One of the fun things about worldbuilding to me is sometimes it's "The god who watched over this world for eons has died and people are now forced to either desperately cling to old faith or turn to beings that were once deemed unholy for protection and guidance." While other times it's "Goblins used to be giants who thought they were so unstoppable they tried to wage war with the gods, only to be cursed by those very gods and made tiny. Ever since they've been trying to crack space travel to reach the domain of gods again so they can get revenge."
4 years ago, I was bored, so I started making a language. It's been through 5 spelling reforms, I've written a journal in it for a year and a half now, and I've made a giant reform of it twice now. I write music in it. It's what got me to worldbuild. In this world there are pine marten (a mustelid) like people. There are religions, education systems, stereotypes, cyphers, cultures, art, dancing, musical instruments. I love building it. I have so many stories and characters in my head. One day I'll put the pen to paper, make the code, put paint on the brush. One day.
hoooollly shit you're living one of my major goals in life with writing journals in your conlang. I've got a journal ive been writing for about 8 years now and a personal conlang that I've been making for about a year, but i havent gotten to the point where i can write full sentences and ideas in it reliably. and the world sounds cool, so keep nurturing it! im curious about those cyphers (something I've never really delved into in my worldbuilding)
Worldbuilding is such a thrill! I recently created an entire world for a D&D campaign, and it was a blast. I crafted a unique map with diverse regions, bustling cities, distinct races, epic wars, and a rich history full of intrigue and depth. It was such a rewarding process to see everything come together. Great video!
I've made so many Pathfinder 2E characters each built to fit together PF2E has so much content to use Most recent books are stupidly thick and or quirky
its strange that minds like this are so uncommon. world building saved my life. it gave me an escape when life was hard. all of my world I hold very dear to my heart. i keep them only in my mind for the magic to me of it all. like a growing multiverse in my mind.
This video filled me with such a visceral childlike excitement that I started daydreaming of a new world before I was even halfway through the video. Thank you so much for making this.
my favorite daydreaming world building ive been doing recently is figuring out how the fully improvised characters in the show by dropout, called Very Important People tie together. They add so much on the fly its kinda hard to keep up with but makes for such an interesting culture and history. Truly never seen a world more bizarre, which makes sense considering its all made up on the spot and they didn't mean for them to be all in one real world. but thats been pretty fun recently
i daydream story concepts all the time. the actual fun part is trying to create a world where those stories can all fit. ive had a universe ive been building for almost 10 years now born from this
mmmm the well-baked quality of a 10-year old world. one of my worlds should be about 10 years old now (the Universe of Gen from one of my other videos), and it's awesome to go back to and write lore and stories for.
I write sci-fi and I have one master folder for one of my books and it HAS SO MANY DOCUMENTS INSIDE, it’s so fucking full and there are so many different things in their from planet environments to the overarching galactic government structure to a stations cultural practices around fight rings. I also have a very disorganized note in my phone that makes no sense to literally anyone but me and a channel in a server with my friend where literally half my plot is
I've been worldbuilding since like 4th grade, and now I'm a sophomore in high school, so like 6 years, going onto 7. My most recent world I'm working on is controlled by two deities/beings, basically like yin and yang (I haven't quite figured out their place in the world, but they're definitely important). One deity created the high elves, which then caused the other to create humans as an opposing force to the high elves. Because the elves saw themselves as superior to humans it resulted in the elves developing a slave based economy, and due to interbreeding it resulted in the elves, and then the half elves. The most interesting system thats in the works is the magic system, basically every organism absorbs mana through special organs, and in the brain there's a specific part of it that specifically deals with magic, and the more you cast spells the larger it grows (a potential interesting thing could be like magic sickness as that part of the brain grows, it could take over other parts of your brain, or it gets too big and you just die from internal pressure). But anyways a way it's processed is through language, so casting it with words is like a little cheat code for your brain, as it activates the neurons to cast the spell, same with magic circles (I wanted an explanation for why spells are cast, cause it always felt stupid, but this gives a reason, but also allows you to do the casting in your head with enough practice(kinda like doing math in your head)). Souls also interact with magic, as when someone dies they manifest as magic and can still hold power over the physical world, and other people can influence their power, as someone who believes in them will give them more power, extending their life and influence over the physical world. This can result in little village deities, but also deities that are overruling if enough people believe in them. This system resulted in the creation of the succubus, basically there was this minority religion followed by a group of humans with traces of elven blood. This group of people were polyamerous and nudist. and when a much larger group of people contacted them, their religions clashed and the more powerful one cursed their entire group to consume the ones they loved, and gave them shapeshifting abilities to lure over other people more easily, but once this religion died out and the god who cursed them died, the curse wore off, but they were left with a new body. And due to the shapeshifting ability it has allowed the succubi to take on many demi-human forms. I'm really excited to delve more into the succubi, as they explore themes of culture and religion I'm not used to, and how tragic events can effect a culture while also exploring trans-humanism and transgenderism more thoroughly. Well anyways, that's my progress on my current worldbuilding progress
I'm starting to build my own world, that I hope to play dnd in with my partner :3 Its such a nice way to be creative because you're so free to just do whatever you want. I've never done it before but I'm in it for the journey ^~^
For anyone who plans to make their own world: only make it geographically accurate if you really enjoy that stuff. Worldbuilding communities talk a lot about how mountains are always in the wrong places on maps due to the tectonic plates beneath them and how there shouldn’t be a river or a forest in that area. Unless those things really excite you, trying to make my map geographically accurate drained me to the point where I just said there were no longer any geography rules because I can make those rules. Don’t make anything accurate if having restrictions on your world steals your enjoyment
As a geologist myself, nature is weird and wild, so do whatever you like and the see if you can explain it scientifically later (if you wish), there are enough theories and possibilities to do anything
I'm a forever GM in my dnd group and I love worldbuilding, but it sometimes feels like a chore. My game group is really chaotic, so I can't just do cool stuff for the sake of it, without thinking of the consequences of stupid or ill-intended actions by my players. I love it, but it's a lot of work. This video has inspired me to create something for the sake of it, like, what if I tweaked some physics laws in order to make magic possible? I could write a diary of a magical scientist in that world describing the experiments they carry in order to arrive at those laws, it's going to be soo cool, thanks for making the video!
I started a binder!! I’m such a fan of having an encyclopedia of sorts (I own all the Dragon Age and FFXIV encyclopedias!) and I love having two for the stories I’m working on. I also love scrapbooking/drawing so having a contained place to decorate/design concepts, having a “world bible” is so perfect. Edit: I’d also love to see how you world build too!
Hi! Do you have any tips on how to start with a binder? Do i search the internet for articles and history stuff to get me to start? I have many journals where i stick drawings of characters and write the plot in, but its more character oriented than world and i think a binder/encyclopedia is super interesting to refer to!
@@OrangeSun55 Of course!! This is still a fairly new system I've been doing with the two books I've been working on. So the subject matter will be different between those, and likely your own, but they'll follow similar ways of organization. So this is what I recommend to help you jump-start your binder: - Get creative with it!! I designed my own via Zazzle ($30~, so a bit pricey), but you can still use stickers, print-outs, markers, etc. to jazz it up. It really makes both my stories feel more 'real' to me. 🥰 - PLAN AHEAD! It doesn't hurt to get dividers and tabs and whatnot, but I'd recommend writing down a list of how you'd want to organize the binder. I'm a plantser more than anything, but this has helped me a bit from feeling lost/overwhelmed at the start. - I've divider both my binders at first with the most basic parts that you'd need as references: Characters, Settings/Locations, Fauna/Flora, Cultures/Races/Traditions/Histories, Maps/Photos/Images, Plot Outline/Timeline, Story Beats/Scenes/Blurbs, Research Notes/Sources/References. Of course all of these sections can be broken down to more minute details, but this comment is getting long enough as it is, LOL. But for instance, you can break down the Character section to include Main/Secondary/Antagonists/Misc characters. In your case with your character art, you can store all those in an Image/Photo section (while still having, say, one pic per character sheet in the Character sections.) But of course, you don't have to limit yourself to _just_ these sections alone! Please don't hesitate to add/remove other subject matter to your binder! For example, there's not really any magic systems in either of my worlds, but if you do, you'd definitely want to create a section for it! - Tools: Hole puncher, highlighters, glue stick, dividers (can never have too many dividers, LOL), tabs*; a folder maybe for temporary storage or for some stuff you haven't put inside yet. A binder with POCKETS, because that is wildly helpful, but totally optional. I also invested in a mini sticker photo printer so I don't have to keep using paper+tape to add pictures with character descriptions. 😂Stamps and scrapbooking stickers are also great for if you're too lazy to hand-draw your own layouts. Scrivener is also a fantastic alternative if you'd prefer to go the digital route for your story bible (and maybe a bit cheaper in the long run.) As of this comment, it might actually be on discount right now since it's November. * When it comes to tabs I like to use them up top, with divider tabs to the side. So basically divider tabs will specify Main/Secondary/etc. sections, while 'top tabs' will show _specific_ characters for easy reference. Never really explained to anyone how to make their own story bible binder, but I'm glad you asked. Now I kinda wanna make a dinky little blog post about it for future reference. 😂Lmk if you have any more questions, I'll be glad to help!
@ Thank you so much for the long comment and taking your time!:) I pulled out an old binder and tabbed it yesterday, being able to change around the pages and stay organized sounds the most freeing! Thanks so much for the tips!!🤩 Also, in my writing journal i try so much to incorporate world building and even info dump as i go, but as much as with where the plot takes me i can carve the world deeper, the story isnt about traveling the world its about living in it, so there will always be unvisited yet important places. A binder like this is honestly perfect and im so excited even tho i just started i can explode 😂🥹 Its so inspiring to see how others do their own world bibles or their ideas too!
@ Also do you think the binders size matters? I have an A5, which feels less intimidating to write in and itll look more full (which is pretty) and i write super tiny anyways. But an A4 has a seriousness to it thats just so formal? And legit and feels more fit i guess idk😅 I guess ı can always upgrade to a bigger one and the most important step is to have fun :)
i´ve been building a fantasy world for almost a year now I think and its just so fun to come up with all the insane lore , from the exctintion of the dwarves to the demonic dragon king who still thousands of years after his death still puts fear into the souls of everyone to the atlantians advanced alien technology everything is well put together and i´m so happy to continue writing the two first books in this world heck i´ve even put a lot of my love for speculative evolution in it, I deadass made up an evolution for orcs. another thing that i wanna put out there is that it can start very small, like my world it only started with a single island with dragons and dinosaurs and soon that island became just one of many continents with their own cultures and history
it's so funny where the initial seed for a world can come from. my oldest worldbuilding project came from me google image searching for Minecraft floating islands, and i was like "huh, what if the whole planet was floating islands and why would it be like that?" also good luck w the projects!
thanks for the inspirational stuff. Theres also a channel called Monstergarden where an illustrator worldbuilds an amazing universe. Also also, worldbuilding a mythology term coined by Tolkien is "Mythopoaea" and i think it sounds so cool
A channel called Rick’s creations got me really invested in world building and ever since I’ve just been able to produce so much great concept art without art block. From an artists perspective, worldbuilding is great
As a long time creative and day dreamer, I got serious about writing it down and officially started back in highschool with my fantasy and sci Fi project, kinda rushing into it which made a messy first draft, until I took a step back and did some further reading into older works of fantasy and sci Fi to get a deeper understanding of the genre and it's foundations, up until now, I've deconstructed and reconstructed both projects of my fantasy world that's closer to our world than we may expect, to many countless worlds beyond ours, and I can't wait to show it to the world, within this decade, soon.
oh god i relate with the "within this decade" sentiment. exhibit a: i've been making a universe for nigh 10 years and my upcoming novel series for 3, and have no publishing goal in sight. at the very least, i'm planning on starting the novel series as a webnovel, and posting the first chapters by the end of the year. it's about the small steps!
wow, really high effort video, I didn't even realize you only had 300 subs till I went down here. personsally, i love detailed worldbuilding that has every small detail, i love that thrill of making a world filled of detail and family trees
thank you! and mmmmm family trees. one of the first things i did when i was originally creating my longest-running world was make a royal family tree. i havent in a while, but i should do that...
i've been building my own world for about 8 years now. slow-going, but it's not for a published project, it's just for me, so no pressure. got 59 whole ocs in there. my favorite thing about taking it slow is that you get these moments where separate storylines or elements of worldbuilding or whatever suddenly click into place like they're two separate chunks of some sort of massive puzzle you've been building up. it's so satisfying when incomplete pieces of lore turn out to complete each other when you put them together in a certain way :)
heck one of my favorite pastimes is to space out and make a species, then make every little detail about it, then build an entire damn ecosystem and habitat around it So fun
I figured I was gonna like this vid cuz of the gentle lapslock and encouraging title, and then your VOICE is so SMOOTH AND BUTTERY - very gender envy - and THEN you have amazingly detailed citations!!! I'm sold, you're gold! :D
thanks you!! i now know what lapslock is and yes!! i like using it when it feels right. yet another thing i can give that nameness lol. citations. are. my. shit.
