As a person who has made lore for his minecraft world once,i can definitely relate to this video and will proceed to thank you for creating such masterpiece
@@mrjong-pildasong1468 no, you arrogant jerk. this man just had the discovery of his life and your just like "ur dum i new dat alredi" I'm happy for you @autumnmarilyn5216 and am glad you found something to get excited about learning
@@mrjong-pildasong1468While it's definitely a clear cut distinction as this video defines it, I'm an active member of worldbuilding communities where the focus is typically more on creating a world for its own sake rather than creating one for a story to live in. In those groups the terms "worldbuilding" and "lore" are interchangeable and encompass both the systems and the reasoning and history behind them. If someone starts out as a "pure worldbuilder" and then decides they actually do want to tell stories in their world it would be easy to not understand the jargon as described here at first.
The "once removed" principle is so cool, I've IMMEDIATELY started generating ideas for my main antagonist - he used to be a fairly standard "powerhungry jealous God" but now I've made him essentially the younger/twin brother of a very powerful, skilled and vain Goddess who embodies much more of the "tyrant god ruler" archetype. By being the twin, this means that he now competes with her, using his subordinates in creative ways to skirt her control and create his own power (he becomes the God of Innovation & kick-starts the industrial revolution), instead of fighting over the same amount of power (based on landmass, followers and worship) that the other Gods use.
Lore?! Lore!! I honestly enjoy fictional history. Its more story...but from the back. I often tell people that the four paragraphs they sent me about why the magical school uniform is green were really great, very illuminating, however, we're going to rewrite them now with proper nouns and action verbs. The adjective is the emotional crutch of the writing world. Like, if they were writing about the lead up to WW1, they would describe how angry the Sebrians were, they would describe the AH Empire, and they would describe nameless, facelsss "rebels" from right of a character sheet and squad tropes. But it would take gentle prodding to get them to simply say "The Austrian-Hungarian Empire annexed and occupied Serbian country. The Black Hand were an independence rebellion group in Sebria and they believed in unity or death. They assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Funny story about how..."
I'm an editor, but watching your videos has helped me communicate better with directors who write their own scripts. In a way, editing is its own form of rewriting a screenplay, and being able to speak in writers' terms has been immensely helpful! Thanks for all you do!
1:50 I have, on several occasions, forgotten to name a character in my D&D game until I was literally in the middle of introducing them to the PCs during the session. Please imagine for a moment that you're playing D&D, and you meet this powerful local religious leader, and the first thing he says to you is, "Hello! My name is... oh fuck I forgot to name him! I've just been calling him 'the Abbot' for three months!" I actually did that. That's real. And it's not the only time it's happened. It's not like he didn't have personality, or backstory, or connections to other characters/the plot; he was the father-figure of the NPC I was inserting into the party to eventually betray them! He had all of that. He just also didn't have a name. Nowadays I have a spreadsheet of all the major NPCs, which obviously has a name column, so it's pretty hard to not notice until game day now. But without something like that, I'm really bad about it.
Ha yeah and I wanna stress that I was coming at that from a psychological angle, but I don’t think characters having names makes the story fundamentally better or anything. Just helps me with writing them
I do something very similar. I could write an endless series about a character, knowing every relationship, every piece of backstory, and every inch of personality, but they won't have a name. D&D is particularly annoying because there is always a random NPC that the party fixates on and I have to create a name and deeper characterization for.
One bit of advice I’ve heard is to generate a list of maybe a dozen random names. When you’re on the spot, just pick one from the list, maybe tweak it however feels right, and you’re good to go. Just don’t forget to track which names you’ve used!
@@nw42 I've heard that advice before, and it does not work for me at all. For a lot of reasons, but one that no one ever seems to think about is races. This is D&D; this random NPC could be a human, or a dwarf, or an elf, or even a beholder! And then there's the male/female/neutral variations. There is not set of twelve names that works as well for a human milk-maid as it does for the leader of the male orcish raiding party, or the dragon that lives in the next mountain over that uses polymorph enough that they gave up on gender two centuries ago. And I, personally, am just as likely to forget to name the dragon as the milk-maid. I find I'm better off just taking 15 seconds to open up a random name generator.
I think a story based around Aegon would work, but with him as almost a force of nature that everyone has to contend with. Like this mf is barrelling his way across Westeros and he WILL get to you and your lands eventually. How do you react to that? How do you stop him? Do you even try to stop him? Who do you align with out of desperation in the face of this absolute ligma male rocking up in your garden and charging at your front door?
@localscriptman the difference being the terminator CAN and WILL BE stopped, though at great cost, risk, and no small amount of luck. Aegon HAS to and WILL win, else the whole story doesn't work.
so, here's the thing: i am in fact a writer who starts out with a premade world where the lore is already codified to an extent. i'm a writer, editor, and teacher in the beyond skyrim-arcane university projects and honestly, i love being able to just jump in and fill in those "hows" and "whys," and then build off that lore to fill in the gaps. we have unofficially designated loremasters who we can pester and who are usually happy to either infodump or find us resources. the thing with starting off with a pre-defined lore set is that you get to touch on pretty much every aspect of the world. compare the father teaching his two young children how to hunt to why a tree looks the way it does to a god pulling the strings behind a massive tragedy. one of the things that i (try to) teach my students is that you have to follow not just an internal logic in your story but the external mechanical and technological constraints of your game engine - you'd be surprised how many times i've read something that just would or could not happen. knowing your limits and where (and why!) you can or can't twist, pull, change, or push them is one of the most important skills a writer of any discipline can learn. dialogue is especially tricky given the interactive nature of a video game and it has unforgiving limits, which is why we have students work on it so much. what's that? an ellipses? oops, that's a crash to desktop, game engine can't handle that. i've learned so much from my time in video game writing that i can apply to my fiction writing to the point where seeing the overlap between writing disciplines is really fascinating for me, which is why i like your videos on screen writing so much. and i will be stealing that "fire up the darling killer 3000" for future lectures, so thank you for that lol.
The one thing i took from all my role playing experience is that you don't make good stories directly, but you make situations with many different possible outcomes. This ensures that player interactivity is consequential. Oh and of course the other half is to react with your characters as soon if there is anything, that could provoke an interesting (and consequential) action. The story will then emerge from that.
I am a beginner writer. I don't have a writer's education. And I am so grateful for your content. You make some things so clear and *usablee*! I don't just learn something new, the gears in my head start spinning immediately, whether it's because I already have a story where I can apply it or (what's even more cool) because I start imagining something brand new just to try out these new tools. It's educational, functional and therefore (for me) inspiring. Thanks, man!
I think the joy of interactive media like DnD is the fact that it leaves room for problem solving. But I think without the dice, the highs and lows would make things fall flat. I think of playing pretend as a kid, and acting out Pokémon battles, and how you’d end up with someone shouting “I use Claw!” “But I dodge you!” “No you don’t, I hit you!!” And the whole thing falls apart. The dice prevent that issue, because chance decides to what degree you are successful, combined with your stats. Usually it’s up to the DM to decide the circumstances of your success/failure. But as I said the great thing is the space given for problem solving. In a different campaign, I came up with a cool move wherein my half drow would shadow step and stab the orc Chieftess we were fighting- but I failed and she caught my wrist. So I was put into problem solving space again. I ended up being able to negotiate with the chieftess and find out her motives. We were only there in the first place, because on a random side adventure we killed a bull mammoth sacred to a group of centaurs. The centaurs were going to kill one of our party members in its place, but was willing to let him live if we got rid of the orc camp that they had a rivalry with. During the course of the fight we realized that all the orcs were female. After talking to the chieftess we discovered the centaurs had taken all their men folk captive. We ended up siding with the orcs and brokering a truce between the orcs and centaurs. This was in no way part of the main plot our DM had planned for the day. But our choices and failures pushed us into problem solving mode and therefore into meaningful gameplay.
