Worldbuilding Post 1: Setting A Foundation

I remember being ENAMORED of Ray Wenninger's series of posts in Dragon Magazine on campaign building. I thought that they were mind-blowing at the time, and as I review some of them now, I still see things where I go "oh yeah!". I loved seeing how another DM thought through the process of putting his campaign together. I liked the intentionality of it all.

I routinely tell my students that I don't want them to just know what they are doing, but I want them to understand WHY they are doing what they are doing. Yes, you are writing an essay analyzing this text. But WHY? Why is this valuable? Why is this a good way to attack this task? Why and how does this help you build your capacity to think and understand? Most of my students stare off into space and then follow up with, 'but how LONG does it have to be'?, but a few get it. They nod their heads as I watch wheels turning in the back there, processing.

So, I thought I'd write a few posts (maybe more if this gets organized in some way), about how my wheels turn. I expect this will go like all of my creative processes go - a bit messy and seemingly dicsonnected, but eventually I start to tease out the threads that pull the whole thing together. Over time, I'm getting better at setting thicker and more robust threads in place earlier, knowing that I'm going to be teasing the heck out of those buggers later on. 

Onward 

ONE: It starts with a vision.

A lot of what I do comes from theater (more on that another post). As a director, if I'm going to stage a show, I need a picture in my head: usually more than one. I need to see the climax, and I want a few touch points along the way. I want the visual moment of when that conflict reaches its peak, and the moments that helped us get there: what's the lighting like? Who's standing where? What angles and shadows and colors are here? Once I have that, I know what I'm building to. I can sort everything into two piles: 'this can help me get to that moment' (maybe keep) or 'this moves me away from that moment' (ditch it). 

For Shards of Tomorrow: Second Edition, that is the first ten minutes or so of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. James Gunn tells out straight out of the gate, "this is Indiana Jones in space". Okay. I can get behind that. Space guy goes into ancient vault, gets by some traps, recovers a mystic artifact, then has a quick gunfight before he jumps into his starship Dukes of Hazzard style, and then barely keeps it together before blasting off into the cosmos.

Having this vision in place gives me all the power I need to make every decision going forward. Can I bend THIS new idea in some way to fit into THAT image? Can these two coexist, or (even better) synergize and inform each other? If I can find some threads to connect them, the idea goes into the brainstorming pile. If not, it is set aside for a different project on another day.