Very good video, i enjoyed. I began making my own ttrpg around 3 years ago after DMing for a group of friends. I put hours of work into every session but eventually things fell apart and the group stopped playing so i was reasonably upset cuz of the efforts i put towards it. So i used that material to begin my own fantasy world all beginning with some premises. It would be horror fantasy in a fictional world a few hundred years after a major event called the convergence which brought otherworldly horrors from strange beasts to new diseases. All the cities would be fortified and protected by giant walls while theocracies would fight for control over the land that remained. After a while, as resources grew scarce, excursions would leave the walls to expand and explore, which is what the player character will be.
This stuff is like a drug. I used to pace around my room 6+ hours nonstop just daydreaming, writing, and drawing, till I got scolded for neglecting dinner.
I’ve been fleshing out a fictional nation as a setting for some dnd campaign in the future. I call it Zhejiang, and it’s based off of 14th century China, 19th century Nantucket whaling culture, and Monster Hunter. The people of Zhejiang are a proud seafaring folk, who sail across the great southern ocean, hunting titanic beasts larger than the largest whales, and bring them back to mainland Zhejiang. There their bodies are disassembled and used for a myriad of purposes, food, clothing, magic weapons, and even buildings. I have a ton of ideas for how Zhejiang operates, from how their monster-based economy works, to their politics, and even what jokes they find funny, but since I cant figure out how to put some super evil bad guy into this world, I doubt I’ll ever actually play dnd with this setting. I love it to death though.
This really helped me out! My views have been down, I make Littlest Pet Shop content... I know, very 2015. The urge to creature a mature sci-fi series inspired by the SCP universe has been in my bones for about a year now. Something more puppeted, with time put into sets and lighting and music... something bigger than what I've been making for so long. I've gone around and around thinking of the best way to monetize it to bring in a new audience that might appreciate it... but I think I need to just make it because it would bring me joy and help me creatively express myself. Thank you!
YT algorithm blessed me again with a worldbuilding channel! Usually these types of channels are centered on one project, wich is fine, but I like a more expanded vision, more centered on the fun of creating itself, just sharing not because you want to make money with your worldbuilding, just because the fun of sharing it. I've a lot of worldbuilding projects, that I'd love to share, I was thinking of making a channel for that, similar to yours (but worse because you are really cool). So yeah maybe I'll comment in another video about that, I'll have fun watching all your videos one at a time (no longer have time to spend all day on YT, not that I want to). So yeah I really liked this video :)
worldbuilding with others is also a very precious thing in my experience. my friends and i started roleplaying on this roblox game back in 2021 as a way to "experience normal teenage things" through our characters in the pandemic, and it grew into our own world with 60+ characters all living in it. we all have such a deep connection to this world at this point it's a part of me that will never truly go away. i love it so much that even though i do want to publish a story based on it someday, i'm still satisfied with it even if it never sees the light of day. my friends and i have gotten so much closer thanks to this world and its characters.
i love the idea of collaborative works and worlds, they're so much fun, and you get to make something special with other people. it's something i wanna properly do someday
Hi, I have thought of Worldbuilding not to long ago as I kept making up fictional scenarios off of surreal imagination on some of my irl experiences (especially over television) thanks to my tendency of day-dreaming or dreams as a way of giving off unique ideas for a story. I would like to thank you for uploading this while I recently became involved in the process of writing one for my own as a way of coping from stress but did it out of boredom. I’m not sure what my purpose for creating one but I know that I am invested in making Sci-Fi fantasy just like Avatar or Harry Potter for inspiration.
I wasn’t as into worldbuilding when I was first starting out bc things like geography and wars and economics didn’t particularly interest me, I was never great in history class, but then I took art history in college and I was hooked. I love building magic systems so I started thinking about how the existence of this magic in the world would effect the world’s culture and their art, like a world where their magic is similar to “weaving” things into the fabric of the universe, so weaving and textiles are a HUGELY important part of culture and the more complex and detailed a person can weave clothing, the more highly regarded they are. It also influenced their architecture so the fancy “palace” type buildings have tiled designs that reference weaving patterns whereas as peasant houses would be far more simple but still draw some influence. Also, I figured that spiders would be important in their culture, because of the association to weaving, and so on and so forth, which eventually *did* lead me to figuring out some stuff about geography and politics and history. It’s very fun and I tend to think culture/art history first now when developing fantasy and even sci-fi worlds.
fuck yeah! i love how everyone has different starting points for their worlds--i tend to start with magic, maps, and history. the art and culture are places where ive historically lacked in, but im working on that side of the world with my current project, since it can add so much depth and life to a place.
Dude, not only this is video solid gold, but the music choice is amazing! I’ve known nobonoko for five years, now? He’s one of my absolute favorite musicians and best friends. I am so beyond happy that he’s getting the attention he deserved, even if it is way overdue haha! We’ve even done a song together, which adds even further in his worldbuilding (just if you’re interested in that). I love worldbuilding in my writing and music! Thank you so much, btw! I have been having a really rough day and nothing I tried that I love doing (music, writing, art, etc.) was working. I was really upset by this, and I just decided to click on your video while eating lunch, just because why not? And now, I’m in an absolutely great mood, now! Thank you, Uluscri!!
oh shit!!! i discovered nobonoko recently, and i'm floored by the power of the internet to connect people--was not expecting to get a comment from someone who knows him, so that's really cool. what's the song y'all collabed on? and thanks! i'm glad to have helped!
Hey buddy! You did a great job! I watched the whole thing. I'm a solo games development guy, and prior to that, a general arts guy. I really benefited from watching this. It's been important for me to reconnect with how this is done so that I can make stuff that makes sense. I think it's important to think about how much we might have lost touch with our "imaginations" when we're constantly bombarding ourselves with "content" and stimuli. Someone told me, if you're finding yourself having trouble doing this, turn off your computer and phone, turn off your lights, sit in a chair and force yourself to be bored! Your brain will get back in gear, like it used to do when you were younger!
yessss this is what i advocate!! disconnect from the product world and become restless enough to throw that energy onto a page (or whatever else you do)
I’m a professional artist, I’ve not done much world building but this video encouraged me to! I have no expectations of a big project, but I do think I will experiment more with daydreaming and making stories out of weird doodles. Like the coin one? Yeah I want to try that. Maybe it will lead to something larger. I’ve been stuck in subject matter, living mostly in the DND realm. I can’t wait to try some of these practices. Thank you!! I feel so inspired to reconnect with my imagination.
When I was 14, I started trying to build what I believe is a more “realistic” version of the multiverse based on real ideas in physics mixed with bizarre and diverse stories that can express different elements. That was 8 years ago and I’m still going. I have so many characters and worlds/universes that I’m able to think about them basically all the time since there’s so much diversity that I can find something to fit whatever mood or energy level I’m in. It’s really changed how I examine the world around me through the potential things and ideas/concepts have to be and do anything rather than simply taking them at face value. I really hope to turn at least one idea into a book or comic one day. A tv show or movie would be the coolest thing ever, but I’m okay with where everything is now and this video helped me accept that.
I absolutely endorse and encourage people to world build, just for the fun of it!^^ I made a website to try and compile the information and art there ^^ sadly, whenever I show it to people excited to give it a look, I never see them again. I'm worried they got abducted into my stories.
12:16 *goes into detail about daydreaming* Me (A Maladaptive Autistic Daydreamer since I could WALK!): I'm always four parallel universes ahead of you! Ok but seriously this video is preaching to the choir! I've been doing this for over 90% of my OCs for as long as I can remember, pretty much around toddler age. And in fact since you asked for it; let me give you a synopsis of this one absolutely massive project, I've had going off and on for a good while now. This world building project stars a minotaur/boar like creatures who are heavily inspired by Norse mythology. Their lore is that this absolutely MASSIVE kaiju like minotaur was their original ancestor and they are not only inspired by "The Mountain King", both the song & the lore of the song, but also named after it as well! And one day the Mountain King gets sad and lonely so he makes a few children using the elements as well as hybrid elements! And these children rule and build the land eventually making their own children. And this continues on until around the 2nd generation where the Element Children just disappear noone ever knows what happened to them they are just gone. But this generation is the cornerstone for how these people live and operate. At first they're savage, bloodthirsty and unrelenting not allowing anyone to share their space or anything. But by the 3rd generation they meet a family of Centaurs and they quickly realize they've met their match as they're so heavily even in strength and whits. So they eventually decide on an olympic challenge where there are over 10 different challenges and races to each of their talents. It all comes down to the final race, an obstacle course, where at first its the fastest members of both tribes but a centaur decides to cheat and knocks the minotaur down. This minotaur was quite elderly so this sadly kills him on impact as it snaps his neck; upsetting not just the tribe but his husband as well (yes they're gay lol). Eventually the cheifs' sons from both sides decide to finish the race. Though hesitant the fathers both agree and let them finish the race. Long story short its a tie and the winners of the olympics are left undecided. Of course both the sons are extremely angry by this being so competitive and having their linage at stake this truly upsets them. But when the Minotaur chief sees the way the Centaur chief comforts his own son and recognizes it as being similar to him he decides to make peace with them. And to this very day many generations later they meet up once a year to host the olympics as a tradition and omage to their close bonds and friendship. There's even more than that including a massive war in the 3rd generation that has some messed up details and lore to it as well. And this current "final" generation that Im building as we speak! And all of this world building was made possible because I saw an autistic content creator on tiktok do a video where he was "reacting" to the song Reida by Danheim. And the final generation child came to my mind just out of nowhere; and I couldnt resist doing the full world building, after I listened to ultimate Diggy Diggy Hole compilation in an attempt to give HIM alone some more lore. But my brain just wouldnt get the idea of a wholesome family tribe with endless tales of love and loss that they share each generation. So now I have this world who's filler name/title is "Children of The Mountains" And this is how it's always been for me. LOL I listen to a song and if a previous existing character doesnt pop up a new one sure as hell will and I can not be stopped once the ball gets rolling and I love every second of it! It's the "super power" that's Im proudest of that comes with my being Autistic and ADHD
Thank you for sharing this video! It was a delight to listen to. I love world-building, and my favorite approach is to start from a fairy tale - make up a folk story of a fantastical nature that you can imagine being told around a fireplace at night to a bunch of wide-eyed children, and then dive into what parts of that folk story are based in "truth." What sort of world would the truth hidden in that fairy story have created, and what sort of world would have hidden that truth in the guise of a story?
