IF Seal: Can you share some worldbuilding techniques?
o wise seal! i feel like i am not very good at worldbuilding. do you have any techniques you like to practice or any advice on it pls and thank you <3
Dear Worldbuilding Friend,
I will begin with a couple of links that I have enjoyed over the years: Patricia C Wrede's Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions and NK Jemisin's Brainstorming Immersive Inclusive Worlds and Growing Your Iceberg: Crafting a Secondary World That Feels Ancient In 60 Minutes (Or Less). These may be helpful for putting the building blocks and rules of a setting together.
But.
I am a seal of action. When I read books I don't have an awful lot of patience when it feels like the author is a bit too enamored of their setting without context, and in a game that's even more of an issue. Because players often adore lots of setting details (more so than I personally do!) but it is very important to make sure that the player, and the PC can interact with that setting and to know how they are going to do so, and what will be the most important to the PC in that setting.A beautifully rendered photograph of a garden that cannot be walked through, or weeded, or whose flowers cannot be picked, does not a game make.
The way I worldbuild is usually in service to the plot and characters first. When I started writing my gay selkie IF, I needed to know my world's rules about how selkies work (does it hurt when their skin comes off? is it like a coat? what does it look like?), and whether seals and humans know about them (is it common knowledge? folklore? urban myths that people laugh about?), and how common they are. But I did not necessarily need to know how selkie governments work and how they interact with merfolk governance because it's very insular, and my selkie PC never encounters a merfolk.
It might be interesting to know, but if it doesn't inform something the PC's or NPC's feelings or something that happens in the game, it's OK to figure that out later. I do not think you need to know everything about your game before you start.
Part of why I say that is that worldbuilding can help enrich the game but it can also be a major distraction. I used to pore over the above links to write my novels and neglected to learn how to plot a novel as a result, and ended up with lots of nicely-written but unfinished novels. Eek!
Another part of why I say it is that figuring worldbuilding elements out through a story or game can be a delightfully fun process of discovery. Of course, how much we prefer to outline and and pin things down varies vastly from person to person. But I find, Worldbuilding Friend, that part of the joy of writing is figuring something out that surprises you along the way. A character might adore a particular food from far away, and it becomes a richer scene; a moment in which the PC explores a cave might make you realise something exciting about the fishing boats nearby. You could figure out these sorts of worldbuilding building-blocks through writing your project, or by writing little scenes about your NPCs or PC, or by writing a scene from your project from another character's perspective.
Something that surprises you may become one of the most beloved elements of your game.
Best of luck with your world, dear friend!