In the beginning...
First of all, dear reader, whoever you may be, welcome to Weirdward Ways. I'm Thom. Thank you for scouring through the web for this blog, clicking a link, or most likely stumbling upon it by pure chance. Something has brought you here. I don't want to get too deep into introductions or anything like that, but a small celebration is in order. You see, this is my very first post on my very first blog and, chances are, you are one of my very first readers. I probably do not know you, and we will never meet, but I feel like there's something very special to all of this. Forces are at work, dearest reader. So let me repeat myself: thank you. I hope you enjoy my content moving forward, should you be inclined to keep following this blog.
My plan for Weirdward Ways is ill-defined and somewhat oneiric. The general theme, to put it in one word, is Fantasy. Vague, I know. To narrow it down a bit, most of what I will be writing about is speculative tabletop gaming (specifically OSR content, though other forms of the medium will be discussed as well), but also books, shows, films, art, documentaries, music, and the various ways all these strange and wonderful things intersect within the cavernous halls of human imagination.
Still vague, huh? Let's leave it like that; it's more fun.
We should probably move on to the actual post now.
A Godlike Hoax
Worldbuilding is a charlatan's art. It is an incomplete con, a flimsy house of cards, a series of small dots on an infinite white canvas. Worldbuilding is the Achilles Paradox put to paper, and for every city you invent, for every sea you form, there will always be an unquenchable void, ever present in the liminal spaces between your creations. In a true world, between every shore are miles of rolling hills. Between those hills are countless blades of grass. Between the blades is weighted space, a universe made of molecules and atoms and physical laws that we can only attempt to replicate.
And so we lie to make up for our incompetence.
Fiction is a hoax, after all, and worldbuilders are scoundrels by nature. We are no gods. We are just dreamers, idlers, head-in-the-clouders. We have no true powers. No ability to mold mountains out of stone, and mold Dwarves out of mountains. We cannot invent gravity, and time, and space, and matter. We can only simulate it. The world we build in our own heads, in our messy notebooks, on our google docs is nothing but a fake plastic scaffolding for a true universe. A blueprint filled with a whole bunch of nothing.
It is through the act of sharing that our world becomes something more than a complete failure.
It is our audience's mental eye that fills in the countless blanks left by our mortal limitations. Be it a reader or a player, once they participate in our world, they are in on our scam. They become our accomplices is this godlike hoax. Their own imaginations do all the heavy lifting that we were too lazy to see through in the first place. Now, the city takes sound and color. The ocean roars, each wave a tiny storm of its own. The civilians on the street shuffle about, chatting, each with their own problems and worries. Dragons in the sky, Demons in the depths, and all things in between. Everything is full, thanks to our reader. The world is no longer broken and empty, but it has weight and it has mass and it has sunsets and sunrises and rainclouds, and anything else the reader decides to put there.
We merely planted the seed. Storytelling, like gardening, is by necessity a collaborative experience.
The Purpose of These Posts
All of this, of course, does not mean we can leave everything up to our audience. Remember, we are trying to trick them into helping us build our world. We cannot expect them to help us for free, that would be too easy. That would not be fiction. So here's my proposition with this little series of posts: I want to create a world from scratch. Something detailed and profound, something that feels real on paper and on the tabletop. I want my oceans to feel briny and deep. My mountains grand, my cities strange. I want it all to make sense, and follow rules that my players can recognize, even on a subconscious level. From geology, to meteorology, to anthropology, to mythology, we will learn how to manipulate these forces in the act of worldbuilding.
I also want it to feel strange. Magical, mystical, arcane, and dangerous. More on that in the future.
I will document my progress with this project on this blog through this series, "The Godling's Task," and I would be honored, dearest reader, if you tagged along and made your own world, a sister to my own, alongside me. It is a daunting journey, and I would love some company. We are gonna learn the tricks of the trade, and figure out how to make our readers fall for our epic scheme.
And if we fail, at least we tried.
So, step one.
The first question I will be asking myself, before placing mountains or oceans, is "what am I trying to make my players believe?" What lies am I telling my audience? What fantasies are true in this fictional world? What are our speculation, our inspirations, our tone, our genre, our "what if?" Also an essential question: "what will this world feel like?" What will it look like? Colors, light, darkness, shapes, lines. How does it all interact. Smells and sounds, heat and cold.
The answer to these question is possibly the most important part of the long process ahead. This is the seed of our world. Everything else is the elaborate prank that will trick the reader into helping this seed sprout.
I have thought of this for a while, and I came up with a list of major inspirations, as well as a few thematic choices and speculations. Here is a hint to one of my many inspirations:
SUPER HECKIN COOL!
I encourage you to think of a few of your own. This is the phase of worldbuilding in which we steal big time. We steal ideas, concepts, moods, aesthetics. The seed of our world sprouts from other creations. That, in many ways, is the underlying truth of any artistic enterprise: theft. Art is a crime, baby. So, make a list of things that just drive you crazy, that give you goosebumps, that keep your mind active even after you are years done with them. Make a list of books, games, songs, shows, drawings, sculptures, poems that YOU wish YOU had created, and get ready to steal.
We will start with those next time.
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