Thanks for making one of my favorite videos on RUclips. It doesn't have my extact philosophy (my philosophy is in this direction but has a good helping of belief and magic and placebo) but it's close enough!! I reccomend the game ufo 50, it's a game collection with so much worldbuilding about the (fictional) company who made the games
Thank you for this video. I would like to think of myself as a fellow creative. Mostly with paint. But recently I have shared my ideas and day dreams (I work a boring job) and have been told I should write a book. I would love to be able to just purely share a sense of wonder that has been lost in most people. That said, your video has inspired me to want to make more effort to write things down and start small and build from there. Thank you!
A worldbuilding project I’m working on is a first time one for me, I decided to be ambitious and build an expansive universe! I was pretty stereotypical when coming up with the idea to implement gods and stuff. But I feel like I made it unique enough :3 My project takes place in the year 57,000 on the human calendar, the universe itself is 80 trillion years old, and it revolves around powerful gods that watch over galaxies. For every galaxy there is 1 god that is omnipotent to everything happening inside of it. But 35 trillion years ago, a massive war broke out between galaxies after the races in said galaxies were trying to invade others. Countless gods and mortals died and flooded the Sanctum (the afterlife). The sanctum broke from all the souls in it and the supreme god repaired it, making every free soul fuse into a god devouring deity who eats the souls of disobeying/dying gods so the sanctum won’t flood and break again.
This wonderful video has inspired me to have the courage to actually draw my ideas rather than just narrate them in my videos. A great reminder that my creations don't have to be perfect just like how I don't have to be perfect. What matters is I try to be better. :) Thank you!! I only recently started sharing my ideas on my channel and I feel like I couldn't have found this video at a better time. If you are ever interested in watching/exploring the worlds I've made I'd love to hear your feedback I'm excited to see more of yours!
My worldbuilding journey started thru conlangs, of which I have only made one that's substantially detailed. I wanted to make a world for my conlangs, and it's developed from there. I'm also realising I'm doing both inside-out and outside-in worldbuilding at the same time, which I'm not sure how well that'll turn out lol Honestly, and sorry for any existential crises I may or may not induce, I think the best part about worldbuilding is that you are God for the characters that you create, just as us earthlings are creations of another such God. It can also be said that the entire known universe was built by this God. I also find it so cool that, speaking from the soul pov, we can take on human form to create our own little D&D adventure for a lifetime on this beautifully crafted planet, even if it has seemingly turned into a nobledark scenario.
Oh boy I have a world I’ve been working on for years, for my main story idea. The story is a science fiction with some fantasy elements. It technically falls into the category of dystopia as well, though the characters don’t realize it at first. There’s a big social commentary element to the dystopian aspect as one would expect. The main characters live in the higher levels of an inter-planetary empire where you’d think they wouldn’t have many problems, however there are certain thematic societal problems that still affect them greatly, especially since the main antagonist, a dictator who immortalized himself by uploading his mind into an incredibly advanced robot body, is also the great great (a lot more greats) grandfather of one of the main characters and is super controlling over his family. The characters are a humanoid alien species with some fairy-like and bird-like elements. They have some weird crystal powers and stuff. The main planet the characters are from is a small ringed world with a high density of rainforests and jungles, and lots of colorful and strange wildlife and plants. The story mainly kicks off when one of the main characters invents a machine that allows for hyper-jumping abilities, giving the empire the ability to expand to other star systems. However said character quickly realizes how badly such a device is used by the empire and there’s a lot of political divide and stuff. I’ll leave it at that because I need to be actually WRITING and I don’t wanna put EVERYTHING in this comment lol, but I hope this sounds interesting at least. Writing and worldbuilding is really fun but really hard.
honestly the biggest reason why i haven't written much for the stories i want to make is i get so invested in the worldbuilding and realize that just a few offhand comments in a book wouldn't do justice to the literal solar systems in my brain worldbuilding is my absolute favorite part of creating stories/concepts it is so much fun and i wish i could project what's in my head into other people's brains so they get it too
Very inspiring video! I love to learn some topic about physics and then come up with new technology and science based on that knowladge for real world inventions and findings, but also for sci-fi worldbuilding.
Man. This is eanting me to actually take a crack at my time loop novel. Its mainly still in the planning phase? The world is still Earth but its more so the differences in the details that matter from loop to loop than the actual planet
I run a Minecraft server. It's technically public but only 2 other people on it once every blue moon. My favorite things to build in Minecraft are villages and roads so I've built a couple of villages and I'm starting to write lore for one of them because the story of how i started that village is tied to the unrelated actions of a player who used to play on my server.
I have been worldbuilding for 11 years now i mostly start with maps and just make some stories around it. Though my main worldbuilding project exists mostly in my mind and a few notes.
i'm currently making my DnD world full of animal folk and bug ppl. almost all the time i feel like im in this world, wandering in my own creation. sometimes i get stressed out about my character's lore. but this is what i WANT to do. i want to make stories AAAAAAAAA
Worldbuilding (and writing in general) always takes me a really long time - a piece of lore here, a snippet of backstory there - but I'm kinda glad it takes me so long because then I can grow and shape and nurture my little world without any pressure to 'get it right'. Sometimes entire stories and even entire worlds start with a single character, or an entire culture starts with a single invented gesture, and I love it when that happens. Once, I started an entire story world from a character who got their name from a random prescribed password my school gave me as a kid (I changed the password, but the name stuck!)
Yes world building is so great! In fact I have four world building projects, a twisted fantasy world, a deeply developed alien biosphere, an unfiction semi-horror story, and an alien seed world.
@ I’ve thought about doing this, but their all so different and complex on their own that merging any of them just wouldn’t feel right and would be over complicated
cool ideas! also i love merging worlds, but yeah a lot of times it's not possible. with the number of universes i have currently, when i have a new idea (that's not itself hugely fundamental), i like to try and fit it into an existing universe before punching a new hole in the nothingness and making a new reality
I’ve never tried worldbuiling (mostly because it’s not my thing) but for a year, I’ve had a bunch of alien ocs and I wanted to elaborate their story so maybe I’ll try worldbuiling to work on their story! This video pushed me to try things out so thank you :)
It's perfectly acceptable to just come up with the lore around your characters! If you want to expand more then great, but if not then at least your characters will have just a bit more depth!
I'm a little new to worldbuilding, but so far it's been a great vehicle to learn about and reinterpret things about real life that I'm interested in. Where i run into problems is the practical organization of the information I have so to hear about your process would be interesting. Great video btw. I love finding high quality in small channels
Thank you so much for making this video, it really helped me view the world I'm writing in a new light and honestly helped me untangle a lot about it. Thank you for inspiring me and so many others ♡ Apologies that the rest of this is quite long so I wanted to start with the most important thing ^v^ . . . I've been writing a book? or comic? or whatever it turns into for the past 5 years and I have a colorful cast of characters that I love with my whole heart. I love writing interesting characters and the way they feel and experience the world and each other but I neglected the actual world in the worldbuilding for most of this time. Mostly because it's supposed to be semi-realistic but I'm not particularly fond of the world that we all call reality, I'm much more partial to fantasy and it only occurred to me while watching this video that I can make it whatever I want, it doesn't have to be one to one with our reality. And realizing this felt so freeing. I realized I do know a whole lot about that world but I never allowed myself to imagine it because it would be considered unrealistic. Thank you so much for giving me this mental and creative freedom. I'll be going to write down all the little silly details that I realized I already know and do my best to not restrain my creative freedom concerning this in the future. Here I come silly world with modern cities, magic systems, alternate dimensions and fantastical magic forests and creatures ♡
whenever i was in middle school me and my online friend would roleplay a lot online, and one day we decided to create a whole new dimension that was cyberpunk (before the game, when it was more of an aesthetic and genre like steampunk). we created the whole world, which was post apocalyptic but nature retaking everything and it was very hostile, and there were like 10 major cities and maybe space travel, definetly time travel and dimensional travel. the cities were huge and neon, and we created an entire power system and "vigilantes" which were just trying to fight the capitalists at the top that controlled everything, and the "heroes" which were just fighting the vigilantes, usually violently. there was a hierarchy, mysterious parts of the city, "dead magic" and cyborgs and lots of tech stuff. i recently learned about the Kowloon Walled City and it's inspired me to try and revisit that world, and maybe keep building on it
Something I found is that while worldbuilding is so frequently only seen as the sprawling, absurdly intricate creative universes that may result from the process, the barrier to entry is actually shockingly quaint. That's because if you allow it to, it can start at *any* idea, it being interesting is not even a prerequisite. Case in point, here is an example I went through in my head, in the middle of watching this video: Let's start at a cube. The default, if you know Blender and on its own rather plain. So let's add attributes. It is a glass cube. A glass cube with something inside. That something is electricity. Sourceless electricity, apparently. Now for an all too intruiging question: Why is this cube a thing? Somebody must've made it. So it is an artificial thing, a thing that mayhaps requires quite the facility to be capable of constructing something that in isolation rather plain, in reality actually breaks the laws of physics. An energy that is perpetual and sourceless is after all quite the bizarre phenomenon. Though it is also useful, a permanent supply of energy in handy, cubical form. But it's still a cube of glass, so what happens if it inevitably breaks, in case it gets dropped for example? That energy is left uncontained, sprawling from the point of impact in a constant, cloudless thunderstorm and is really tough to recontain, considering it required a special facility to make its contained form in the first place. Now this is not a particularly stable universe, as those incidences creating natural disaster style danger zones can quickly pile up to be pretty cataclysmic for just one world. So let's give these people more space, a lot more space. They have the facilities and effectively endless energy generation already, so it's not a stretch to make them spacefaring. From here we already have a rough sci-fi world, ready to cascade with detail, like actually explaining how they got here in-universe, who and what "they" even are and fleshing out the process that produces those lightning cubes, perhaps ending up with other forms of energy that could be locked inside one of these devices (already thinking fire and radiation as some examples). But going any further here would completely blow the scope of an illustrative comment out of proportions. Something else you can do to exercise is building on top of existing worlds. Find those niches that your favorite story never explored or reimagine an existing part of it. For example, I've been having a field day with the forms of lightsaber combat in Star Wars, actually fleshing the official ones out with possible guard positions and playing around with how using them in this more rigidly defined manner ends up working out. Or there is Wynncraft, a Minecraft MMORPG, which I've found myself running as a story in my head and now am in the slow process of writing a fanfiction playthrough of. This led me to examining some of the smaller oddities of the game world and mechanics to the point I have a working concept for how every single class and subclass archetype functions within the world outside of just a bunch of player characters adventuring around; coming up with an entire additional plane of reality just to explain the bank storage and accessory crafting, which coincidentally both use ender related blocks, so the enderscape was born as a place where concepts are the only thing that matters; creating an entirely new species of the treeborne, beings that are a forest come to life in the form of a unique spirit, shaped by all the things that happen across the generations within its territory; and even managing to make the joke religion of bovemism work as something to be taken seriously, where countryfolk decided to take cows as role models, incidentally leading to the greatest protectors of the warrior's paladin archetype. And then I've also been playing off of a facette of the lore behind Malice-Risu's Protogens a bunch, which is that they used to be just purpose built servants with limited autonomy essentially, up until some of the more advanced ones gained a spark of sentience, that they could infect others with, resulting in an uprising. In my head, this actually leads to an all out rebellion war, which in turn means I now have so many details within that conflict to flesh out from how the initial beginnings with isolated trouble insurrectionist groups came to be, over the sorts of combat designs that would be fielded on both sides (up to and including a group of superhero level living weapons, which end up clashing amongst themselves), and finally the aftermath of how those creatures that were purpose built for war then fair with autonomy in a peaceful society afterwards and whatever scars have been left on people and places. Point is, it is *so easy* to just get started with doing a bit of worldbuilding. In fact I'd say that every creative idea you have ever had has been a seed for worldbuilding, waiting to be grown.
i REALLY like that cube analogy, thanks for sharing it! it's functionally how all art starts--from a seed of an idea. Very few people (if any) can come up with a whole, detailed painting in their head in an instant. it's basically always a small idea that balloons into something cooler, and i really like that. worldbuilding is a funny thing bc (especially w how broadly i define it), literally any piece of art can be read as part of a sprawling world outside its bounds.
