WORLDBUILDING MISTAKES you don’t know you’re making

Loved your lesson you got a new subscriber

The video could use more structure, it feels chaotic and honestly this feels like video about world building phylosophy than mistakes.

Don't do THIS:

Great job

Stopped watching after "gender roles can be non existent".

❤❤

I am creating my own universe of Middle Earth since events from The Lord of the Rings never happened there. Videos like this one really help me in creating that universe. Great video. Also in my universe believe me or not Wednesday is 9th and last life of Durin 1. I might also remake Game of thrones at some point.

"Thanks, Ernie."
"F*** you."
Yeah, that checks out.

I was about to call my brother to ask him if that's how you solve a cube, but because you asked so nicely I'll let it slide for today

this is a super good video thank you:)

The first thing I think of when magic is introduced: So are the buildings made with magic? How did construction techniques evolve in a world where stone could be shaped with bare hands? Is wood more expensive because stone is easier to use? Would medieval poor housing even be ramshackle huts made of scrap or would they be simple mud cubes like a night 1 Minecraft house?
Do nails even exist?
It's such a simple train of thought but when you don't ask these questions there's a sense of diconnect when characters use magic to reshape mountains and yet live in a house that looks no different from a modern 3 bed 2 bath.

Hello, did you credit the thumbnail artist? :)

Worldbuilding is in service to the story you are telling, if you're writing a world setting book in D&D go nuts as long as you don't go over the page count, if you are writting a short horror story it's probably not gonna be very important, only write the things that are important to the story, each one is different, don't use worldbuilding as a excuse to procrastinate, tell your story, focus on the important stuff to make it interesting, don't fucking make spreadsheets and charts for soil density and the reproductive habbit of blue-haired red-tailed billyclub rabbits.

I don't understand why this guy has such a problem with undead dragons.

Just use real world stuff and create your world around it, like the invetion of electricity would have a completely diferent purpose of being invented if magic existed like, people could generate light but it used their owm energy and it was too tiring after a long time, so thomas edson came with the solution, energy generated by other thing than a human which would prevent future problems like electricity farms which use humans to produce energy

I love the image of the camps on the shattered plains, very pretty

It seems wonky to relate really well made stuff to a slapstick comedy anime, but Mashle has that "Well it's basically medieval but magic". The magic system is an entire comprehensive caste system, the most powerful are the highest ranking. The main character, who doesn't have any magic, is seen as weak and an untouchable, even though he's the most powerful.

Epic video dude! This helps a ton with world-building!

Love from a Vaush and NetNarrator fan!

Great video!!!!

Would it make the most sense, then, to begin world-building with cultures first, before trying to draw a map or something? Start with the people before the land.

what a load

without knowing every aspect of your own world, you will inevitably make mistakes and cause inaccuracies as you're neither perfect nor capable of remembering everything you've done.

Why is there a divide in a political faction? Well a hundred years previously an earthquake created a vast chasm between two parts of an empire and split them off, creating two parts and one is better off becuase a thousand years previously, a war with Elves doused the land in their blood, therefore making it far more fertile and crops grow easier.

You don't need to explain this as everyone knows but having those points written down along with the reason for that war and why it explains how the other people across the chasm have become far more dangerous and blood thirsty helps you to remain consistent.

Suggesting that people fake it is incredibly wrong footed.

So much of this is exactly what I love about the manga Girls Last Tour. On the last page it has a paragraph from the author. The first sentence saying "This world is so massive and complicated that many things will pass us by without us even knowing". The author speaks directly to us about the world they had created and the real world simultaneously. There's simply too much to know everything. By telling this to us at the end it helps ease us into accepting that the manga is over. No need for an epilogue, we don't need to know; let us fill in the dots.
Similar can be said for BLAME as that was a big influence for GLT.

even evolution does not make sense in this world its all assuming because we have the property

Took some notes ✍🏾

I guess it's something you learn with experience. Don't make more work for yourself when unnecessary, consider drastically different concepts in your fictional reality from the real one and what it would change, remember that it's all about escapism, not recreating our world someplace else.

This was a good video. You presented it in a direct and concise way and you also gave examples. I'm currently working on a few world building projects and your insights are helpful. Thanks.

I don’t remember where I got this tip, but it’s very useful, and it applies to more than D&D. In a Campaign, things have to be consistent. If you have a story about, say, a desert scavenger in a tattooine esque world, then in this campaign there can’t be a luscious jungle and sci-fi robots. It must stick to the theme and stay consistent.

The best part about all this is that if you have any ideas that don’t quite fit into your world you can save it for another time if the concept really sticks with you.