Another DnD story I want to share: Someone’s paladin died during a side quest, and everyone was really bummed out. The DM had an idea to circumvent it, but said the player had to accept it without knowing what it was. So my friend’s human paladin was resurrected as a teifling. Which opened up all kinds of fun character angst for later.
As someone who is working on a stupidly big fantasy story and world that is always one step away from spiralling into an uncontrollable mess of plot lines and lore, I appreciate this.
This video brought to mind something i heard from an rpg showrunner "Characters are all like stained glass. The shapes, colors, and translucense are all different, but the light shining through is always you." And i would also like to add in that actors no matter how close they stick to a script are injecting their own personality, and I've heard that the best directors collaborate with their actors rather than just dictating what they need to do. Just two tidbits i figured could be interesting to think about moving forward, considering what you mentioned in this video
Okay so I've been struggling to write a couple of episodes for my cartoon project. I tried using your suggestion of asking why to everything and I've fixed a crucial episode in like half an hour. I cannot thank you enough.
At 18:33 you can just hear in his voice, this is not just a collection of characters he's pushing through an epic backstory... these are nuanced, complex, friends.
I have started with a preexisting world before because I have a bunch of ideas I really like to keep around for a particular story. However, I use the preexisting world as a template, not a mold-it’s a jumping off point that can bring with it some pretty cool ideas, but it’s malleable, because it has to be.
Yeah, the story I'm writing right now wouldn't even have been conceptualized if I hadn't first thought of a world where supervillains were rising and giving problems to the goverment, to the point the government decides to make a military program of Iron Man like soldiers
Mhm mhm! For me, the trick to writing in preexisting worlds has always been to find a theme in it somewhere - or an underexplored area I can mold into something of my own - then derive my characters from that
The "on gameplay" section says everything about, with out actually saying, the players are the antagonist of the story. The story is set to move in a direction, and with out player involvement it will land at that destination. The players actions get in the way of the story's progression and it then needs to take a new path to completion.
This has become my favourite writing channel so quickly. I’ve gotten so much further with the screenwriting projects I’ve been working on since I started watching. Thanks for keeping this amazing content coming!
Recently I’ve found it very useful to represent every group/organisation with a character who acts as the “face” of that group. Even opinions on events can be encapsulated by a character. E.g instead of “the doctors refused to operate because it’s too dangerous” it could be “doctor Connor refused” from which you can go into his character and personality to see why he felt that way.
I remember that this trick is pulled to express the fall of the Amaroutines in FFXIV. In general, when Hermes forces the disaster of Meteion and her song of despair, plenty of Amaroutines sacrifice themselves to make Zodiark. Some others counter that by instead following Venat and following in a sense of hope that later people can overcome, and reject the recreation of paradise most Amaroutines seek, creating Hydaelyn. (Venat knows this because she meets FFXIV Warrior of Light/Azem, who admits to her the plan of Hydaelyn.) Then the world is sundered into fourteen shards, and only three Amaroutines (Lahabrea, Elidibus, and Emet-Selch) are left to try to reconstruct their society by rejoining shards. Emet-Selch is the only person left who really remembers what goes on, and is broken in trying to enjoy life but bitterly remembers how everything was torn from him and is stuck. There is a particularly good scene where the weight of this on every remaining Amaroutine is shown succinctly. Hythodaelus, as a nice person but is not a person counter to Amaroutine society, sacrifices himself and moves to the left to indicate he is part of Zodiark. Venat, as a person who puts her trust in the future and believes in moving forward, moves to the right to imply that she is forced to be Hydaelyn and sunder the original world. Emet-Selch, as the leader of the Ascians who just want their world back, is stuck in between. In this, you succinctly see the bind that Amaroutines have come to because of Meteion causing all of their creation magical to turn against them and ruin their paradise.
I made a world long ago full of characters and lore and what not. Eventually I hit a dead end, my characters had no depth no background or story and this stopped me from progressing further. Now that I know my mistakes I think I'm going to revisit it and try to improve it, maybe even start a new one in the same universe. Thank you for the help Local.
The "once-removed" principial is fascinating. You have this archetypal paragon, but they are in the backstory. The person in the main narrative that has their role can then be compared and contrasted with them. What differences are there? How do they feel about this? A writer can get a lot for this once-removed character just by having this paragon in their backstory.
Only 4 minutes in, and I’m already so thankful for writing advice like this. It educates where some lack and it affirms what others have been doing right all along.
Why chaining is really interesting to me because I subconsciously did it for a while and almost always I found that the real story that mattered to me was found in that backstory. Turns out, the king being a huge authoritarian because he lost his daughter long ago is way less interesting to me than actually writing about the daughter going into the great big world and getting captured. She has to make connections with other captives and grow strong to escape, all the while while her father tries to track her down. Finally seeing that she has indeed grown up when he catches up to a daughter who freed herself. It's wild how often it happens to me, to the point where sometimes I'll create a scenario I know I'll never use just to construct a backstory that would be a more interesting front story.
I love starting with a pre-existing world. For one, it helps be come up with details that make the story feel more lively and less generic (as giving details based on a big picture idea tends to give more generic results). For another, the limits on what I can do are half the fun. If I have a plot point I want to do but the worldbuilding details go against it, I now get to problem solve my way into a situation where the plot point can still happen without changing the worldbuilding too much (which tends to create interesting complexity hat wouldn't have happened otherwise).
"most of the conversation about worldbuilding is very superficial" Got my subscribe. I am a writer, primarily flexing my muscles on running DnD games for the last 15 years. I knew everything you said, in a way, but what you said still helped because its useful to have new perspectives on old information.
you're the only channel where I don't skip ad reads out of sheer respect for the segue lol. thank you! for the bit about once-removing, it tied together and brightened up quite a few things in my worldbuilding. looking forward to the next!
You had me for the long run when you said, "I've personally found most of the conversation around world building has been superficial and foundational." I thought I was the only one. Thank you thank you thank you for digging in.
The "once removed" thing sort of sparks some ideas given how it plays into a handful of characters I played in a game that I'd like to use if I ever ran a game... However, in that case, it wasn't so much falling with each removal so much as raising up. It started with Orphea the First, who for her descendants would become as myth, was the illegitimate child of a dragon who was also a lord of a distant land; the story as it came to be told was her descendants was that in a land to the far east her mother Kirika seduced the dragon under the assumption that her own strengths could only truly have flourished with sorcery, and that would require a magical bloodline which she didn't have enough of. The result of this was her being branded a criminal and conscripted, and the culture's sense of honor and shame placed Orphea the first as having the same social status as a criminal herself save for a direct punishment. So she left the land with her own children, only to presumably die drowned on a beach trying to buy time for the ship carrying her kids to leave for the west. This act of dying in water would repeat twice more, but with hints of betrayal added. Orphea the second started as a slave on a pirate ship, only to help start a mutiny and save the new captain through trickery and magic, only to be pushed into a fight with a squid by the very captain she saved, and died. Orphea the third would die at the hands of a fey creature that beguiles and drowns those that see it, and this happens because she tried to save someone else from this fate, only for that person and the rest of the party to leave her to die. By Orphea the Fourth, we're dealing with a character with trust issues, more ready to run than risk herself, though she may come back with help, and a belief in fate, and a fear of water... So she's wound up in a desert land of iron gods and machines... However, despite all of this legacy, she manages to live, thrive, and overcome the machines and the iron gods and become a demi-god; one interested in helping others follow the path to godhood through the overcoming of fate, one she's already done once, and likely will a few more times. ... And then there's her children, in addition to leaving a town she formed in the hands of her first daughter, Orphea the Fifth, her second daughter Astra recognizes that her mother achieved all she did while being a fool caught out of her depth, and so seeks knowledge and wisdom so she can one day support her mother, and then Orphea the Fourth's illegitimate son named Zagreal born the son of a demi-god of strength named Zenon that she stewarded; and Zagreal has to deal with trying to reconnect with his father by gaining the approval of his stepmother.
literally already in love with this channel from the thumbnails alone. i'm in the process of writing out a script for my webcomic idea and i need all the pointers i can get. subscribed.