I'm writing a book right now but I started with a few years of worldbuilding, I'm basing it upon a period in my life where my hallucinations and delusions were rampant (I have schizophrenia) so its ending up as a really surrealist world and I really like it!
@@cryingwatercolours Sometimes there can be, its a crazy learning curve but I think its worth doing anyways. I think for myself if I don't turn my experiences into something creative I can feel really overwhelmed by them, but there definitely are moments where focusing so much on certain hallucinations and delusions can bite me in the ass. But for me the curiosity of how I can turn something so internal and all consuming into something explainable can be really beificial. Hope this answers your question! ;p
i have been worldbuilding before even knowing it is an actual "thing". my main world is sci-fi with various planets and alien species and such, that basically just grew in my head organically over time without me actively trying to make something. i kind of want to expand on it more intentionally
Really great video! I’ll definitely be taking a lot of this advice! On daydreaming, I’ve been listening to music in languages I don’t speak, and just feeling the emotions of the singer. I can try to add a story to it as well. Only after I’ve reflected on how it made me feel do I look up the translated lyrics. It’s fun to see how close or far off you were!
thanks! and mmmm i also listen to a lot of music in languages i dont know! icelandic (listen to JóiPé and Króli), swedish (listen to Hanna Järver and Felicia Takman), german (Cro is fun), and japanese (listen to Reol and the Shuta Hasunuma Philharmonic Orchestra) especially. and i also also do that daydreaming of what the songs mean, except i always forget to look up what they actually mean lol
As a worldbuilder since I was little, I would advice make it your own world. I never did use magic or something in my world and I have a genuine passion for it… it is such a complex universe and I’m now making a book for my universe like its a scientific book abt it with concepts. My “world” is an infinite multiverse with its own rules and thats what you need to do. Make it personal to you bro and dont let anything influence or stop your creativity
It's mind over matter that's what it is. It's all in your head use it wiseley. And try not to numb on your own mind like it's some kind of occupation being preoccupied and engrossed in as if dopamine was the answer. The safety of your senses is at hand and what you do determines the physicality and impact on your mind.
If you want to read a book solely about some random guy’s random fictional world, I highly recommend the speculative biology book, the yaetuan sagas by Christian cline! Or I would recommend his other book, teeming universe!
I did the same when I was 6, I made a world in my head and developed the story for years until I turned 16 last year and abandoned it to make something better.
I made this account to comment this lol, but here's my worldbuilding idea thing! There's a bunch of animal-folk, of varying animals, animals varying from basic cats and dogs, to bird-folk. Bird-folk live high in trees, living in treehouses that are connected by small wooden bridges (think of Rainwings, from Wings of Fire), Dog-folk, Cat-folk, and other domestic animals live in various places, places like cities and suburban places! Cat-folk are known to be lazy, crazy or even thiefs, but it's just a stereotype. Dog-folk are loyal, but fun fact! In the biggest city, Tolkien, Dog-folk are the biggest crime-committer. Bird-folk being a close second. I named a city after Tolkien, it servers as a hub for every species to congregate and talk with one another. People trade, talk, eat together and just exist. There are dozens of small states, towns, and more stuff. I'm very proud of how far this project has come, despite the fact it's only been a few weeks since I first started worldbuilding. Edit (nov. 14) Okay so, I have a few more things to add!!! First, Insect-folk, Cow-folk and a few other kinds of folk have been added to this idea!!
This got me excited about worldbuilding for my novel again. I'm interested in the flows of trade and economics, and the spread pattern of people when establishing a foothold in a country. Things like that. And it's not really a sexy aspect of worldbuilding like cool animals and sweeping architecture and magic, but it's the bit that I always wonder about. I have magic and gods too, but they feel less fleshed out haha. More like they are just supposed to be there. I was starting to get a bit discouraged. Still not sure what to do with the gods and the magic, but they will get sorted out. Thanks for encouraging me to get back to it ahain.
Yeah! Worldbuilding is great. It can be done in so many different mediums and it's a very rewarding experience to see new connections emerge between the once separate parts of your world.
mmmm emergence is so good. and i find that a lot of my work, from the worlds to the stories, morph a lot in the beginning as i figure out the real direction i want it to go in. fun stuff!
Lovely video! I couldn't agree more. Do something creative for its own sake - for your own sake! - and don't worry about finding the so-called "correct" methods. Scarcely have I found my footing in anything without taking the first step. Here's hoping this video gets plenty of reach.
I started learning how to animate semi recently and at the same time started world building this huge story in my head. Often characters, events, and places are made just because I think it would be fun to animate/see animated The joy I have seeing my character's come to life is unparalleled \/ incredibly Long ramble of ideas below \/ - A mining village that haoldsthe "Hero's Sword". The sword is stuck in incredible hard stone. The people of the village once tried to "pull" the sword by digging at the ground around it. They eventually hit a incredible hard stone that is supposedly indestructible. The sword is stuck in this stone. They try and dig under the sword but the indestructible stone continues deep into the ground froming a piller with the sword stuck at the top. Because of the large pit now surround the sword a bridge was constructed leading to the sword. The village hold's a festival every year and everyone tries to pull the sword. Outsiders can try to pull it whenever. It's said The sword can only be pulled by someone set on bringing peace to the world. (The real criteria is a secret known by practically no one) - Elf girl who is the last of her kind. She is incredibly playful, absolutely loves magic, and when visiting a city, can often be found playing with groups of kids. A event 200-500 years ago left her as the last elf alive. She doesn't share much about how she survived or what happened during that time. - World leader gauntlet. If a person kills every/enough powerful leaders they are granted a wish. Only one person has done this but it happened hundreds of years ago. It is unclear what he wished for. - a monster whose eyes seem to look random directions. The monster actually breaks the 4th wall and the eyes actually stare directly to the viewer watching the show. The in universe characters are incredible confused by this - blind princess who wields a massive axe. She "sees" by reading mana aura levels as well as mana signatures. - king that can see into the future. He will execute people for something that has yet to happen. In his old age he is slowly going insane. - giant wolf with the power to manipulate it's own blood. It's 6ft tall when on all fours and often has a ring of blood around its head starting at the jaw and forms around the back of the head (almost like a halo) - girl who also has blood manipulation power's. She learned them by growing up with one of the wolf I just mentioned. She continues to travel around with the wolf. Ok wow I forgot I was a youtube comment oops, lol. This is just some of the ideas I've had for characters, events, and places. Hopefully I'll find time to draw or animate some of them in the future.
I like these ideas, especially the world leader gauntlet, just cause of how off-the-wall it is (as well as the mystery of "what did that person wish for?"), it's awesome. keep at it!
I have been worldbuilding way before I knew there was a term for it. And naturally I ended up creating several world, one developed way more than the others but I cherish all of them. I have an urban fantasy world set in the 90s where people found out super powers exist but there are still supernatural mysteries unknown to most. There is also a zombie apocalypse world where starro-bellum from Zelda-like parasites turn people into zombies and has a hint of cosmic horror. I'm also cooking a stone age fantasy world where magic and technology are both rudimentary. And I have some others that are more ideas than proper settings, like one where the real and the virtual world combined which led to gamers have powers of the games they play and hackers invading people's minds. Or another setting where supernatural creatures control the world from the shadows and turned everything into a subscription based service.
I'm not an expert at worldbuilding or anything (I've just been doing it as a hobby and have received little to no peer review) but I've noticed that you can literally add anything to your world as long as you can justify its existence, and I think that's my favorite part about worldbuilding. When I (and my friend) started with two towns. One was a quiet depressing village with an invasive species of trees that have grown to block the sunlight while the other was an artistic renaissance-like town where "butterflies" were the main source of economy. I was a bit scared of how much their themes clashed. But then I realized, screw it. I already had ideas of environments I hadn't explored and their themes all clashed with each other. Add them all in. If everything clashes with each other, then nothing feels out of place. Now there's an area filled with floating islands and waterfalls that stretch towards the horizon. A small cluster of these islands have become an interconnected technology ridden civilization. That renaissance-like town has begun to expand towards a snowy mountain range, which gets steeper and steeper into infinity. There's a town in the middle of nowhere who's history is heavily inspired by The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. In a weird way they all kinda feel connected. Like different cultures, but really really different. Worldbuilding's just really fun.
yeah haha a part of the fun is trying to connect the disparate things you think of along the way. it's so easy to think "eh, ill just get rid of this thing that doesnt fit" (and to be fair, there are plenty of situations where the thing should be discarded), but the real work is in trying to get the things you like to fit well together. and i still gotta read that short story, my partner keeps talking about it
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Thank you for helping me realize that I can create a highly complex world without having to put it to any public form of media
ofc!! glad to have helped!
One of the fun things about worldbuilding to me is sometimes it's "The god who watched over this world for eons has died and people are now forced to either desperately cling to old faith or turn to beings that were once deemed unholy for protection and guidance."
While other times it's "Goblins used to be giants who thought they were so unstoppable they tried to wage war with the gods, only to be cursed by those very gods and made tiny. Ever since they've been trying to crack space travel to reach the domain of gods again so they can get revenge."
lol that's an awesome justification for space travel
4 years ago, I was bored, so I started making a language. It's been through 5 spelling reforms, I've written a journal in it for a year and a half now, and I've made a giant reform of it twice now. I write music in it. It's what got me to worldbuild. In this world there are pine marten (a mustelid) like people. There are religions, education systems, stereotypes, cyphers, cultures, art, dancing, musical instruments. I love building it. I have so many stories and characters in my head. One day I'll put the pen to paper, make the code, put paint on the brush. One day.
hoooollly shit you're living one of my major goals in life with writing journals in your conlang. I've got a journal ive been writing for about 8 years now and a personal conlang that I've been making for about a year, but i havent gotten to the point where i can write full sentences and ideas in it reliably. and the world sounds cool, so keep nurturing it! im curious about those cyphers (something I've never really delved into in my worldbuilding)
that is literally the coolest thing ive ever read
Cool, that's how Tolkien started writing the Lord of the Rings.
let me know when you start putting it out there, pls
Acctually creating a unique language is hecking awesome!
Worldbuilding is such a thrill! I recently created an entire world for a D&D campaign, and it was a blast. I crafted a unique map with diverse regions, bustling cities, distinct races, epic wars, and a rich history full of intrigue and depth. It was such a rewarding process to see everything come together. Great video!
thanks! and i hope the campaign is/was successful and swell simultaneously!
I've made so many Pathfinder 2E characters each built to fit together PF2E has so much content to use
Most recent books are stupidly thick and or quirky
that's so cool! the reason i even started worldbuilding in the first place is becuase of D&D!
Yesss!!! Worldbuild!! Make worlds!!!! That's literally a thing you can do and that fact is so much more exciting than it gets made out to be
like, you just get to make a planet and throw some silly (often not so silly) guys and let them make histories and cultures and it's awesome
@@uluscri I am so happy that someone else loves the flying spider-squids that used to be rocks!
The RED ALGAE is the POWERHOUSE of the CHEMOPHYTA!
its strange that minds like this are so uncommon. world building saved my life. it gave me an escape when life was hard. all of my world I hold very dear to my heart. i keep them only in my mind for the magic to me of it all. like a growing multiverse in my mind.
