World creating vs story creation

[Cait]

World creating vs story telling

What is the difference? when you build a world, you are creating cultures, people, history, but never in too much detail in case, you want to go back to that period. You can always enrich the world by going some where else in the world and not necessarily within the same time period, either for another game. But how to begin?

Step 1: Explore other possibilities
HOW: You can accomplish this, but not only exploring modern day countries, but reading up on history, or just by watching the history channel. See how other people thought, and what their culture was like. We do things a lot a like, but not always. When you explore other possibilities, you expand your own mind and it will be added to your world.

I consider all the ideas that go into my idea pot like I would a stew pot, the more ideas in there the better the ideas will taste. Ideas mixing in with each other, forming new ideas in the process.

Step 2: Drop the progress idea
There is no such thing as primitive societies, they are always modern. If you were to ask a man in the 1700s, he would say he was a modern man, not a historical man. Technology has always existed in one form or another, like did you know that Rome came close to being the first ones to use steam power? If they had only went one step further than what they were doing already; it could have happened. Elevators have existed for a long time, it's only a progression of that elevator. We didn't go from primitive to advanced, we slowly progressed and then, fell, progressing again. o.o It's not one jump from stone age to the computer age without any dips in it.

Step 3: Learn more about other forms of things that we call religion today.
I mean, learn more about what you can about ancient religions, but this one you might have to just get some idea from. The one true religion isn't exactly true when you do a religious comparison study, you find they all have the same ideas. Of course, religion might come up in step one, but I mean, to study their pantheon. the order in which a society placed the gods were what they felt was more important.

Step 4: Evil government, good rebels
Uh, there is no such thing as evil, so this is a joke. When you are creating a system, some systems are better than others, if a government represses the people, eventually they will rise up and destroy that government. I would suggest looking back at all the ancient forms of government. Like Norway, had a class of nobles, but their king was elected from the nobles and had to be supported by the nobles. But did you know in order to become a noble, you had to own land for a certain amount of time and you had to be married? o.o WOW! That is a lot different than the way we do it now.

Step 5: multicultural - uh, where are the.... people?
this is the one issue that's a bit sticky in that our world is less tolerant to even discussing it. There were no multicultural states, they died out pretty quickly. BUT there were travelers, subjects (subjects are people who live in an area, but not citizens; they don't have as much rights as a citizen. However, they are afford certain amount of protection which I am not sure about.) There were also people who went from their birth land to new lands, declaring their loyalty to the king of that nation. Most people, however, did not move around. I won't go further into this issue.

That being said, I would love to see more game with wide variety of places, people and possibilities. o.o' Of course, I would like it if people created a group of RTP characters of different ethics without just changing the color of the skin and hair. Each people have a different look, and it isn't doing anyone justice by doing that. Just saying, you know!

Step 6: Class, don't like, but you have to accept it! It's real, despite all claims otherwise.
There are quite a few classes and the name vary place to place.
Shadow - These people often have no status, they are not acknowledge, likely they've been banished or exiled.
Peasant The lower class, these people work hard and long hours. This does not mean that they have no skills, just that they stay where they are.
Middle class - Merchant class, or business man, rich man, these people work for money.
Nobles - Nobles have always been for the preservation of society, but at times, they've forgotten their goal in society, becoming just as bad as the middle class. Greedy and such.

Of course, there are people who separate the priestly class from the warrior class (as is the case in INDIA). I would investigate how different people did class systems, it's the order of society and many people had such systems for a long time. o.o You know it's all about expanding your mind.

Steps 7: your characters (finally, right?)
Your characters should be varied, each have their own reasons for being on the journey, but not necessarily matching the same reason. For you characters, I would explore not only different various myths from different lands, but if you don't like to do that much exploring, Joseph Campbell's: "HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES" is an excellent read. I highly suggest it.

