Staffing Worldbuilding! How do *you* do it?

[FriedKilamari 46]

Every roleplay takes place in a world, be it canon, fanon, or original. How do you, as a worldbuilder, go about building your world?

 

There's really no right or wrong way to go about it (in my opinion, at least), so share away! I'd love to hear from canon and fanon roleplay setings, since most of my experience has been in building original worlds and environments from scratch.

 

And who knows, we all might even pick up on some cool tips, tricks and resources in the process!

[Death Kitten 200]

I think the most critical thing if you're setting up game lore and world building for a canon setting? Very clearly state how much of your setting's source material you include in your game canon. This is easier to do when you're building off something relatively small, like your setting is based on one series of books that has maybe three volumes in it and you know the author isn't going to write any more. It gets complex when you have something like Star Trek and Star Wars who have decades worth of materials across multiple mediums to start incorporating and they're still making new stuff.

 

I run a Star Trek game, and there are basically two tiers of canon: hard canon which consists of TV and Movies, and soft canon which is basically everything else including print comics and novels, games, etc. The reason for this divide is that CBS doesn't as closely monitor what happens in the soft canon mediums, and if something comes along in one of the hard canon sources that conflicts the stuff in soft canon, soft canon gets tossed out the window. This can and does lead to a lot of debate in the fandom as to what's right and what's not. Which means every one of my players approach my game with a different vision of the universe they'll be playing in shaped by any number of things: what hard canon things they've watched, what soft canon things they've read/played/etc, and what groups they've either played past RPGs with or groups they've watched and discussed hard and soft canon sources with.

 

In light of this, I make a quick calibration for my game: I name Memory Alpha as our Hard Canon bible for our sim (this is a fan run wiki that covers all the TV & Movies, as well as meta information related to these sources), list out the one thing that I disagree with hard canon on and clarify how it's amended for the purpose of my game (don't get me ranting about money in the Federation unless you're prepared to start a long debate involving economics, social structure, and human nature), then list what things I've cherry picked from soft canon with links to their entries in Memory Beta (like Memory Alpha, but for soft canon sources), and clarify my game's stance about fanon beliefs that I've seen (there's a wide spread fanon thing about marines in Starfleet among a lot of the larger star trek fleets, and I just don't get it?). Once everyone's on the same page re: canon, then I can start with the game specific world building.

 

Game specific stuff really just depends on what's needed. My current game is set about three decades after the last events in hard canon in the prime universe, so we had to fill in some of the major events that took place in that time. That started with a timeline with bullet points, and things have been, and continue to be, expanded as needed. We have a Wiki that we put everything in, so my players also are allowed to toss entries in for things that strike their fancy, and I put little bits of flavor and setting in as the muse strikes (we have a few entertainment and dining establishments, I put together a decent start to an entry about the transit system in SF around Starfleet HQ and the greater city with history, stuff like that).

[Uaithne 543]

When it comes to creating a canon site, I decide what aspects of the canon material are going to work well in a play-by-post role-play and which ones won't. If it's not going to work, I'm going to have to figure out a way to change it. This could mean altering it to fit a roleplay format or skipping it altogether.  If possible, I look to other sites to see what seems to work and what doesn't, and then I assess the "doesn't work" to figure out if it's because of the nature of the source material or the way that specific site uses it.

 

When I ran my Hunger Games roleplay, I was already on a site of the same genre. There had been a handful that came and went because of many factors, but one that stuck out to me was the fact that if you have twelve distinct districts, you spread your characters far too think and people can't roleplay with each other. Some sites could swing it, but it didn't appeal much to me. So I had to rework the world of Panem so that characters could interact.

 

It was an ongoing thing, too. Over the course of the roleplay (4 years of so) I had to rework it several times to accommodate for the changes within the community as well as various flaws I found in my original world building. Whenever I could, I sought feedback from the staff and members to figure out what they liked and didn't like, and to keep them updated about the new changes and what opportunities came with them. It wasn't ideal, but we were working with what was, canonically, a very rigid world that didn't support enough interaction to make a solid roleplay for characters not in the Hunger Games themselves.

 

Many times, I realize that I like the basic premise of a Canon source but not the thing as an entirety. In this case, I'll make a site that is "inspired by" rather than being "based on" the source material. With that, I am essentially making an original site.

 

Original world building, to me, is more challenging if it's not strictly real life. There are so many options, and I don't want to commit to something that is going to be challenging to change in the future if there is an issue. I want to leave opportunities for members to give input and feedback, which doesn't work so well when the site is new and people don't want to contribute to world building information. So I'm trying to provide solid but basic information that can be expanded in the future as needed.

 

I'd like to know more about what people would like to know about a world at minimum in order to join a site. If that is too off topic, I can always make another thread.

[FriedKilamari 46]

On 8/14/2017 at 0:17 PM, Uaithne said:

I'd like to know more about what people would like to know about a world at minimum in order to join a site. If that is too off topic, I can always make another thread.

 

I don't think that's at all off topic, since it has to do with the world building process (at least imo).

 

For me, I like to see at least the basic structure of the world. Major cities and landmarks, important historical events that have helped shape the world, and current events. Basic maps are also nice, since it shows the terrain of the world, but written descriptors do that just as well. Having the basics means you can always expand later, and it might encourage members to also contribute! I know I get turned off a game when it's really rigid, so having some leeway to be creative and contribute is always a plus.

 

@Death Kitten I'd never heard of the terms hard canon and soft canon before now, but it makes a lot of sense, and I now have a term to put to genres I've played in the past (like pokemon). I also really appreciate your input, since as I mentioned before, canon roleplays are something I've never really experienced! For lack of a better term, I think it's really heckin' neat.