The many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XIX

[Arakhor]

Get A Magical Mediaeval Society: Western Europe. It's a d20 book, but it's full of stuff about how fantasy interacts with the presumed feudal pseudo-European setting.

 

[Borachio]

This makes sense. The trick is to create a realistic, believable fantasy world.

Ah. But you mean, then, it doesn't make sense.

Well, no. Sitting reading a book, suspending your disbelief and believing in what you're reading doesn't make much sense. But such is the human condition.

And when you dream, fantastic though things can be, you still believe what you're dreaming, generally, don't you?

If you create a fantasy world which is simply incredible...well, it might be interesting to try to do that.

 

[Cutlass]

This makes sense. The trick is to create a realistic, believable fantasy world.

That's actually not as bad of advice as it may seem superficially. Fiction is based on the concept of the reader suspending disbelief. And you make that easier to do as your world becomes somewhat familiar, or at least believable within the context of the fantasy story. No one expects or looks for a fantasy story, or most fiction, to be really true to life. But how far you can get outside of true to life depends on how well you make your fantasy milieu plausible. So a lot of fantasy has a semi-European-feudalistic setting just so that the reader has a frame of reference they don't have to engage their brain too much for. Because once you start engaging the reader's brains, then you have to build your milieu with a lot more care and depth to make it plausible.

 

[salty mud]

I didn't mean to sound sarcastic, Mr. B. Well I did, but not in an offensive way.

I'd love to create a world of political intrigue (which could be difficult as my own knowledge of politics is feeble at best) but a world where empires rise and fall, the map is constantly changing and people are constantly trying to wrest power. The trick is to add my own USP to make it my own.

 

[cybrxkhan]

@salty_mud: My suggestion is to maybe join a forum that does this sort of stuff, which is called conworlding (constructed words). That way you can get some feedback and advice on how to do these things.

I've been doing this sort of stuff for years, and I have to say that the creation of a "realistic", wholescale fantasy world - and one that is not always based on pseudo-medieval Europe - is a difficult and daunting task if you want to make it not... well, not a pile of fantasy cliches, as you'll have to be learning the basics of different subjects, ranging from history to anthropology to linguistics and even biology (though of course not all of them are necessary for your purposes). But it is rewarding too, in a way. Some of the conworlders like to focus on different things, like creating languages (which was Tolkien's original focus, anyways), or creating an interesting ecology/biology of the new world (i.e. new believable evolution of plants and animals). Personally I enjoy creating a believable history.

Of course, for a believable world for a story, you don't have to go that far - you don't have to go Tolkien and pin down every single @#$% ruler of every single state and every single mythology for every society and religious group in your world. If you want to just publish a story, you just need what is needed for suspension of disbelief. Yet for me, even though I ioriginally conworlded as a way to build up settings for some of my writing, I've realized that I enjoy conworlding on its own, too.


EDIT: Also, if you're interested in political intrigue and history and stuff like that, your best bet is to read up on that stuff that happened in our world - like read up on the political machinations of [insert great Empire/nation you are interested in], or political theory, or even just Wikipedia pages related to the matter.

 

[Borachio]

Then there's humourous satirical fantasy, like Terry Pratchett.

Or relatively straight forward counterfactual stuff, transferring some version of political history onto a fantasy world. (Come to think of it, I haven't much of clue what I'm talking about, so I'll stop.)

edit: oh and please feel free to be as snarky sarky as you like. I'm not usually alert enough to notice.

 

[ace99]

I have the first edition "Thirteen Days: Memoir of the Cuban missile crisis" by Robert F. Kennedy with introductions by Robert McNamara and Prime Minister Harold Macmillian. It has pictures and was published in 1969. I'm thinking it might be worth something. How do I find out?

 

[Murky]

I have the first edition "Thirteen Days: Memoir of the Cuban missile crisis" by Robert F. Kennedy with introductions by Robert McNamara and Prime Minister Harold Macmillian. It has pictures and was published in 1969. I'm thinking it might be worth something. How do I find out?

This site sold one for $300.00 it might be worth more to a collector.
http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/kennedy-john-kennedy-robert-f-/thirteen-days/75820.aspx

 

[salty mud]

As an extension to my previous question, how do the creators of fantasy worlds like Bethesda for Elder Scrolls, Tolkien etc. actually make their worlds? I can't imagine that the Bethesda developers have a vast knowledge of politics and history, and Tolkien was only one man.

 

[Borachio]

But Tolkien* was an English professor and had vast knowledge of linguistics and Anglo Saxon. He was also in cahoots with C.S.Lewis.

I think you're really dealing with works of imagination. And the subconscious. Have you tried recording your own dreams?

And how much experience have you had in writing already? They do say it's a good idea to write something based on your own life to start with. Have you tried this?