First time seeing your channel (I'm from the D&D world), and this blew me away. I'm getting into short story writing as well, and both the common ground and differences of the media fascinate me. I subbed before we even hit the 10 minute mark. Cheers!
This is so well timed because I’m making my first dnd campaign so I wanted to watch one of your videos to help and there was a lore video waiting for me 🙏
I like working within a pre-existing world because the limitations that come with that force more deeply working through the issues I want in the story, how they intersect etc. It's HARDER but I find it ends up with a more interesting/deeper story
I like your method of working with archetypes. Personally, in my novel writing, I like to play archetypes in full and explore them to their greatest potential. I also love creating backstories for characters who personify an obvious archetype. The making of a legend is more interesting than the legend itself.
*Hello Future Me* has a fantastic video on Worldbuilding & exploring 2 methods; Hard Worldbuilding and Soft Worldbuilding. Someone in the comment section of that video aptly described each by saying: Hard worldbuilding creates a story for the world. Soft Worldbuilding creates a world for the story. I go goofy with inspired giddiness when I refer to that video and now with this one (even tho I've not finished it, I still know this will be insightful/inspring cuz Lucas LocalScriptman is no less than a prolific writing prophet bestowed upon us by the Sacred Elders of Storytelling)
An example of the "once-removed" effect is, as it would happen, in Zelda. Hylia is the perfect iteration of the wise-queen archetype and is a literal goddess, the Zelda of _Skyward Sword_ and basically all the other mainline Princess Zeldas are these "wise-beyond-their-years" kind of messiah figures who just kind of know everything and always tell Link what has to be done next whenever they show up, and then finally the Zelda of BOTW is a nerd who, even though it wasn't actually her fault, is made to feel like a screw-up and is afflicted by guilt and self doubt. There isn't even any particular in-context reason that the archetype "decayed" and became more complex other than the 10,000 years of complacency purchased by the Shekiah's plan to defeat the first Calamity being so successful. She still has those messianic moments, but they always seem to come upon her like some kind of possession or deeper personality like the Nameless Pharaoh form _YuGiOh_ and there more sense that she's a person with limitations and desires.
I never understood how one could make stories. I am also a bad storyteller in general day to day, but my god was your explanation crystal clear you have no idea how much i resonated with your explanations. I am PUMPED THE FUCK UP MAN.
I'm a songwriter and you've given some advice that has opened up a whole other world of possibilities for me. You've really given me some insight on a different storytelling process that has helped me crank out a good handful of bangers in the last few months.
Not saying anything others haven’t said a bunch already, but thank you for this channel. As an older person who struggles with not ideas or concepts for characters and worlds, but struggles with how to structure these things into a cohesive way to turn it into a narrative on paper, seriously just the basic structure on getting these things down on paper in the way you’ve explained in your previous videos. It’s truly invaluable youve helped me tremendously
Thank you so much for making content and putting words to these concepts. I am getting more into writing because of you, and your video about dialogue has helped tremendously. Currently, I am drafting an SCP article, and it would not happen without your great advice. Side note, when I played DnD in high school, I developed my campaigns directly from my friends PCs’ backstories. In this way, I outsourced what my stories were by coaxing creativity out of my friends, and the way I did this was the Socratic Method of asking “why is this?” Hearing you go on about the “why chain” near the start of the video is very similar to what I did, and hearing it was so nice.
You inspired me to write! I love the way you do your videos, it makes me feel like writing is actually something attainable, and not just for a certain "elite" persons, thank you for everything random internet guy!
I just realized I've been unwittingly doing the once-removed trick myself in writing my D&D campaign villians. As a big fan of Lost and Marvel, though, I think for me at least this trick might just be a generalization of the "daddy issues" school of character writing. For example... who is the uberdark, conflicted, multi-dimensional recurring villain with the oh so compelling backstory? Well first of all, he's NOT the famous and powerful bad guy who already did the bad thing in the past, no. He's the SON of that bad guy. The young man who grew up with a combination of admiration and fear in the shadow of such an influential person. He aspires to the same status, but perhaps he doubts his competence and this compels him to take on some desperate Faustian bargain, or perhaps he is torn between competing influences but his father's legacy compels him to avoid moderation and make decisive sacrifices. His potential for villainy is believable because he was raised by one, but his reputation is still to be determined. Oh, and he has some rivalry or frenemy type connection to the party. Now his "backstory" is compelling because it is happening right now, and inextricably linked to the party's own choices. If they defeat him early on, perhaps the shame makes him more desperate. If they make friends, perhaps it's not his goals but his methods that the party finds themselves at odds with. And of course, what happens to his dad and how does that influence his thoughts about his own legacy? I often think it's impossible to define a character independent of their relationships to other characters, but that chain can't go on forever. So if you are going to end it with an archetype, put that archetype in the past.
This was EXACTLY what I needed right now and if my work ever gets published I WILL credit you for “why I am so darn good at writing” 😂 Also I’m basing characters of Lucas and Jay because *incoherent excited writer noises I can’t describe in words*
This was a sick watch. Extremely helpful, stuff like why-chaining and once-removing especially for me. if you have more techniques, tips and methods for people that are dumb like me and didn't realise these top tips it would be extremely cool to see a video on stuff like that.
Im so happy that you are going into the gaming direction with this video. Since i started watching your videos i really like your opinion and thoughts you shine on media i seen before but could now see in a different way. I whom is really really into game development and for that word building/story writing will try to learn from stuff like this. Thanks
That sounds like an awesome world! I've been working on a world of my own and I feel like it's gotten stretched thin. This video will really help give me some ideas on how to clean up the history and lore, so thanks!
20:00 Yeah you also have the benefit of making the idea of the archetype more of a concrete thing in the story, y'know? Like if you just have a wise old mentor, thats just a dude who happens to check all the right boxes. If its some kind of successor you're dealing with, in a way that makes the character genre savvy because they too know what the perfect fantasy mentor looks like and are trying to emulate it
I think what has helped me the most with writing a world is to not view it as a story that you are writing, but rather to tell the story of a world that did exist. Whether that be a world that once was that is now lost, or is still an existing world is up to how you write it. It take away the disconnect from the writer to the world, where you will write more like a distant omnipotent being, rather than a bard or storyteller, retelling the stories of yore.
Hardest thing I've ever worked on was magic. Main problem is that while I want it to do fantastical things, I also want it to have a logic to it. Dang you FMAB!
glue (Translation: Yippee! another video from the local script man now I get to watch it at 1 am and think about how to apply its information to my story and then maybe do that in like 5 months :D. But seriously, you give us some of the best writing tips on TH-cam for FREE!? Absolutely Foolish. 10/10)
I'm not big into DnD but Ive done plenty of text based rp games in the past. I think what you mentioned near the end about the dice changing the experience is something I need to think about when it comes to text rp. It seems like all games are either just the DM stringing the players along in their own story like a group of people locked into a theme park ride with no real agency, or the rp is an aimless sandbox that never gives anyone a reason to care. I really do like rping so I hope I can figure out a good way to go about it in the future. Anyways, great video, thanks for the content bubba
Thanks so much for making videos! Your explanations are really concrete and make me feel like I can really tackle the storytelling problems I’m having and make progress 😄
Please do more of these, I really enjoy it and this video is the best ive seen so far. Perhaps a series of worldbuilding like for religion, culture, fleshing out cities, nations, gods, etc.
