LAZY WORLDBUILDING: What is it, and How Do You Avoid It?

Comments · 3.2K

• TH

  @thebordoshow · 1 year ago · pinned

  Thanks for the shoutout.<br><br>Ive been thinking of making a similar video and i agree on most of your points.<br><br>Its good to be original, but more important is to be consistent and give your world rich and loved in feeling, for that pulling from history and mythology can be very helpful.<br><br>My favourite way of making a world map, is looking at old inaccurate maps of the world and tweeking it for my benefit.

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• LU

  @luijininja9525 · 1 year ago

  If you ever feel like your names suck, remember that “Sahara Desert” means “Desert Desert” and “Avon River” means “River River”

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• MA

  @MartinTraXAA · 1 year ago

  I do not fear making my worldbuilding corny, for I was born on the cob.

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• DE

  @deadknight1402 · 1 year ago

  The King of Neutralia when confronted with the decision to either join the Protagnians or the Antagnians: &quot;I have no strong feelings one way or the other.&quot;

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• TA

  @talibeherolde8624 · 1 year ago

  The only thing that this map lacks is a snowy island on the north named &quot;Nordheim&quot;

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• JE

  @jealousyxanderblood7894 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Pro Tip: if you flesh out the background and the little things in your world such as history, language, speech, culture and customs, eventually the lore kind of starts to write itself based on the logic that has been laid out.

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• GR

  @gryotharian · 1 year ago

  that first good guy land, bad guy land, and all the other guys who arent important is just americas view of the cold war

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• KR

  @KrackosStorm · 1 year ago

  The way you discuss real world influence and how some elitists say you have to build everything from scratch and be 100% original is something I see even outside the realm of creative writing. In game dev, there&apos;s an obnoxious subset of people who claim that using a premade game engine is &quot;not real game development&quot; even though most games are made with engines nowadays. The whole thing puts me in mind of an old Carl Sagan quote: &quot;If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.&quot;

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• HA

  @hatmcshooty · 1 year ago

  Naming things is simple. If it sounds bad, call it a placeholder, and then it isn’t your problem until the last minute.

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• SA

  @san2yy · 1 year ago

  when i was going to dm in such a short notice, i created a shitty map and made up a world in a few minutes. this wasn’t really my style since it takes me weeks to worldbuild. in order to combat my lazy attempt at worldbuilding i told my players that this map was so old, and that they had to find an npc with a newer version of the map which is why i could add details as the campaign went on lmao.

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• RE

  @redpurger · 1 year ago

  &quot;How do you get the land in Antagnia to look so destitute and evil?&quot;<br>&quot;I&apos;m so glad you asked. First we just burned everything to get that nice matte black finish across the landscape, then we replaced all the water with the blood of innocents. I think the blackened soil really makes the red pop. Getting the volcanoes to erupt was the hardest part.&quot;<br>&quot;All the water? Wow, that must have taken a lot of innocents...&quot;<br>&quot;Well, when we set out to create Antagnia, we wanted to make something special. And for us, that meant no cutting corners, no skimping out to save money, and sparing no newborn.&quot;

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• ID

  @Idkmanitsaname · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAiIXqsZ90&amp;t=1020">17:00</a> something that personally pisses me off about the whole &quot;you have to be 100% original or you&apos;re lazy&quot; thing is that many of these cultures and worlds IRL have culture for a survival reason. if you want your cultures to seem even a little bit realistic, there are going to be inevitable similarities. &nbsp;People in the middle east didn&apos;t just wear a bunch of fabric for the drip or religion, they wore it to defend themselves from the sun and dehydration. This eventually evolved into a more religious and cultural reason. Likewise, a culture within a fantasy world that is set within a desert will naturally have to employ the same exact tactics to survive. That is not laziness, it is good and realistic worldbuilding within the context of the ecosystem the culture is set in. You can&apos;t ignore this if you want your culture to seem realistic, rather, you can find the originality more in <b>how</b> they dress and how their culture values that dress. Making an exact replica of medieval islamic Iran is lazy. Making a culture that has the same starting point as medieval islamic iran is realistic.

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