Build-A-World

Due to the low number of comments in the previous talk post, this week's is combined with the weekly WiP post.

Rules

1. Be considerate and polite.
2. For now, any topic is acceptable. That said, this is a world-building community.
3. I (or any mod, once we have more than one) may ask participants in a particularly interesting conversation to create a write-up for wider community enjoyment. Participants may say no.
4. Trolling and ad hom attacks will lead to the thread being frozen and a warning. Three warnings and you will be banned.
5. The first comment of any thread should have a clear topic identifying the subject.

If you've already figured out your playground, then tell us what it looks like.

Writing from your own perspective (or a close friend's), what are some of the most remarkable views, landmarks, etc? Why are they remarkable?

If you walk barefoot, how does the ground feel? What sound does the wind make?

Pretend for a moment that you're looking down from an airplane or another space ship, what does the world look like?

Give directions from one landmark/area to another.

The goal of this challenge is to get a feel for your world. Later, after developing people and societies, we'll re-visit this challenge, but from the perspectives of native residents. If you've already figured out how you'd experience the world, it may be easier to distinguish your experience from that of those who live there.

World-building, as a creative endeavor, ignores traditional boundaries between art, math, writing, science, and more. The challenge is inherent in the task; can we overcome the same divisions? This comm will not be perfect, but it will strive to approach world-building from a variety of perspectives and challenge all of us to reach beyond our comfort zones.

Welcome, everyone, to build_a_world. If you haven't already, please introduce yourself over at the Meet & Greet.

October kicks off the first monthly challenge.

The task for October is to create our playground in the form of what will, for most of us, look like a map*. You do not have to draw. If you'd rather mold your world from clay or piece it together from legos, that's good too. As long as you have a scale and you can make sense of what you've made.

A world is not merely a collection of land and water (or steel and glass or so on). It is a collection of land, water, etc governed by rules. Before you start your map, you should understand these rules.

Do not yet place cities or countries. We'll do that after we make our intelligent species and figure out the population. If all you finish is a map of landmasses, mountains, rivers, and notes for where various biomes will go, that is fine as well. You can finish next month when we work out ecosystems.

I realize that not everyone is creating a planet. In that case, you need to think through what your playground will entail. If this includes mapping a star system, then map the star system. If you've a space station, then start mapping that.

The secondary challenge for this month is a writing one. Some of you are working in others' playgrounds or have already finished designing your own. In such cases, the challenge is to describe important natural landmarks, views, and so forth. Do not write as a native to the world. Instead, write like an Earthling from our time who has been transported to your world. What are three to five things they notice? What is most remarkable?

*As with any person-created representation of a thing, a map is only one view fraught with compromises, assumptions, arguments, and prejudice. That is why the challenge is to create your playground, rather than your map.

Spotlights will be an irregular feature on this comm. They will look at examples of world-building, inspiration from real life, and more.

Epona

"The third stone from Taranis, within the star's life-bearing zone, Epona was born with an unusual obstacle for the successful evolution of life. The planet is locked into a deep ice age from which it is released by geologic activity for only 10 million years every 100 million years or so. You have arrived towards the end of the eighteenth warming cycle to find that a wide variety of life forms have exploded into ecological niches carved out in the wake of the freeze. But the ice cycle will return!

Epona is more than a game. It is a challenge that will give you a new perspective of life on Earth. It is an environment that has been carefully crafted to observe known physical laws and arrive at a truly believable alien in a consistent extraterrestrial context. Several stories have already been written using Epona as its environment.  On this site, we hope to reveal one way in which a thoughtful alien world has been designed.  We hope you will enjoy the experience!"

In the early to mid 90s, a group of men and women at the CONTACT convention decided to collectively build a world. They began with the stars and worked their way up to lifeforms. This website takes you through each 'Act' of the world's creation and explains why the creators made the decisions they did. While the development and thought that went into Epona may be more scientific than some world-builders want or think necessary, the explanations and, in places, discussions are what make this world so fascinating and the website so useful.
 
(Another benefit of this website and Epona is the development of a podcast series focusing on world-building. The latest podcast came out 7/4/2010.)

I neglected star maps and galaxies. So here is a sci-fi update.

( Information and Software & Tutorials )

( FAQ )