I didn't know this was a thing but it makes total sense. My favorite definition of a Mary Sue, after all, comes from Overly Sarcastic Productions, who defined it as "a character who warps the setting and other characters around them until that central point is the only fully realized entity within the story itself" (a Sue-gularity, if you will).
What helped me was taking secondary characters and make them main characters in their own smaller stories. Replacing small victories with small defeats can be a good source of inspiration and sprout new characters and ideas.
Another tip I would add is to introduce high-level crisis well before your players have the capacity to solve them. I feel like a lot of plot points DMs come up with are usually, “Thank the gods, a party of level 17 players is here! The Tarrasque just woke up and began terrorizing this town!” I think a MUCH better way of handling it is to have the Tarrasque destroying stuff in the background since the very beginning of the campaign (maybe the players encounter a town that’s being rebuilt when they’re level 7, or a forest that’s been completely flattened when they’re level 10), so when they’re high enough level to fight the big monster, there’s a lot more history to it then just the DM’s newest way of trying to challenge their high-level party.
You could weave world building stories by introducing a news paper that gets put into towns. That way you can see stories from around the world progressing on their own. And mabye have a feature of the party in a positive or negative light.
I think that Kevin Crawford's version of "factions & faction turns" helps here.( SWN and WWN.) Mainly to provide formal structure to address this exactly this issue and many of the suggestions in this vid are just par for the course (and Kevin probably has a table for it if that helps). Even if not playing a sandbox style game, the added structure of establishing factions with their own goals, assets, actions, and evolution...plus the infrequent between-sessions where factions do things...can help here. And gamifies for the GM, making it a sort of solo session for the GM. As well as a source of inspiration and world-evolution in ways that make sense...and have stochastic elements. And they can provide the context for player sessions & campaigns or even more direct connections for the players by connecting their activities to Faction developments. Are there tools to help with WWN/SWN style factions, faction assets, and faction turns?
I let my non player characters moving around between locations in a semi-random way, to simulate that they have a life of their own. If I have a merchant, the merchant moves between towns and the players can miss an encounter and have to chase and character if they need to find that person. In the beginning my players had problems with this, because they was not used to this type of encounters where they had meet a character in one plays and the they meet the same characters in another place. They become paranoid, because every one are used to see a npc for a reason.
My world is definitely not a snow globe. About two years ago I created a villain npc, who does genetic experiments and was after one of the player characters for their rare dna. That player however left the group, so the campaign turned into a different direction. Now in another group there is a pc who fits the same genetic profile. Infact they fit it even better. The characters are currently traveling in the general area where that villian is located and they recently did something to draw his attention. Since the villian also matches the theme of that second campaign, I have started to lay the ground work for his appearance. He is still looking for that rare dna afterall. I have never understood gms, who tear up their notes, if the players don't take a plot hook. You might need that later! Letting the world exist for its own sake, is also a great antidote for the urge to rail road.
Oh snow globe worldbuilding. I didn't know this problem was a thing. I love worldbuilding, so this is an easy problem to avoid. This tips make me even more excited to world build. Off the top of my head, the two best examples of avoiding the problem is Game of Thrones and Chronicles of Narnia. These series go out of thier way to make thier world bigger than one hero. They even have more than one hero. I do that approach with my own worldbuilding. I like to make history so vast. So different characters become protagonists at different times. There are three reasons why a protagonist has little to no involment outside thier time. Number one they were not born yet. Number two they are already dead. Number three they turned into a deity and settled down. I don't have protagonists die during thier stories. I don't want to be as dark as Game of Thrones. It is just that the characters are going to die some time because they are mortal. So another story can be set after that, even centuries later. I even like to have some characters be reincarnated from much older characters. It is like how in Avatar, Korra is a reincarnation of Aang. BTW I didn't know the cabbage guy had a fan base. That is so wierd. The biggest advice in worldbuilding I heard is not to do too much of it. That problem is called worldbuilders disease. It can be tricky to avoid, and I feel like I have to restrain myself at the time. Snow Globe worldbuilding seems like taking that advice and going too far in the opposite direction. This video is very validating for me personally. Perhaps the ideal worldbuilding is a balence of snow globe worldbuilding and worldbuilders disease. The most reasonable advice in this videos is to flesh out the side characters so they are not just props of the protagonist. They don't need a full life story. They just need a little bit of fleshing out so they have other things to be focused on. That wouldn't be too trucky to pull off.
