Have you ever started a book or settled in
to watch a film and found yourself completely...
transported?
Sitting atop an ent's shoulder as it carries
you under the dark bows of Fangorn Forest,
or chroming your teeth with the war boys before
a glorious death in the Wasteland?
Call it escapism, but there's a magic in walking
the paths of someone else's mind.
Even more when you realize that you could
be the one to lay those paths.
A world is a... very large thing to create,
though.
Without the proper tools, worldbuilding rapidly
devolves into a Sisyphean task.
You end up putting patterns on the wings of
every beetle, naming every star of every constellation
in the sky.
We may be a foundry, but only for stories.
If we're going to help you learn the art of
forging worlds, we'll need a proper anvil
to do it on.
Luckily, we've found just that.
With the help of the amazing humans behind
World Anvil, we've been able to turn this
episode into something special.
Not only are we going to discuss how to build
worlds, we're going to give you the opportunity
to do it yourself.
World Anvil is a website dedicated to organizing
and hosting your fictional worlds.
You can write articles about your world, link
them together like a wiki, draw maps, nest
those maps into larger maps, and access dozens
of other useful features all for free.
For this series, we're going to be working
closely with World Anvil to run a worldbuilding
competition.
The prize?
We'll use your world as the setting for the
short story at the end of this series.
So stay tuned until the end of the video for
details!
Also, if you've been following the bizarre
correspondence I've been keeping with the...
entity that's been sending me letters, you
will definitely want to stay until the video's
end.
The most recent letter I've received is the
strangest thing they've said to me yet.
But that can wait.
Now, on to the matter at hand.
Worldbuilding is interesting, because it isn't
exactly what it sounds like.
As much as you can use it for spinning whole
worlds from the aether and devising the lineage
of the gods, you can also use it to dress
the inside of a hut, or plan the layout of
a town square.
In this sense the "world" in worldbuilding
doesn't really refer to "worlds" at all-it
refers to the places, great or small, varied
or singular, disparate or cleverly interwoven,
which compose them.
There are a lot of very good reasons to begin
worldbuilding.
Pure love of the craft, experimentation with
concepts and environments, searching for ideas
and inspiration.
But we are storytellers.
For us worldbuilding represents the development
of the places in which our stories happen-the
setting.
And this is where things start to get complicated.
So, find a notebook, and buckle up!
It should be pretty clear at a glance that
Worldbuilding and setting design share an
intrinsic connection, but they are not the
same thing.
Where worldbuilding is about the creation
of places, setting design is, obviously, about
the creation of settings.
That's a good place to start, but for it to
make any actual sense, we need to explain
what we mean when we say the words "place"
and "setting".
In his book Story, Robert McKee lays out the
"4 dimensions of setting", which are Period,
Location, Level of Conflict, and Duration.
Location and period together make a place.
The presence of all four of these things together
makes a setting, in which something (most
often a story) happens.
For instance, Medieval Italy is a place.
A Medieval Italian villa frantically trying
to create a quarantine in the days before
the black plague arrives is a setting.
Okay!
That must feel like a lot in rapid succession,
but don't worry-everything so far has just
been the groundwork for our actual topic.
As long as you have a grasp on what the terms
place and setting mean, you should be able
to follow along without too much trouble.
What we really want to do here is show how
setting design bridges the gap between worldbuilding
and storytelling.
And, after a lot of research and cogitation,
we've found a very simple way to do it!
We call it the Three Fs of Worldbuilding!
...not to be confused with the four Fs of
evolution-that's something very different.
First, we have Free Design.
This is what most people think of when they
think "worldbuilding".
It's essentially the free development of a
fictional world's places independent of any
possible settings.
As you plan the locations and periods of your
world, nothing is stopping you from painting
with the broadest strokes, sketching in the
most minute detail.
You might place a mountain and move on; you
might turn that mountain into a volcano with
cultural significance to those living in its
shadow, who worship the primordial being that
lives within.
You might even strip all of this from your
world after creating it.
You have the freedom.
Second, we have Fixed Design.
When you decide to add a level of conflict
over a duration of time to a place in your
world, it becomes a setting.
At this point, the design of this particular
place within your world becomes constrained
by its new needs as a freshly-established
setting.
Take, for instance, the volcano from our free
design.
You might say the people in its foothills
worship the primordial being inside, but what
if the volcano begins to show signs of eruption?
What if, in the weeks leading up to the cataclysm,
all those people have to decide whether to
flee or accept the gift of the god they worship?
Now you've appended a level of conflict over
a duration of time, and in the process posed
a whole list of questions about the place
this new setting exists in.
What is their technology like?
How hard will it be for them to get away?
Is there any way to protect themselves should
they choose to stay?
These questions now require answers for this
part of the world to be cohesive.
It is now beholden to the setting.
It has become fixed.
Third and finally, we have Found Design.
And this one is special, because unlike the
other two which are methods of building, it's
a method of selection.
Found design is what happens when, rather
than freely building the places in your world
or predetermining which places need to become
settings, something external drives you to
discover the parts of your world that need
building.
There are a lot of reasons this might happen,
but the interactive nature of tabletop RPGs
makes them one of the best examples.
A Game Master might have painted some broad
strokes for their world and may have created
plot hooks to compel players toward certain
possible places or settings.