Conclusion: When you build a world, you are able to pull any spot in time and place, creating a game, rather than one giant world saving quest, you have a series that will you will die before you ever exhaust the possibilities. I know this is long, but one of my favorite things to do has been to world build, been doing it for a while. As you pratice, you see other possibilities easier and easier as time goes on. (^_^) So why not explore Asia, but at the same time, why not explore ancient Europe, the middle east, south America. >.> <.< I'd say America, but we're B-O-R-I-N-G! Have a great day and sorry this was so long, but it's really full of (I hope) great information. :rock:

 

[glorious caesar]

im gonna give you a lengthy reply soon but first i've got two comments:

1 i think this would be better suited to game design articles than rpgmaker tut's and i'm sure someone will be getting around to moving it soon.

also:

I'd say America, but we're B-O-R-I-N-G!

reported for treason

 

[Cait]

o.o Yeah, well, compared to everyone else in the world, we're toddlers. When was the last time you got into a serious discussion with a toddler? I say wait a few hundred years and we'll be just as interesting as everyone else. I put it in tutorials, because it isn't as easy to create a world, a lot goes into it. You have a lot to think about to make a complex world, with cultures and countries that are not simple like most RPG maker games. I mean, I see countries with simple countries and no country is simple. The magic kingdom, the mining kingdom, the tyrant kingdom (or empire). I don't like world saving, but I think it's best if people did what the professionals are having mostly trouble doing: world creating. Which is why I created something, but I suppose it could easily go in discussion. The problem with this kind of thread is so ifie where to put it. Is it a tutorial because it's telling you what you should do or better suited as a discussion?

I'll leave that in the hands of the moderators. (Which I am thankful that I am not!) I suppose you COULD research the United states, but ('o.o) I find the US completely boring after the 1700s. ....It's like a cute kitten or an infant, you're in love with them when they're young, but bam, the dreaded two's hit and you're like "Uh, can we go back in time?" Yup, that's me and American history after the 1700s. Of course, I love with the ancient past and the far future, anything other than the time and country I live in NOW! If you saw the place I grew up in, you'd completely understand. I live in a boring state, which I won't mention, because I know there are other people that live here. (*cough, Colorado, cough*)

I suppose it all goes down to this advice: "Keep an open mind to the possibilities and learn to explore a story from many angles, not just the one from the heroes".

 

[So fist]

Uh, there is no such thing as evil, so this is a joke.

Deliciously naive moral relativism at its worst. Moral relativism is a fine philosophy if you're discussing issues of ethnocentrism and generalized classicism but history and realpolitik laughs its ass off at it. An old saying, "If you stand for nothing you'll fall for anything." If you choose moral relativism as the absolute central value with which to view the world you in effect stand for nothing because of the endless rationalization of the most inexplicable and abhorrent behavior of history's most notorious butchers and slavers that such a viewpoint would require. Under what prism can you accept, mass persecution, wholesale slaughter, beyond the pail butchery under the clause of, "if you understood their culture and background you'd see their behavior as acceptable or understandable?" Certainly evil or the abhorrent is not something that is easily cut and dry, and indeed all leaders and cultures have their moments of necessary dirty work.

Perhaps it's the unnecessary dirty work that may be what defines evil for a state. The rape of an entire city to demonstrate national dominance and "keep morale up" (Nanking), the systematic extermination of whole peoples for the arbitrary sake of ideology (jews, kulaks, gypsies, Tutsis), and the administration of a hysteria driven police state apparatus to incarcerate and execute millions (NKVD, Angkar, SS + Gestapo). While there are many out there that try and do right by their own values, there are people who are sociopathic and maniacally egotistical. People who would sew children together, perform operations on them without anasthesia, and inject dyes and chemicals into their wakeful eyeballs, and then go on to spend the rest of their days hiding from justice while utterly convinced of their righteousness and humanity (Dr. Mengele). And while in Dr. Mengele's time eugenics was a popular school of thought for social engineering you'd be hard pressed to find any, especially fellow surgeons who took the same oaths as he, who would say that his methodology was ethical or remotely justifiable. There is a line somewhere and if you don't choose to place one you risk becoming the sycophant of butchers and madmen. That is, if you're lucky enough.

