This stuff is like a drug. I used to pace around my room 6+ hours nonstop just daydreaming, writing, and drawing, till I got scolded for neglecting dinner.
@@JulianVicworld building as a hobby is not the same thing as maladaptive daydreaming and even if you have had a formal diagnosis i would be very careful in telling other people that they have something like that
4 years ago, I was bored, so I started making a language. It's been through 5 spelling reforms, I've written a journal in it for a year and a half now, and I've made a giant reform of it twice now. I write music in it. It's what got me to worldbuild. In this world there are pine marten (a mustelid) like people. There are religions, education systems, stereotypes, cyphers, cultures, art, dancing, musical instruments. I love building it. I have so many stories and characters in my head. One day I'll put the pen to paper, make the code, put paint on the brush. One day. (Edit: i didn't expect this many likes or replies. Literally. This is the most attention I've ever gotten on the internet.)
hoooollly shit you're living one of my major goals in life with writing journals in your conlang. I've got a journal ive been writing for about 8 years now and a personal conlang that I've been making for about a year, but i havent gotten to the point where i can write full sentences and ideas in it reliably. and the world sounds cool, so keep nurturing it! im curious about those cyphers (something I've never really delved into in my worldbuilding)
For anyone who plans to make their own world: only make it geographically accurate if you really enjoy that stuff. Worldbuilding communities talk a lot about how mountains are always in the wrong places on maps due to the tectonic plates beneath them and how there shouldn’t be a river or a forest in that area. Unless those things really excite you, trying to make my map geographically accurate drained me to the point where I just said there were no longer any geography rules because I can make those rules. Don’t make anything accurate if having restrictions on your world steals your enjoyment
As a geologist myself, nature is weird and wild, so do whatever you like and the see if you can explain it scientifically later (if you wish), there are enough theories and possibilities to do anything
This is so important to remember. There was one world I abandoned at some points because of how "stuck" I ended up being when trying to follow most of thoses "rules"/advices. Now, I'm more on a "dreamy" mood, so, who cares if the mountains are in the "correct" position, if the whole world is actually floating continent above clouds!
yes!! i have a world i created for a dnd game and the part that originated the entire concept for the world was “what if there wasn’t a moon in a fantasy world? it could be cool for there to be a star or 2 people use to tell the time at night” i then realised that this wouldn’t be possible for a world with life and got quite upset but decided eventually “oh well, it’s my world, i don’t care” and that’s the mindset i’ve had going forward because who cares about geography or science when the world itself is filled with magic
One of the fun things about worldbuilding to me is sometimes it's "The god who watched over this world for eons has died and people are now forced to either desperately cling to old faith or turn to beings that were once deemed unholy for protection and guidance." While other times it's "Goblins used to be giants who thought they were so unstoppable they tried to wage war with the gods, only to be cursed by those very gods and made tiny. Ever since they've been trying to crack space travel to reach the domain of gods again so they can get revenge."
@@uluscri To add, Lovecraft has a similar view in his musings and writings over these old gods. It seems like whenever an artist adds an impression to a piece, it's almost as if he himself must justify that he is a creator in poetic form which is why there's always tales of violence, cults, political powers etc. I guess my challenge to you would be, are you able to find a built world without these conflicts? The conflicts are seemingly obtuse because every world needs some sense of agency but as creatives, can we find ways to build conflict externally from our ideas. Moreover, is religion the tool for an escape into that would or back out of it. Lovecraft would most likely say that religion is both the way in and the way out. Anyways, as far as the goblins go, I love this dark fantasy type, but there needs to be more blends between certain literary genres to create uniquely written and imaginative landscapes. Thanks for the video. Love to hear what you think.
i daydream story concepts all the time. the actual fun part is trying to create a world where those stories can all fit. ive had a universe ive been building for almost 10 years now born from this
mmmm the well-baked quality of a 10-year old world. one of my worlds should be about 10 years old now (the Universe of Gen from one of my other videos), and it's awesome to go back to and write lore and stories for.