Local's videos are so great for me personally, because he presents concepts in this "rational, it all makes sense" type of way. Like a math, in a good way
I had a whole essay talking about this very topic. People who just world build, and people who just write stories are equally feckless. World building IS writing, and must be treated as such.
@@localscriptman Oh come on ScriptMan! You know, I Feck, You Feck, He she me Feck, Feck, Fecking, We'll have thee Feck, Feckorama, Feckology, The study of Feck!? It's first grade ScriptMan!
I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your content. I’m an amateur writer attempting to make my first serious project after years of not writing with purpose, and your videos have been genuinely helpful and enjoyable. Thanks a lot!
No joke idk why but this got me into the headspace I needed to be in to set up my next dnd world and i had to grab my phone to write down the premise in the shower
I have worldbuilt for most of my life and never got good at it because I kept neglecting the lore. I am now working the other way round, starting with the creation myth, mythology and lore (using pre-Helenistic Proto-European mythology as guidelines) before even thinking of any maps and dungeons and stuff. The actions of the gods will shape and reshape the world. I already have three Ends of the World: The First Dragon War, The Devine Rapture, The Mage Wars. Each time, the landscapes and maps changed drastically beyond recognition (which is why I didn't draw any yet) and each time the civilised/thinking races were razed to the brink of extinction, loosing much of their technology (due to not enough craft/tradesmen surviving to keep the technology alive) and effectively being thrown back into somewhere between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, struggling for survival in isolated villages with hundreds of miles of untamable wilderness in between, each one believing themselves the very last survivers of the last cataclysm, leaving the world littered with ruins from one, two or three apocalypses ago, with artefacts of unimaginable power, made of the sacred Iron or the mythological Steel (or even the unholy demonic Plastic of the First Age).
Exactly what I need! Musing about my first story where I don’t start from an ancient mythological plot and give it a twist, but instead this one’s gonna be about 30y in the future - and I got a whole lot of variables with their whys to track through time.
Love the video and I wanted to thank you because your channel has been so very helpful for me, as an aspiring game developer. I have had almost the oppossite problem as I inherently understand how to create complex, deep, spontaneous narratives between groups (sometimes large groups) of people, but I don't have any idea how to write a story myself...let alone create a lore, that will help people create stories. What I can tell you about ttrpg's or table top games in general, is that DnD occupies a very unique experience and handles narrative construction unique to itself. It is only really able to do that because of both age and storytelling traditions that have grown around it over several decades. In other games what motivates the player to behave in a way that is coherent with the story, are incentive mechanics. Every game has different ways of doing this, and there are many different perspectives on agency of the player, and adherence to the story. There are too many different takes to recount here and I can try to give an example if you want. The purpose of these mechanics is to both provide a character ability or mechanics consequence that the player has bought into. this is tied to a narrative element the GM (game master) incorporates or ties into the world's lore. The trick is that the player has already bought into that story because they have chosen that option, and GM can use that to motivate the character in accordance with the story as they have just unknowingly agreed to.
Man you just sparked the next idea for my campaign. Love your videos dude, helped me alot with my writing and storytelling. Dont forget us when you become famous 🙏🏾
I finished a Solarpunk feature recently where I started with the world. I knew I wanted a story about people, like a “When Harry Met Sally” vibe. That’s my A story, two childhood friends reconnecting. Starting with the world informed the B story, the lore, and made the story more unique. The world informed the character’s occupations, which gave them something to do. The world could also act as a plot catalyst. For example, a wildfire is my act 2 break, a story beat that was informed by the climate-changed world. You can extract plot, secondary characters, backstory, and these small details just from the world itself.
Kurt Vonnegut once implied that the best story has no point. That we end exactly in the same position where we began, because that is the true reflection of life
Kurt Vonnegut has written the majority of my favorite books. I love him and his dryness and wit so much. However, I think that anecdote about the "line of a story" moreso was meant to reflect his philosophical outlook on life as whole, rather than a silver bullet template that all the best stories should follow. In my opinion, he's basically saying "Life is absurd and there's no meaning to it beyond that, so a realistic story is an absurd one." In regard to the subject of this video (creating lore out of worldbuilding through causality) I'd argue that whatever story you write SHOULD have a point. You could say the purpose of running/playing a game of D&D is many different things, but I think most people wouldn't say that purpose is to create a true reflection of life. Curious to hear your thoughts on my take! Reading this got me to stop what I was doing and really think about why we consume entertainment and play games.
@@ernyoung8357 Sometimes I struggle to differentiate writing and life advice. 😅 I would actually agree that a good story needs a point, a theme to resonate with, or a goal for our protag to strive for. I'm probably thinking more of "coming full circle" like in the hero's journey when the hero finds themselves back exactly where they started except wiser and with a whole new perspective on their life.
![[TH] 2024 PMGC League | Survival Stage วันที่ 1 | PUBG MOBILE Global Championship](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FVFT-PFwU80/mqdefault.jpg)
We making it out of the Ojabog with this one 😈
Is this the first comment Local pinned that wasn’t a hate comment?
@@ihavespoken9871Sean didn’t make an appearance this time
@localscriptman he’s too afraid to diss now
🤯
youve got a good start, mr.'s Big and Little. please dont go down the preachy route. remember the choose your own adventure format .
As a person who has made lore for his minecraft world once,i can definitely relate to this video and will proceed to thank you for creating such masterpiece
Making Minecraft lore is next level
My minecraft worlds always have lore. What else could be the reason for a new city to be built than a deep history and religion that motivates.
@@JonasBuechnerArt fr fr
sometimes i even like to give my villagers story or friends lmao
This is actually dope as fuck and I'm amazed I've never done this.
@@Mayo-ow5lb I used to do that with my lego builds as a kid and kinda just kept going when I got Minecraft
Distinguishing worldbuilding from lore is so important and I never thought about it, oh my god
Isn’t that common sense ?
@@mrjong-pildasong1468 no, you arrogant jerk. this man just had the discovery of his life and your just like "ur dum i new dat alredi"
I'm happy for you @autumnmarilyn5216 and am glad you found something to get excited about learning
@@mrjong-pildasong1468it appears not
Inspirational Speakers when there is a sudden lack of extended words
@@mrjong-pildasong1468While it's definitely a clear cut distinction as this video defines it, I'm an active member of worldbuilding communities where the focus is typically more on creating a world for its own sake rather than creating one for a story to live in. In those groups the terms "worldbuilding" and "lore" are interchangeable and encompass both the systems and the reasoning and history behind them. If someone starts out as a "pure worldbuilder" and then decides they actually do want to tell stories in their world it would be easy to not understand the jargon as described here at first.
The "once removed" principle is so cool, I've IMMEDIATELY started generating ideas for my main antagonist - he used to be a fairly standard "powerhungry jealous God" but now I've made him essentially the younger/twin brother of a very powerful, skilled and vain Goddess who embodies much more of the "tyrant god ruler" archetype. By being the twin, this means that he now competes with her, using his subordinates in creative ways to skirt her control and create his own power (he becomes the God of Innovation & kick-starts the industrial revolution), instead of fighting over the same amount of power (based on landmass, followers and worship) that the other Gods use.
That’s super cool!
Lore?! Lore!! I honestly enjoy fictional history. Its more story...but from the back.
I often tell people that the four paragraphs they sent me about why the magical school uniform is green were really great, very illuminating, however, we're going to rewrite them now with proper nouns and action verbs.
The adjective is the emotional crutch of the writing world. Like, if they were writing about the lead up to WW1, they would describe how angry the Sebrians were, they would describe the AH Empire, and they would describe nameless, facelsss "rebels" from right of a character sheet and squad tropes. But it would take gentle prodding to get them to simply say "The Austrian-Hungarian Empire annexed and occupied Serbian country. The Black Hand were an independence rebellion group in Sebria and they believed in unity or death. They assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Funny story about how..."