I'm just diving into my first storytelling adventures, so this is a great topic to keep in mind! I'll be looking out for snowglobes in my work... and maybe even thinking about how I could use a snowglobe situation as a narrative element! Lots to think about :) Wonderful video!
hence the quotes!! I have listened to a diff podcast that loved to say "don't let worldbuilding get in the way of telling a story" like actually, I think I will @@WorldAnvil
@@lilyn7497 that's only a problem if you're goal is to write stories. If you do want to see your world populated with stories and you're comfortable with it, you can always open it up to other people. Setting guides for ttrpg are a thing, for example. Otherwise is perfect valid to create a world just because.
Great video, as always. While I think I’m safe from the snow globe for now, it’s always good to watch these sorts of things and take stock of how in doing.
im building a world that i hope tovturn into a ttrpg and within the world im going to have 5 different major events going at once.. players would only be able to do one event as the others progress along the timeline when the one they're doing does. rumors of other happenings will be abundant. they can choose to travel to a different event if they tire of the current one but said event will be progressed and they'd run into other adventurers who are dealing with the others. this will make the world feel alive as things they arent apart of still happen and it'll give replayability in the form of dealing with different events (one event will have 3 starting options/paths so there will be a total of 7 playthroughs in this world). pretty sure that'll break any snowglobing issues. lol
Beware of murder hobos though(adventurers that go around killing NPCs). These types of players/characters need to be put in a Gary Gygax type of world! Complicated world building is best for newer players, but they might need to be taught how to ask questions and investigate instances in order to grab onto story hooks you place for them.
@@WorldAnvil Indeed. My original DM just told us where we were at first and asked us where we want to go(direction), because he had created the world, at first, in a circle around our starting area. In a later campaign, we were also tasked with drawing our own map from where we had gone and found... like actual cartography was back in "the day"(hundreds of years ago). 😄
I like to think I've managed to avoid these issues in the plots for my graphic novels about some of my D&D characters. In the first book, the characters literally save the entire realm from a dark god bent on destruction. For the sequel, the character's conflict is going to center entirely around settling personal problems from their past and dealing with their past actions (not stuff from the first book) catching up with them. I did this because I don't agree with the "sequels must always up the stakes" line of thinking, as well as to keep from repeating myself (I find it unlikely the same characters would save the entire world *twice*). To tie it into the subject of your video, the consequences that are catching up with our heroes all happen well off-screen while they were off saving the world. And the third book is going to see the main character return to her homeland to find that the merchant caste has taken over and everything is far worse than when she left. I dunno, sometimes it's nice to see videos like this and realize I was already doing some of the stuff that's suggested, like maybe I'm NOT a talentless hack after all.
I suppose one of the advantages that my main writing project for the past three years or so has been a series of shorts rather than a novel is that I've been able to just... Dip into an individual disconnected from any of the major arcs for a chapter and focus on another aspect of the setting for 1-2k words without it hurting the pace. And, sure, sometimes they get revisited later as a major character for an arc, or a sideplot, but sometimes it's just 1-2k words on them. ...I'm also glad I've finished the writing portion of that project and am now just doing editing on the final shorts in the series, but...
The story I've been working on started out as a bit of a Snow Globe with a single conflict on one small continent. That has since expanded to there being a whole world with eight continents and many other conflicts that my main cast isn't even involved with. No one travels West because the nations over there have been embroiled in war for centuries and everyone is afraid of that war spilling over into the East.
13 seconds in, I already know this is not an issue I have. My characters have always inhabited the setting, not the other way around. I can't even imagine the idea of building the world around the character.