How do you do this? I have been adding random paragraphs to my notepad but I constantly want to go back and change everything and it's hard because it's not a linear process either so putting it in a notepad with an order doesn't make much sense. So I juste have a collection of small worlds that are kind of separate
@@maxcarvalho3202Honestly I get that at times too. Usually I try to imagine a few key characters in each plot and then in my head establish some basic rules on how the magic or political systems work and then I just keep asking myself questions like “why did they decide to worship elephants?” Or “why are the people in the East more modernized but the West more like religious zealots that don’t want to change even a single thing?” And I just keep adjusting my ideas if I come up with a better one but usually the changes aren’t super extreme. I don’t stop myself from making changes on previous information but usually I can move forward by asking myself more questions that force me to build on what I already have rather than questions about if what I have already is good enough if that makes sense. Usually I just keep asking questions of myself and trying to imagine what readers might be confused about or how I can connect certain people or groups of people to make each other feel more complex and interactive. Not sure if any of this rant will help you but I hope you got something out of it. Good luck!
Worldbuilding is such a thrill! I recently created an entire world for a D&D campaign, and it was a blast. I crafted a unique map with diverse regions, bustling cities, distinct races, epic wars, and a rich history full of intrigue and depth. It was such a rewarding process to see everything come together. Great video!
I've made so many Pathfinder 2E characters each built to fit together PF2E has so much content to use Most recent books are stupidly thick and or quirky
This video filled me with such a visceral childlike excitement that I started daydreaming of a new world before I was even halfway through the video. Thank you so much for making this.
its strange that minds like this are so uncommon. world building saved my life. it gave me an escape when life was hard. all of my world I hold very dear to my heart. i keep them only in my mind for the magic to me of it all. like a growing multiverse in my mind.
I write sci-fi and I have one master folder for one of my books and it HAS SO MANY DOCUMENTS INSIDE, it’s so fucking full and there are so many different things in their from planet environments to the overarching galactic government structure to a stations cultural practices around fight rings. I also have a very disorganized note in my phone that makes no sense to literally anyone but me and a channel in a server with my friend where literally half my plot is and a very chaotic milanote
When I was young, in high school, I was in such a dark place emotionally and mentally. I had severe anger issues, I’d felt betrayal, heartbreak, death of family and felt incredibly isolated, it was just at the right time that a world presented itself to me in my head, an alternate reality that acted as a safe space for me to project myself mentally, I was convinced this place was real but just out of our reach. I called this place the void and it saved my life. World building can really change your life.
my favorite daydreaming world building ive been doing recently is figuring out how the fully improvised characters in the show by dropout, called Very Important People tie together. They add so much on the fly its kinda hard to keep up with but makes for such an interesting culture and history. Truly never seen a world more bizarre, which makes sense considering its all made up on the spot and they didn't mean for them to be all in one real world. but thats been pretty fun recently
I have a world building project that honestly started in like 2006, but picked back up in 2019-present. I write a lot about the world, have created a language, characters, history, war, and using illustration skills plus Minecraft as a physical representation of the world. I’ve drawn maps, and included my sisters, husband and friends to discuss geopolitics. It’s so freeing.
World building, in my head or on paper, is one of many ways I have coped with mental health issues throughout my life. It's fun, it's satisfying, and it is a safe and creative form of escapism. I also highly recommend it.
I'm 29 but I've been worldbuilding for almost 25 years, and finally started making real stories instead of just keeping it all in my head or scattered notes that go nowhere. For me I was just a lonely and all too curious kid with a family life that made me want to be anyone else, anywhere else. Now I have some real life experience and it feels like I can take all my thoughts and feelings and make something that's so much bigger than me. I'm doing it for my 1 year old son, but I'll be damned if it doesn't feel like I need it like I need air or water. It's never too late to invest in yourself, in whatever form feels right.
