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[ijub]

I'll start

All of the coolest stuff in the setting already happened

[StrawBarrel]

A common world building issue I hear about is evil races. Writing an evil race is challenging, and when done incorrectly contribute to bad worldbuilding.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/AlwaysChaoticEvil
This tvtropes Analysis page gives some examples of how to avoid pitfalls.

[Iduno]

I'll start

All of the coolest stuff in the setting already happened

Especially when there's no real fallout from those things happening and/or the world has reached an unchanging state now.

[Loud Whispers]

So far we're off to a bad start, as both of those are top tier. How about excessive proper nouns? That one can fuck up your world building no matter the setting by overloading new ppl. No point having the best setting if people can't understand the significance of the Oog Nagarthai talking to the Jaghatai Samly about the long term Tongoska when it finally flim flams the Shatoosh

[Criptfeind]

All of the coolest stuff in the setting already happened

This is a weird one because I feel like this is actually super common in fictional settings and rarely called out as a bad idea. It feels like most fantasy settings had an age of gods and demons, dragons and archmages, great empires in the past that overshadowed anything in these days and Sci-fi settings are absolutely chocked full of ancient godlike aliens that no longer interact with the setting much for one reason or another, feels like half of star trek is the crew randomly bumping into some super technology from a bygone age. Heck as long as we're linking TV tropes there's a page for a trope that's not directly it but sorta a consequence of what you're talking about most of the time.

[nenjin]

All of the coolest stuff in the setting already happened

This is a weird one because I feel like this is actually super common in fictional settings and rarely called out as a bad idea. It feels like most fantasy settings had an age of gods and demons, dragons and archmages, great empires in the past that overshadowed anything in these days and Sci-fi settings are absolutely chocked full of ancient godlike aliens that no longer interact with the setting much for one reason or another, feels like half of star trek is the crew randomly bumping into some super technology from a bygone age. Heck as long as we're linking TV tropes there's a page for a trope that's not directly it but sorta a consequence of what you're talking about most of the time.

It's the flow of human mythic experience. What's old is mysterious and unknowable, so conceivably more impactful than what's happening right now (until the inevitable climax, at any rate.) Look at any religious mythic tradition. Even the Greek gods had a mythic backstory to themselves as gods, where shit was off the chain. Dudes coming out of thighs, gods eating each other. Madner. And then they just kinda sit around on their thrones or change into animals and what not to mess around with mortals. It makes that earthquake suddenly feel more meaningful in a religious/superstitious sense when it's like "Oh, this have must been what it was like when [insert Greek mythology anecdote here]."

I actually had this epiphany a few years ago with Warhammer 40k. For ~20 years I'd read about all the events and characters of the Horus Heresy, the period of time 10,000 years before the actual setting timeline and found it all quite fascinating particularly because it wasn't well documented.

Then a few years ago Games Workshop decides to start writing about the Horus Heresy for real and cranks out 2.4 million novels set during that time, and gives voice to all these characters that previously had only been described in mythic terms.....

And you know what? They became less interesting to me when they opened their mouths, made conversation, had personalities and gave reasons for their motivations. It was more interesting to imagine them than it was to meet them. Never meet your heroes, etc....

It's a pan-human psychological and cultural phenomenon I think. Are there any cultures that don't revere, venerate or at least respect their ancestors and the old ways? That don't build mythic traditions based on their history? Even America did it, with apocryphal tales about Washington, Lincoln, Paul Revere. Johnny Appleseed?

So I think it's common because it's the human experience. And in terms of narrative structure and story flow, I think we need that context to feel like the story we're reading is building to something, building back to that level of awesomeness and then surpass it.

I would make this analogy. You've never ridden in a car before. You get in one, and someone instantly goes to 100 / mph.

With no frame of reference, you'd think that's just how fast cars are.

But now take the same instance, and tell some stories about people doing 100 mph in the past, and how that's like "Woah." And how people back then knew how to drive 100 mph easy, but now people don't know how to do it so much anymore.

And then they take you for a ride and you hit 125 / mph.

There's a lot of reasons people do it that all work together and dovetail each other, but in my mind context is the biggest reason. If a story is always on the bleeding edge of everything in its world, I think it eating away at your suspension of disbelief.

Sorta like Sirus talking about reading LotR for the first time in the Amazing Cultivation Simulator thread. Although maybe his stance refutes my point, but he's like "Why did Tolkien create all this elaborate history for LotR when it wasn't super relevant to the story?" And I had the same answer there: to give context and that whiff of ancient mystery to the setting of Middle Earth. And tbh, while some of the stories of the 1st and 2nd Age are pretty cool, I sorta had the same problem there: reading directly about the mythic historical parts of Middle Earth actually kinda took away some of what made it cool to me.