I'm an editor, but watching your videos has helped me communicate better with directors who write their own scripts. In a way, editing is its own form of rewriting a screenplay, and being able to speak in writers' terms has been immensely helpful! Thanks for all you do!
Thanks for your support! I will say that directors can be oddballs when it comes to writing, especially when they're writing for themselves
I’m studying creative writing for my Masters and this has basically been my school. Thank you for existing ❤
Thank you for watching, glad I could be of service
I’m glad I’m not the only one getting to this stuff later on and getting a lot out of it. Best of luck with your studies 🫡
You been scammed my dude
@@tedarcher9120 S c a m m e d ?
@@localscriptman creative writing masters is pretty much a scam unless your prof is Sanderson lol
I think it's crazy how you only have 14 videos and your content is just so good
Video take long time 👽 but thank you, I appreciate your support!
I think it’s crazy that you are so young and your content so comprehensively and sarcastically wise. Keep up the good work.
@@whatisrealknowtheformula6137 Thank you! Yeah I’m gonna be 22 in August
@@localscriptmanhey man I’d pay money to talk to you, you should make a discord connected to your Patreon if that lines up your interests.
@@Elija503 There is a discord connected to my patreon
1:50 I have, on several occasions, forgotten to name a character in my D&D game until I was literally in the middle of introducing them to the PCs during the session. Please imagine for a moment that you're playing D&D, and you meet this powerful local religious leader, and the first thing he says to you is, "Hello! My name is... oh fuck I forgot to name him! I've just been calling him 'the Abbot' for three months!" I actually did that. That's real. And it's not the only time it's happened.
It's not like he didn't have personality, or backstory, or connections to other characters/the plot; he was the father-figure of the NPC I was inserting into the party to eventually betray them! He had all of that. He just also didn't have a name.
Nowadays I have a spreadsheet of all the major NPCs, which obviously has a name column, so it's pretty hard to not notice until game day now. But without something like that, I'm really bad about it.
Ha yeah and I wanna stress that I was coming at that from a psychological angle, but I don’t think characters having names makes the story fundamentally better or anything. Just helps me with writing them
I do something very similar. I could write an endless series about a character, knowing every relationship, every piece of backstory, and every inch of personality, but they won't have a name. D&D is particularly annoying because there is always a random NPC that the party fixates on and I have to create a name and deeper characterization for.
One bit of advice I’ve heard is to generate a list of maybe a dozen random names. When you’re on the spot, just pick one from the list, maybe tweak it however feels right, and you’re good to go. Just don’t forget to track which names you’ve used!
@@nw42 I've heard that advice before, and it does not work for me at all. For a lot of reasons, but one that no one ever seems to think about is races.
This is D&D; this random NPC could be a human, or a dwarf, or an elf, or even a beholder! And then there's the male/female/neutral variations. There is not set of twelve names that works as well for a human milk-maid as it does for the leader of the male orcish raiding party, or the dragon that lives in the next mountain over that uses polymorph enough that they gave up on gender two centuries ago.
And I, personally, am just as likely to forget to name the dragon as the milk-maid.
I find I'm better off just taking 15 seconds to open up a random name generator.
well in my experience no player remembers any NPC names ever anyways
I wanted to say thank you, I’m a very young person who wants to be a screenwriter and you’ve really inspired me when it comes to my writing
Thanks for commenting! I’m glad I could be of service
I think a story based around Aegon would work, but with him as almost a force of nature that everyone has to contend with. Like this mf is barrelling his way across Westeros and he WILL get to you and your lands eventually. How do you react to that? How do you stop him? Do you even try to stop him? Who do you align with out of desperation in the face of this absolute ligma male rocking up in your garden and charging at your front door?
Oohhh yeah I think that's the right way to handle him. He's sort of like the Terminator
In that story the "main family" would probably be the Martell from Dorne then. They gave Aegon a run for his money.
@localscriptman the difference being the terminator CAN and WILL BE stopped, though at great cost, risk, and no small amount of luck. Aegon HAS to and WILL win, else the whole story doesn't work.
so, here's the thing: i am in fact a writer who starts out with a premade world where the lore is already codified to an extent. i'm a writer, editor, and teacher in the beyond skyrim-arcane university projects and honestly, i love being able to just jump in and fill in those "hows" and "whys," and then build off that lore to fill in the gaps. we have unofficially designated loremasters who we can pester and who are usually happy to either infodump or find us resources. the thing with starting off with a pre-defined lore set is that you get to touch on pretty much every aspect of the world. compare the father teaching his two young children how to hunt to why a tree looks the way it does to a god pulling the strings behind a massive tragedy. one of the things that i (try to) teach my students is that you have to follow not just an internal logic in your story but the external mechanical and technological constraints of your game engine - you'd be surprised how many times i've read something that just would or could not happen. knowing your limits and where (and why!) you can or can't twist, pull, change, or push them is one of the most important skills a writer of any discipline can learn. dialogue is especially tricky given the interactive nature of a video game and it has unforgiving limits, which is why we have students work on it so much. what's that? an ellipses? oops, that's a crash to desktop, game engine can't handle that. i've learned so much from my time in video game writing that i can apply to my fiction writing to the point where seeing the overlap between writing disciplines is really fascinating for me, which is why i like your videos on screen writing so much. and i will be stealing that "fire up the darling killer 3000" for future lectures, so thank you for that lol.
The one thing i took from all my role playing experience is that you don't make good stories directly, but you make situations with many different possible outcomes. This ensures that player interactivity is consequential.
Oh and of course the other half is to react with your characters as soon if there is anything, that could provoke an interesting (and consequential) action.
The story will then emerge from that.
I am a beginner writer. I don't have a writer's education. And I am so grateful for your content. You make some things so clear and *usablee*! I don't just learn something new, the gears in my head start spinning immediately, whether it's because I already have a story where I can apply it or (what's even more cool) because I start imagining something brand new just to try out these new tools. It's educational, functional and therefore (for me) inspiring.
Thanks, man!
I think the joy of interactive media like DnD is the fact that it leaves room for problem solving. But I think without the dice, the highs and lows would make things fall flat.
I think of playing pretend as a kid, and acting out Pokémon battles, and how you’d end up with someone shouting “I use Claw!” “But I dodge you!” “No you don’t, I hit you!!” And the whole thing falls apart.
The dice prevent that issue, because chance decides to what degree you are successful, combined with your stats. Usually it’s up to the DM to decide the circumstances of your success/failure.
But as I said the great thing is the space given for problem solving. In a different campaign, I came up with a cool move wherein my half drow would shadow step and stab the orc Chieftess we were fighting- but I failed and she caught my wrist. So I was put into problem solving space again. I ended up being able to negotiate with the chieftess and find out her motives. We were only there in the first place, because on a random side adventure we killed a bull mammoth sacred to a group of centaurs. The centaurs were going to kill one of our party members in its place, but was willing to let him live if we got rid of the orc camp that they had a rivalry with. During the course of the fight we realized that all the orcs were female. After talking to the chieftess we discovered the centaurs had taken all their men folk captive. We ended up siding with the orcs and brokering a truce between the orcs and centaurs.
This was in no way part of the main plot our DM had planned for the day.
But our choices and failures pushed us into problem solving mode and therefore into meaningful gameplay.
Another DnD story I want to share:
Someone’s paladin died during a side quest, and everyone was really bummed out. The DM had an idea to circumvent it, but said the player had to accept it without knowing what it was.
So my friend’s human paladin was resurrected as a teifling.
Which opened up all kinds of fun character angst for later.
As someone who is working on a stupidly big fantasy story and world that is always one step away from spiralling into an uncontrollable mess of plot lines and lore, I appreciate this.
This video brought to mind something i heard from an rpg showrunner "Characters are all like stained glass. The shapes, colors, and translucense are all different, but the light shining through is always you."