I've been worldbuilding since like 4th grade, and now I'm a sophomore in high school, so like 6 years, going onto 7. My most recent world I'm working on is controlled by two deities/beings, basically like yin and yang (I haven't quite figured out their place in the world, but they're definitely important). One deity created the high elves, which then caused the other to create humans as an opposing force to the high elves. Because the elves saw themselves as superior to humans it resulted in the elves developing a slave based economy, and due to interbreeding it resulted in the elves, and then the half elves. The most interesting system thats in the works is the magic system, basically every organism absorbs mana through special organs, and in the brain there's a specific part of it that specifically deals with magic, and the more you cast spells the larger it grows (a potential interesting thing could be like magic sickness as that part of the brain grows, it could take over other parts of your brain, or it gets too big and you just die from internal pressure). But anyways a way it's processed is through language, so casting it with words is like a little cheat code for your brain, as it activates the neurons to cast the spell, same with magic circles (I wanted an explanation for why spells are cast, cause it always felt stupid, but this gives a reason, but also allows you to do the casting in your head with enough practice(kinda like doing math in your head)). Souls also interact with magic, as when someone dies they manifest as magic and can still hold power over the physical world, and other people can influence their power, as someone who believes in them will give them more power, extending their life and influence over the physical world. This can result in little village deities, but also deities that are overruling if enough people believe in them. This system resulted in the creation of the succubus, basically there was this minority religion followed by a group of humans with traces of elven blood. This group of people were polyamerous and nudist. and when a much larger group of people contacted them, their religions clashed and the more powerful one cursed their entire group to consume the ones they loved, and gave them shapeshifting abilities to lure over other people more easily, but once this religion died out and the god who cursed them died, the curse wore off, but they were left with a new body. And due to the shapeshifting ability it has allowed the succubi to take on many demi-human forms. I'm really excited to delve more into the succubi, as they explore themes of culture and religion I'm not used to, and how tragic events can effect a culture while also exploring trans-humanism and transgenderism more thoroughly. Well anyways, that's my progress on my current worldbuilding progress
Around the time this came out, the algorithm placed it on my timeline and I saved it to watch later. For some reason, today I finally did and I am so glad. This is one of the best videos I've watched in a while and you, friend, have such a way with explaining things and inciting that timeless childhood wonder. I've been feeling kinda unmotivated lately, you know.. between school and work, relationships and social media addiction, etc. It has me feeling like I can barely string a single sentence together sometimes, much less create cool things! Sometimes I feel like I've used up the entire limited supply of creativity I had available in my body and now the well just dried up. Being reminded that it is something that lives inside me always, that I just need to feed and nurture it back to health, that there is no right or wrong way to create... This is a priceless reminder
What an inspiring video. I really like your ideas about exploring via daydreaming, and imagining the lore of areas you're in. Recently while driving I remembered how as a kid I would imagine cats running alongside the car on long road trips, so I decided to try to imagine that again. It felt very invigorating and exciting... I find it funny how that simple thought made me feel myself again. Great video!
this video really made me rethink things. i realised that i’ve been so clouded by ‘why do this thing if not for someone to see’ and ‘what if its a waste of time’. this line of thinking. when really.. i shouldnt care. i should let my creativity be free, i should build the worlds ive been dreaming and trying to forget. i’m going to make that planet of wholesome cute food animals because who’s going to stop me? no one’s even going to see it. it’s my world. thank you for making this. you are an inspiration, truly.
thanks for the inspirational stuff. Theres also a channel called Monstergarden where an illustrator worldbuilds an amazing universe. Also also, worldbuilding a mythology term coined by Tolkien is "Mythopoaea" and i think it sounds so cool
I'm a forever GM in my dnd group and I love worldbuilding, but it sometimes feels like a chore. My game group is really chaotic, so I can't just do cool stuff for the sake of it, without thinking of the consequences of stupid or ill-intended actions by my players. I love it, but it's a lot of work. This video has inspired me to create something for the sake of it, like, what if I tweaked some physics laws in order to make magic possible? I could write a diary of a magical scientist in that world describing the experiments they carry in order to arrive at those laws, it's going to be soo cool, thanks for making the video!
im currently working on a world that is set in the year 2120, where almost the entirety of humanity lives in a Megacity that extends deep into the ground, called “The Rack”, or colloquially known to the residents of the Megacity as “Darkwell”. in this version of Earth, roughly fifty years prior to current day, a strange phenomenon occurred, where in random places all over the planet, magical creatures of nearly every variety began to appear. fairies, centaurs, minotaurs, and even, on rare occasions, dragons. though, these creatures were hunted for their bodies, just as we did with elephants or other animal pelts. the blood of these creatures all seemed to contain an unknown essence that allowed physical/mental stimulation and enhancement. now, in 2120, many multi-billion dollar corporations have figured out a way to synthesize these magical aspects of these creatures into microchips, planted into the brains of those willing to accept them. they’ve bastardized the concept of “magic” and turned it into a commodity.