 

[Cait]

There really isn't any such thing as good and evil, but I do say that there are good ideas/bad ideas. what one people will consider good, another evil. I mean, how do you think the lambs will describe the wolves? It's time you think beyond good and evil in games, I prefer to think in terms of protagonist and antagonist. People whose sphere of influence overlap, and in order to keep things as they are, must fight. o_o Nothing personal, but no one EVER says that they are evil; they are doing it because they think it's the right course of action. We're all trying to create the ultimate supervillain and there is no such thing; only human beings.

we do wrong, but we can only act with what we know at the time. What's good for the city, the people, within that place. war is hell, the god of war was disliked for a reason and that's why. no evil act, just men who made quite a few mistakes. No, it's time we think protagonist and antagonist, with countries fighting because of real reasons countries go to war: overlapping influence (two countries claiming the same thing). You expand the nature of conflict, you find more conflict than if you were trying to make one all evil.

people don't like change, they want it to stay the same. good times, plenty of money, power.... they don't want it to change and that drives people to do the things they do.

 

[So fist]

I find the US completely boring after the 1700s.

Yeah pretty doldrums if you ask me, what with the Civil War and eventually US growth into a gigantic superpower and several international wars to boot. We invented flight at some point, too. That was pretty lame.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

I find the US completely boring after the 1700s.

Yeah pretty doldrums if you ask me, what with the Civil War and eventually US growth into a gigantic superpower and several international wars to boot. We invented flight at some point, too. That was pretty lame.

Man and that space race with the Russians. And going to the moon. That shit just puts me to sleep. Pacific theater of WWII, PUHLEAZE can we get any more boring.

 

[So fist]

There really isn't any such thing as good and evil, but I do say that there are good ideas/bad ideas. what one people will consider good, another evil. I mean, how do you think the lambs will describe the wolves? It's time you think beyond good and evil in games, I prefer to think in terms of protagonist and antagonist. People whose sphere of influence overlap, and in order to keep things as they are, must fight. o_o Nothing personal, but no one EVER says that they are evil; they are doing it because they think it's the right course of action. We're all trying to create the ultimate supervillain and there is no such thing; only human beings.

A famous American quote comes to mind: "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." You are mistaking what one may try to justify to themselves and others to be their own authentic reason/motivation for doing what is and should be considered reprehensible as a sole motivator rather than something they go to for the sake of vanity and guilt deference. Where was such patriotic pride over the butcher's act when they saw justice? Many turned to point fingers at others above them, or denied a hand in such misdeeds, or destroyed evidence that showed culpability, or fled to live in hidden obscurity. Would not a true patriot stand up to scoff at the victor's court to lay bare the perfect reasoning for their "crimes"? Would they not bear the evidence with pride rather than hide behind denial had they a clear conscience? People like Mengele fled to avoid facing themselves. For considering what their victims and unfortunate underlings already knew. That what motivated and attracted them to the worst of their endeavors was a combination of sadism, utter egotism, and fanciful lunacy clothed in patriotism and the common good. That their crimes made them more similar to Ted Bundy than they did to Charlemagne.

we do wrong, but we can only act with what we know at the time. What's good for the city, the people, within that place. war is hell, the god of war was disliked for a reason and that's why. no evil act, just men who made quite a few mistakes. No, it's time we think protagonist and antagonist, with countries fighting because of real reasons countries go to war: overlapping influence (two countries claiming the same thing). You expand the nature of conflict, you find more conflict than if you were trying to make one all evil.

