World Building For Game Designers
World Building For Game Designers
Lesson Five: Keep Asking Questions
BY Steve Dee
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
In the previous lesson we talked about how most of the exercises you learn about character development in writing lessons apply just as well to world building. So what are those exercises? We’ll go through a few of them over these columns but one of the simplest ones is “keep asking questions”. It’s often shortened to “ask three questions”, and most of the time that’s enough. Sometimes it’s turned to “keeping asking why” because why gets to the heart of things so often. They’re all versions of the same thing: we keep interrogating our ideas – characters or worlds – until we find the core truths. And we learn a lot as we go.
How does this work? Let’s think of some examples; first with characters, then with worlds.
Imagine I want my character to have a gun in the next scene so I decide I’ll write in a character who gives him one. If I just write “John handed Jane a gun” it’s not very compelling. So I decide to figure out who John is. So I start asking questions.
Why does John have a gun?
He got it for self defence.
Why does he need it for self defence?
He lives in a poor neighbourhood.
Why is it a poor neighbourhood?
Because the Big Bad Evil Guy destroyed it.
Now I might write: “John handed Jane a gun. ‘Go get him,’ he said, with a shadow in his eyes. Jane knew that Doctor Despair had taken a lot from the young man when the treacle floods had come and turned the western city into a hellhole.” Now we know a lot about John and the scene has a lot more weight.
You can see how well the question of why works, but it’s not essential. For example:
What kind of gun does John have?
A service revolver from his time as a soldier.
When was John a soldier?
During the war that ended last year.
Where was John in the war?
In the deserts of Elnad.
“John handed Jane a pistol, a standard issue for desert soldiers. ‘This got me out of a lot of trouble in Elnad,’” he said. “
Note that these questions could have been about our main character, and the details might then have more knock-on effects, requiring us to do some edits of previous material. We’ll talk more about this practice of establishing truths and possible contradictions in later installments, but for the most part, you can always edit your world until you start releasing it so you should never stop asking questions like this. In other words, do not be afraid to ask questions or give answers that might rewrite some core truths of your world! That’s how worlds get better. World building is a long and involved process, both in the first formations and the ongoing work.
Also note that both of our examples above do a lot of world building, because again, since your world is a character, everything about characters impacts your world, and everything about your world impacts your characters.
If three questions aren’t enough – if you’re not getting to something really helpful yet, something that paints a vivid, commanding picture – then you may want to dig and dig until you get to the real truth, the personal truth. Something like this:
Why does John have a gun?
To keep him safe in a poor neighbourhood.
Why does he live in a poor neighbourhood?
Because he doesn’t have much money.
Why doesn’t have have much money?
Because he never got a good job.
Why not?
Because he never got an education
Why not?
Because his parents made him go into a trade
Why?
Because they were poor as well.
But he could have had an education?
Yes
So he was smart?
Yes
So they took away his chances.
Yes
So does he resent his parents?
Yes
Now we know that John has a deep wound and a tragic backstory. Note also here that the next question might be “Can he forgive them?” and that might be a question without a clear answer. And importantly, a question without an answer isn’t a dead end. It is in fact what you want. A question without an easy answer is one that can be explored. One that can define the whole character.
So how does all this work with worlds? Again, let’s just pick an example. One world I built began with free-forming the idea of a pirate magician. (Note: free-forming is an improv exercise of just saying random words out loud and reacting to each word with another word without censoring yourself until you get a cool new idea). So why I asked, would you have a pirate magician? What does that even mean?
What’s a pirate magician?
A magician with an eye patch and a pegleg.
Why would a magician have those?
Because all magic requires a blood sacrifice.
What does that imply?
That only those with the best doctors – say the noble class – can keep wizards alive. Only the rich have magic. Or the zealotic.
It could have gone plenty of other ways, of course:
What’s a pirate magician?
A magician who operates outside magical law, stealing magic. Making illegal copies?
Why would they do that?
Magic is all based on scrolls from official wizard colleges which only the rich can afford so a large pirate market has sprung up.
What does that imply?
Copy protected scrolls. Fake scrolls. Magic that looks like cure light wounds but in fact turns your entire village into zombies.
There’s so many fun way this could go, really.
The question “What does that imply?” or “What does that mean?” can be like the “whys” of world building. Every single idea in a world can and does have a next step ready to access. Everything has an implication. Everything has a consequence. Even the simplest things in our world do, because everything is connected in worlds. Jim has a gun, what does that mean? What assumptions have we made? And what assumptions are part of those assumptions? Steel exists (or some similar metal), probably. Gunpowder exists (or does it?). So mining exists (or does it?). Some sort of precision construction exists (or does it?) and perhaps mass production (or does it)?
Could you make a gun that is made of wood? An elven plant gun? An alien bio gun? Could it fire some magical explosive? Could metals not be mined but collected from the air or extracted from animals or harvested from long-dead technology? Could guns be extremely unreliable because they are very poorly made? Could there be only a few in existence? Could they run on intricate clockwork only available to the vastly wealthy? Does Jim have the only gun ever made, and is he being hunted by those who want it back? You see how every single one of these questions can cause incredible consequences and even more questions?
You might have also noticed that I added questions after every assumption, and that’s important. So important that it’s the topic of the next lesson. But let’s finish up with one more example of world-building through questions. Let’s imagine we’re trying to add flavour to a town.
What do we know about the town?
It’s by the sea
What does that mean?
It means that fishing is their primary industry.
What does that mean?
It means they have a religious relationship with the fish population. What threatens that threatens them on a personal and spiritual level.
How religious is this relationship, exactly?
That last one is a question without an easy answer, and that’s your plot hook. So originally we might have had an adventure hook like this: “The town depends on the fish population to survive, so will hire the adventurers to find out what’s killing the fish” we now might have “The locals are conducting religious ceremonies to try and get the fish population back. Unscrupulous locals may kidnap the adventurers to be sacrificed. Kinder folks will beg the heroes to intervene.” Now we’ve got drama, not just a Quest Giver. We’ve got factions. We’ve got moral dilemmas – do they help people who tried to kill them? We’ve got – to quote Lloyd Price – personality in our little town and its adventure.
Exercise:
Don’t even think about your current projects for this one – at least not at first. Get into practice by just asking a series of questions about every idea you can think of. Pick anything: any detail in any world you can imagine or come across (or in this world), and run down some questions. Once you can do this on anything, you can do it easily in world-building.
Image Duplicator, by Roy Lichtenstein (after Jack Kirby) (1963)
This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Steve Dee of Tin Star Games. If you want to get in touch with the contributor they can be reached at tinstargames@gmail.com or visit their website at www.tinstargames.com.