World Building

[Turrosh Mak]

While waiting for the next episode of Ascendance of a Bookworm, I stumbled across this:



Which introduced me to the concept of "Shandification" and (in the great tradition of youtube crawls) lead me to this:



Enjoy

[Arioch]

Yeah, often when in a dungeon crawl, I wonder, "how do these gigantic beasts get enough food to survive down here? What's keeping these torches burning, and how is it that they aren't using up all the oxygen in an enclosed chamber?" Let's just say I wasn't the GM's favorite player, as I would get into arguments with him about things like how much books should cost in a world without printing presses.

But I think "Shandification" is a poor choice for a term to describe extensive worldbuilding. The definiting characteristic of Tristram Shandy was its meandering and scattershot narrative structure, and I don't think that solid worldbuilding is only important for meandering stories or interactive games. Internally consistent worldbuilding is just as important for tightly-plotted and -paced stories.

I'm reminded of a famous scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in which Indy and company open the Well of the Souls... and as they pry open the stone, there is this rush of escaping air with an ominous sound, implying not only that the chamber had been sealed air-tight, but that the air was thousands of years old. But then in the very next shot we see that there are thousands of snakes living down there. What have they been eating for thousands of years, and how do they still have oxygen? Now, we learn in short order that the snakes have been coming in from outside through holes in the wall, and eventually we see that the area could not possibly have been airtight (Indy pushes out a stone from an aperture that was clearly already open to the outside air). So the escaping air had been -- at best -- deliberately misleading. And that's not good storytelling... especially when it was unnecessary.

And yes, I did notice it the first time I saw it at age 14. It didn't ruin the scene for me, but it did draw me out of the immersion of the world for a moment. I was willing to overlook how or why thousands of snakes (of about a dozen different species) would congregate in such an area for no particular reason... but then, there was a magical artifact of "unspeakable power" there. Snake behavior might be affected by objects of Biblical power. But air... is air.

[SaintofM]

Overly sarcastic Productions has one as well. Actually a couple, if you add write what you know (which can be better surmised as Write what you understand). THree with Evil Empires.

Writing What you know


Planet of Hats (where everyone in a particular race or culture has one definable trait like Klingon's are all Proud Warrior Race types, Romans are all decident, ect.)



Realism (reality is unrealistic by the way)


Evil Empires

[SVlad]

Yeah, often when in a dungeon crawl, I wonder, "how do these gigantic beasts get enough food to survive down here? What's keeping these torches burning, and how is it that they aren't using up all the oxygen in an enclosed chamber?"

Dungeon maintenance crew, of course.