Let's see what Mengele knew at the time. He knew that cutting people open with surgical equipment without anasthesia would likely kill them in a grisly painful death. He knew it would be easier to do it with anasthesia since they wouldn't squirm so much. He knew his colleagues considered human experimentation of this nature to be considered monstrous and sadistic. He knew his experimentation wouldn't likely yield any useful short term results relevant to his people's paramount struggles (the war). Yet he continued with each new experiment increasing in levels of sadism and bizarreness. But why rush to judgment that he took pleasure in such torture. Surely we can trust his living of Ted Bundy's wildest fantasies as a simple outgrowth of his patriotism and desire to do good for his people, and not some sick self indulgent pursuit to feel powerful through acts of sadism (like Ted Bundy did).

Second plenty of wars are sparked on ideological grounds as well: The crusades, almost every revolution in history, the thirty years war, WWII, etc. The dimension of evil in a character is not something that makes them flat or lack complexity. Lack of any believable detail, driving force, motivation, psychology that creates the character as an individual is what causes that. Idiotic rationalization and centralization of evil on the part of the story is what creates that cartoon villain jrpg effect. Yes there are a lot of everymen out there, who mean well and act accordingly. There are also a few Ted Bundy's out there who are driven by their own personal demons to do harm. Anyway I wasn't commenting from a writing view, I was commenting from as a general world view. Total moral relativism is at best a worthless exercise in sycophancy in the face of people that do not respect the value of human dignity.

Anyway villains who are believably fleshed out are easily interesting if not more interesting than your day to day johnny everyman. The trick is they need qualities that allow them to be redeeming in some way so that we can be duped into being charmed by them. So that we can see our neighbor or boss for a moment before we see the monster beneath. You just need to make sure that monster isn't something that doesn't fit with the character so as to lose the suspension of disbelief. Villains can steal the entire story and be the best characters: Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men), Iago (Othello), Cpl. Hans Landa (Inglorious Bastards), Waleran (Pillars of the Earth)... I could keep going but you get the point. All these villains are complex and really dominate their shows with their personas that are decidedly evil and self serving.

 

[Cait]

Let me summarize it for you, when you remove the glasses of looking at something as good or evil; you are more able to look at situations with no emotions and see where things went wrong or right. There are correct courses of actions that have resulted in terrible situations, and wrong that lead to something good. But when you removed labeling countries as good or evil, you must begin to see them as human beings doing the best the can. Yeah, there are people who are faulty human beings from what they do, their reasoning, but when you label them, you are judging through emotional reasons. No, I am saying to dump the evil/good nations and see countries not as you would people. No more evil empire, no more kind good small empire, but two groups of people fighting it out for overlapping reasons. I am suggesting that we dig deeper into conflict other than the almighty good country against the evil empire. To look much deeper into the human psyche than we ever have and see human faults, with some form of reality in the mix: real human reactions. If you understand human reactions, you can place your game in any time and with knowledge of their beliefs, you might be able to put yourself into that time period, thus enabling your player to do the same. You would no longer be an outsider in the world, but truly emerged into the game world. People who are the VILLAINS would have to grow, expand into beyond evil, into human being with real life feelings and reasons (good, bad).

What separates a super hero from a super villain? ....... They each have a power, but one went to serve mankind while the other went to serve his own self interests, desires, urges for power, and would sell or kill his mother to get what he wants. A super villain has the same potential as the super hero, but it's the choices that one makes in his or her life that will determine which way they walk. Do you serve yourself or others, and just because you serve yourself, doesn't mean that you're an immoral person (which is basically EVIL, if you go to askoxford, you see the word immoral), but you are someone that most people may not want to be around. o.o I hope you understand what I'm saying, but I'm through looking at people through the good/evil glasses and countries I've removed it altogether. But we can learn from our mistakes and other people's mistakes, that's why we have history books. That's why we learn history to learn, it's not about facts or figures, but the stories that have been passed down.

The last century has all been about good and evil, it only made our world chaotic. It was a way of making people react in a certain way, so they wouldn't think, debate, but mostly react out of a emotional reason. But I do not want this to be about anything other than world creating, and looking deeper into the world, and humanity. (_ _) Thank you and I'm sorry we had this misunderstanding and I do additional say that I began to really understand "VILLIANS" when I removed those glasses. I had trouble with why people behaved in a certain way. WHY? Well, with them removed, I do know now why they act that way.