I think that last problem (overly loyal secondaries) is what spoiled His Dark Materials for me. You could rename the series Everybody Loves Lyra. What's supposed to be an expanding multiversal story increasingly revolves around a character I never liked as much as Pullman does.
@@WorldAnvil I should perhaps clarify I was referring to the novels, which were clearly meant to be very big and expansive, but come across as faintly petty, basically for the reason you suggest. I haven't had a chance to look at the TV adaptation yet as I keep having to write books about world-building in Game of Thrones.
I’m more worried about the other extreme from this. I’ve been worldbuilding for the last nine years and I’m just now starting to figure out the characters and story. If I’m not careful I’ll end up just like George RR Martin.
@@goji253 Yes don’t want to make my fans wait upwards of a decade for the second to the last installment and then use “ fascism” as a pathetic excuse as to why I am incapable of finishing my masterpiece.
Sam example is just wrong, he's not a supporting character, he's literally the hero of the story. The one who comes back. It's a good point, but wrong example. Dr. Watson is a better example for that, although it still lacks perfect loyalty.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
I didn't know this was a thing but it makes total sense. My favorite definition of a Mary Sue, after all, comes from Overly Sarcastic Productions, who defined it as "a character who warps the setting and other characters around them until that central point is the only fully realized entity within the story itself" (a Sue-gularity, if you will).
What helped me was taking secondary characters and make them main characters in their own smaller stories. Replacing small victories with small defeats can be a good source of inspiration and sprout new characters and ideas.
Defeats and setbacks are the unsung heroes of deep worldbuilding.
Another tip I would add is to introduce high-level crisis well before your players have the capacity to solve them. I feel like a lot of plot points DMs come up with are usually, “Thank the gods, a party of level 17 players is here! The Tarrasque just woke up and began terrorizing this town!” I think a MUCH better way of handling it is to have the Tarrasque destroying stuff in the background since the very beginning of the campaign (maybe the players encounter a town that’s being rebuilt when they’re level 7, or a forest that’s been completely flattened when they’re level 10), so when they’re high enough level to fight the big monster, there’s a lot more history to it then just the DM’s newest way of trying to challenge their high-level party.
You could weave world building stories by introducing a news paper that gets put into towns. That way you can see stories from around the world progressing on their own. And mabye have a feature of the party in a positive or negative light.
I think that Kevin Crawford's version of "factions & faction turns" helps here.( SWN and WWN.)
Mainly to provide formal structure to address this exactly this issue and many of the suggestions in this vid are just par for the course (and Kevin probably has a table for it if that helps).
Even if not playing a sandbox style game, the added structure of establishing factions with their own goals, assets, actions, and evolution...plus the infrequent between-sessions where factions do things...can help here.
And gamifies for the GM, making it a sort of solo session for the GM. As well as a source of inspiration and world-evolution in ways that make sense...and have stochastic elements.
And they can provide the context for player sessions & campaigns or even more direct connections for the players by connecting their activities to Faction developments.
Are there tools to help with WWN/SWN style factions, faction assets, and faction turns?
Should I SHAKE UP my Worldbuilding?
LOL, yes! With a juicy meta and some conflict that doesn't revolve around your MCs :P
I let my non player characters moving around between locations in a semi-random way, to simulate that they have a life of their own. If I have a merchant, the merchant moves between towns and the players can miss an encounter and have to chase and character if they need to find that person. In the beginning my players had problems with this, because they was not used to this type of encounters where they had meet a character in one plays and the they meet the same characters in another place. They become paranoid, because every one are used to see a npc for a reason.
best to keep them on their toes hehe
@@WorldAnvil exactly, and they look so funny when they understand that they have wasted their time on a goose chase
My world is definitely not a snow globe. About two years ago I created a villain npc, who does genetic experiments and was after one of the player characters for their rare dna. That player however left the group, so the campaign turned into a different direction. Now in another group there is a pc who fits the same genetic profile. Infact they fit it even better. The characters are currently traveling in the general area where that villian is located and they recently did something to draw his attention. Since the villian also matches the theme of that second campaign, I have started to lay the ground work for his appearance. He is still looking for that rare dna afterall.
