Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3512680" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm going to make one last comment on this increasingly silly thread.I've been in alot of different debates on the internet over the years, and so I often think that I've seen it all.  I've seen enough that I should know better than to think that.Let's just stop and consider a definition of world building here offered.We are told that world building is not creating setting.  No, never.  World building and creating setting have nothing to do with each other, or so we are told.  I mean, ignore all the common definitions of world building, they are just merely leading us astray.  Here, I'm going to impart to you the special Gnostic knowledge on world building.  Here is how the argument thus far runs.You may be thinking that world building is creating details that aren't used.  But, no that can't be the definition either, because we have to craft a straw man definition that isn't so obviously a straw man, if we are to come out of here with some shred of the Emperor's New Clothes covering our dignity.  I mean, clearly, we want to have a detailed setting that allow options for the players, and well that involves the risk that they'll never actually choose those options.  Obviously, having options and a detailed setting are good things, so that those things can't possibly be world building, because we know world building is bad.  Hense, those things, being good, can't be world building.  See how logical that is?So what is world building, you ask?  Well, it must be the creation of information that can never possibly be used!  That's right, its only world building if the information could never actually be used in the course of play!  Well, clearly thats a waste.  Things that by definition never used and unusable are of course of no utility!  Viola for the great definition of world building!Now, of course, this requires us to introduce the Quantum Law of World Building.  Any sort of mapping, history creation, cosmology, NPCs, culture, dungeons, nations, or anything that you create exists in this fuzzy quantum indeterminancy until such time it is actually used and then by alchemical force, 'Pop' it becomes good setting.  And if it is not used, then its bad world building.  Of course, merely not being used doesn't make it world building.  No, it has to not be used in any alternate universe ever.  Only the truly enlightened prophets of World Building can see into the murky future and bless something as setting.  Those unblessed things, that's world building.  Simple really.  Just ask a prophet.</blockquote>

Verification