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worldbuilding in rpg franchises

eli

Learned
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Aug 30, 2020
Messages
187
What are examples of good elements to create good worldbuilding in rpgs, wrpgs and jrpgs alike, in long running franchises like dragon quest or the elder scrolls?
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
write a ton of extremely tl;dr texts describing how your world works, then put it into codex/glossary/ingame books so no one would read it.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
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Sep 1, 2017
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Australia
In my world there's a handful of gods but only two are real, what you would consider the god of Justice and the goddess of Nature. They are in love. Demons like to eat gods occasionally, causing mayhem in the mortal realms whenever they attempt this. The rest of the lore you discover along the way in small bites, unless you want to read the optional in-game tl;dr lore books. That's the best way to do worldbuilding IMO

I don't want to be handed a short essay on how your gods and planets came to be before I even know if I like the game yet
 

curds

Magister
Joined
Nov 24, 2019
Messages
1,098
I don't care about worldbuilding that doesn't tie into the actual game.

By that I mean; the worldbuilding and lore should be actually relevant to what the player is doing. I, as a player, don't need to know the 2000 years of history leading up to the game.

For example; I liked the lore tidbits in Dark Souls because they explained game mechanics like respawning and experience points.

Arcanum is another example of having worldbuilding, lore and history actually tie into the main story and gameplay. There's no loredumps that are irrelevant to what you're doing.

I don't understand people frothing over TES lore.

"In Skyrim, Nords paint their shields with wasabi and there are flying whales" sounds cool but why would one give a shit, really, if none of that stuff appears in the game?
 
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DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
What are examples of good elements to create good worldbuilding in rpgs, wrpgs and jrpgs alike, in long running franchises like dragon quest or the elder scrolls?
Play Pillars of Eternity and do everything contrary to what they did then you will have a game with a good story and lore.
 
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Ghulgothas

Arcane
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Every bit of the LoreBuilding that isn't communicated in immediate narrative, setting, background and assorted minutiae (wordlessly and otherwise) needs to be compressed into a Setting Bible or series of Development Docs. And there it should fucking stay.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Worldbuilding goal should be to help create characters, problem is that writers many times start making worlds when they have no idea of what characters they want to make, few good examples:

The Tribunal on Morrowind, their story created the whole Morrowind culture and the whole game is about the problems that came after some of the things they done. There is a reason why Vivec has a city named for him. Here, every House, every faction and even the main villain are related with the Tribunal story, everything circles around this story. So, everything should circle around the characters, the world building should be tailored to make them more interesting. No, you dont need 2000 years of story, you can have that as some distant background but it should ever be the main focus. I was really interested into meeting Vivec through the whole game because the whole game reminded me of him and this only make a character more interesting.

Planescape Torment, the Nameless One is exploring Sigil and did what he did to escape the Blood War so the player must know how Sigil is, what the blood war is and how the planes work, otherwise you have a crazy confusion. So, you have all that explained indirectly through the whole game by NPC interactions. So, you must teach the player information he must know, the least cliche and relatable a world is, the more you should care about it.

Bad examples:

NumaNuma, do you want to know about a plane where weird people that you will ever meet live? Yeah, me neither.

Pillars of Eternity, do you want to know the joke about how the Fampyr took a ride on a Biawac? Yeah, me neither,

Skyrim, so dragons are on Skyrim... but what the rest of the world has anything to do with them? How this makes the characters more interesting? "Nah, I'm Todd, I dont think about stuff, they look like cool marketing material, the dragons dont do shit, they are just there for the player to feel cool."

So, world building exist to help making actual characters you gonna meet better, problem is lazy hackish cargo cult or too much intellectual abstraction turn it into useless garbage.
 
Unwanted

Sweeper

Unwanted
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
2,394
The first question should always be: "What do they eat?" Followed by: "What do they drink?" Arcanum, New Vegas and Morrowind have the best worldbuilding, and they give an answer to both questions.
New Vegas and Arcanum, unlike Morrowind, handle politics very well. Each location and faction have their own interests and goals that are often in conflict with other factions. But not only that, the major factions in both games have interesting philosophical backgrounds.

Caesar with his Hegelian dialectics, NCR being his antithesis, both being attempts to recreate civilization by copying civilizations that have already failed, to which the game provides two alternatives in the form of House (science bitch) and Yes Man (lmao idgaf).

Arcanum meanwhile showcases the industrial revolution in Tarant and what happens to societies who refuse to adapt and stagnate via Dernholm. If Uncle Ted played Arcanum he'd genocide everyone in Tarant.

So not only do these games show you the utilitarian aspects of worldbuilding, but they provide some philosophical basis of the world, that I at least, find pretty interesting. You don't necessarily need that basis, but it goes a long way.

