Worldbuilding is essential for anyone working on a fantasy or science fiction setting. Whether you’re writing a novel, designing a video game, or just making something in isolation, it’s a huge undertaking to figure out how all the peoples, cultures, technology, magic, and everything else interacts within that world. For many people, that worldbuilding looks like sketching notes and building out an encyclopedic one-drive with a huge backlog of characters. But I want to make an argument in favor of a more active worldbuilding method: tabletop one-shots.
I discovered the value of doing this by chance. I’m currently working on the Solar States: a surrealist sci-fi world set in the year 2376. I made the setting for a tabletop RPG campaign that never fully materialized due to scheduling conflicts. Even though the full campaign didn’t pan out, I found the time to run a few one shots in the world. Each time I ran a session, I decided to set it in a different part of the world: the chimp wars in the Mediterranean, kaiju fishing expeditions on Europa, a dolphin casino heist on Callisto, and the origins of the New Soviet Venusian Republic. Doing the game as a series of one shots gave me a ton of range in exploring the world, and I found it to have a lot of advantages over regular worldbuilding.
For one, it forced me to concentrate on what matters from a player (or reader’s perspective). I had a deadline (typically of a week or two) to figure out what was needed to entertain people for a few hours. Anything else: lineages, timelines, even most maps, I found to be superfluous. The worldbuilding I crammed in those few hours felt leagues better than the aimless method I had previously. Additionally, it felt rewarding and motivating to see players actually engage and react to the world. I could see what parts of the setting interested them and what made their eyes glaze over. With games and novels that I’ve written before, it’s sometimes months or years before the work is in a state to be seen by other people. It’s a huge motivator to get people’s reactions early on.
I don’t believe that tabletop one-shots are a replacement for booting up that OneNote or Google Doc. It comes with plenty of limitations. I highly recommend choosing a rules-lite RPG system like Scum & Villainy, Fate, Blades in the Dark, or anything that will make you think more about the world than the stat-blocks of enemies. The other limitation of this is that is finding a few other subjects–er–friends, to play your game, which is more challenging than herding cats. Naturally, you also have to put their entertainment before your own needs. Hopefully, your world is exciting enough that it comes naturally. Even with those limitations, I think it’s a valuable tool in the arsenal of any hobbyist or artist working on a big, exciting project.
What about you? How do you get the most out of worldbuilding? Let us know on our Boss Rush Facebook Group or our Boss Rush Discord.
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