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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3459298" data-attributes="member: 4937">Although I'm generally on the 'Mr. Harrison is full of crap' side of this argument, Hobo is quite correct.&nbsp; Lovecraft was not, or at least not primarily, a world builder.&nbsp; There is very little like a coherent world in his stories, because his stories have little need of a coherent universe that spans between stories and arguably would be ill-served by one.&nbsp; Much of the world building and coherence one would attribute to Lovecraft, was actually done by his fans and admirers.However, there is a good deal of small scale world building going on his stories to the extent that he finds it necessary.&nbsp; Take a story like 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'.&nbsp; While we don't normally think of world building on this scale, because it is so intimate, Lovecraft is engaging in something that most DM's would see as world building for almost the entire duration of the story.&nbsp; Almost all of the story consists of a character taking a walking tour of a small town and narrating its history and the details of its architecture to the reader, with alot of vague hints at its connections to mysterious larger things in the wider world.&nbsp; The actual action and characterization in the story is minimal, because what the author needs to do first and foremost is emmerse you in this town so that the reader is (or feels as if) they are there, so that when things go 'bump' the reader jumps.&nbsp; And the technique that he uses is almost indistinguishable from world building - laying out the streets, describing individual buildings, family trees, and a detailed history - to the point that it is quite easy to create RPG materials from what he wrote.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3459298, member: 4937"] Although I'm generally on the 'Mr. Harrison is full of crap' side of this argument, Hobo is quite correct. Lovecraft was not, or at least not primarily, a world builder. There is very little like a coherent world in his stories, because his stories have little need of a coherent universe that spans between stories and arguably would be ill-served by one. Much of the world building and coherence one would attribute to Lovecraft, was actually done by his fans and admirers. However, there is a good deal of small scale world building going on his stories to the extent that he finds it necessary. Take a story like 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'. While we don't normally think of world building on this scale, because it is so intimate, Lovecraft is engaging in something that most DM's would see as world building for almost the entire duration of the story. Almost all of the story consists of a character taking a walking tour of a small town and narrating its history and the details of its architecture to the reader, with alot of vague hints at its connections to mysterious larger things in the wider world. The actual action and characterization in the story is minimal, because what the author needs to do first and foremost is emmerse you in this town so that the reader is (or feels as if) they are there, so that when things go 'bump' the reader jumps. And the technique that he uses is almost indistinguishable from world building - laying out the streets, describing individual buildings, family trees, and a detailed history - to the point that it is quite easy to create RPG materials from what he wrote. [/QUOTE]

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