But what if an NPC mentions that there's a
cult out there somewhere who worships a primordial
being in a volcano?
And what if the players then decide, plot
be damned, they want to go find it?
For the Game Master, that might just be a
foot note.
They might never have intended to develop
that part of the world in any way.
But now, at the very least, they need to flesh
out the place so that players can experience
it.
Even more, they might need to add a level
of conflict over a duration of time and turn
this little footnote into a fully-fledged
setting, depending on what they and their
players want from the experience.
Instead of attempting to preemptively free
design every possible blade of grass that
could exist in their world- instead of plotting
out a field of fixed settings with their own
predetermined levels of conflict-they've allowed
themself to find the places and settings within
their world.
That can be a lot to digest.
It certainly took me a long time to wrap my
head around.
Don't worry though, this is just an introduction.
We'll delve much deeper into free, fixed,
and found design as independent worldbuilding
methods in our upcoming list video.
But like I said near the start of the video,
we're storytellers.
What we really care about here is how worldbuilding
applies to storytelling.
And for that, we look to fixed design.
When writing a story, we actually want to
be fairly constrained with the places we're
building, because if we go wandering freely
into our worldbuilding, we might never actually
write a story.
In fact, there's a term to describe the phenomenon
of writers getting lost in free design.
Worldbuilder's Syndrome is when, instead of
working with a fixed design to develop the
place specific to your story's setting, you
begin a free design and get totally lost in
the innumerable details of your world.
Luckily, this is very easy to prevent.
There are two main ways to approach fixed
design.
Let's go over them one at a time.
First, the way we described earlier: you begin
with a place, turn it into a setting through
the addition of a level of conflict over a
duration of time, and then build the details
of the place specific to that new setting.
Essentially, if you've decided your setting
is going to be the city at the volcano's base
in the days before its eruption, full of people
deciding whether to stay or flee, that is
not the time to begin developing the wholly
unrelated underwater kingdom on the other
side of the planet.
The second way to approach fixed design-and
this is very common with higher concept stories-is
precisely the opposite: you begin with your
level of conflict over a duration of time,
and then build the place in which these things
exist in order to turn them into a setting.
So instead of creating a fixed point in a
pre-existing world and getting very detailed
with it, you're creating only as much of the
world as you need to from a starting fixed
point.
For instance, you may decide you want to write
a story about a people who are confronted
with a cataclysmic event and have only several
weeks to decide between their beloved religion
and their own lives.
Level of conflict and duration.
You might then decide that their culture and
religion has developed around a primordial
being said to inhabit the volcano they live
beneath.
Location and period.
These both work really well, and in fact we
use both of them for the show!
Our recent Slavic Folklore short story began
with some inkling of place, generously given
us by the existing myth and tales, and then
we developed a setting from there.
Our Junji Ito short story, on the hand, began
with the high concept that our protagonist
ought to be a vehicle for the main spectacle-the
horror-which lead us to develop a level of
conflict over a duration of time before building
the specifics of the place in which they exist.
This second one is actually a lot more common
for us, so it's going to form the basis for
our challenge to all of you.
I mentioned at the beginning of this video
that we're going to be running a worldbuilding
competition for this series.
More specifically, we're going to give you
the beginnings of a setting-a level of conflict
over a duration of time-and it'll be your
job to build the place-the location and the
period.
And this is something we could never do without
the help of World Anvil, because they allow
you to turn the nebulous task of worldbuilding
into something concrete and manageable.
Essentially, what you're going to do is make
a free account, visit the competition page
(link in the description), and then build
a world by writing several small articles
using the list of templates provided.
When the time comes, we'll review the worlds
created by our finalists and select the one
that would work best for our setting, at which
point we'll write a brand new Tale Foundry
short story based in the world you've built.
Check the description for more information,
and stay tuned!
We'll be uploading a brief instructional video
with World Anvil after this one!
Now, the prompt you're going to be building
your world around: "There have been creatures
hiding in plain sight among the populace for
centuries, but only now are the people becoming
aware.
They must race over the course of the next
week to prevent the catastrophe that will
result from their discovery."
Now, go build a world for it!
We'll be waiting.
In the meantime, if you like you what you
saw here and you'd like to help us make more,
consider supporting the show on Patreon!
It's our amazing Patreon community that allows
us to make these videos.
In return, we give them votes to help us decide
on video topics, daily updates, weekly sneak-peeks,
and bi-weekly think tank sessions where the
team brainstorms ideas for the next video
with the community!
It's a lot of fun, and we'd love to see you
there!
And now, as I promised, I have something...
odd to share with you.
My correspondent's latest letter is, frankly,
the opposite of what I'd been expecting.
I think it may well be the first genuine question
they've asked me.
This, because following one particular recommendation
in the comments, I dared to ask what their
connection to The Foundry is.
-
Whatt precisely do you mean by "The" Foundry?
-
Short, but...
I don't know if I've ever had so many expectations
dashed in eight words.
I thought I'd eventually start to get some
answers about this place, not start to give
them.
I know so little.
What should I even say?
If you have any ideas for me, leave a comment.
I'll be reading them.
At any rate, that's all for this episode!
Thanks for watching, and keep making stuff
up!
We'll see you...
next time!
Bye!
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