 

[So fist]

When are you going to debate me instead of some straw man you'd like to debate?

Let me summarize it for you, when you remove the glasses of looking at something as good or evil; you are more able to look at situations with no emotions and see where things went wrong or right.

Character means that the person derives his rules of conduct from himself and from the dignity of humanity. Character is the common ruling principle in man in the use of his talents and attributes. Thus it is the nature of his will, and is good or bad. A man who acts without settled principles, with no uniformity, has no character. A man may have a good heart and yet no character, because he is dependent upon impulses and does not act according to maxims. Firmness and unity of principle are essential to character. ~Immanuel Kant

Good or evil are not delineations based on emotion. They are delineations based on decided principles that are coexistent with the natural dignity given to life. Your idea that it only stems from emotional sensibilities that you like to pretend yourself free of is both childish and naive and reeks of hubris.

I am saying to dump the evil/good nations and see countries not as you would people. No more evil empire, no more kind good small empire, but two groups of people fighting it out for overlapping reasons.

Hi straw man nice to meet you. You're making a baseless assumption that my own decisions of having some principles makes me lump nations and individuals into stereotypes based on spurious and short inquiry. You are also making the grave error of looking at nation/states by the traditional (in the sense that this was diplomatic scholarship of the 18th century) and radically outdated rational actor view which is a really shallow way of looking at the nation state. A nation is never, never, one group of people. Nations are organizations that consist of various factions, powerful individuals, and trend phenomenons (ideological movements + popular social trends) that compete or cooperate to pull them into various directions. Even in the most totalitarian of regimes this principle is true. A nation is not inherently anything but the complex machinery of all these interests and phenomenons.

The last century has all been about good and evil, it only made our world chaotic.

Yeah up until now everything was so elegantly organized and peaceful. We weren't like that other planet that had all those barbarian invasions that destroyed whole peoples, Pax Romanum at the point of a sword, slave trade of indigenous Africans, the calamitous thirteenth century, various plagues, and insert random period of political instability and violence here.

Second, the most cruel and horrific attrocities of this past century were perpetrated by people who's moral philosophies reject the principle of Good and Evil. The Nazis were embracers of Nietzsche in ways that he would never have wanted. They wanted to destroy the Judeo-Christian morality that celebrated free will and the dignity of human life to replace it with one that worshipped racial power through eugenics. The Soviets embraced moral relativism and rationalized away all their crimes as for the good of the proletariat. The Khmer Rouge were similar to the Soviet's. All of them embraced an equation that ends justified the means even though their pursuit of those ends stripped them of their humanity and, to quote Watchmen, erected a "heaven populated with horrors." The fact in of itself that they don't think of themselves as evil and justify to themselves constantly of the value of these despairing works is hardly comforting, in itself useful as an explanation, or complex enough an analysis to understand the nature of these individuals and events. The idea that you would think that having principles that would say that there is an inherent dignity value to human life somehow blinds me to the complexity of these people is naive and myopic. In fact my values also confers the ability to view them with the same amount of dignity and look for the person rather than the caricature. But being a person doesn't acquit them of the monstrous things they've done. And acknowledging those crimes as monstrous does not preclude me from understanding the various forces at works within their psyche. In fact it impels me to understand why a University educated, well spoken, clean cut, married, man from a middle class upbringing with no history of violence or familial instability, would perform vivisections (like a dissection only without the subject being dead) on children and women. Especially to do so with no compelling force from the Reichstag (his only official job was to create selection lists and maintain camp health safety). The decision was his alone.

Anyway I merely brought up the more modern attrocities as they occured in an era where the moral values of contemporaries are pretty similar to our own.

WHY? Well, with them removed, I do know now why they act that way.