This video filled me with such a visceral childlike excitement that I started daydreaming of a new world before I was even halfway through the video. Thank you so much for making this.
my favorite daydreaming world building ive been doing recently is figuring out how the fully improvised characters in the show by dropout, called Very Important People tie together.
They add so much on the fly its kinda hard to keep up with but makes for such an interesting culture and history. Truly never seen a world more bizarre, which makes sense considering its all made up on the spot and they didn't mean for them to be all in one real world.
but thats been pretty fun recently
i daydream story concepts all the time. the actual fun part is trying to create a world where those stories can all fit. ive had a universe ive been building for almost 10 years now born from this
mmmm the well-baked quality of a 10-year old world. one of my worlds should be about 10 years old now (the Universe of Gen from one of my other videos), and it's awesome to go back to and write lore and stories for.
I write sci-fi and I have one master folder for one of my books and it HAS SO MANY DOCUMENTS INSIDE, it’s so fucking full and there are so many different things in their from planet environments to the overarching galactic government structure to a stations cultural practices around fight rings. I also have a very disorganized note in my phone that makes no sense to literally anyone but me and a channel in a server with my friend where literally half my plot is
Oh fuck yeah! I'm more of a fantasy person, but I vibe with that so much. Notes on notes in folders in folders, that's the wayyyyy!
this is so freaking motivating, im looking forward to trying something just as cool!!
@ I believe in you! You can do it!
u guys should try obsidian if u havent already i love it
@@spawel1 ooh what’s that
I've been worldbuilding since like 4th grade, and now I'm a sophomore in high school, so like 6 years, going onto 7.
My most recent world I'm working on is controlled by two deities/beings, basically like yin and yang (I haven't quite figured out their place in the world, but they're definitely important). One deity created the high elves, which then caused the other to create humans as an opposing force to the high elves.
Because the elves saw themselves as superior to humans it resulted in the elves developing a slave based economy, and due to interbreeding it resulted in the elves, and then the half elves.
The most interesting system thats in the works is the magic system, basically every organism absorbs mana through special organs, and in the brain there's a specific part of it that specifically deals with magic, and the more you cast spells the larger it grows (a potential interesting thing could be like magic sickness as that part of the brain grows, it could take over other parts of your brain, or it gets too big and you just die from internal pressure). But anyways a way it's processed is through language, so casting it with words is like a little cheat code for your brain, as it activates the neurons to cast the spell, same with magic circles (I wanted an explanation for why spells are cast, cause it always felt stupid, but this gives a reason, but also allows you to do the casting in your head with enough practice(kinda like doing math in your head)). Souls also interact with magic, as when someone dies they manifest as magic and can still hold power over the physical world, and other people can influence their power, as someone who believes in them will give them more power, extending their life and influence over the physical world. This can result in little village deities, but also deities that are overruling if enough people believe in them.
This system resulted in the creation of the succubus, basically there was this minority religion followed by a group of humans with traces of elven blood. This group of people were polyamerous and nudist. and when a much larger group of people contacted them, their religions clashed and the more powerful one cursed their entire group to consume the ones they loved, and gave them shapeshifting abilities to lure over other people more easily, but once this religion died out and the god who cursed them died, the curse wore off, but they were left with a new body. And due to the shapeshifting ability it has allowed the succubi to take on many demi-human forms.
I'm really excited to delve more into the succubi, as they explore themes of culture and religion I'm not used to, and how tragic events can effect a culture while also exploring trans-humanism and transgenderism more thoroughly.
Well anyways, that's my progress on my current worldbuilding progress
I'm starting to build my own world, that I hope to play dnd in with my partner :3 Its such a nice way to be creative because you're so free to just do whatever you want. I've never done it before but I'm in it for the journey ^~^
For anyone who plans to make their own world: only make it geographically accurate if you really enjoy that stuff. Worldbuilding communities talk a lot about how mountains are always in the wrong places on maps due to the tectonic plates beneath them and how there shouldn’t be a river or a forest in that area. Unless those things really excite you, trying to make my map geographically accurate drained me to the point where I just said there were no longer any geography rules because I can make those rules. Don’t make anything accurate if having restrictions on your world steals your enjoyment
As a geologist myself, nature is weird and wild, so do whatever you like and the see if you can explain it scientifically later (if you wish), there are enough theories and possibilities to do anything
I'm a forever GM in my dnd group and I love worldbuilding, but it sometimes feels like a chore. My game group is really chaotic, so I can't just do cool stuff for the sake of it, without thinking of the consequences of stupid or ill-intended actions by my players. I love it, but it's a lot of work.
This video has inspired me to create something for the sake of it, like, what if I tweaked some physics laws in order to make magic possible? I could write a diary of a magical scientist in that world describing the experiments they carry in order to arrive at those laws, it's going to be soo cool, thanks for making the video!
oooo tweaking physics is right up my alley (as a physics major myself, teehee). and thanks! hope the project goes well!
I started a binder!! I’m such a fan of having an encyclopedia of sorts (I own all the Dragon Age and FFXIV encyclopedias!) and I love having two for the stories I’m working on. I also love scrapbooking/drawing so having a contained place to decorate/design concepts, having a “world bible” is so perfect.
Edit: I’d also love to see how you world build too!
Hi! Do you have any tips on how to start with a binder? Do i search the internet for articles and history stuff to get me to start? I have many journals where i stick drawings of characters and write the plot in, but its more character oriented than world and i think a binder/encyclopedia is super interesting to refer to!
@@OrangeSun55 Of course!! This is still a fairly new system I've been doing with the two books I've been working on. So the subject matter will be different between those, and likely your own, but they'll follow similar ways of organization.
So this is what I recommend to help you jump-start your binder:
- Get creative with it!! I designed my own via Zazzle ($30~, so a bit pricey), but you can still use stickers, print-outs, markers, etc. to jazz it up. It really makes both my stories feel more 'real' to me. 🥰
- PLAN AHEAD! It doesn't hurt to get dividers and tabs and whatnot, but I'd recommend writing down a list of how you'd want to organize the binder. I'm a plantser more than anything, but this has helped me a bit from feeling lost/overwhelmed at the start.
- I've divider both my binders at first with the most basic parts that you'd need as references: Characters, Settings/Locations, Fauna/Flora, Cultures/Races/Traditions/Histories, Maps/Photos/Images, Plot Outline/Timeline, Story Beats/Scenes/Blurbs, Research Notes/Sources/References. Of course all of these sections can be broken down to more minute details, but this comment is getting long enough as it is, LOL. But for instance, you can break down the Character section to include Main/Secondary/Antagonists/Misc characters. In your case with your character art, you can store all those in an Image/Photo section (while still having, say, one pic per character sheet in the Character sections.) But of course, you don't have to limit yourself to _just_ these sections alone! Please don't hesitate to add/remove other subject matter to your binder! For example, there's not really any magic systems in either of my worlds, but if you do, you'd definitely want to create a section for it!
- Tools: Hole puncher, highlighters, glue stick, dividers (can never have too many dividers, LOL), tabs*; a folder maybe for temporary storage or for some stuff you haven't put inside yet. A binder with POCKETS, because that is wildly helpful, but totally optional. I also invested in a mini sticker photo printer so I don't have to keep using paper+tape to add pictures with character descriptions. 😂Stamps and scrapbooking stickers are also great for if you're too lazy to hand-draw your own layouts. Scrivener is also a fantastic alternative if you'd prefer to go the digital route for your story bible (and maybe a bit cheaper in the long run.) As of this comment, it might actually be on discount right now since it's November.
* When it comes to tabs I like to use them up top, with divider tabs to the side. So basically divider tabs will specify Main/Secondary/etc. sections, while 'top tabs' will show _specific_ characters for easy reference.
Never really explained to anyone how to make their own story bible binder, but I'm glad you asked. Now I kinda wanna make a dinky little blog post about it for future reference. 😂Lmk if you have any more questions, I'll be glad to help!
@ Thank you so much for the long comment and taking your time!:) I pulled out an old binder and tabbed it yesterday, being able to change around the pages and stay organized sounds the most freeing! Thanks so much for the tips!!🤩
Also, in my writing journal i try so much to incorporate world building and even info dump as i go, but as much as with where the plot takes me i can carve the world deeper, the story isnt about traveling the world its about living in it, so there will always be unvisited yet important places. A binder like this is honestly perfect and im so excited even tho i just started i can explode 😂🥹
Its so inspiring to see how others do their own world bibles or their ideas too!
@ Also do you think the binders size matters? I have an A5, which feels less intimidating to write in and itll look more full (which is pretty) and i write super tiny anyways. But an A4 has a seriousness to it thats just so formal? And legit and feels more fit i guess idk😅 I guess ı can always upgrade to a bigger one and the most important step is to have fun :)
i´ve been building a fantasy world for almost a year now I think and its just so fun to come up with all the insane lore , from the exctintion of the dwarves to the demonic dragon king who still thousands of years after his death still puts fear into the souls of everyone to the atlantians advanced alien technology everything is well put together and i´m so happy to continue writing the two first books in this world heck i´ve even put a lot of my love for speculative evolution in it, I deadass made up an evolution for orcs. another thing that i wanna put out there is that it can start very small, like my world it only started with a single island with dragons and dinosaurs and soon that island became just one of many continents with their own cultures and history
it's so funny where the initial seed for a world can come from. my oldest worldbuilding project came from me google image searching for Minecraft floating islands, and i was like "huh, what if the whole planet was floating islands and why would it be like that?"
also good luck w the projects!
@@uluscri thanks, yeah inspiration can come from everywhere, I have a whole country in my world that is literally medieval pacific rim
thanks for the inspirational stuff. Theres also a channel called Monstergarden where an illustrator worldbuilds an amazing universe. Also also, worldbuilding a mythology term coined by Tolkien is "Mythopoaea" and i think it sounds so cool
o ye ive seen monstergarden, very good channel
A channel called Rick’s creations got me really invested in world building and ever since I’ve just been able to produce so much great concept art without art block. From an artists perspective, worldbuilding is great
Wow this is really good, deserves way more attention then it’s getting! Really reminded me I need to be the creative person I am, and Everyone is!
Instant subscription, I love simply listening to discussion of how wonderfully vibrant creativity and imagination are
thank you!!!
As a long time creative and day dreamer, I got serious about writing it down and officially started back in highschool with my fantasy and sci Fi project, kinda rushing into it which made a messy first draft, until I took a step back and did some further reading into older works of fantasy and sci Fi to get a deeper understanding of the genre and it's foundations, up until now, I've deconstructed and reconstructed both projects of my fantasy world that's closer to our world than we may expect, to many countless worlds beyond ours, and I can't wait to show it to the world, within this decade, soon.
oh god i relate with the "within this decade" sentiment. exhibit a: i've been making a universe for nigh 10 years and my upcoming novel series for 3, and have no publishing goal in sight. at the very least, i'm planning on starting the novel series as a webnovel, and posting the first chapters by the end of the year. it's about the small steps!
wow, really high effort video, I didn't even realize you only had 300 subs till I went down here. personsally, i love detailed worldbuilding that has every small detail, i love that thrill of making a world filled of detail and family trees
yeah really! i watch a lot of creative and self-help videos and i thought this was from a big account! i subscribed😌
thank you!
and mmmmm family trees. one of the first things i did when i was originally creating my longest-running world was make a royal family tree. i havent in a while, but i should do that...