[MrRoboto75]

All of the coolest stuff in the setting already happened

This is a weird one because I feel like this is actually super common in fictional settings and rarely called out as a bad idea. It feels like most fantasy settings had an age of gods and demons, dragons and archmages, great empires in the past that overshadowed anything in these days and Sci-fi settings are absolutely chocked full of ancient godlike aliens that no longer interact with the setting much for one reason or another, feels like half of star trek is the crew randomly bumping into some super technology from a bygone age. Heck as long as we're linking TV tropes there's a page for a trope that's not directly it but sorta a consequence of what you're talking about most of the time.

Recently I was reading a book series that was basically alt-history, where magic existed but was heavily regulated, generally kept away from the common people.  The first book revolved around the idea of commoner magic users fighting for the rights of using magic, with the historic backdrop of the French Revolution and the whole enlightenment age.

The first good chunk of the first book was... rather uneventful?  A lot of British parliament blockage on the abolishment of slavery, the French Revolution hasn't revolved yet, the main characters vacationing in Paris for seemingly no real reason...

Anyways, a big part of the background was the Vampire Wars, this universes version of the Hundred Years War.  Essentially France and England were ruled by powerful vampire kings that fought to bitter destruction, and ended up with a cross-European treaty banning all magic from warfare.  So for the first chunk of the book I was like, "Man I wish I were reading about THAT."

[Telgin]

Then a few years ago Games Workshop decides to start writing about the Horus Heresy for real and cranks out 2.4 million novels set during that time, and gives voice to all these characters that previously had only been described in mythic terms.....

And you know what? They became less interesting to me when they opened their mouths, made conversation, had personalities and gave reasons for their motivations. It was more interesting to imagine them than it was to meet them. Never meet your heroes, etc....

I'm getting a touch off topic by following this line of thought, but generally speaking I think it's risky to start answering too many questions in settings with much mystery to them.  You risk giving bad answers to those questions when the fans might have been much happier speculating on it.

Maybe it's not the best example, but the first example that comes to mind is what happened to the setting of Alien after Prometheus was released.  Alien set everything up with the premise that some ancient alien civilization built a deadly bioweapon and presumably wiped themselves out with it in ancient history.  We stumbled across the remains long after they were gone and suffered for it.

Prometheus decided to come back and change it so that those ancient aliens, who originally were like 8 meters tall and only vaguely humanoid, were now a species of 2.5 meter tall Handsome Squidwards who actually engineered humanity and maybe even made the xenomorphs to get rid of us.  But then Prometheus had to cut so much from the final version you really don't know much of what's going on, so maybe it's not a great example.  And maybe most Alien fans don't feel like I do, but I felt like it was a terrible backstory to the xenomorph and that we'd have been better off if we just never got an answer.

Then Alien: Covenant came along and implied that one of our own synthetics actually made the xenomorphs and I just don't even anymore.

[scriver]

The world is the Norse mythology world where the world was made from pieces of Ymir's body, except not symbolically: the world you live in is literally pieces of his literal body

[NRDL]

Actual terrible worldbuilding:

Dividing populations or civilisations into really uniform, arbitrary segments. YA Novels love this shit.

Obviously mileage may vary. But for me, having actual chaotic, organic-feeling civilizations and communities gives a lot more opportunity for interesting individuals, conflicts, ideologies, etc.

[scriver]

The pore classes must unite and overthrow the navel oppressors that keep them separated

[Starver]

Actual terrible worldbuilding:

Dividing populations or civilisations into really uniform, arbitrary segments. YA Novels love this shit.

Obviously mileage may vary. But for me, having actual chaotic, organic-feeling civilizations and communities gives a lot more opportunity for interesting individuals, conflicts, ideologies, etc.

They tend to be very Rock-Paper-Scissors, too (or Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock) with any superiority of one 'guild' or 'faction' technically vulnerable to some plucky-underdog quality that's only suppressed due to historic imbalance (possibly a then-coup, or a rise willingly agreed to due to circumstances, by the current (de facto?) governing lot). It can be seen prominently in wide examples of fiction such as the Minbari in Babylon 5, the world of Divergence, the Avatar[1] societies.

Usually the initially (once the story is set up) is solved by a 'saviour' from either the most suppressed element (by caste-like inevitability or 'sorting hat'-like assessment) or even totally outside the apparently stable system (but maybe assumed 'lesser element'-aligned upon arrival, if only because no-one else deigns to claim them) who agitates somehow. Maybe by being omni-capable (the Avatar-type, always intended to balance things) or unusually able to form cross-faction alliances (also Avatar, perhaps, but there are even better examples) to assemble the Captain Planet meta-power to re-balance the unbalanced.

Not that an RPS system is bad world-building (however many elements, 3, 4, 5, 9[9] you use), but it can be a lazy shortcut. I've previously concocted a Bastard Mod mafia game (not on this forum), based on tripartate circular-supremacy, that failed more due to my inability to justify the seemingly conflicting results and interests. I've also got a long-standing universe-simulating project (or possible game, but never to be released publicly, I suspect, given it's been 30 years since I first came up with the concept) that uses a handy colourspace shortcut to three different tendencies (let's call them War, Growth and Subtlety). In my case, at least, it's a contrived system for the sake of a system, and could be considered tuned just to set up the problem that then needs solving.

