You got all these people like Tolkien and that one autistic black guy who spend their ENTIRE lives developing their autistic way too indepth fantasy setting.
I want to be like that. But I just can't focus and work on one single world like that. Please help- I could spend years doing it and just be happy with that.
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Adderall
You need a passion and experience that is based on the real world first.
They aren't just autists that sit on their asses all day doing nothing of note.
You don't even pretend you play games
/thread
> I want to be like that
Okay, but why? Creating an autistically in-depth fantasy world, on its own, accomplishes nothing. If JRR had written up 10 volumes of Middle Earth lore but never actually written it into a STORY like Lord of the Rings, you wouldn't even know about it.
I've dumped way too much time into a fictional world before, its something I do for fun. Its a mental exercise to do in the shower or on a walk or drifting off to sleep. But this exercise doesn't accomplish anything in a vacuum, if you don't share it with someone else in the form of a game or a book or other creative work its not really anything but a bit of fun.
Focusing on the world building, but with no stated intention of doing anything with it, as a goal in and of itself is just bizarre. And if your end goal is to tell a story, focusing on autistic worldbuilding FIRST is a big mistake.
Get off the internet.
Start writing it down. Every day, no exceptions. Don't make excuses, just write 500 or more words, get them down. Go back and edit later, the trick is to focus on at least making it onto paper then fixing it.
Really though getting off the internet and not using your phone for shit is the best way to be more focused and productive.
This though.
Since this thread is taking a negative bent, let me come back and clarify: I am more than willing to offer you some advice on worldbuilding something, OP, but we need to define what your actual goals are because what you plan to do with said setting impacts how it should be conceived.
I do actually run tabletop games (though not as much any more because of le kung flu) and solo tabletop games just for myself on occassion. Truthfully I really like writing stories and doing creative things, but I feel as though having one set real "world" where I can set these stories and characters that feel concrete and real to me would help me button down my creative ventures. I just always feel a little jealous when I think of these people who have one world or story that they've worked on for years, maybe even decades, and I feel like that could be me. My hobby time would feel more "legitimate" that way.
Okay. In that case, my advice to you would be to step away from genre conventions and try to build out a setting organically. Don't get hung up on how you HAVE to have elves/dwarves/orcs or whatever, how magic HAS to work this way, or even be available at all.
Come up with an single, focused idea that you think is cool. Is it a place, like an island nation where weirdly benevolent vampires fill the role of the nobility? Is it a magic system, where magic users can only use specific forms of magic that align with their central desires making each wizard have only a focused subset of spells they can cast? Is it a race of your own creation, or a twist on an existing fantasy race you think is neat, that you want to do something with?
Start small, with this one laser focused element that you feel strong about. Then start asking questions about it. How big is the island, and what do its neighbors think of the vampires? How is magical knowledge passed down if a master and apprentice probably can't even cast the same spells? What is the lifecycle of your fantasy race and what makes them different from humans besides appearance? Etc.
Answer the questions you ask, and then ask more questions and try to build things out and keep things consistent. Eventually, you will reach a point where your previous answers are informing your new questions, or the answers to some of your new questions mean you go back and change the details of something you established before to draw connections between things and establish common elements. Eventually, the thing you started off with as your building point is just a small part of a much larger world, but it all feels like it exists in a coherent setting because all of this information is related to each other.
As opposed to, say, popping down desert elves in the desert zone and making them vaguely arabic themed and going "yeah, thats good enough' and moving on.
Good advice, thanks friend.
If you want to try, we can workshop some ideas you have in this thread to get the ball rolling. The thread already exists, no harm in getting the most out of it.
I've always liked the idea of a semi-traditional fantasy world; with Gods, spells, races, stuff like that. My problem is that whenever I make something like that it's always too easy to just add more and more- the world never feels cohesive and grounded.
Not OP, but I would also like that. Love a good idea thread, this board definitely needs more of them.
I have a vaguely similar dilemma to yours. What's mainly stopping me from working on a project like this are irl obligations and practicing other hobbies. It is also the autistic fixation on wanting every source of inspiration on hand. I unironically learned about all kinds of stuff from working on projects and browsing the library at uni, and if you've been on this site long enough you'll find interesting ideas and concepts for settings. One night I spent several hours just reading through a book about Mesoamerican paintings and looking at the art. I would post a picture of it but I forgot the name and it was a long time ago. It's fascinating to learn about certain perspectives and how civilization develops. You probably recognize why it would be solid material for worldbuilding. I know it is absolutely stupid, but I am hesitant to jot down something out of fear for neglecting anything like what I just mentioned. I just have to stop sperging and get to it.