Love doing world building as an escape from other creative endevours. It keeps me sane. Love writing out of a diectic factual perspective.
this video sparks joy!!! your voice is both very comforting and very inspirational i’m excited to get the brain juices flowing :3
i've been building my own world for about 8 years now. slow-going, but it's not for a published project, it's just for me, so no pressure. got 59 whole ocs in there.
my favorite thing about taking it slow is that you get these moments where separate storylines or elements of worldbuilding or whatever suddenly click into place like they're two separate chunks of some sort of massive puzzle you've been building up. it's so satisfying when incomplete pieces of lore turn out to complete each other when you put them together in a certain way :)
You are really underrated. I now realize how worldbuilding is involved with anything and everything, no matter what it is. Thank you! :)
heck one of my favorite pastimes is to space out and make a species, then make every little detail about it, then build an entire damn ecosystem and habitat around it
So fun
I figured I was gonna like this vid cuz of the gentle lapslock and encouraging title, and then your VOICE is so SMOOTH AND BUTTERY - very gender envy - and THEN you have amazingly detailed citations!!! I'm sold, you're gold! :D
thanks you!! i now know what lapslock is and yes!! i like using it when it feels right. yet another thing i can give that nameness lol.
citations. are. my. shit.
Very good video, i enjoyed. I began making my own ttrpg around 3 years ago after DMing for a group of friends. I put hours of work into every session but eventually things fell apart and the group stopped playing so i was reasonably upset cuz of the efforts i put towards it. So i used that material to begin my own fantasy world all beginning with some premises. It would be horror fantasy in a fictional world a few hundred years after a major event called the convergence which brought otherworldly horrors from strange beasts to new diseases. All the cities would be fortified and protected by giant walls while theocracies would fight for control over the land that remained. After a while, as resources grew scarce, excursions would leave the walls to expand and explore, which is what the player character will be.
This stuff is like a drug. I used to pace around my room 6+ hours nonstop just daydreaming, writing, and drawing, till I got scolded for neglecting dinner.
I’ve been fleshing out a fictional nation as a setting for some dnd campaign in the future. I call it Zhejiang, and it’s based off of 14th century China, 19th century Nantucket whaling culture, and Monster Hunter. The people of Zhejiang are a proud seafaring folk, who sail across the great southern ocean, hunting titanic beasts larger than the largest whales, and bring them back to mainland Zhejiang. There their bodies are disassembled and used for a myriad of purposes, food, clothing, magic weapons, and even buildings. I have a ton of ideas for how Zhejiang operates, from how their monster-based economy works, to their politics, and even what jokes they find funny, but since I cant figure out how to put some super evil bad guy into this world, I doubt I’ll ever actually play dnd with this setting. I love it to death though.
oh fuck yeah, that sounds awesome! i like the idea of a culture that subsists on giant whale monsters
This really helped me out! My views have been down, I make Littlest Pet Shop content... I know, very 2015. The urge to creature a mature sci-fi series inspired by the SCP universe has been in my bones for about a year now. Something more puppeted, with time put into sets and lighting and music... something bigger than what I've been making for so long. I've gone around and around thinking of the best way to monetize it to bring in a new audience that might appreciate it... but I think I need to just make it because it would bring me joy and help me creatively express myself. Thank you!
7:01 what a pretty place. I love the shots of nature as you talk about this stuff, it weirdly drives home the point.
YT algorithm blessed me again with a worldbuilding channel! Usually these types of channels are centered on one project, wich is fine, but I like a more expanded vision, more centered on the fun of creating itself, just sharing not because you want to make money with your worldbuilding, just because the fun of sharing it.
I've a lot of worldbuilding projects, that I'd love to share, I was thinking of making a channel for that, similar to yours (but worse because you are really cool). So yeah maybe I'll comment in another video about that, I'll have fun watching all your videos one at a time (no longer have time to spend all day on YT, not that I want to).
So yeah I really liked this video :)
worldbuilding with others is also a very precious thing in my experience. my friends and i started roleplaying on this roblox game back in 2021 as a way to "experience normal teenage things" through our characters in the pandemic, and it grew into our own world with 60+ characters all living in it. we all have such a deep connection to this world at this point it's a part of me that will never truly go away. i love it so much that even though i do want to publish a story based on it someday, i'm still satisfied with it even if it never sees the light of day. my friends and i have gotten so much closer thanks to this world and its characters.
i love the idea of collaborative works and worlds, they're so much fun, and you get to make something special with other people. it's something i wanna properly do someday
Hi, I have thought of Worldbuilding not to long ago as I kept making up fictional scenarios off of surreal imagination on some of my irl experiences (especially over television) thanks to my tendency of day-dreaming or dreams as a way of giving off unique ideas for a story. I would like to thank you for uploading this while I recently became involved in the process of writing one for my own as a way of coping from stress but did it out of boredom. I’m not sure what my purpose for creating one but I know that I am invested in making Sci-Fi fantasy just like Avatar or Harry Potter for inspiration.
I wasn’t as into worldbuilding when I was first starting out bc things like geography and wars and economics didn’t particularly interest me, I was never great in history class, but then I took art history in college and I was hooked. I love building magic systems so I started thinking about how the existence of this magic in the world would effect the world’s culture and their art, like a world where their magic is similar to “weaving” things into the fabric of the universe, so weaving and textiles are a HUGELY important part of culture and the more complex and detailed a person can weave clothing, the more highly regarded they are. It also influenced their architecture so the fancy “palace” type buildings have tiled designs that reference weaving patterns whereas as peasant houses would be far more simple but still draw some influence. Also, I figured that spiders would be important in their culture, because of the association to weaving, and so on and so forth, which eventually *did* lead me to figuring out some stuff about geography and politics and history. It’s very fun and I tend to think culture/art history first now when developing fantasy and even sci-fi worlds.
fuck yeah! i love how everyone has different starting points for their worlds--i tend to start with magic, maps, and history. the art and culture are places where ive historically lacked in, but im working on that side of the world with my current project, since it can add so much depth and life to a place.
I needed this... I'm sitting on a 14 year old Sci Fi i failed to find the drive to actually -Finish-
Dude, not only this is video solid gold, but the music choice is amazing! I’ve known nobonoko for five years, now? He’s one of my absolute favorite musicians and best friends. I am so beyond happy that he’s getting the attention he deserved, even if it is way overdue haha! We’ve even done a song together, which adds even further in his worldbuilding (just if you’re interested in that). I love worldbuilding in my writing and music! Thank you so much, btw! I have been having a really rough day and nothing I tried that I love doing (music, writing, art, etc.) was working. I was really upset by this, and I just decided to click on your video while eating lunch, just because why not? And now, I’m in an absolutely great mood, now! Thank you, Uluscri!!
oh shit!!! i discovered nobonoko recently, and i'm floored by the power of the internet to connect people--was not expecting to get a comment from someone who knows him, so that's really cool. what's the song y'all collabed on?
and thanks! i'm glad to have helped!
@@uluscri It's unreleased at the moment, but it's going to be a double! I'll let you know when it's out, if you'd like!
oh yes do let me know! i would love to check it out
Hey buddy! You did a great job! I watched the whole thing. I'm a solo games development guy, and prior to that, a general arts guy. I really benefited from watching this. It's been important for me to reconnect with how this is done so that I can make stuff that makes sense. I think it's important to think about how much we might have lost touch with our "imaginations" when we're constantly bombarding ourselves with "content" and stimuli. Someone told me, if you're finding yourself having trouble doing this, turn off your computer and phone, turn off your lights, sit in a chair and force yourself to be bored! Your brain will get back in gear, like it used to do when you were younger!
yessss this is what i advocate!! disconnect from the product world and become restless enough to throw that energy onto a page (or whatever else you do)
I’m a professional artist, I’ve not done much world building but this video encouraged me to!
I have no expectations of a big project, but I do think I will experiment more with daydreaming and making stories out of weird doodles. Like the coin one? Yeah I want to try that. Maybe it will lead to something larger.
I’ve been stuck in subject matter, living mostly in the DND realm. I can’t wait to try some of these practices. Thank you!! I feel so inspired to reconnect with my imagination.
When I was 14, I started trying to build what I believe is a more “realistic” version of the multiverse based on real ideas in physics mixed with bizarre and diverse stories that can express different elements. That was 8 years ago and I’m still going. I have so many characters and worlds/universes that I’m able to think about them basically all the time since there’s so much diversity that I can find something to fit whatever mood or energy level I’m in. It’s really changed how I examine the world around me through the potential things and ideas/concepts have to be and do anything rather than simply taking them at face value. I really hope to turn at least one idea into a book or comic one day. A tv show or movie would be the coolest thing ever, but I’m okay with where everything is now and this video helped me accept that.
I F**KING LOVE ROBOTS IN SCI-FI!!!!!!!
I AGREE AND I REALLY LIKE YOUR ENTHUSIASM!!!!!!
SAME! I GOT A ROBOTS TOO
Been world building since I was able to talk! It is my comfort! I find such a huge fascination to it! I encourage more people to do it more!!!
I absolutely endorse and encourage people to world build, just for the fun of it!^^ I made a website to try and compile the information and art there ^^ sadly, whenever I show it to people excited to give it a look, I never see them again. I'm worried they got abducted into my stories.
oh sounds delightful, what's the website link? im sure i wont disappear ha! (the beginning of every horror story)
12:16 *goes into detail about daydreaming*
Me (A Maladaptive Autistic Daydreamer since I could WALK!): I'm always four parallel universes ahead of you!
Ok but seriously this video is preaching to the choir! I've been doing this for over 90% of my OCs for as long as I can remember, pretty much around toddler age. And in fact since you asked for it; let me give you a synopsis of this one absolutely massive project, I've had going off and on for a good while now.
This world building project stars a minotaur/boar like creatures who are heavily inspired by Norse mythology. Their lore is that this absolutely MASSIVE kaiju like minotaur was their original ancestor and they are not only inspired by "The Mountain King", both the song & the lore of the song, but also named after it as well! And one day the Mountain King gets sad and lonely so he makes a few children using the elements as well as hybrid elements! And these children rule and build the land eventually making their own children. And this continues on until around the 2nd generation where the Element Children just disappear noone ever knows what happened to them they are just gone. But this generation is the cornerstone for how these people live and operate. At first they're savage, bloodthirsty and unrelenting not allowing anyone to share their space or anything. But by the 3rd generation they meet a family of Centaurs and they quickly realize they've met their match as they're so heavily even in strength and whits. So they eventually decide on an olympic challenge where there are over 10 different challenges and races to each of their talents. It all comes down to the final race, an obstacle course, where at first its the fastest members of both tribes but a centaur decides to cheat and knocks the minotaur down. This minotaur was quite elderly so this sadly kills him on impact as it snaps his neck; upsetting not just the tribe but his husband as well (yes they're gay lol). Eventually the cheifs' sons from both sides decide to finish the race. Though hesitant the fathers both agree and let them finish the race. Long story short its a tie and the winners of the olympics are left undecided. Of course both the sons are extremely angry by this being so competitive and having their linage at stake this truly upsets them. But when the Minotaur chief sees the way the Centaur chief comforts his own son and recognizes it as being similar to him he decides to make peace with them. And to this very day many generations later they meet up once a year to host the olympics as a tradition and omage to their close bonds and friendship.
There's even more than that including a massive war in the 3rd generation that has some messed up details and lore to it as well. And this current "final" generation that Im building as we speak! And all of this world building was made possible because I saw an autistic content creator on tiktok do a video where he was "reacting" to the song Reida by Danheim. And the final generation child came to my mind just out of nowhere; and I couldnt resist doing the full world building, after I listened to ultimate Diggy Diggy Hole compilation in an attempt to give HIM alone some more lore. But my brain just wouldnt get the idea of a wholesome family tribe with endless tales of love and loss that they share each generation. So now I have this world who's filler name/title is "Children of The Mountains"
And this is how it's always been for me. LOL I listen to a song and if a previous existing character doesnt pop up a new one sure as hell will and I can not be stopped once the ball gets rolling and I love every second of it! It's the "super power" that's Im proudest of that comes with my being Autistic and ADHD
Thank you :>
i actually was trying to start writing my animated series for a while now, i think with this video i will :)
oh fuck yeah, Im glad to have inspired :)!!
