous and enduring novel (we'll see if Robert Jordan still has legs a couple of decades from now), plot takes precedence over setting. Star Wars isn't incredibly popular because of the setting. It was incredibly popular because its a damn good story with special effects that no one had ever seen before.

From a player perspective, I've run into this a couple of times. If it doesn't really impact my character, I can't say that I care that much. Why should I? It's great to get excited about the name of a beer, but, I can see that shine wearing off very, very quickly.

Put it another way. Think of your great gaming experiences. The ones that stand out in your mind as the best times around the table for you. Now, do those experiences stand out because of setting or plot? For me, it's plot. It's the time the party kicked in the door to find an advanced rust monster only to obliterate it the next round. It's the time the thief set off the trap one time too many and got fried. It's the battle with the black dragon, the wraith, the wraith's wight cohorts, and the five hill giants. It's the time throwing a bucket at the otyugh because I thought it was a rat in the dark.

Setting? Being wowed about the fact that someone's setting fits a certain perspective? Not so much.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

On the thought that world building leads to better stories.

Ballocks.

Grimm Fairy Tales. Zero world building. Probably some of the most enduring stories in the English Language.

Well, those are not quite the same. The "authors" didn't actually write the stories - they merely collected them by interviewing a large number of Germans and writing down what they were told. These fairy tales emerged from the collective body of myth and folklore of the German people. While this was not "world building" as such, these stories were not created in a vacuum.

And it's good to hear that they had an impact in other countries, too...

 

[hong]

Whatever you say, the USS Enterprise would still totally pwn a Star Destroyer.


Hong "but Driz'zt still beats them all" Ooi

 

[Dr Simon]

I come down on the side of "Only create what you need, plus a little bit more".

One early criticism of the Creative Conclave was that it was creating a world "where every blade of grass is listed". That's not entirely true , but I can see the point. There's a lot more initial work to set your game in, say, Tekumel, than in a broad-strokes world like Greyhawk. You don't need precise population statistics for a nation, you just need to say that it's crowded, like Japan or sparse, like Finland. You don't need a full lexicon of elven words, but a smattering of every day phrases and perhaps a standardised 'sound' to the language is nice (but not essential).

It's something I've tried to bear in mind with the revised version of Conclave, hence more directly game-related material. It was originally meant to be a world for RPGs but the discussion boards ended up with more con-lang and world-builder types than gamers so things got a bit esoteric. The Gloranthan Digest was another that went that way. That's when you've got to sit back and look at *why* you are doing this world-building. Intellectual exercise? Go as detailed as you want. Game setting? How much do you really need?