I suppose it's also important to keep in mind the way the world will be used and the target audience - for example, creating a world for a tabletop RPG, or even for a computer game, has somewhat different needs than for non-interactive media. I would say for interactive worlds, it makes sense to go with either the real world, or a well known fantasy world as a baseline, and then change a few major things and many details, but keep a lot of the stuff from the base you've picked. The reason is, your players need to make decisions, plan things, reason within the world, and for that they need to understand the world and know at least major things, and details specific to the situation. There's always a gap between what the players know and what their characters know (for example, you might be playing a wizard who read hundreds of magic books, but the player themselves didn't), or you might be playing a bard who knows hundreds of stories, but the player doesn't. This will always be the case. But you want to make this gap unimportant in practice, which means the players should know at least the information that is relevant in a given context. And the more unique your world is, straying away from all the well known fantasy worlds, the more information that will be.
An example would be designing a pantheon of gods for your world. If you simply take some Greek, Egyptian and Norse gods for example and rename them, maybe change some small details like who is related to whom and how they interacted in the past, but keep their personalities and domains intact, you can simply tell your players "Wololo, the god of thunder and forge, is basically Hephaestus with some aspects of Thor.", and they'll immediately know what to expect. In fact, you often don't even have to say it aloud (which might be a bit immersion breaking, since you are referencing things from outside your world by name). Usually it's enough that you say "Wololo is a god of thunder and forge, patron of blacksmiths, also revered by some warriors", and your players will immediately think "Ok, so he's kinda like Hephaestus and some other similar gods", you don't even have to say it. And that's usually good. This means you don't have to spend an hour explaining how your pantheon differs from the pantheons your players know from other worlds, before they can get a grasp. There may be exceptions - if your players want a game focused on religion, or just enjoy playing with a vastly different pantheon even if it means spending extra time to get familiar with it, but that would be the exception, not the rule.
And that applies to many other aspects as well. If you want your players to just 'jump in and play' in your world, without having to spend hours prepping, reading about the world and familiarizing themselves with it, and memorizing a lot of stuff, then making a world that will feel familiar to the players can be a big benefit.

Recommends Discworld, gets my upvote. :)

I was still impressed that you solved the cube like that.

The loosely stated Isach Hemingway theory was too loose and lost it. I have no idea what that head with a stick said.

That unnatural evolution idea is really cool

Thank you so much for this video!!! Some times it feels like I don't have a clue on what I'm doing when world building but, after watching it, I realized I already do a lot of this stuff without giving it some thought after I have been world building for a few years now. It feels validating! I am currently working on the deities for my setting since they, and the legends that have spawned from them, are focal points of my next pathfinder campaign!

In my fake worlds I never explain anything and call it magic because as soon as you know how it works it is no longer magical and it seems normal and basic (you don't have to do this but it's just what I do)

"What if I am writing sci fi and can't just magic things into my world?"
Solution: "Aliens ]...[ I still get my cool outlandish creatures."
This is a great video.
And yes, these are some rather common issues.

I myself usually take world building as a multi step process.
1st I outline the "basic" idea.
2ndly I overthink of how various aspects of said idea would interact and what consequences that would form.
3rdly I find solutions/fixes to the things that derail the world too far from what the original idea strived for.
4th is to just repeat step 2 and 3 until one is "satisfied", even if this can lead to an endless struggle for perfection. So perhaps limit yourself in some fashion.

Also, having a friend to toss ideas at and get feedback in response can be some major help.

Damn, the fact that the Cube changes almost every time you go to a new part of the video is brilliant.

“The world could actually be flat”

And on the back of four elephants that are on the back of an even more massive turtle

10 minutes of running water basically.
But maybe helpful for those who want to write their small story and call it a day.

I knew the audience can be dumb as fuck when they were yelling at me about the 3 chapter rule, which isn't a rule. my solution was to be preachy to an extent that it isn't mansplaining my world to them hahahaha. i have also been critiqued for my comic even though there is like only 4 chapters which was not enough to give valid criticism, showing how dumb an audience can be

I loved all the cubes metaphor

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

the problem, that you have a plan for a world and some characters, and the characters/world just saying "NOPE I'll do it my way!"...

i worldbuild not to make a story, i worldbuild to make a world

...so i can ignore some of your advice

You, sir, are awesome.

"this is the story, and this is world around it"
nuh uh... i first created wolrd, and now adding stories to it...

also that thing with magic, youre right... thats why in my world, there is no magic... or is there? Its called "chaos" and noone knows how it works...
Thats why there is "tharmaturgy" - "fake magic" which works like you expected, tharmaturgist have some artifact he found, that contains chaos, and he is using it to cast "spells" (letting chaos free) but once there is no more chaos in that item, tharmaturgist is no longer "magical"... and those few mages, who can use chaos, they mostly dont know what theyre doing... they just remembered "okay, when i do this, it does this" but it can work only on them, so when other mage will try it, nothing will happen... So mages created "runes" how does runes work? well, they mostly dont... theyre same as tharmaturgy, s o they need to access chaos somehow, how? well... like sacriface, like with "forbidden rune languae ZARA" you create rune, and to activate it you need blood of something that contains chaos... stronger the rune, more blood needed.... thats why these using it often have random scars on their body...
Other runes are used for example with Church of Fallen sun... they use crystals containing chaos (definitelly for slavery) and they will draw the runes into the crystals, to concentrate their poewer... etc...

sorry for my bad english, its not my native language... also i dont have any respect for that language

this is an inspiring video, it was really helpful for me, thank you