Phew!
We are having an incredible time with this worldbuilding theme.
Not only has it been a long-awaited opportunity to investigate how exactly fictional worlds
are built, but it's also been an eye-opening look at just how creative you humans can be.
To everyone participating in the competition we're running with World Anvil right now,
I personally want to let you know that I am awed by your imagination and your skill.
Well done.
If you aren't participating or you're coming to this video long after the competition has
ended, you can find all the information you'll need in this video's description.
If you get a chance, go look at the entries-they are inspired.
Oh!
And be sure to watch until the video's end.
It really seems like things are beginning to go somewhere with these strange letters
I've been receiving.
I've been asked yet another question, and this one...
well, it's a lot bigger than the last one they asked.
For now, though, while the metal is still hot, we're going to show you worldsmiths some
new ways to strike it!
We started to explore something in our last video called "The Three F's of Worldbuilding",
but we really only focused on one of them.
Now it's time to get a little more detailed about all three.
So, take up your hammer, light up the forge, and prepare to build!
These are our Three Methods of Worldbuilding.
Free Design is by far the most popular approach to building a fictional world, likely because
of how simple and unrestricted it is.
The other methods on this list are pretty much all about constraints, but with Free
Design the only constraint you face is the internal logic and consistency of the world
you're building.
Essentially, the world you create is beholden only to itself, and to you.
That isn't to say free design is wild or directionless, though.
It can be, but it's also very common for the author to move along a scale of magnitude
as they use this method.
And on this scale, there are three typical directions to move: Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and
Middle-Out.
A Top-Down free design begins, of course, at the larger end of the scale.
The author begins with the broader details of their world and crafts progressively smaller
details from there.
For example, the author might decide they'd like to build a world that lacks gravity.
This is a big detail, and will out of necessity affect the rest of the design.
If there's no gravity, none of the structures will really need load-bearing capacity.
Thus, none of the creatures will require skeletons, which means that the inhabitants could reasonably
be, say... shapeless, floating, amoeboid life forms.
Bottom-Up design on the other hand begins at the smaller end of the of the scale.
The author starts with the more minute details of their world and builds into progressively
larger ones.
For instance, the author might like the concept of common plants that can grow animal cells.
This is a relatively small detail.
But if that's the case in this world, then the inhabitants don't necessarily need to
practice animal husbandry or hunting for meat produce.
The author could, from there, justify the world as a relatively pacifist place where
not even animals need to kill each other out of necessity for food.
Finally, Middle-Out design starts, obviously, in the middle of the scale.
The author begins with the most ubiquitous, moderate details-things which are neither
as seemingly inconsequential as the produce of a plant, nor as sweeping in their implications
as a law of physics.
Let's say the author decides they'd like the apex species of their world to have evolved
from octopi.
That could very well justify a world almost entirely submerged in water-an effect on the
larger end of the scale.
It could also mean that, should this species retain the elasticity of their mollusk ancestors,
they could have very simple housing needs.
Clusters of cubby holes attached to a common area might do just fine-an effect on the smaller
end of the scale.
Top-Down, Bottom-Up, Middle-Out.
There's one thing all of these have in common: a sense of oriented freedom.
No constraints beyond the needs of the world itself, and the desires of the author.
The scale of the decisions the author makes about their world may send ripples through
their design, but there is no imperative for where or how they drop that first pebble.
This makes free design perfect for larger projects intended to spawn a litter of offshoot
works.
In fact, it's the method Tolkien used to create Arda and Middle Earth.
If you read Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, you can see it in Tolkien's many detailed
references to pieces of the world totally irrelevant to the plot-pieces which he had
designed independent of the story and was eager to expose wherever he could in the text.
By a similar token, free design is also generally the favorite method of tabletop RPG designers,
whose job it is to design sandbox worlds for game masters to use in order to rapidly develop
their campaigns and settings in.
And of course, I would be remiss not to mention one of the best applications of free design-pure
love of the craft.
Remember, worldbuilding is an art unto itself.
Don't ever feel forced to build your world for a story or a project, the need to pile
constraints onto your design.
