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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 3460358" data-attributes="member: 18363">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? Perhaps I am wrong in my wonderings upon his works, but I have to admit that I quite strongly disagree with his advice. Granted, over-doing it can be a problem when worldbuilding for a written work, as it can drown the book in minute details, but so long as it is done in moderation - or, for some works, just a bit beyond necessary moderation - worldbuilding aids the author in visualizing and understanding the interrelations of their work. Some stories, due to their particular style, can do away with most world building and still work out quite well. But anything that is likely to become a series will need at least a little or it will suffer from what I term the 'quilted patch' effect: several parts that have no real coherence or interrelation with each other despite having supposedly been interacting together for generations if not longer. In a game, I have found that at least the bare bones of the setting must be worked out for the sake of coherence. If a continent beyond the horizon has not had contact with the one on which the PCs stand for more than a thousand years, then there is no need to determine much of anything about it other than its existence and perhaps any interesting detail that might be affecting the PC's continent. On the other hand, it is best that the DM has worked out what kingdoms border the one the PCs are in and whether they are friends, foes, etc and what major interactions they have (if any) with said PC inhabited kingdom. And if the PCs are in a town with three roads leading from it, the DM certainly needs to know what is next upon each road, as who knows which direction the PCs will be taking. You can make it up, but what if that very act invalidates something along another road later. Making things up over and over again leads to a quilted patch effect faster than any other method. For a one shot campaign and even for some one shot novels leaving most if not nearly all world building by the side of the road is not a problem, but for anything expected to last more than one story, more than one session, worldbuilding is necessary, useful, and even expected (in my experience, anyway).</blockquote>

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