World Building For Game Designers
Lesson One: Worlds Must Have a Purpose
WBGD is a series of lessons on world building for game designers by multi-award winning designer/world-builder Steve Dee. Each lesson stands alone or can be read in a series, and ends with an exercise for the reader to practice their world building skills.
I think all too often we think of world builders like they are model makers. They sit at a table and slowly, painstakingly, build a world, from the central supporting structures, the spines of wood and metal that hold the frame, to overlaying that with paint and textures and buildings and then zooming right down to painting the tiny faces of each tiny individual person. Later, games, stories, media products, imaginary play-acts: some or all of these will be drawn from this source, but the world sits perfectly under glass, in a vacuum, fully constructed ex nihilo and indeed in toto. From this ur-text, the world may be interpreted, devised, developed and represented, but it is at birth complete, and everything stems from this.
And there are, in fact, a few worlds that were designed like this, or partly. We might think of the Lord of the Rings being one, because it is the case that Tolkien built the world before he envisaged writing a novel to hang the world upon, but the world itself wasn’t really built first: the languages came first, then his histories, the idea of a kind of parody of medieval history and a melding of Scandinavian epic mythology with history itself, and then that became a world, which became stories, which told the story of the world, because Tolkien really understood that stories and worlds are very much the same thing.
Glorantha, the setting of the RPG Runequest, also comes close, but it was invented originally to support the board game White Bear and Red Moon. The world expanded as its creator Greg Stafford made more games, mostly wargames but also his famous RPG, and the needs of his games drove his interests and decisions. As with Tolkien, each inevitably fed back into the other.
The only one I can think of that really qualifies is Tekumel, which M. A. R. Barker wrote in wholecloth when he was studying and immersing himself in Middle Eastern and central Asian cultures. Tekumel filled vast notebooks with its geography, history and again, language, long before Barker thought it could be “for” anything. Then by sheer chance he stumbled onto a very early version of D&D and it seemed like the perfect fit. What else could RPGs be best at besides exploring foreign worlds? (Although we’ll come back to this question later.)
Of course, Tekumel was barely played when it came out and is remembered only for its nigh-unplayability. It was said only Barker could really run the game, because only Barker really understood the world and how to present it. It couldn’t be put into anything else successfully, and his attempts at novels also failed. Barker may be the one person who really did build a world in a bottle and because it had no purpose, it never became anything else.
Part of the problem is that world building and world communicating are two different skills, and that will also be a lesson for later.
Baker’s world only served as something to be read and marveled at as a document of world building. And let’s be clear: that’s fine. There are plenty of products where the world really is just there to be read. James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is a terrible movie, but viewing it as a documentary about an interesting world makes it much more entertaining. The problem is, it’s the wrong world for that film, because the film isn’t a documentary. Nothing in the film’s plot really tells the story of the world, and nothing in the world tells the story of the film. Even James Cameron makes mistakes. Sometimes titanic ones.
If you want to use your world to do something, and do it well, then your world needs to be built for purpose. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of worlds that were built for one thing have been fine being developed into other things. But part of that development is adjusting to fit—which is more world building.
And that’s the lesson hiding inside this: world building, if done right, never ends. Worlds don’t exist under glass, inviolate and unchanging. Some things might be set in stone, and some things might be canon (and those aren’t the same thing) but that doesn’t mean the world isn’t constantly being developed, added to and pruned back where needed.
And when we say worlds have a purpose, they might not have just one purpose. It might go on to have many products and many forms, and it might have many purposes in the same product. It’s not just the whole world that has a purpose, but every element of it too. World building isn’t just doing the DNA, or the core geographic structures, or the big headlines. World building is always going on, and part of every step of design and creation. Unless your game is entirely abstract, then every element of your game involves world building.
So what is the purpose of your game? And what role does the world play in achieving that purpose? How does your world fit into this goal? Note that this also raises another question, hiding inside it: how does a setting achieve the goals of a game? What indeed is the point of having a world in a game at all? Why not just keep it abstract and avoid all the trouble?
That question…is for next time.
Exercise:
Step back from your game and ask yourself what is the game trying to achieve? “Being fun” is not a good answer, but broad notes about the type of game it is and the type of experience you want to give to your players will suffice. Write that down, without thinking about the world. A purpose can’t be “to show off the world” either. If you want to do that, write an atlas. Once you have your purpose, ask yourself: is this the world that delivers those goals? Does it deliver them as much as possible? If not, can we go back and align things so it does? That might mean going right back to first principles, or it might mean simply adding some factions so the character creation choices are more interesting. Keep your purpose in mind: stick it up somewhere where you can see it. Come back to it all the time. It’s key to every step of your world building.
Today’s IGDN blog article is brought to you by Steve Dee of Tin Star Games. If you want to get in touch with the contributor he can be reached at @tinstargames on Twitter or visit their website at www.tinstargames.com.
Steve’s WBGD is a series of lessons on world building in general and for game designers in particular by multi-award winning game designer and world-builder Steve Dee. Each lesson stands alone or can be read in a series. Each entry ends with an exercise for the reader to stretch their world building skills, examine their world and look for ways to improve it, or as a prompt to solve problems they have encountered in their creations
This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network's blog series. The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of the IGDN or its members.