I have never understood gms, who tear up their notes, if the players don't take a plot hook. You might need that later! Letting the world exist for its own sake, is also a great antidote for the urge to rail road.
Nothing's ever wasted if it adds something interesting to the game.
Always great advice on this channel! Thanks for taking a look at this.
Thanks for watching!
Oh snow globe worldbuilding. I didn't know this problem was a thing. I love worldbuilding, so this is an easy problem to avoid. This tips make me even more excited to world build. Off the top of my head, the two best examples of avoiding the problem is Game of Thrones and Chronicles of Narnia. These series go out of thier way to make thier world bigger than one hero. They even have more than one hero. I do that approach with my own worldbuilding. I like to make history so vast. So different characters become protagonists at different times. There are three reasons why a protagonist has little to no involment outside thier time. Number one they were not born yet. Number two they are already dead. Number three they turned into a deity and settled down. I don't have protagonists die during thier stories. I don't want to be as dark as Game of Thrones. It is just that the characters are going to die some time because they are mortal. So another story can be set after that, even centuries later. I even like to have some characters be reincarnated from much older characters. It is like how in Avatar, Korra is a reincarnation of Aang. BTW I didn't know the cabbage guy had a fan base. That is so wierd. The biggest advice in worldbuilding I heard is not to do too much of it. That problem is called worldbuilders disease. It can be tricky to avoid, and I feel like I have to restrain myself at the time. Snow Globe worldbuilding seems like taking that advice and going too far in the opposite direction. This video is very validating for me personally. Perhaps the ideal worldbuilding is a balence of snow globe worldbuilding and worldbuilders disease. The most reasonable advice in this videos is to flesh out the side characters so they are not just props of the protagonist. They don't need a full life story. They just need a little bit of fleshing out so they have other things to be focused on. That wouldn't be too trucky to pull off.
Glad you found it helpful!
Thanks for the great video. This came just when I needed it. Snow globe smashed!
Excellent! Nice work.
I'm just diving into my first storytelling adventures, so this is a great topic to keep in mind! I'll be looking out for snowglobes in my work... and maybe even thinking about how I could use a snowglobe situation as a narrative element! Lots to think about :) Wonderful video!
Glad you enjoyed! And best of luck in your storytelling adventures
I 1000% have the opposite "problem"; I worldbuild for the sake of it and only have one story idea so far lol
I also worldbuild more than word-build haha xD
That's not a problem, that's a hobby!
hence the quotes!! I have listened to a diff podcast that loved to say "don't let worldbuilding get in the way of telling a story" like actually, I think I will @@WorldAnvil
@@lilyn7497 that's only a problem if you're goal is to write stories. If you do want to see your world populated with stories and you're comfortable with it, you can always open it up to other people. Setting guides for ttrpg are a thing, for example. Otherwise is perfect valid to create a world just because.
@@melinnamba I know guys I know it was a joke comment 🙏 😔
Great video, as always. While I think I’m safe from the snow globe for now, it’s always good to watch these sorts of things and take stock of how in doing.
Very true!
im building a world that i hope tovturn into a ttrpg and within the world im going to have 5 different major events going at once.. players would only be able to do one event as the others progress along the timeline when the one they're doing does. rumors of other happenings will be abundant. they can choose to travel to a different event if they tire of the current one but said event will be progressed and they'd run into other adventurers who are dealing with the others. this will make the world feel alive as things they arent apart of still happen and it'll give replayability in the form of dealing with different events (one event will have 3 starting options/paths so there will be a total of 7 playthroughs in this world). pretty sure that'll break any snowglobing issues. lol
This sounds great!
@WorldAnvil sounds great but is a logistical nightmare. lol.
Beware of murder hobos though(adventurers that go around killing NPCs). These types of players/characters need to be put in a Gary Gygax type of world!
Complicated world building is best for newer players, but they might need to be taught how to ask questions and investigate instances in order to grab onto story hooks you place for them.
