The Culture: The Role Of World-Building In The Hobby

This is a writer's podcast. This episode is about world-building. Yes, there's a point for me posting this here.

Writing is not Gaming.

World-building when you're writing means that you're in control from the cosmos down to the most irreducible element. You're telling a story, in the form of a traditional narrative, and your world-building exists to serve that narrative first and foremost; doing it well is as much a core part of the art of writing comics, novels, scripts for film and TV, etc. as everything else.

World-building in the hobby is not under your control- not in the real hobby. At best, you're playing a Real Game where all those things are generated on the fly using an array of random rolling tables and free association thinking to generate verisimilitude on the spot to explain what's generated. For Slop Product, it's pre-defined so it's no different than playing a game using a property from another medium (e.g. Star Wars) so you're doing Gamified Fan-Fic.

And yes, keeping these differences in mind, you will get a lot out of reading how fiction writers handle the construction and execution of their world-building. Gamers have to go a different road to reach the same end, and use different tools to build the road, but because the Real Hobby accepts that PVP Is Always On The Table the core element of geo-political conflict--Multiple Independent Factions In Win-Lose Conflicts Operating Under Fog of War--is there from the start so it's more about ensuring a fair game than creating a compelling narrative.

Yes, that does mean that the guy who's smart enough to outplay everyone else and win on Turn One should get it- if he tells everyone else how he did it over pizza after the fact. That doesn't fly in narrative media unless you're going for a comedy, and even then that's difficult to execute well enough to satisfy a viable audience.