Worldbuilder’s Disease

Dungeons and Dragons, most lovingly referred to as DnD, is a table-top role playing game in which a group of like-minded individuals sit down and play pretend. In a role playing game, players do just that: they create a character, then insert themselves into that role and pretend to be them. The group is led by a dungeon master (DM) – also often called a game master – who does everything else to facilitate the game. They play the roles of all the other characters the players may interact or speak to, they adjudicate the rules of the game, they write and dole out the story for the players to play through, and, oftentimes, they entirely create the fictional world the game is set in.

It is the finalmost of these I wish to delve into this day: worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is the process of creating a fictional world, whether for a book or movie, for a game like DnD, or simply for its own sake as a hobby. Some worldbuilders start with nothing and come up with a world entirely its own, such as in “The Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars.” Sometimes the process is more subtle, and a worldbuilder takes an existing world—usually our own—and adds to it in an interesting way. See the world of “Harry Potter” or “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” by Hank Green. Whichever the case, both create something wonderful and unique.

Building an entire world begins with an idea: What if there were dragons? What if spaceships existed in a fantasy world? What if there were spirits that lived among people and gave them magic? From that one idea, endless possibilities branch out. ‘What if there were dragons?’ leads to the question of ‘Where do those dragons live?’ which leads to the question of ‘How common are they?’ which leads to the question of ‘How do the people there interact with them?’ Answer those questions with ‘fictional Scandinavia’, ‘very common’, and ‘they fight them’, and suddenly you have Berk from “How To Train Your Dragon” (the movies, not the books). Answer instead with ‘fictional Britain’, ‘very rare’, and ‘only a select few can control them’, and you might wind up with a world more like Westeros from “A Game of Thrones.”

To me, worldbuilding is amazing because it lets you explore exactly what fascinates you most. If you love languages, you can create your own and build a world around it, like J. R. R. Tolkien did. If you are interested in people and culture, you can create a group of people and design their customs and traditions. If you’re more into geography or cartography, you can spend hours planning realistic biomes or drawing beautiful maps. Personally, I’m fascinated by mythology, cosmology, and magic, so I usually focus on how my fictional universe was created and the mechanics of how it continues to work.

There’s something for everyone when it comes to worldbuilding! It’s a wonderful form of self expression and outlet for creativity. It may seem nerdy or niche, but I’ve seen people I never would have expected get really into it.

There’s a term among science fiction and fantasy authors called worldbuilder’s disease, where an author spends so much time worldbuilding that they never get around to actually writing their story. Today, I want to encourage you to embrace that. Even if you don’t plan on ever doing anything with the world you create, try it out. All you have to do is think about some way the world could be different, then go wild following the questions and answers that interest you. The power is in your hands—see what you can do with it!