And i would also like to add in that actors no matter how close they stick to a script are injecting their own personality, and I've heard that the best directors collaborate with their actors rather than just dictating what they need to do.
Just two tidbits i figured could be interesting to think about moving forward, considering what you mentioned in this video
Okay so I've been struggling to write a couple of episodes for my cartoon project. I tried using your suggestion of asking why to everything and I've fixed a crucial episode in like half an hour. I cannot thank you enough.
Glad I could be of service, good luck with your thing 👽
What is the show? Where can I watch it?
At 18:33 you can just hear in his voice, this is not just a collection of characters he's pushing through an epic backstory... these are nuanced, complex, friends.
I have started with a preexisting world before because I have a bunch of ideas I really like to keep around for a particular story. However, I use the preexisting world as a template, not a mold-it’s a jumping off point that can bring with it some pretty cool ideas, but it’s malleable, because it has to be.
Yeah that seems like a good way to do it
Yeah, the story I'm writing right now wouldn't even have been conceptualized if I hadn't first thought of a world where supervillains were rising and giving problems to the goverment, to the point the government decides to make a military program of Iron Man like soldiers
I just create an outline of the world with geography, chacracters and history, and just place those together until story.
Bingo, this is how I'm building my world and characters. This channel helped me adjust everything towards themes a the world started creating itself 😂
Mhm mhm! For me, the trick to writing in preexisting worlds has always been to find a theme in it somewhere - or an underexplored area I can mold into something of my own - then derive my characters from that
The "on gameplay" section says everything about, with out actually saying, the players are the antagonist of the story. The story is set to move in a direction, and with out player involvement it will land at that destination. The players actions get in the way of the story's progression and it then needs to take a new path to completion.
You give, hands down, the most helpful writing advice ever. This vid is especially helpful as I’m a dungeon master myself.
Happy to help 👽
You know I actually listen to your posts when I'm working on my DnD world. Your videos really help me out a lot!
I’m happy to hear it!
This has become my favourite writing channel so quickly. I’ve gotten so much further with the screenwriting projects I’ve been working on since I started watching. Thanks for keeping this amazing content coming!
Thanks for tuning in!
Recently I’ve found it very useful to represent every group/organisation with a character who acts as the “face” of that group. Even opinions on events can be encapsulated by a character. E.g instead of “the doctors refused to operate because it’s too dangerous” it could be “doctor Connor refused” from which you can go into his character and personality to see why he felt that way.
I remember that this trick is pulled to express the fall of the Amaroutines in FFXIV. In general, when Hermes forces the disaster of Meteion and her song of despair, plenty of Amaroutines sacrifice themselves to make Zodiark. Some others counter that by instead following Venat and following in a sense of hope that later people can overcome, and reject the recreation of paradise most Amaroutines seek, creating Hydaelyn. (Venat knows this because she meets FFXIV Warrior of Light/Azem, who admits to her the plan of Hydaelyn.) Then the world is sundered into fourteen shards, and only three Amaroutines (Lahabrea, Elidibus, and Emet-Selch) are left to try to reconstruct their society by rejoining shards. Emet-Selch is the only person left who really remembers what goes on, and is broken in trying to enjoy life but bitterly remembers how everything was torn from him and is stuck.
There is a particularly good scene where the weight of this on every remaining Amaroutine is shown succinctly.
Hythodaelus, as a nice person but is not a person counter to Amaroutine society, sacrifices himself and moves to the left to indicate he is part of Zodiark.
Venat, as a person who puts her trust in the future and believes in moving forward, moves to the right to imply that she is forced to be Hydaelyn and sunder the original world.
Emet-Selch, as the leader of the Ascians who just want their world back, is stuck in between.
In this, you succinctly see the bind that Amaroutines have come to because of Meteion causing all of their creation magical to turn against them and ruin their paradise.
I made a world long ago full of characters and lore and what not. Eventually I hit a dead end, my characters had no depth no background or story and this stopped me from progressing further. Now that I know my mistakes I think I'm going to revisit it and try to improve it, maybe even start a new one in the same universe. Thank you for the help Local.
The "once-removed" principial is fascinating. You have this archetypal paragon, but they are in the backstory. The person in the main narrative that has their role can then be compared and contrasted with them. What differences are there? How do they feel about this? A writer can get a lot for this once-removed character just by having this paragon in their backstory.
Didn’t expect D&D stuff from this channel but as a huge nerd I am pleasantly surprised
🤓🤓🤓
@@localscriptman 26:12 🥸🥸🥸
Only 4 minutes in, and I’m already so thankful for writing advice like this. It educates where some lack and it affirms what others have been doing right all along.
Why chaining is really interesting to me because I subconsciously did it for a while and almost always I found that the real story that mattered to me was found in that backstory. Turns out, the king being a huge authoritarian because he lost his daughter long ago is way less interesting to me than actually writing about the daughter going into the great big world and getting captured. She has to make connections with other captives and grow strong to escape, all the while while her father tries to track her down. Finally seeing that she has indeed grown up when he catches up to a daughter who freed herself.
It's wild how often it happens to me, to the point where sometimes I'll create a scenario I know I'll never use just to construct a backstory that would be a more interesting front story.
YES! Writing is a lot like exploring. You can find things you didn't expect.
Man, getting TTRPG content from a writing channel like yours is blending my two favorite things. And shout-out to Jay! This setting rocks!
couldnt have been timed better, decided to finally take the plunge and make my own campaign last night. another flawless w for the Local fandom
👽
That is a great way to handle world building... Lore is the why, the what, when where and who come during storytelling.
As someone who primarily watches your videos to become a better GM, this is a gift, thank you
I love starting with a pre-existing world. For one, it helps be come up with details that make the story feel more lively and less generic (as giving details based on a big picture idea tends to give more generic results). For another, the limits on what I can do are half the fun. If I have a plot point I want to do but the worldbuilding details go against it, I now get to problem solve my way into a situation where the plot point can still happen without changing the worldbuilding too much (which tends to create interesting complexity hat wouldn't have happened otherwise).
"most of the conversation about worldbuilding is very superficial" Got my subscribe. I am a writer, primarily flexing my muscles on running DnD games for the last 15 years. I knew everything you said, in a way, but what you said still helped because its useful to have new perspectives on old information.
As I'm revisiting a world I created about 2 years ago, but never made a story for, this video has been invaluable. Thank you!
you're the only channel where I don't skip ad reads out of sheer respect for the segue lol. thank you! for the bit about once-removing, it tied together and brightened up quite a few things in my worldbuilding. looking forward to the next!
Everytime you upload, I am filled with the glad. Your content 100% deserves the attention it's getting and way more.
This sounds like the coolest campaign I've ever heard. 100% would by a book. Love the channel man
You had me for the long run when you said, "I've personally found most of the conversation around world building has been superficial and foundational." I thought I was the only one. Thank you thank you thank you for digging in.
The "once removed" thing sort of sparks some ideas given how it plays into a handful of characters I played in a game that I'd like to use if I ever ran a game... However, in that case, it wasn't so much falling with each removal so much as raising up. It started with Orphea the First, who for her descendants would become as myth, was the illegitimate child of a dragon who was also a lord of a distant land; the story as it came to be told was her descendants was that in a land to the far east her mother Kirika seduced the dragon under the assumption that her own strengths could only truly have flourished with sorcery, and that would require a magical bloodline which she didn't have enough of. The result of this was her being branded a criminal and conscripted, and the culture's sense of honor and shame placed Orphea the first as having the same social status as a criminal herself save for a direct punishment. So she left the land with her own children, only to presumably die drowned on a beach trying to buy time for the ship carrying her kids to leave for the west.
This act of dying in water would repeat twice more, but with hints of betrayal added. Orphea the second started as a slave on a pirate ship, only to help start a mutiny and save the new captain through trickery and magic, only to be pushed into a fight with a squid by the very captain she saved, and died. Orphea the third would die at the hands of a fey creature that beguiles and drowns those that see it, and this happens because she tried to save someone else from this fate, only for that person and the rest of the party to leave her to die.