Not that it need be done badly, either, but it does do a lot of the work in a story that (for young minds, especially) need incredibly well-differentiated factionating from the off. The Hogwarts Houses' split (another even-numbered system, perhaps more black-vs-white than others but even then not absolutely so) creates the factionalisation missing (or at least easily subverted) in the more dynamic and variously stratified Sunnydale High environment.

Creators may have many different reasons for setting up the system to play in (design to justify the plot, extract the plot from the worldgen conclusion of the design, or many other interpretations) but it can be/seem much too curated and contrived at times.


(Surprised to see this in General, as I flicked through. Though quickly realised it wasn't an Upper Forums subject at all, and maybe not (after all) entirely a Creative Projects discussion. Depending on where the conversation leans.)


[1] a) not the sci-fi one, SFAIK; b) unusually based on four factions, at least on the surface/until later.

[9] Not quite as described, but the Weiss/Hickman creation of the Darksword world had nine 'magical' affiliations, but it was more 3D with seven 'standard' magical specialities plus "Life" (magical conduit class, seemingly powerless but necessary for greater magic than could be unfolded by a single specialist, who had become the supreme priest-class government because of supply and demand) and "Death" (actually "Technology", but long banned and all-but-destroyed, because... likewise... it could theoretically enable a different kind of greater works outwith the control of the Life lot; and faction-independently, because anybody can use something as simple as a lever rather than get an Air-specialist to arrange a levitation, or use medicinal concoctions rather than Water-aligned healing-touch, and none of this needs Life to be involved). Still, you can see the definite workings of the intended balance/imbalance of setting to it.

[ChairmanPoo]

I find fantasy counterpart cultures asinine. I mean it cant be avoided to an extent, but when overdone is usually dumb as fuck and borders unfortunate implications.

Star wars does this quite often. For instance: There are at least three jewish stereotype stand-ins. One of them in particular is both stupid and almost uncomfortable to watch

[scriver]

Not that it need be done badly, either, but it does do a lot of the work in a story that (for young minds, especially) need incredibly well-differentiated factionating from the off. The Hogwarts Houses' split (another even-numbered system, perhaps more black-vs-white than others but even then not absolutely so) creates the factionalisation missing (or at least easily subverted) in the more dynamic and variously stratified Sunnydale High environment.

I always assumed the Harry Potter houses was build on English boarding school culture, if with a magical twist

[Starver]

I always assumed the Harry Potter houses was build on English boarding school culture, if with a magical twist

Well, yes (which - in my mind - is the most lazy part of the Potter franchise, being a copy of a longstanding cliché), and not just boarding schools (my own 'normal' school had different colour-and-black striped ties for the 'houses', albeit identical school uniform otherwise, though they got rid of the system in my era as more trouble than it was worth).

But while there may be subtly different aggregate qualities between IRL houses. e.g. Blue House is a bit more sporty, Red House seems always to win debates, while Yellow House tends to triumph in inter-house essay competitions and Green House might not excel at much but rarely gets given a demerit so does not necessarily comes bottom in the rankings - as a generic example - this would cycle and change as 'leadership' and particular pupils (or staff!) leave and no longer enact their own brand of learnt guidance and maybe (or maybe they don't) have similar successors. Perhaps Yellow gain a better sports-captain/players than Blue is now left with, blah-de-blah.

There were reputations, but it wasn't permanent and fateful, unlike (hat-reinforced) the inevitable flavouring. At least in any real school that I have heard enough about to judge. Hogwarts is far more contrived, just like elsewhere there's Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless and Erudite (also with a Sorting Hat mechanic to it!).

It's there as a handy shortcut and simplifier. A bit more complex than Black Hats and White Hats in westerns (and beige/whatever for the bystanders, townsfolk, etc) which is so clichéd as to probably be more subverted than observed these days (even direct inversion is old <Whatever-hue> Hat!). IRL, the "Are we the baddies?" indicators and results are probably not going to survive the overview of any fair-dealing non-partisan school leadership (or else be nurtured across them all by the less competent/fair type).

Which is why I say it's a design decision to enable (bits of) plot. Sunnydale, as mentioned, had threats either from individuals (pupil, teacher, outsider) or cliques (the nerds probably did the most internal-threatening, as a group) but it took a coalition of talents (the Scoobies) to deal with everything, rather than just "Buffy punch!" every time, but also Willow's research (arcane or computerised), Xander's perserverence/luck/whatever, and so on, according to the latest (reliable) alliances for a given episode and MOTW.

Harry really doesn't get too many Slitherin supporters, as they and their wider-world grouping become the obvious powermongers of the saga (and with a history of it), and the other three houses/non-Death-Dealing-externals should have long ago stopped humouring that academic faction, or so you'd think, and disbanded that polarising element of the academy. "Better the Evil Sadistic Wizard you know?", was it? Yeah, plot-driver, not 'realistic'.

Whether or not the resulting story is good or not is not relevent (I'd give it points for scale and forethought), this is still one of my main comments about it.