@@uluscri im glad u did!
Creation is such a wonder that anyone can enjoy.
Thank you for sharing this video! It was a delight to listen to. I love world-building, and my favorite approach is to start from a fairy tale - make up a folk story of a fantastical nature that you can imagine being told around a fireplace at night to a bunch of wide-eyed children, and then dive into what parts of that folk story are based in "truth." What sort of world would the truth hidden in that fairy story have created, and what sort of world would have hidden that truth in the guise of a story?
I unironically love your little watercolor wolf!
Really high quality video i’m surprised this doesn’t have 2 million views
worldbuilding sounds like a cool way to make your story make sense
Thanks for making one of my favorite videos on RUclips. It doesn't have my extact philosophy (my philosophy is in this direction but has a good helping of belief and magic and placebo) but it's close enough!! I reccomend the game ufo 50, it's a game collection with so much worldbuilding about the (fictional) company who made the games
Thank you for this video. I would like to think of myself as a fellow creative. Mostly with paint. But recently I have shared my ideas and day dreams (I work a boring job) and have been told I should write a book. I would love to be able to just purely share a sense of wonder that has been lost in most people. That said, your video has inspired me to want to make more effort to write things down and start small and build from there. Thank you!
A worldbuilding project I’m working on is a first time one for me, I decided to be ambitious and build an expansive universe!
I was pretty stereotypical when coming up with the idea to implement gods and stuff. But I feel like I made it unique enough :3
My project takes place in the year 57,000 on the human calendar, the universe itself is 80 trillion years old, and it revolves around powerful gods that watch over galaxies. For every galaxy there is 1 god that is omnipotent to everything happening inside of it. But 35 trillion years ago, a massive war broke out between galaxies after the races in said galaxies were trying to invade others. Countless gods and mortals died and flooded the Sanctum (the afterlife). The sanctum broke from all the souls in it and the supreme god repaired it, making every free soul fuse into a god devouring deity who eats the souls of disobeying/dying gods so the sanctum won’t flood and break again.
This wonderful video has inspired me to have the courage to actually draw my ideas rather than just narrate them in my videos. A great reminder that my creations don't have to be perfect just like how I don't have to be perfect. What matters is I try to be better. :) Thank you!!
I only recently started sharing my ideas on my channel and I feel like I couldn't have found this video at a better time. If you are ever interested in watching/exploring the worlds I've made I'd love to hear your feedback I'm excited to see more of yours!
My worldbuilding journey started thru conlangs, of which I have only made one that's substantially detailed. I wanted to make a world for my conlangs, and it's developed from there. I'm also realising I'm doing both inside-out and outside-in worldbuilding at the same time, which I'm not sure how well that'll turn out lol
Honestly, and sorry for any existential crises I may or may not induce, I think the best part about worldbuilding is that you are God for the characters that you create, just as us earthlings are creations of another such God. It can also be said that the entire known universe was built by this God.
I also find it so cool that, speaking from the soul pov, we can take on human form to create our own little D&D adventure for a lifetime on this beautifully crafted planet, even if it has seemingly turned into a nobledark scenario.
Oh boy I have a world I’ve been working on for years, for my main story idea.
The story is a science fiction with some fantasy elements. It technically falls into the category of dystopia as well, though the characters don’t realize it at first. There’s a big social commentary element to the dystopian aspect as one would expect.
The main characters live in the higher levels of an inter-planetary empire where you’d think they wouldn’t have many problems, however there are certain thematic societal problems that still affect them greatly, especially since the main antagonist, a dictator who immortalized himself by uploading his mind into an incredibly advanced robot body, is also the great great (a lot more greats) grandfather of one of the main characters and is super controlling over his family.
The characters are a humanoid alien species with some fairy-like and bird-like elements. They have some weird crystal powers and stuff. The main planet the characters are from is a small ringed world with a high density of rainforests and jungles, and lots of colorful and strange wildlife and plants.
The story mainly kicks off when one of the main characters invents a machine that allows for hyper-jumping abilities, giving the empire the ability to expand to other star systems. However said character quickly realizes how badly such a device is used by the empire and there’s a lot of political divide and stuff.
I’ll leave it at that because I need to be actually WRITING and I don’t wanna put EVERYTHING in this comment lol, but I hope this sounds interesting at least. Writing and worldbuilding is really fun but really hard.
honestly the biggest reason why i haven't written much for the stories i want to make is i get so invested in the worldbuilding and realize that just a few offhand comments in a book wouldn't do justice to the literal solar systems in my brain
worldbuilding is my absolute favorite part of creating stories/concepts it is so much fun and i wish i could project what's in my head into other people's brains so they get it too
This is my sign to homebrew that TTRPG campaign setting.
Very inspiring video! I love to learn some topic about physics and then come up with new technology and science based on that knowladge for real world inventions and findings, but also for sci-fi worldbuilding.
Man. This is eanting me to actually take a crack at my time loop novel. Its mainly still in the planning phase? The world is still Earth but its more so the differences in the details that matter from loop to loop than the actual planet
Just do it! Make your dreams come true!!
I run a Minecraft server. It's technically public but only 2 other people on it once every blue moon.
My favorite things to build in Minecraft are villages and roads so I've built a couple of villages and I'm starting to write lore for one of them because the story of how i started that village is tied to the unrelated actions of a player who used to play on my server.
Oh gosh, even yt is reminding me to continue my worldbuilding project
I have been worldbuilding for 11 years now i mostly start with maps and just make some stories around it. Though my main worldbuilding project exists mostly in my mind and a few notes.
i'm currently making my DnD world full of animal folk and bug ppl. almost all the time i feel like im in this world, wandering in my own creation. sometimes i get stressed out about my character's lore. but this is what i WANT to do. i want to make stories AAAAAAAAA
Worldbuilding (and writing in general) always takes me a really long time - a piece of lore here, a snippet of backstory there - but I'm kinda glad it takes me so long because then I can grow and shape and nurture my little world without any pressure to 'get it right'. Sometimes entire stories and even entire worlds start with a single character, or an entire culture starts with a single invented gesture, and I love it when that happens. Once, I started an entire story world from a character who got their name from a random prescribed password my school gave me as a kid (I changed the password, but the name stuck!)
Yes world building is so great! In fact I have four world building projects, a twisted fantasy world, a deeply developed alien biosphere, an unfiction semi-horror story, and an alien seed world.
@@ribersmopps one idea, two words: merge them. put them all in one universe..
@ I’ve thought about doing this, but their all so different and complex on their own that merging any of them just wouldn’t feel right and would be over complicated
@@ribersmopps fair enough! Sometimes that happens!
@ indeed, still a cool idea though!
cool ideas! also i love merging worlds, but yeah a lot of times it's not possible. with the number of universes i have currently, when i have a new idea (that's not itself hugely fundamental), i like to try and fit it into an existing universe before punching a new hole in the nothingness and making a new reality
I’ve never tried worldbuiling (mostly because it’s not my thing) but for a year, I’ve had a bunch of alien ocs and I wanted to elaborate their story so maybe I’ll try worldbuiling to work on their story! This video pushed me to try things out so thank you :)
It's perfectly acceptable to just come up with the lore around your characters! If you want to expand more then great, but if not then at least your characters will have just a bit more depth!
I'm a little new to worldbuilding, but so far it's been a great vehicle to learn about and reinterpret things about real life that I'm interested in. Where i run into problems is the practical organization of the information I have so to hear about your process would be interesting. Great video btw. I love finding high quality in small channels
Thank you so much for making this video, it really helped me view the world I'm writing in a new light and honestly helped me untangle a lot about it. Thank you for inspiring me and so many others ♡
Apologies that the rest of this is quite long so I wanted to start with the most important thing ^v^
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I've been writing a book? or comic? or whatever it turns into for the past 5 years and I have a colorful cast of characters that I love with my whole heart. I love writing interesting characters and the way they feel and experience the world and each other but I neglected the actual world in the worldbuilding for most of this time. Mostly because it's supposed to be semi-realistic but I'm not particularly fond of the world that we all call reality, I'm much more partial to fantasy and it only occurred to me while watching this video that I can make it whatever I want, it doesn't have to be one to one with our reality. And realizing this felt so freeing. I realized I do know a whole lot about that world but I never allowed myself to imagine it because it would be considered unrealistic. Thank you so much for giving me this mental and creative freedom. I'll be going to write down all the little silly details that I realized I already know and do my best to not restrain my creative freedom concerning this in the future. Here I come silly world with modern cities, magic systems, alternate dimensions and fantastical magic forests and creatures ♡
thank you so much, and i hope the writing and worldbuilding goes well!!
whenever i was in middle school me and my online friend would roleplay a lot online, and one day we decided to create a whole new dimension that was cyberpunk (before the game, when it was more of an aesthetic and genre like steampunk). we created the whole world, which was post apocalyptic but nature retaking everything and it was very hostile, and there were like 10 major cities and maybe space travel, definetly time travel and dimensional travel. the cities were huge and neon, and we created an entire power system and "vigilantes" which were just trying to fight the capitalists at the top that controlled everything, and the "heroes" which were just fighting the vigilantes, usually violently. there was a hierarchy, mysterious parts of the city, "dead magic" and cyborgs and lots of tech stuff. i recently learned about the Kowloon Walled City and it's inspired me to try and revisit that world, and maybe keep building on it
Something I found is that while worldbuilding is so frequently only seen as the sprawling, absurdly intricate creative universes that may result from the process, the barrier to entry is actually shockingly quaint. That's because if you allow it to, it can start at *any* idea, it being interesting is not even a prerequisite.
Case in point, here is an example I went through in my head, in the middle of watching this video:
Let's start at a cube.
The default, if you know Blender and on its own rather plain. So let's add attributes.
It is a glass cube. A glass cube with something inside. That something is electricity. Sourceless electricity, apparently.
Now for an all too intruiging question: Why is this cube a thing?
Somebody must've made it. So it is an artificial thing, a thing that mayhaps requires quite the facility to be capable of constructing something that in isolation rather plain, in reality actually breaks the laws of physics. An energy that is perpetual and sourceless is after all quite the bizarre phenomenon. Though it is also useful, a permanent supply of energy in handy, cubical form.
But it's still a cube of glass, so what happens if it inevitably breaks, in case it gets dropped for example?
That energy is left uncontained, sprawling from the point of impact in a constant, cloudless thunderstorm and is really tough to recontain, considering it required a special facility to make its contained form in the first place.
Now this is not a particularly stable universe, as those incidences creating natural disaster style danger zones can quickly pile up to be pretty cataclysmic for just one world. So let's give these people more space, a lot more space. They have the facilities and effectively endless energy generation already, so it's not a stretch to make them spacefaring.
From here we already have a rough sci-fi world, ready to cascade with detail, like actually explaining how they got here in-universe, who and what "they" even are and fleshing out the process that produces those lightning cubes, perhaps ending up with other forms of energy that could be locked inside one of these devices (already thinking fire and radiation as some examples). But going any further here would completely blow the scope of an illustrative comment out of proportions.
Something else you can do to exercise is building on top of existing worlds. Find those niches that your favorite story never explored or reimagine an existing part of it.
For example, I've been having a field day with the forms of lightsaber combat in Star Wars, actually fleshing the official ones out with possible guard positions and playing around with how using them in this more rigidly defined manner ends up working out.