By Orphea the Fourth, we're dealing with a character with trust issues, more ready to run than risk herself, though she may come back with help, and a belief in fate, and a fear of water... So she's wound up in a desert land of iron gods and machines... However, despite all of this legacy, she manages to live, thrive, and overcome the machines and the iron gods and become a demi-god; one interested in helping others follow the path to godhood through the overcoming of fate, one she's already done once, and likely will a few more times.
... And then there's her children, in addition to leaving a town she formed in the hands of her first daughter, Orphea the Fifth, her second daughter Astra recognizes that her mother achieved all she did while being a fool caught out of her depth, and so seeks knowledge and wisdom so she can one day support her mother, and then Orphea the Fourth's illegitimate son named Zagreal born the son of a demi-god of strength named Zenon that she stewarded; and Zagreal has to deal with trying to reconnect with his father by gaining the approval of his stepmother.
literally already in love with this channel from the thumbnails alone. i'm in the process of writing out a script for my webcomic idea and i need all the pointers i can get. subscribed.
First time seeing your channel (I'm from the D&D world), and this blew me away. I'm getting into short story writing as well, and both the common ground and differences of the media fascinate me. I subbed before we even hit the 10 minute mark. Cheers!
Thanks for your support!
You not playing games gives a lot of insight into the really functional way you view characters. Deep local lore
Along with my screenplay projects I’ve also been writing a novel series and creating lore and world building is so fun
This is so well timed because I’m making my first dnd campaign so I wanted to watch one of your videos to help and there was a lore video waiting for me 🙏
I like working within a pre-existing world because the limitations that come with that force more deeply working through the issues I want in the story, how they intersect etc.
It's HARDER but I find it ends up with a more interesting/deeper story
I like your method of working with archetypes. Personally, in my novel writing, I like to play archetypes in full and explore them to their greatest potential. I also love creating backstories for characters who personify an obvious archetype. The making of a legend is more interesting than the legend itself.
*Hello Future Me* has a fantastic video on Worldbuilding & exploring 2 methods; Hard Worldbuilding and Soft Worldbuilding.
Someone in the comment section of that video aptly described each by saying:
Hard worldbuilding creates a story for the world.
Soft Worldbuilding creates a world for the story.
I go goofy with inspired giddiness when I refer to that video and now with this one (even tho I've not finished it, I still know this will be insightful/inspring cuz Lucas LocalScriptman is no less than a prolific writing prophet bestowed upon us by the Sacred Elders of Storytelling)
Whoa high praise. Yeah I’m familiar with his stuff, he’s pretty good
An example of the "once-removed" effect is, as it would happen, in Zelda.
Hylia is the perfect iteration of the wise-queen archetype and is a literal goddess, the Zelda of _Skyward Sword_ and basically all the other mainline Princess Zeldas are these "wise-beyond-their-years" kind of messiah figures who just kind of know everything and always tell Link what has to be done next whenever they show up, and then finally the Zelda of BOTW is a nerd who, even though it wasn't actually her fault, is made to feel like a screw-up and is afflicted by guilt and self doubt.
There isn't even any particular in-context reason that the archetype "decayed" and became more complex other than the 10,000 years of complacency purchased by the Shekiah's plan to defeat the first Calamity being so successful. She still has those messianic moments, but they always seem to come upon her like some kind of possession or deeper personality like the Nameless Pharaoh form _YuGiOh_ and there more sense that she's a person with limitations and desires.
currently planning to write a book with silly little characters ive created back in secondary 3, this helped so so much
The skillshare transition was crazy!! lol
Love your videos, dude. Been binging them since two days ago
I never understood how one could make stories. I am also a bad storyteller in general day to day, but my god was your explanation crystal clear you have no idea how much i resonated with your explanations. I am PUMPED THE FUCK UP MAN.
describing it with that ball simile was great
I'm a songwriter and you've given some advice that has opened up a whole other world of possibilities for me. You've really given me some insight on a different storytelling process that has helped me crank out a good handful of bangers in the last few months.
Not saying anything others haven’t said a bunch already, but thank you for this channel. As an older person who struggles with not ideas or concepts for characters and worlds, but struggles with how to structure these things into a cohesive way to turn it into a narrative on paper, seriously just the basic structure on getting these things down on paper in the way you’ve explained in your previous videos. It’s truly invaluable youve helped me tremendously
Thank you so much for making content and putting words to these concepts. I am getting more into writing because of you, and your video about dialogue has helped tremendously. Currently, I am drafting an SCP article, and it would not happen without your great advice.
Side note, when I played DnD in high school, I developed my campaigns directly from my friends PCs’ backstories. In this way, I outsourced what my stories were by coaxing creativity out of my friends, and the way I did this was the Socratic Method of asking “why is this?” Hearing you go on about the “why chain” near the start of the video is very similar to what I did, and hearing it was so nice.
You inspired me to write! I love the way you do your videos, it makes me feel like writing is actually something attainable, and not just for a certain "elite" persons, thank you for everything random internet guy!
Thanks for tuning in
I just realized I've been unwittingly doing the once-removed trick myself in writing my D&D campaign villians. As a big fan of Lost and Marvel, though, I think for me at least this trick might just be a generalization of the "daddy issues" school of character writing.
For example... who is the uberdark, conflicted, multi-dimensional recurring villain with the oh so compelling backstory? Well first of all, he's NOT the famous and powerful bad guy who already did the bad thing in the past, no. He's the SON of that bad guy. The young man who grew up with a combination of admiration and fear in the shadow of such an influential person. He aspires to the same status, but perhaps he doubts his competence and this compels him to take on some desperate Faustian bargain, or perhaps he is torn between competing influences but his father's legacy compels him to avoid moderation and make decisive sacrifices. His potential for villainy is believable because he was raised by one, but his reputation is still to be determined. Oh, and he has some rivalry or frenemy type connection to the party.
Now his "backstory" is compelling because it is happening right now, and inextricably linked to the party's own choices. If they defeat him early on, perhaps the shame makes him more desperate. If they make friends, perhaps it's not his goals but his methods that the party finds themselves at odds with. And of course, what happens to his dad and how does that influence his thoughts about his own legacy?
I often think it's impossible to define a character independent of their relationships to other characters, but that chain can't go on forever. So if you are going to end it with an archetype, put that archetype in the past.
This was EXACTLY what I needed right now and if my work ever gets published I WILL credit you for “why I am so darn good at writing” 😂 Also I’m basing characters of Lucas and Jay because *incoherent excited writer noises I can’t describe in words*
Major win, so glad we could help
Such a great thing to come home to after a 12-hour shift, time to sit back, relax, and not so patiently wait for the next upload.
This was a sick watch. Extremely helpful, stuff like why-chaining and once-removing especially for me. if you have more techniques, tips and methods for people that are dumb like me and didn't realise these top tips it would be extremely cool to see a video on stuff like that.
Im so happy that you are going into the gaming direction with this video. Since i started watching your videos i really like your opinion and thoughts you shine on media i seen before but could now see in a different way. I whom is really really into game development and for that word building/story writing will try to learn from stuff like this. Thanks
D&D permeates every aspect of my life, so, this is awesome. Very cool seeing into the process and expansion of this setting and story!
4 minutes in and all the problems i was having with my storytelling and Worldbuilding suddenly got so much clearer.
The sponsorship transition is next level.
That sounds like an awesome world! I've been working on a world of my own and I feel like it's gotten stretched thin. This video will really help give me some ideas on how to clean up the history and lore, so thanks!
