worldbuilding

Way With Worlds: It Comes Apart – Conflicts And The World

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war ruins city bombed

(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

So there’s a reason I covered humans (and human-alikes) and the psychology of conflict first. Characters and their institutions are often the causes of conflicts – and characters are the lenses through which players/readers experience your world. We have to think about them first in the case of worldbuilding because it gives us the right perspective.

But with that said, you need something to get your cast to engage in (or prevent) atrocities. What are he drivers and elements that create wars and conflicts?

Again, it’s often a matter of perspective. Which is the problem in fiction – and come to think of it real life as well . . .

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Way With Worlds: The Game – Negatives

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despair depression sad man

(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

So last we met I discussed how using RPGs was actually a boon to Worldbuilding. There were positives in stimulating thinking, in sheer entertainment, and of course using premade concepts to test the consistency of an RPG system.

Now let’s talk the negatives of using using RPG systems in your worldbuilding, be they mapping characters to classes or diving into them for ideas. Yes, there are negatives.

Hey, it’s not all sunshine and worldbuilding here.  Some stuff is just bad.

The core issue is that RPG systems are just that –  systems – and any use of a system can constrain you. That is actually the point of having a system. The problem is the system is an outside factor influencing your imagination.

Which is good. Sometimes.

In this case however, we’ll look at how it can go bad.

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Way With Worlds: The Game – Positives

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chessboard chess

(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds).

A lot of people who wolrdbuild get into roleplaying games. I feel I can make this statement clearly; its true in my experience, and of course I’m not quoting any numbers so I have deniability. I’m covered here!

But seriously, it seems like people get ideas from, put ideas into, or think of ideas in forms of RPGs. I’m not just talking the freeform collective storytelling style of RPGs – I’m talking about the rules-and-dice type RPGs that we’re all familiar with.

We wonder what class a character would be in a given game.

We try and build a character we made in a given game.

We think of game rules as writing guidelines.

We get ideas looking over game rules.

And more . . .

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