Language is a brutally underutilized aspect of worldbuilding. You don't need a fictional language, but the inhabitants of the world do need some form of a unique lexicon or vocabulary that arises naturally from the world. The zoners, pipeworkers, and barrel soups of Core City in Underrail is simple, juvenile, and pretty fucking great imo. NPCs crying out n'wah in Morrowind is unforgettable. Now compare it to PoE and Deadfire and their lazy use of Italian, Welsh and Polynesian. It throws in a couple of words, some naming conventions and that's it. Boring.

The atmosphere or immersion is pretty important. The art style, UI elements and the music need to fit the game world. While not directly tied to worldbuilding, they do convey a feeling of the world. Morrowind doesn't stop only at the flora and fauna in portraying its alien world, the armor design feels and looks alien.
MW-item-Light_Helms.jpg

MW-item-Special_Light_Helms.jpg

MW-item-Medium_Helms.jpg

MW-item-Special_Medium_Helms.jpg
Most fantasy games simply stop at generic medieval inspired armor, which is neither authentic, nor particularly interesting. Planescape also does a similar thing, where the aesthetic, almost by itself, manages to create interesting wolrdbuilding.

Basically, there's a lot of shit that goes into it. Consistency and logic is the key.
 

DraQ

Arcane
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Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
NPCs crying out n'wah in Morrowind is unforgettable. Now compare it to PoE and Deadfire and their lazy use of Italian, Welsh and Polynesian. It throws in a couple of words, some naming conventions and that's it. Boring.
  • Good: You have dwarves, but they are actually extinct (or are they?) underground mesopotamian elves who not only used pretty advanced steampunky technology, but actually fucked with fabric of reality by fucking around with a heart of dead god that might have been one of said reality's anchors, might have tried to build some sort of artificial god (or become one - and that's assuming we have enough understanding of their philosophy, science and motivations to make any sense of what they were actually trying to do which we probably don't. Also might have gotten themselves extinct in the process assuming that's what actually happened. Also, dwarves is mistranslation, the proper term is "dwemer".
  • Bad: You have xaurips but they are actually kobolds. Oh.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
NPCs crying out n'wah in Morrowind is unforgettable. Now compare it to PoE and Deadfire and their lazy use of Italian, Welsh and Polynesian. It throws in a couple of words, some naming conventions and that's it. Boring.
  • Good: You have dwarves, but they are actually extinct (or are they?) underground mesopotamian elves who not only used pretty advanced steampunky technology, but actually fucked with fabric of reality by fucking around with a heart of dead god that might have been one of said reality's anchors, might have tried to build some sort of artificial god (or become one - and that's assuming we have enough understanding of their philosophy, science and motivations to make any sense of what they were actually trying to do which we probably don't. Also might have gotten themselves extinct in the process assuming that's what actually happened. Also, dwarves is mistranslation, the proper term is "dwemer".
  • Bad: You have xaurips but they are actually kobolds. Oh.

tbh nearly all the TES races have cool designs, some of the best in video games.
Khajit are cat gypsies that steal everything not nailed down with at least 17 different physical forms that are determined at birth depending on the moons. They consume heroin all the time and claim they can travel to the moon by getting high enough and it later turns out that it's completely true and they do have colonies on the moon.
 

Ghulgothas

Arcane
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Messages
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So Below
Unless you're actually going to go to the length to craft a wholly original setting you ought to drop whatever pretense of originality you have and just call your generic fantasy tropes what everyone already knows them by.
 
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Pink Eye

Monk
Patron
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Oct 10, 2019
Messages
5,793
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Space Refrigerator
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Drop world building. I am illiterate. I can't read! Just throw me some tough encounters, and we'll go from there.
Streets of Rage was great game. A lot of tough encounters.
Haven't played Streets of Rage actually. Played lots of King of Dragons and Metal Slug when I was kid. You should play King of Dragons - it's great. Used to emulate the shit out of it during my stays in the hospital.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Unless you're actually going to go to the length to craft a wholly original setting you ought to drop whatever pretense of originality you have and just call your generic fantasy tropes what everyone already knows them by.
They do this because they never actually read Lord of the Rings.
The new words/words Tolkien popularized are done so because we had no equivalent to the Westron word. LotR is written as if Tolkien found The Red Book and translated it from Westron to English.
He didn't refer to The Shire as Sûza or find a new word for it because there's a translation for it.
 
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
4,189
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
What are examples of good elements to create good worldbuilding in rpgs, wrpgs and jrpgs alike, in long running franchises like dragon quest or the elder scrolls?
Play Pillars of Eternity and do everything contrary to what they did then you will have a game with a good story and lore.

That's probably the most spot-on comment in this thread. I spent 5 minutes writing a post about not bothering player with useless bloat that barely matters in the game only to realize I was basically going to list everything I disliked about POE and telling people to do the exact opposite of what was done there. What the heck.
 

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