Exploration is the under-appreciated pillar of D&D.
@@WorldAnvil Indeed. My original DM just told us where we were at first and asked us where we want to go(direction), because he had created the world, at first, in a circle around our starting area. In a later campaign, we were also tasked with drawing our own map from where we had gone and found... like actual cartography was back in "the day"(hundreds of years ago). 😄
I like to think I've managed to avoid these issues in the plots for my graphic novels about some of my D&D characters. In the first book, the characters literally save the entire realm from a dark god bent on destruction. For the sequel, the character's conflict is going to center entirely around settling personal problems from their past and dealing with their past actions (not stuff from the first book) catching up with them. I did this because I don't agree with the "sequels must always up the stakes" line of thinking, as well as to keep from repeating myself (I find it unlikely the same characters would save the entire world *twice*).
To tie it into the subject of your video, the consequences that are catching up with our heroes all happen well off-screen while they were off saving the world.
And the third book is going to see the main character return to her homeland to find that the merchant caste has taken over and everything is far worse than when she left.
I dunno, sometimes it's nice to see videos like this and realize I was already doing some of the stuff that's suggested, like maybe I'm NOT a talentless hack after all.
I suppose one of the advantages that my main writing project for the past three years or so has been a series of shorts rather than a novel is that I've been able to just... Dip into an individual disconnected from any of the major arcs for a chapter and focus on another aspect of the setting for 1-2k words without it hurting the pace. And, sure, sometimes they get revisited later as a major character for an arc, or a sideplot, but sometimes it's just 1-2k words on them.
...I'm also glad I've finished the writing portion of that project and am now just doing editing on the final shorts in the series, but...
That's really cool to hear!
The story I've been working on started out as a bit of a Snow Globe with a single conflict on one small continent. That has since expanded to there being a whole world with eight continents and many other conflicts that my main cast isn't even involved with. No one travels West because the nations over there have been embroiled in war for centuries and everyone is afraid of that war spilling over into the East.
Thanks for the videos, I always appreciate them.
Thanks for watching!
So many wonderful tools! Looking forward to using as many as I can wrap my fever tetched brain around. 😊
Fantastic!
13 seconds in, I already know this is not an issue I have. My characters have always inhabited the setting, not the other way around. I can't even imagine the idea of building the world around the character.
That's great!
All the things! I need to write more. 😞
Your world needs you!
No, but I watched it anyway because you're fun.
Thanks!
Great topic! ❤
❤️❤️❤️
@WorldAnvil sharing your great content with my play group.
I'll have to watch this one a few times to see if it maters to my world. 🤔
Hope it's helpful!
I think that last problem (overly loyal secondaries) is what spoiled His Dark Materials for me. You could rename the series Everybody Loves Lyra. What's supposed to be an expanding multiversal story increasingly revolves around a character I never liked as much as Pullman does.
that's an interesting take about the series adaptation
@@WorldAnvil I should perhaps clarify I was referring to the novels, which were clearly meant to be very big and expansive, but come across as faintly petty, basically for the reason you suggest. I haven't had a chance to look at the TV adaptation yet as I keep having to write books about world-building in Game of Thrones.
This is an inspiration! I am totally making a world that evolves around Cai,the cabbage merchant!
Yip! Yip!
Valid option. 😆
I’m more worried about the other extreme from this. I’ve been worldbuilding for the last nine years and I’m just now starting to figure out the characters and story. If I’m not careful I’ll end up just like George RR Martin.
Don't wanna end up like one of our time's most successful authors, true.
That's worldbuilder's disease. We've got a video about that, too!
@@goji253 Yes don’t want to make my fans wait upwards of a decade for the second to the last installment and then use “ fascism” as a pathetic excuse as to why I am incapable of finishing my masterpiece.
Sam example is just wrong, he's not a supporting character, he's literally the hero of the story. The one who comes back.
It's a good point, but wrong example.
Dr. Watson is a better example for that, although it still lacks perfect loyalty.