Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Worldbuilding Part 3: What This Is Not

It is important to know what your world is, and what it's about. However, it is also important to know what the world is not. This is where worldbuilding overlaps heavily with game design, and sets the parameters for the game that will follow (or, in my case, must derive itself from the parameters that the game has already put in place). The D20 engine, as I have been interpreting and refining it, is a pretty fluid, open, and malleable thing. I have worked to put in some guard rails so it doesn't play as hand wavey, but I also intentionally leave a lot of blurry edges. I remember that decades ago, I wanted to create a game that could be everything to everyone; it would be such a robust system that you could play any genre. I suppose that I wanted to make GURPs. But, I've never played GURPs. My guess is, because it tries to do everything well, it doesn't nail anything perfectly. Okay, I cannot speak to GURPs; I can only say that I don't think I could do it.

My game defies a simple clear explanation is a really bohemian response, but it's also bad design. As I've grown, I've realized that limits are a vital part of the creative process. You've got to know where the boundary lines are, or you're always getting the chocolate in someone else's peanut butter, but not in the good way. So, genres Shards could be:

Science Fiction. This is Traveller. This is measuring fuel, and tracking ammunition, and working out the physics of how a planet's gravity may impact a missile's trajectory, and how much power is actually needed to drive this starship, and how much refrigeration is needed for the consummables of a crew of 325 for a mission of seven months, and bleh. No. Thank. You. Furthermore, the rules don't support this. There is not enough gradation in the basic system to allow for this level of scientific precision.

Science Fantasy. This is what I want to call it. Its heart is rooted in a fantasy game, after all. It's going to have dragons in it. However, science fantasy is still firmly fantasy (mine is not) and is also rooting itself in scientific concepts (mine, also, is not). This is a bit hard for me; I know that the messari had colonized a moon of Banquo's Tooth, and that moon was destroyed, and that its fragemtns have been pulled into the Rings of Banquo. I know that Saturn's rings are full of debris and meteors and rocks, so this scientifically aligns with what is really out there. But, I also know that Banquo's Rings are held together with void energy, creating something of an evil atmosphere, and that many of the ancient tombs of the messari exist within, floating amid the debris field, waiting to be explored. That's fantasy, but it leaps away from the science rather than leaning into it. It doesn't use science to support the fantasy; it says 'heck science to heck, we're going for the crazy'.  

Space Opera. I have resisted this term just because it is linked to Star Wars. But, it's also linked to Guardians of the Galaxy, so I have to accept that this is where my game falls. This is why Midichlorians were so universally reviled; we don't need to know about blood tests and lab results; we want you throwing stuff with your brain and hitting things with your laser sword.

Planetary Romance. This is a genre within space opera, and it shares many of the tropes. While the core rules are going to hew towards this (the initial focus is on the planet Banquo and its moons), the game will be expanding outward. It's going to have rules for star travel and space combat. Space is a big part of it.

Okay, so now I know that I'm writing a fantasy-inspired space opera. This tells me what the game is, but also gives me clear parameters. When I start asking you to tabulate how many fuel crystals are needed to power a transport weighing 132.5 tons, allowing it to travel 1.275 light years, you'll know I've forgotten where I came from. 

No comments:

Post a Comment