*Tolkien began writing the Hobbit while marking an exam paper, when he came across a blank page. Something, he said, was a delight for every examiner. I think he thought of it as something arriving automatically in his mind, as he wrote. Have you tried just writing what ever comes?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

As an extension to my previous question, how do the creators of fantasy worlds like Bethesda for Elder Scrolls, Tolkien etc. actually make their worlds? I can't imagine that the Bethesda developers have a vast knowledge of politics and history, and Tolkien was only one man.

Tolkien started the beginnings of Middle-earth back when he was a soldier in the first World War, and was still left unfinished after he died in the seventies.

 

[_random_]

Get A Magical Mediaeval Society: Western Europe. It's a d20 book, but it's full of stuff about how fantasy interacts with the presumed feudal pseudo-European setting.

Are you familiar with Ars Magica?

 

[cybrxkhan]

As an extension to my previous question, how do the creators of fantasy worlds like Bethesda for Elder Scrolls, Tolkien etc. actually make their worlds? I can't imagine that the Bethesda developers have a vast knowledge of politics and history, and Tolkien was only one man.

They worked on it piece and piece. You can't make entire worlds in a day, and it's an always on-going process. I am almost certain that Tolkien was still working on his world even when he died.

Now, you don't need a vast knowledge of everything. You just need to know some basics. In fact, you only need to know as much as you want to know, depending on how realistic you want your world to be. Some conworlders take great pains to make sure their planets, for instance, have realistic climates and geology (so for instance deserts and jungles will be exactly where they should be), and this, of course, requires a bit of knowledge about earth science (though not as much as you might think). Yet you don't need that. You can just have the world's geography be outrageously funky. It's not necessary.

For me, when I conworld, I do it piece by piece. I add a little here, a little there; sometimes I have to make modifications (major or minor) to my previous work. Sometimes I have to scrap things that just don't fit into the world. It's all part of the process. Today I will lay out the personal lives so-and-so monarchs of so-and-so minor nation; tomorrow I might do a little work on the linguistics of a certain language group; the next day I might figure out how the economic collapse occured in X Empire; the day after that I might dabble a bit in the prehistorical tribal society of culture Y; and so on and so on. Little things at a time. After a while, it'll build up.

Anyhow, again, my suggestion is to join some forums that deal with conworlding (or geofiction, as a few have called it, although I thikn conworlding is more common). Many of the members on these forums have considerable experience with creating these worlds and the knowledge that might be needed (though, again, you don't need to know everything to make what you consider a believable world - you just need enough for what you want).

 

[Arakhor]

Are you familiar with Ars Magica?

I know of it and I own a couple of the earlier books, but I've never played it, no.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

What tactical attachments would actually be useful on a spear? An underbarrel smoke grenade launcher would be quite advantageous for charging with the spear, for instance.

 

[Ajidica]

As an extension to my previous question, how do the creators of fantasy worlds like Bethesda for Elder Scrolls, Tolkien etc. actually make their worlds? I can't imagine that the Bethesda developers have a vast knowledge of politics and history, and Tolkien was only one man.

Tolkien was really into medieval sagas and spent the better part of his adult life developing the world of Arda.
As far as Bethesda goes, they put alot of effort into bringing the world to life. Some of tiheir endeavors were more sucessful then others. (Yay Morrowind! Boooo Oblivion!) I still feel Morrowind had perhaps the best designed game world ever. It felt so exotic, mysterious, and dangerous. Oblivion just felt like a bad D&D campaign.

 

[Dachs]

I can't imagine that the Bethesda developers have a vast knowledge of politics and history

Most conworlders don't, and it shows in their work.

But that's okay, because if they're not setting out to emulate it, it doesn't really matter how much they know about how stuff in the real world works/worked.

What tactical attachments would actually be useful on a spear? An underbarrel smoke grenade launcher would be quite advantageous for charging with the spear, for instance.

What kind of spear?

 

[Yeekim]

This makes sense. The trick is to create a realistic, believable fantasy world.

Indeed. I would start with asking myself: "what is the root cause that makes my world different from the real one"? and go from there.

Starting from "what I think would be cool" is pretty much guaranteed to cause problems afterwards, because you can't rationalize what you've created.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Painted_Man is a great example of a spectacular fail at world-building, possibly for this very reason (besides being ridiculously cliché - as weird as it sounds).

 

[Flying Pig]

What tactical attachments would actually be useful on a spear? An underbarrel smoke grenade launcher would be quite advantageous for charging with the spear, for instance.

Modern militaries tend to like attaching rifle barrels to their spears.

 

[Borachio]

Actually, didn't they find spears* quite useful in close quarter stuff in the WW1 trenches? Much lighter and quicker to use than a heavy rifle and bayonet combo.

And then I remember some Russian veteran from Stalingrad saying he favoured slicing Germans with a trenching tool in preference to a firearm.

*They didn't call them spears, though that's what they were. Short stabby things, anyway.