Or there is Wynncraft, a Minecraft MMORPG, which I've found myself running as a story in my head and now am in the slow process of writing a fanfiction playthrough of. This led me to examining some of the smaller oddities of the game world and mechanics to the point I have a working concept for how every single class and subclass archetype functions within the world outside of just a bunch of player characters adventuring around; coming up with an entire additional plane of reality just to explain the bank storage and accessory crafting, which coincidentally both use ender related blocks, so the enderscape was born as a place where concepts are the only thing that matters; creating an entirely new species of the treeborne, beings that are a forest come to life in the form of a unique spirit, shaped by all the things that happen across the generations within its territory; and even managing to make the joke religion of bovemism work as something to be taken seriously, where countryfolk decided to take cows as role models, incidentally leading to the greatest protectors of the warrior's paladin archetype.
And then I've also been playing off of a facette of the lore behind Malice-Risu's Protogens a bunch, which is that they used to be just purpose built servants with limited autonomy essentially, up until some of the more advanced ones gained a spark of sentience, that they could infect others with, resulting in an uprising. In my head, this actually leads to an all out rebellion war, which in turn means I now have so many details within that conflict to flesh out from how the initial beginnings with isolated trouble insurrectionist groups came to be, over the sorts of combat designs that would be fielded on both sides (up to and including a group of superhero level living weapons, which end up clashing amongst themselves), and finally the aftermath of how those creatures that were purpose built for war then fair with autonomy in a peaceful society afterwards and whatever scars have been left on people and places.
Point is, it is *so easy* to just get started with doing a bit of worldbuilding. In fact I'd say that every creative idea you have ever had has been a seed for worldbuilding, waiting to be grown.
i REALLY like that cube analogy, thanks for sharing it! it's functionally how all art starts--from a seed of an idea. Very few people (if any) can come up with a whole, detailed painting in their head in an instant. it's basically always a small idea that balloons into something cooler, and i really like that. worldbuilding is a funny thing bc (especially w how broadly i define it), literally any piece of art can be read as part of a sprawling world outside its bounds.
I'm writing a book right now but I started with a few years of worldbuilding, I'm basing it upon a period in my life where my hallucinations and delusions were rampant (I have schizophrenia) so its ending up as a really surrealist world and I really like it!
@@whatistheultimatequestion oooh that sounds rlly interesting!! may i ask, are there negative consequences to focusing on that part of your life?
ooooo i like the surreal and the strange! good luck with the world! and i second the question from watercolours
@@cryingwatercolours Sometimes there can be, its a crazy learning curve but I think its worth doing anyways. I think for myself if I don't turn my experiences into something creative I can feel really overwhelmed by them, but there definitely are moments where focusing so much on certain hallucinations and delusions can bite me in the ass. But for me the curiosity of how I can turn something so internal and all consuming into something explainable can be really beificial.
Hope this answers your question! ;p
@@whatistheultimatequestion it does, thank you for sharing with me!
i have been worldbuilding before even knowing it is an actual "thing". my main world is sci-fi with various planets and alien species and such, that basically just grew in my head organically over time without me actively trying to make something. i kind of want to expand on it more intentionally
glad to see im not the only one who would sketch out fictional planets and continents and make creatures to live in them!
Really great video! I’ll definitely be taking a lot of this advice! On daydreaming, I’ve been listening to music in languages I don’t speak, and just feeling the emotions of the singer. I can try to add a story to it as well. Only after I’ve reflected on how it made me feel do I look up the translated lyrics. It’s fun to see how close or far off you were!
thanks!
and mmmm i also listen to a lot of music in languages i dont know! icelandic (listen to JóiPé and Króli), swedish (listen to Hanna Järver and Felicia Takman), german (Cro is fun), and japanese (listen to Reol and the Shuta Hasunuma Philharmonic Orchestra) especially. and i also also do that daydreaming of what the songs mean, except i always forget to look up what they actually mean lol
thx. this makes me want to add lore to everything
Yeah, I have been wanting to create a world for years now. I guess this video is a sign lol.
As a worldbuilder since I was little, I would advice make it your own world. I never did use magic or something in my world and I have a genuine passion for it… it is such a complex universe and I’m now making a book for my universe like its a scientific book abt it with concepts. My “world” is an infinite multiverse with its own rules and thats what you need to do. Make it personal to you bro and dont let anything influence or stop your creativity
This video is crazy underrated! I love worldbuilding with my ocs and such, and this was super reassuring + inspiring :]
new subscriber earned!
You could also get some inspiration from reading Italo Calvino's "The Invisible Cities"
Would love to see you make series videos on your worldbuilding methods!! You found a new sub, this vid was great :)
thanks! and yes! a how-i-worldbuild series is at the top of the list for planned videos.
It's mind over matter that's what it is. It's all in your head use it wiseley. And try not to numb on your own mind like it's some kind of occupation being preoccupied and engrossed in as if dopamine was the answer. The safety of your senses is at hand and what you do determines the physicality and impact on your mind.
If you want to read a book solely about some random guy’s random fictional world, I highly recommend the speculative biology book, the yaetuan sagas by Christian cline! Or I would recommend his other book, teeming universe!
Good video. People need hobbies that are done without a screen. Analog.
hello world.
hay bud.
I just finished writing. And then your video played. It is a fun Video.
I once created a world in my head and lived there for about six months. Leaving it was painful.
I did the same when I was 6, I made a world in my head and developed the story for years until I turned 16 last year and abandoned it to make something better.
I made this account to comment this lol, but here's my worldbuilding idea thing!
There's a bunch of animal-folk, of varying animals, animals varying from basic cats and dogs, to bird-folk. Bird-folk live high in trees, living in treehouses that are connected by small wooden bridges (think of Rainwings, from Wings of Fire), Dog-folk, Cat-folk, and other domestic animals live in various places, places like cities and suburban places!
Cat-folk are known to be lazy, crazy or even thiefs, but it's just a stereotype. Dog-folk are loyal, but fun fact! In the biggest city, Tolkien, Dog-folk are the biggest crime-committer. Bird-folk being a close second.
I named a city after Tolkien, it servers as a hub for every species to congregate and talk with one another. People trade, talk, eat together and just exist. There are dozens of small states, towns, and more stuff. I'm very proud of how far this project has come, despite the fact it's only been a few weeks since I first started worldbuilding.
Edit (nov. 14) Okay so, I have a few more things to add!!! First, Insect-folk, Cow-folk and a few other kinds of folk have been added to this idea!!
"just you and the etch a sketch that is your short term memory" I liked that one
thank you!!
This got me excited about worldbuilding for my novel again. I'm interested in the flows of trade and economics, and the spread pattern of people when establishing a foothold in a country. Things like that. And it's not really a sexy aspect of worldbuilding like cool animals and sweeping architecture and magic, but it's the bit that I always wonder about. I have magic and gods too, but they feel less fleshed out haha. More like they are just supposed to be there. I was starting to get a bit discouraged. Still not sure what to do with the gods and the magic, but they will get sorted out.
Thanks for encouraging me to get back to it ahain.
Yeah! Worldbuilding is great. It can be done in so many different mediums and it's a very rewarding experience to see new connections emerge between the once separate parts of your world.
mmmm emergence is so good. and i find that a lot of my work, from the worlds to the stories, morph a lot in the beginning as i figure out the real direction i want it to go in. fun stuff!
One of those happy little algorithm moments ~
Lovely video! I couldn't agree more. Do something creative for its own sake - for your own sake! - and don't worry about finding the so-called "correct" methods. Scarcely have I found my footing in anything without taking the first step. Here's hoping this video gets plenty of reach.
Wow I didnt release how underated you are! Such an intresting video!! It gets me exited to continue to worldbuild
I started learning how to animate semi recently and at the same time started world building this huge story in my head. Often characters, events, and places are made just because I think it would be fun to animate/see animated The joy I have seeing my character's come to life is unparalleled
\/ incredibly Long ramble of ideas below \/
- A mining village that haoldsthe "Hero's Sword". The sword is stuck in incredible hard stone. The people of the village once tried to "pull" the sword by digging at the ground around it. They eventually hit a incredible hard stone that is supposedly indestructible. The sword is stuck in this stone. They try and dig under the sword but the indestructible stone continues deep into the ground froming a piller with the sword stuck at the top. Because of the large pit now surround the sword a bridge was constructed leading to the sword.
The village hold's a festival every year and everyone tries to pull the sword. Outsiders can try to pull it whenever.
It's said The sword can only be pulled by someone set on bringing peace to the world. (The real criteria is a secret known by practically no one)
- Elf girl who is the last of her kind. She is incredibly playful, absolutely loves magic, and when visiting a city, can often be found playing with groups of kids.
A event 200-500 years ago left her as the last elf alive. She doesn't share much about how she survived or what happened during that time.
- World leader gauntlet. If a person kills every/enough powerful leaders they are granted a wish.
Only one person has done this but it happened hundreds of years ago. It is unclear what he wished for.
- a monster whose eyes seem to look random directions. The monster actually breaks the 4th wall and the eyes actually stare directly to the viewer watching the show. The in universe characters are incredible confused by this
- blind princess who wields a massive axe. She "sees" by reading mana aura levels as well as mana signatures.
- king that can see into the future. He will execute people for something that has yet to happen. In his old age he is slowly going insane.
- giant wolf with the power to manipulate it's own blood. It's 6ft tall when on all fours and often has a ring of blood around its head starting at the jaw and forms around the back of the head (almost like a halo)
- girl who also has blood manipulation power's. She learned them by growing up with one of the wolf I just mentioned. She continues to travel around with the wolf.
Ok wow I forgot I was a youtube comment oops, lol. This is just some of the ideas I've had for characters, events, and places. Hopefully I'll find time to draw or animate some of them in the future.
I like these ideas, especially the world leader gauntlet, just cause of how off-the-wall it is (as well as the mystery of "what did that person wish for?"), it's awesome. keep at it!
I have been worldbuilding way before I knew there was a term for it. And naturally I ended up creating several world, one developed way more than the others but I cherish all of them.
I have an urban fantasy world set in the 90s where people found out super powers exist but there are still supernatural mysteries unknown to most.
There is also a zombie apocalypse world where starro-bellum from Zelda-like parasites turn people into zombies and has a hint of cosmic horror.
I'm also cooking a stone age fantasy world where magic and technology are both rudimentary.
And I have some others that are more ideas than proper settings, like one where the real and the virtual world combined which led to gamers have powers of the games they play and hackers invading people's minds. Or another setting where supernatural creatures control the world from the shadows and turned everything into a subscription based service.
I'm not an expert at worldbuilding or anything (I've just been doing it as a hobby and have received little to no peer review) but I've noticed that you can literally add anything to your world as long as you can justify its existence, and I think that's my favorite part about worldbuilding.
When I (and my friend) started with two towns. One was a quiet depressing village with an invasive species of trees that have grown to block the sunlight while the other was an artistic renaissance-like town where "butterflies" were the main source of economy. I was a bit scared of how much their themes clashed.
But then I realized, screw it. I already had ideas of environments I hadn't explored and their themes all clashed with each other. Add them all in. If everything clashes with each other, then nothing feels out of place.
Now there's an area filled with floating islands and waterfalls that stretch towards the horizon.
A small cluster of these islands have become an interconnected technology ridden civilization.
That renaissance-like town has begun to expand towards a snowy mountain range, which gets steeper and steeper into infinity.
There's a town in the middle of nowhere who's history is heavily inspired by The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
In a weird way they all kinda feel connected. Like different cultures, but really really different. Worldbuilding's just really fun.
yeah haha a part of the fun is trying to connect the disparate things you think of along the way. it's so easy to think "eh, ill just get rid of this thing that doesnt fit" (and to be fair, there are plenty of situations where the thing should be discarded), but the real work is in trying to get the things you like to fit well together.
and i still gotta read that short story, my partner keeps talking about it
I can't imagine using an app or ai and just have it make worlds for you when you can make your own