What's Your World Building Jam?

[StormWolfe 557]

We had a topic on Lore Organization some time back. This comes at the age-old RPG lore conundrum from another angle.

 

How do you create it? Obviously, you have the concept well in-mind. You may even write out outlines to follow as you create the actual documents.

So, do you have standard forms that you use for creating species, races, cultures, and nations? If you are going completely from scratch and creating your own universe and planet, do you create an entire solar system? Galaxy?

If you do use some type of form for your species, races, and/or nations, would you share an example or two?

I ask all of this because I am in the process of building a parallel universe that has diverged significantly from ours. Many of the animals and plants would have roamed Earth during our Pleistocene era. Most of the races are drawn from our various mythologies as well as being original constructs based on various books, films, TV series, etc. We do not claim to be 100%, totally new ideas original.

However, I also feel that if I am finding the lore intimidating to write, then it's too much. On the other hand, I do not want to put our members in the position of having to rewrite posts because they put something in that is totally outside the realm of the lore. Sure, some things can be glossed over, and I can mentally adjust my own view of Species X to take the player's version into account.

My other goal, along with consolidating our lore into something manageable, is to be able to reduce my character sheets to as few fields as possible. Make it less about building out the character app and more about having the lore as a reference when needed.

[Sora 29]

So I've never built a whole world/universe for a forum, but on my site I'm in charge of lore so I've had a lot of experience expanding and introducing new IC concepts.

 

I could probably say a lot of the topic of lore building, but I'm going to limit it to the most important point in my mind: balance. If you are going to create something you have to keep it in balance with everything else. For every strength you give it, you have to give it a weakness. You have to compare it to other things you've already created to see if it's too powerful or too weak. 

 

I'll play with something I'm working on for weeks. Adding and removing things, until I finally find a combination I like and feel is the most balanced for the plot. 

 

What I also like to do sometimes is do anonymous polls with the members, asking them for their opinions of an idea, and give me feedback/ideas they have to improve it. This has always been very beneficial because you get feedback from those that will actually be using your idea.

[Veino 26]

One thing I’ve found helpful is more of a sandbox approach. Let writers create lore. I’ll create the structure and way the world works, with enough hooks to start with that new writers have a sense of where to join in, and then set the limits. Within which, they are completely free to create whatever lore and history they want. Part of this comes from my main board where I write as a member-turned-staffer, which is very open for creating tons of things. It helps that the universe is Star Wars. Even set centuries after the movies, everything is similar enough that we all know Star Wars and can function within that. 
 

For fantasy boards, as groups of us have spun off to make our own, we’ve kept much of the same philosophy. They’ve all been very open with member created lore the freedom that comes with it. However; what we do

originally is generally use very archetypal worlds and settings. It works since that’s what we all want to write. So we’ll have templates for species, factions, kingdoms, media, technologies, all of which are optional, but there to be used when desired and have really added to the core community by giving members more sense of ownership and investment into the board. 
 

For niche and unusual settings, I’d usually avoid making a forum for them. However, I’ve toyed with some ideas before, like an alternate history Napoleonic steampunk setting. Nobody’s got an idea for that because I don’t think anyone’s had Napoleon command ironclad airship armadas. If I were to use that, for lore, I would go for clarity and simplicity to convey the tone and information accurately, but wouldn’t get super crazy with it. Keep things pretty generic across the board unless someone wanted to get super detailed and then work with that writer to develop the details as the lore becomes relevant or wanted. Otherwise, like my first D&D campaigns, there’s just going to be tons of info that’s never used and hinder the development of what the community actually desires.