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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8461516" data-attributes="member: 6670763">How does the line go from Inception? "Never create places from your memories, always imagine new places. Only use details. Never entire areas."The movie is not talking about sci-fi magic gadgets, it's talking about writing fiction.You got to use existing elements from other places to create new things. You can't actually imagine something new from nothing. Original ideas come into being when you are filling in the gaps between pieces that didn't originally fit together.Disassemble, mix things up, reassemble.Simply using existing countries, or rather your vague incomplete image of countries, and plopping them into a fantasy world as they are is bad worldbuilding. On the one hand, it reduces these places to the most basic sterotypes, but it also produces something that is utterly generic and doesn't distinguish itself from the many other copies that already exist.I can absolutely live without ever seeing an "original fantasy world" with vikings ever again.</blockquote>