20:00 Yeah you also have the benefit of making the idea of the archetype more of a concrete thing in the story, y'know? Like if you just have a wise old mentor, thats just a dude who happens to check all the right boxes. If its some kind of successor you're dealing with, in a way that makes the character genre savvy because they too know what the perfect fantasy mentor looks like and are trying to emulate it
I really enjoyed hearing how screenwriter was able wrap their head around d&d and it's relationship with lore and worldbuilding. cool stuff
I think what has helped me the most with writing a world is to not view it as a story that you are writing, but rather to tell the story of a world that did exist. Whether that be a world that once was that is now lost, or is still an existing world is up to how you write it. It take away the disconnect from the writer to the world, where you will write more like a distant omnipotent being, rather than a bard or storyteller, retelling the stories of yore.
You're elevating the way people think about storytelling, Mr ScriptMan. Kudos to you
Hardest thing I've ever worked on was magic. Main problem is that while I want it to do fantastical things, I also want it to have a logic to it.
Dang you FMAB!
glue
(Translation: Yippee! another video from the local script man now I get to watch it at 1 am and think about how to apply its information to my story and then maybe do that in like 5 months :D. But seriously, you give us some of the best writing tips on TH-cam for FREE!? Absolutely Foolish. 10/10)
Glue
Whoa, I'm mad early and I don't even have notifications on
I'm not big into DnD but Ive done plenty of text based rp games in the past. I think what you mentioned near the end about the dice changing the experience is something I need to think about when it comes to text rp. It seems like all games are either just the DM stringing the players along in their own story like a group of people locked into a theme park ride with no real agency, or the rp is an aimless sandbox that never gives anyone a reason to care. I really do like rping so I hope I can figure out a good way to go about it in the future.
Anyways, great video, thanks for the content bubba
Thanks so much for making videos! Your explanations are really concrete and make me feel like I can really tackle the storytelling problems I’m having and make progress 😄
Please do more of these, I really enjoy it and this video is the best ive seen so far. Perhaps a series of worldbuilding like for religion, culture, fleshing out cities, nations, gods, etc.
Love to see your exploration into magic systems & worldbuilding. Look forward to your personality stuff!
Local's videos are so great for me personally, because he presents concepts in this "rational, it all makes sense" type of way.
Like a math, in a good way
Thank you, I really appreciate that. Definitely what I’m going for
I had a whole essay talking about this very topic. People who just world build, and people who just write stories are equally feckless.
World building IS writing, and must be treated as such.
Oh I have feck. I have so much feck
@@localscriptman Oh come on ScriptMan! You know, I Feck, You Feck, He she me Feck, Feck, Fecking, We'll have thee Feck, Feckorama, Feckology, The study of Feck!? It's first grade ScriptMan!
I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your content. I’m an amateur writer attempting to make my first serious project after years of not writing with purpose, and your videos have been genuinely helpful and enjoyable. Thanks a lot!
God, i love these videos. Honestly, i wish i could have played the game without knowing my graduation would get interrupted with a dragon
No joke idk why but this got me into the headspace I needed to be in to set up my next dnd world and i had to grab my phone to write down the premise in the shower
oh my god, a longer localscriptman video
tomorrow will be such an amazing day
The ball analogy is such a simple, beautiful way to put it. Great video!
I have worldbuilt for most of my life and never got good at it because I kept neglecting the lore. I am now working the other way round, starting with the creation myth, mythology and lore (using pre-Helenistic Proto-European mythology as guidelines) before even thinking of any maps and dungeons and stuff. The actions of the gods will shape and reshape the world.
I already have three Ends of the World: The First Dragon War, The Devine Rapture, The Mage Wars.
Each time, the landscapes and maps changed drastically beyond recognition (which is why I didn't draw any yet) and each time the civilised/thinking races were razed to the brink of extinction, loosing much of their technology (due to not enough craft/tradesmen surviving to keep the technology alive) and effectively being thrown back into somewhere between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, struggling for survival in isolated villages with hundreds of miles of untamable wilderness in between, each one believing themselves the very last survivers of the last cataclysm, leaving the world littered with ruins from one, two or three apocalypses ago, with artefacts of unimaginable power, made of the sacred Iron or the mythological Steel (or even the unholy demonic Plastic of the First Age).
Exactly what I need! Musing about my first story where I don’t start from an ancient mythological plot and give it a twist, but instead this one’s gonna be about 30y in the future - and I got a whole lot of variables with their whys to track through time.
Love the video and I wanted to thank you because your channel has been so very helpful for me, as an aspiring game developer. I have had almost the oppossite problem as I inherently understand how to create complex, deep, spontaneous narratives between groups (sometimes large groups) of people, but I don't have any idea how to write a story myself...let alone create a lore, that will help people create stories.
What I can tell you about ttrpg's or table top games in general, is that DnD occupies a very unique experience and handles narrative construction unique to itself. It is only really able to do that because of both age and storytelling traditions that have grown around it over several decades. In other games what motivates the player to behave in a way that is coherent with the story, are incentive mechanics. Every game has different ways of doing this, and there are many different perspectives on agency of the player, and adherence to the story. There are too many different takes to recount here and I can try to give an example if you want.
The purpose of these mechanics is to both provide a character ability or mechanics consequence that the player has bought into. this is tied to a narrative element the GM (game master) incorporates or ties into the world's lore. The trick is that the player has already bought into that story because they have chosen that option, and GM can use that to motivate the character in accordance with the story as they have just unknowingly agreed to.
I get the worldbuilding v lore now, and I guess environmental storytelling is the bridge between both.
Been waiting all week for this video! great insight and the delivery is hilarious as always! 💯💯
Thank you, I’m really proud of this one since it took so long
*John* The *Bleeg* is most definitely going to be a special guest at some point in one of my VN's
That skillshare segueway is amazing 😂
2:40 John the bleg is now my favorite bleg in all of fiction xD.
Thanks for all the videos. They are very helpfull for my writing.
Man you just sparked the next idea for my campaign. Love your videos dude, helped me alot with my writing and storytelling.
Dont forget us when you become famous 🙏🏾
Thanks for watching, I will not 👽
Your videos have vastly improved my homoerotic fanfiction. Thank you
That’s what it’s all for at the end of the day
I finished a Solarpunk feature recently where I started with the world. I knew I wanted a story about people, like a “When Harry Met Sally” vibe. That’s my A story, two childhood friends reconnecting. Starting with the world informed the B story, the lore, and made the story more unique. The world informed the character’s occupations, which gave them something to do. The world could also act as a plot catalyst. For example, a wildfire is my act 2 break, a story beat that was informed by the climate-changed world. You can extract plot, secondary characters, backstory, and these small details just from the world itself.
This video should be called screen writer discovered cooperative storytelling
Kurt Vonnegut once implied that the best story has no point. That we end exactly in the same position where we began, because that is the true reflection of life
Kurt Vonnegut has written the majority of my favorite books. I love him and his dryness and wit so much. However, I think that anecdote about the "line of a story" moreso was meant to reflect his philosophical outlook on life as whole, rather than a silver bullet template that all the best stories should follow. In my opinion, he's basically saying "Life is absurd and there's no meaning to it beyond that, so a realistic story is an absurd one."
In regard to the subject of this video (creating lore out of worldbuilding through causality) I'd argue that whatever story you write SHOULD have a point. You could say the purpose of running/playing a game of D&D is many different things, but I think most people wouldn't say that purpose is to create a true reflection of life.
Curious to hear your thoughts on my take! Reading this got me to stop what I was doing and really think about why we consume entertainment and play games.
@@ernyoung8357 Sometimes I struggle to differentiate writing and life advice. 😅 I would actually agree that a good story needs a point, a theme to resonate with, or a goal for our protag to strive for. I'm probably thinking more of "coming full circle" like in the hero's journey when the hero finds themselves back exactly where they started except wiser and with a whole new perspective on their life.
Oh god, about writing stories in existing worlds, I can't agree more.