Worldbuilding

Description

This is a community embracing and bringing together worldbuilders, writers, poets and dreamers searching for help and inspiration to bring their creative stories, RPGs, and worlds to life.

Worldbuilding is first and foremost Art: the creation of an alternate world, a secondary creation or faerie in which places and events and people that may or may not exist here take form and exist there, interacting in new and different ways.

When God was about to create the world by his Word, the letters of the alphabet descended from the terrible and august crown whereon they were engraved with a pen of flaming fire. They stood round about, and one after the other spake and entreated: "Create the world through me!"

When we subcreate such a place as an alternate world, we are in fact reaching out into the Dreaming, into the very Source of our own existence; we are reaching within, into the creative urge; we touch another reality and give it shape and form in this reality.

Topics

Topics covered would include:

• Essentially everything that pertains to the creation of a fictional world or universe or setting as well as the creation of the narratives of those worlds' stories themselves. Broadly speaking, topics like cosmology, astrophysics, chemistry and biology would not be foreign to our members.

• Neither would concepts such as theology, philosophy, game design, aesthetics, geology, magical systems, mythic and unreal creatures.

• This is an art-focused community. Thus, the intended scope of this forum is to help creators with the development of their creative infrastructure: worldbuilding and storybuilding. This community embraces the creative where other Codidact communities might embrace the scientifically factual, historical or disciplinary.

• We would happily accept questions that focus on "unreal sciences" and the technologies that derive from them. Either the creation and description of such a science or the derivation of such from known science. Such questions might touch strongly on multiple communities — none of which at this time (unless I'm misunderstanding their limits) would accept such a question.

• We would accept a fairly broad range of question types. Within reasonable limitations, questions that require focused brainstorming or fishing for ideas, as well as questions that elicit well considered opinions and concept analysis would all be welcome here.

• "Reality Checks" to see if a given scenario is realistic a/o plausible (within the context of the fictional world) are on topic, as are questions that delve into whether some event would realistically happen in a given scenario.

• Our favourite kinds of questions are those that delve into deeper aspects of a member's fictional world. Social ramifications of dragon extinction would be far more to our liking than "can my world have two moons".

• This community embraces the idea of helping participants to write a story. We would be very interested in questions that link world with narrative. We love questions that focus on the creativity and art of storytelling, rather than the mechanics.

Exclusions

These topics or types of posts would be out of scope:

• We would specifically avoid questions that ask about the real world. Such questions ought to be asked in other Codidact forums as and when they become available. Plain questions about historical events or orbital mechanics ought to be addressed to those communities. Where history and orbital mechanics meet art and fictional realities is where we would take over!

• We would specifically avoid questions that are specifically pertinent to other Codidact communities. In particular, Scientific Speculation and Writing.

Special Features

(Would this community want additional categories, new post types, changes to site settings, etc? Codidact has a lot of configuration available, so if there's something you want to be able to do, please share it.)

• We want it all! This section will need to be updated as we explore the possibilities Codidact has to offer.

• We would certainly be interested in subforums for Worldbuilding and Storybuilding; introduction / help for each (along the lines of the Sci.Spec "Q&A" and "Rigorous Science" subforums.

• Tab with a list of worldbuilding resources

• Tab with a list of storybuilding resources

Overlaps

This site would ideally not overlap at all with other Codidact communities. Questions about the real world would be redirected to communities like physics or history whenever possible. We would love, and indeed welcome, experts from those other communities to pop in and offer their expertise! Questions asking for a basis in science would be redirected to Sci.Spec. Questions about writing techniques and mechanics would be redirected to Writing.

The Other Side of the Moebium

It seems like the SciSpec Codidact forum is going to claim the scientific side of the geopoetical coin. I'm therefore proposing that Worldbuilding take up the artistic side of the same coin. Geopoesy, of course, is just another, maybe fancier, name for worldbuilding.

Over on StackExchange, the community seems to focus a lot on general science and I notice that a lot of queries get comments essentially along the lines of "your scenario is implausible, because that's not how reality works". Well, duh. Querent isn't asking about reality -- she's asking about a fictional world! That forum also seems to slightly downplay art and to more than slightly downplay creativity. Which is really kind of counterintuitive!

There is currently some beginnings of a discussion on storybuilding as a legitimate part of worldbuilding (I don't mean character development or plot determination, but rather, how the fictional world and the developed character interact to form the plot). And there has long been discussion and some tension on what constitutes "opinion based" queries.

I think we could distinguish this forum, WB:CD, from both WB:SE and from SS:CD by embracing and treating seriously the fanciful, the opinion based, the artistic, the intuitive, perhaps even the literary. If SS:CD is taking science in worldbuilding seriously, then why not take art in worldbuilding as seriously? That'll be our job!

Lots of questions at WB:SE seem to be really "basic", if you take my meaning. Questions like "can I have a unicorn cavalry in a Civil War setting". I'd like for this forum to bring that up a few notches. Explore the hows and whys, the wherefores and hownows. Consider the choices made as matters of art: what are the underlying meanings and significations? How do these choices mesh and create a deeper world? Where do we touch the transcendentals of goodness, truth and the beauty through geopoetical arts?

If you are interested to participate

• Please "react" to this posting to indicate your interest
• Please check the Worldbuilding discussion on Meta (filter by "worldbuilding") and join in
• Please use the tag "worldbuilding" for all your posts concerning that topic, in your Q&A posts as well as on Meta.

posted 3 months ago

3mo ago by Monica Cellio‭

elemtilas‭

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