It's very easy to get along with people when you are unwilling to take a stand on a principle. Ask Neville Chamberlain. Seriously how does a man who comes home to brutalize and rape his wife on a regular basis become excused because he feels powerless in his life due to working in a sweat shop and his horrible upbringing featuring a daddy who used to drink and put cigarettes out on his back. At a certain point circumstance does not excuse violating someone else's human dignity. And if you aren't willing to make that kind of stand then well, it speaks volumes doesn't it.

Anyway a character can be uniquely deep and individual but judged decidedly evil and still be believable, because well there are people in our own experience that demonstrate that lack of regard for human dignity and life.

 

[Cait]

Okay, here it is. Upon looking up the definition of the word: EVIL. (Askoxford, because it's one of the best sites and group that I know of.) said that it meant: "profoundly immoral and malevolent" You notice that little thing called immoral, so what does immoral mean? so I looked that up as well. "not conforming to accepted standards of morality" Hmm, interesting how it doesn't so far state anything about criminal, but morality. I wonder what morality or morals are. "concerned with or derived from the code of interpersonal behavior that is considered right or acceptable in a particular society" Morality has is this is in fact society morality and law have nothing to do with each other. As such it changes from period to period, based on feeling, irrational human beings. Which means you are basing your villain on society morality, shallow and no shades of gray whatsoever.

That means you are not really have villains, because society believes a lot of things to be wrong, but to state these people are evil merely because they do not conform to accepted standards of society is wrong, irresponsible. You can clearly see that this line of reasoning is akin to heretic, heathen.... The truth is we act according to our desires, what we know, and sometimes we make the right choices, wrong choices for various reasons. Yeah, and sometimes, you look at a person and hate them for what they do. But me, I am looking at the behavior of a person and not judging those people on an emotional level. I try, but every now and then, I fail, too. Was the last century worse than the others? Yeah.

First of all, we shoved our nose into everyone's business, those we didn't like or didn't like what they decided to do, we declared evil. Just like there are rose colored glass, there are what I deem evil glass, you see everything in shades of black and white. no debates, no ethic issues. An hero is only challenged by someone on the other side who is equally as powerful, in his beliefs. A villain is someone who chose to do things another way, not that his opinion, view or reasons for starting out were wrong. It's the way we get there, that will determine if did things the right way or the wrong way. But anyway, what else do you think about the article?

The idea of creating a world, or as in the case of the legend of Zelda, it created a Kingdom. That's what I'd like to see more of. Less world saving plot, insane criminal villains and just a story of two people (you're really telling two stories and I think that many people are forgetting the tale of the villain.) who is he? Why is he doing what he's doing? It all comes down to a dislike of change, desire (Power, greed)

Power can take the form of many things (control over ones life, power in the case of ruling).
Greed is desire, to have things that isn't yours.
And of course, there is blood lust. Blood lust is when hurting people, killing people excites you. These people are rare for a reason and to have millions of games with these people, they lose their strength as characters. YOU SAY Joe Somebody is boring in an RPG, but why not Joe Somebody? Most people wouldn't want to leave their safe home to go fight anything, but what would drive someone to do just that?

In the end, you can see why I don't believe in EVIL, but I do believe there are people I can't stand, hated, love and sometimes I want to smack them across the face. It's our desires, personalities, flaws and what we know that lead us down the path we go and guess what? Sometimes that means the other person must make that exact choice concerning us: we might be a threat to what they have. genghis Khan killed people who were a threat to him, kept those who were alive and those who were useful to him alive. me, I don't say he was good or bad, because one, he's dead and two, nothing will change. History is over, we can only learn from it, not say if someone was good or evil.

(^_^) Besides, there are a lot of people who don't live up to society standards (who I disagree with), that I don't consider evil. With view of evil and good gone from countries, and characters you can see how a character might be good in one game and be the very thing you fight in the next game. If you ask the sheep about the lion, he would believe that the lion was evil; it's all subjective really. And emotionally based on the feeling of hatred. That I do believe in.