Before I get on a tangent, I have gathered a rough concept of one process of worldbuilding. I haven't had too much practice with it so take it with a grain of salt and whatever helps you. People like give solid advice, but I approach the "idea" with a different interpretation.
Think of the idea as a theme instead, what the setting is about, THE overarching thing going on. One way to formulate a theme is to frame it as a question. When you think about it, settings in an age of exploration are often about the following question: How do peoples and societies develop and react to a new frontier? A new world? Here's another one, kingdoms of different faiths and values clashing in a dark age: Why does it happen, how does it affect how people view one another and how are faith or values shaped by this? I know that one was technically multiple but I hope I'm conveying this properly. Of course, this doesn't have to be and is often not a question.
Take Traveller and Battletech, both are about the persistence of human nature and ambitions through such a great advancement as spanning space. Most tangible settings out there have this element, questions or otherwise. It doesn't have to be the next big thing, it can be as wide or concentrated as you want it to be. It is yours, and you should be fine as long as you don't hack modern politics into it or get pretentious.
Once you have that theme or idea, determining the type of setting usually follows. Space opera, medieval fantasy, modern day, you get the gist. People have different preferences on whether to approach geography or factions in the setting next. Wherever you lean, make sure of two things. The geography, system, etc. must accommodate the theme. The other thing is to make sure the history and development of every major faction reflects the theme. Among each other and within themselves. From here, the resulting timeline could be as open or detailed as you deem ideal. If you plan to write a story or run a campaign withing your setting, make sure that whenever it takes place it's far enough down the line to get a good view of everything once the reader or players have been through enough.
Afterward, development of cultures, religions, towns, cities, roads, borders, trade markets, landmarks of all kinds, and all the goodies come. To save yourself a lot of grief, only activate autism where you need to. In the case of a campaign, for example, you shouldn't outline anything more than the general layout of a city unless the party plans to go there. Even then, just materialize what it is they're going to see and develop detail accordingly.
I'm just one guy on the internet and there are a multitude of people more versed in worldbuilding than I am, but I hope this helps.
>Think of the idea as a theme instead, what the setting is about, THE overarching thing going on.
'Grow organically' guy here. The theme based approach is also a really good one. I find that works better, however, for settings that you intend to use for a story because any story that doesn't have themes is just random mishmash, and you want the themes of your world to support the themes of your story.
It takes practice. I started by simply being curious and reading way too much for my own good. And when the opportunity presented itself, it was like it burst a dam containing all the useless trivia, life experiences and inherited weirdness I had.
Over the years, you can have a half-dozen well developed settings/stories instead of just one.
Having someone to discuss things is great, and in person is a lot better than writing replies or even talking through cellphones/internet.
I will add things that work for me. Setting arbitrary limits challenges you to be creative. One of the other players says his PC comes from a kingdom such and such, or anon on /tg/ proposes X. I will try to figure out how to make it work. Some cases take much longer than others, but eventually I make something that fits the request and makes sense.
>One night I spent several hours just reading through a book about Mesoamerican paintings and looking at the art.
Reminds me of the time I learned about grooves on Roman roads and started planning how a specific nation would create wheeled shields for the chokepoints into their crater nation.
The thread is going into "negative", because your objective is moronic, plain and simple.
> Op: I would be happy just building a world
> these idiots: BuT tHaT’S nOt pRoDucTiVe
>how do i productively worldbuild?
>no not answers that help, I just want to complain about how I feel
>that one autistic black guy who spend their ENTIRE lives developing their autistic way too indepth fantasy setting.
CWC is trans, not black
>and that one autistic black guy who spend their ENTIRE lives developing their autistic way too indepth fantasy setting.
Unironically who
Also I've settled with the fact that I will never be done or have a concrete world
You need more autism, go and steal hundreds of vaccines.
If you could truly spend years being happy doing that you'd be doing that instead of asking us to do it for you
I know this is bait but I'll bite. He's just asking for advice and trying to find the confidence to worldbuild. It's understandably an intimidating kind of project, but he might find comfort in having agency over whether to share it. Everyone starts somewhere.
Write stories that you want to tell. The world will arise naturally from those stories. I know that sounds like putting the cart in front of the horse, but it really does work. Don't worry too much about any given facet of the world until it comes up naturally. Feel free to manipulate the setting as you need to in order to better fit the stories. There's no need to concretely plan everything ahead. Often I find that accidental symmetries are more beautiful than deliberate ones.