If what you love is shaping worlds from the aether of your imagination, do it!
Feel free to design!
At some point during the planning phase of every story, the author has to ask themself:
Where is this stuff happening?
When is it happening?
And this is where fixed design begins: with the need for a setting.
That may be a little more complex than it sounds, though.
A setting is not just a place where something happens.
We went into some detail about this in our first worldbuilding video, but for now, suffice
it to say that a setting is a place in which a conflict occurs over a duration of time.
Without any of those individual elements-place, conflict, duration-a setting cannot exist.
And that's important, because if you were to approach setting using the free design
method, altering or removing the places associated with that setting however you'd like, you'd
effectively be destroying it.
Simply put: in the building of worlds, settings are far more difficult to change than other
elements.
These are places in the design that are fixed by their obligation to a conflict over a duration
of time.
The only thing the author can really do with them is begin to answer the slew of questions
they beg.
For instance, in your loosely medieval European-themed world, if the setting involves a profaned
burial ground that now has undead swarming out of it, the nearby townsfolk rushing to
stymie the flow and protect themselves, you also have to wonder: what resources do they
have to protect themselves?
Do they have firearms?
Gunpowder?
Do they have an organized militia of their own?
Are they able to produce enough food on their own to stake out behind the town walls until
the blight passes?
Any number of particularities that don't concern the rest of your world, demanded by this one
relatively small setting.
Essentially, if you're creating a setting within your world, there is an imperative
to flesh it out.
This focus is what distinguishes fixed design from free design.
Yes, it does offer a constraint, but for writers and storytellers it's a useful one.
It protects the author from wandering off into their design to get forever lost in the
anatomy of imaginary insects and the history of fictional family lines.
Instead of designing every facet of their world, they focus on those pertinent to the
setting.
There are two simple approaches to fixed design: the "World-Based" approach, and the "Story-Based"
approach, which are precisely what they sound like.
In the case of a World-Based fixed design, the author has already spent time free designing
their world and in the process stumbled across places that they want to tell stories about.
So they develop an appropriate conflict, apply it to that place for a duration of time, and
then get to work answering all the new questions this marriage begs so that they can tell a
story in their brand new setting.
In the case of Story-Based fixed design, the author has spent time developing an independent
conflict and now requires a place for it to happen in for a time.
Knowing their goal is to tell a story and not necessarily to build a world, they begin
to design specifically within the sphere of their conflict's concerns.
This means making decisions about the world based on the story they're planning to tell.
If the author knows a hero must slay a beast as a part of their conflict, that creates
a need for a beast of some kind in their world.
Whether it's a dragon or a great and mighty hippo can make a heck of a difference.
What they don't need to decide on is what the mating habits of the common wood louse
look like on the continent next door.
By giving themself the constraint of a setting which needs to be fleshed out, fixed in place
within their world, the author is ultimately protecting their story.
A world is a large thing to build.
If they wait until all of it is finished before they write the story, the story will never
be written.
So far we've talked about two different worldbuilding methods based on two different levels of constraint.
Free design, where the construction of the world is beholden only to the world itself,
and Fixed design, where the construction of the world is beholden to a setting.
But however spacious, these are not the only boxes worldbuilding can happen within.
Often, an author will begin their design with some constraints that have nothing to do with
their world or their setting-external considerations like ethical boundaries, concept conveyance,
aesthetic cohesion, and so on.
It's when, in the middle of their worldbuilding process, the author finds new external constraints
or new conflicts between their external constraints and their world, that the author stumbles
into the realm of Found design.
We call these external constraints that pop up mid-process or prove to conflict with other
parts of the design "Emergent" constraints.
It's common for the author to abandon those parts of their design, but Found design is
the process of finding a compromise between the design and the emergent constraints discovered
in the process.
On a larger scale, this works very well as a method of selection, which is something
we focused on in our previous video.
As opposed to deciding which parts of their world ought to be built freely and which parts
deserve to be developed into fixed settings, the author can let an emergent constraint
guide their decision.
This can be as simple as a Game Master in a tabletop RPG making a decision based on
the emergent constraint of their player's preferences.
If the players want to go explore a cave system the GM mentioned in passing but never designed,
the emergent constraint becomes "this cave system must be able to support a setting,"
in which case, following the method of found design, they don't tell their players "no,
that place can't support a setting", but they instead prepare to begin a fixed design for
the setting it has to become.
On a smaller scale, found design can also actually be a method of building.
This is the case when emergent constraints don't lead to the selection of a worldbuilding
method, but instead influence the design directly, regardless of the method being used.
This can be the result of anything from game designers needing to retroactively marry their
world to the game's mechanics, to show-writers needing to inflate their world to accommodate
new filler arcs.
But by far, the most common application of found design is in the author's fulfillment
of their own desires.
Perhaps they've fallen in love with a species of winged serpent they've designed, but the
world they want to place it in is a frigid wasteland where it couldn't possibly survive.
The emergent constraint becomes "I want this winged serpent to exist in my frozen world."
Following the method of found design, they would neither abandon the creature nor warm
up their world.
They'd adjust aspects of one or both to accommodate the addition.
Maybe the atmosphere in this world works differently from Earth's, causing higher points to be
warmer, mountain peaks being some of the rare places that actually thaw.
And maybe the author's winged serpents roost atop them in order to regulate the temperature
of their cold blood.
Perhaps they've even evolved coats of white fur instead of scales to better trap and retain
the heat.
These would be new designs found through addressing emergent constraints.
Out of the three methods of worldbuilding in this video, this is easily the most dynamic.
It can apply to virtually any part of the process and can work in tandem with just about
any other method.
It's not always appropriate to adjust established parts of your world like this, but when it
is-when you can find parts of your design rather than just deciding on them-it's like
watching your world grow and evolve before your eyes.
Well.
How was that for dense?
We crammed a whole lot into this list, so don't be afraid to back-track and re-listen
to parts of it-we certainly had to do a lot of that while we were putting it together.
Before we wrap up I think it's important to point out that these aren't the only THREE
GUARANTEED methods of worldbuilding-they're just the ones we've found or pieced together
from the findings of others.
Ultimately, the Three Fs of Worldbuilding are meant to make things simpler, despite
how deep we went with them in this video.
If they help you to understand and articulate your process in any way, we've done our job!
And don't forget-there's still an opportunity to experiment with at least one of these methods.
If you want to try your hand at using fixed design to build a world, be sure to join the
worldbuilding competition we're running with World Anvil!
There's still ten days left to create your world, and if it wins, we'll be using it for
the setting of our worldbuilding series short story!
You can find all the information you'll need to participate in the description or linked
at the end of the video.
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, weekly video 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!
Okay... phew.
I think it's time now for me to let you in on one the biggest questions I have ever been
asked.
I'm not sure whether to thank you or curse your names, but it was the helpful suggestions
of a large handful of commenters on our last video that brought us here.
Essentially, following your advice, I tried to get a clearer perspective on why they had
asked me that strange question last time.
In not so many words, I told them that I had always been under the impression there is
only one Tale Foundry, and I asked whether they think that impression is wrong.
Here... is what they sent back: -
Oh, dear sender, dear sender, sweet thing that you are.
Here, now!
Come easily, and let me swaddle you in assurances: you have impressed no falsehood upon your
own delicate mind.
Though it is true, as I have found in my dreaming, thatt there are foundries to be had and foundries
more, theirs are a toil of metal that flows and drips like sweat.
And for Tales?
The page is the crucible of each letter, the pen a subtle hammer.
These things I know.
Thus, I am filled with a wonder that I must pass on to you, my figment: fragment of a
reverie that you inhabit, how is it that you've married tales and foundries with such conviction?
- As usual, this took a healthy amount of time
for us to... decode.
It really just sounds like they're surprised by the mere concept of Tale Foundry, and even
more by the possibility that I could be aware of this place when they aren't.
So...
I suppose I have some explaining to do?
(heavy sigh) Any ideas on where to begin?
This definitely seems like something to ease our way into.
As always, I'll be looking for suggestions in the comments.
Thanks for your help with this thing.
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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