I figured I was gonna like this vid cuz of the gentle lapslock and encouraging title, and then your VOICE is so SMOOTH AND BUTTERY - very gender envy - and THEN you have amazingly detailed citations!!! I'm sold, you're gold! :D
thanks you!! i now know what lapslock is and yes!! i like using it when it feels right. yet another thing i can give that nameness lol. citations. are. my. shit.
I wasn’t as into worldbuilding when I was first starting out bc things like geography and wars and economics didn’t particularly interest me, I was never great in history class, but then I took art history in college and I was hooked. I love building magic systems so I started thinking about how the existence of this magic in the world would effect the world’s culture and their art, like a world where their magic is similar to “weaving” things into the fabric of the universe, so weaving and textiles are a HUGELY important part of culture and the more complex and detailed a person can weave clothing, the more highly regarded they are. It also influenced their architecture so the fancy “palace” type buildings have tiled designs that reference weaving patterns whereas as peasant houses would be far more simple but still draw some influence. Also, I figured that spiders would be important in their culture, because of the association to weaving, and so on and so forth, which eventually *did* lead me to figuring out some stuff about geography and politics and history. It’s very fun and I tend to think culture/art history first now when developing fantasy and even sci-fi worlds.
fuck yeah! i love how everyone has different starting points for their worlds--i tend to start with magic, maps, and history. the art and culture are places where ive historically lacked in, but im working on that side of the world with my current project, since it can add so much depth and life to a place.
wow, really high effort video, I didn't even realize you only had 300 subs till I went down here. personsally, i love detailed worldbuilding that has every small detail, i love that thrill of making a world filled of detail and family trees
thank you! and mmmmm family trees. one of the first things i did when i was originally creating my longest-running world was make a royal family tree. i havent in a while, but i should do that...
A channel called Rick’s creations got me really invested in world building and ever since I’ve just been able to produce so much great concept art without art block. From an artists perspective, worldbuilding is great
One of my favorite memories from last year was going to a friend's house and locking ourselves in her room so she could explain her entire worldbuilding and ocs for 2 hours straight, including old artwork inside bulked binders, to the point where we were late for a school event later that evening. I had so much fun, I love when my friends explain their worldbuilding to me and we become so invested we seem to get lost in them for a few hours, asking questions about everything and them having (or not) answers for it! As of late I'm trying to build a world with my girlfriend and we're making it as self indulgent as we like :]
I love this so much! I once talked to my mother about my project for hours straight and I didn't even get through half of it. She said "That was information overload. Just write the book already so I can read it!" hahah If a friend ever asks me about my creative projects I will be so down to do the same.
@@NightmarelizedDina ohh hope you do get to write your book tho! Maybe then your mom writes an hour long review of it after she can finally process everything lmaoo. Also hope you can explain your lore to a friend too :D
As a long time creative and day dreamer, I got serious about writing it down and officially started back in highschool with my fantasy and sci Fi project, kinda rushing into it which made a messy first draft, until I took a step back and did some further reading into older works of fantasy and sci Fi to get a deeper understanding of the genre and it's foundations, up until now, I've deconstructed and reconstructed both projects of my fantasy world that's closer to our world than we may expect, to many countless worlds beyond ours, and I can't wait to show it to the world, within this decade, soon.
oh god i relate with the "within this decade" sentiment. exhibit a: i've been making a universe for nigh 10 years and my upcoming novel series for 3, and have no publishing goal in sight. at the very least, i'm planning on starting the novel series as a webnovel, and posting the first chapters by the end of the year. it's about the small steps!
Worldbuilding as a hobby has been something I've done for a very long time without realising, I've always 'scrolled' through stories and environments in my head when I get bored, whether it's on a road trip or waiting in a queue. I've made up hundreds of worlds but only developed a handful, but my approach has always been to write down the key elements of the world (major settlements, environments, general lore) but approach the world as a character living there when I daydream. It allows their arcs to be more developed and concise each time since I only remember the key elements, but lets the world become more filled in as they explore. Each time they get to a new location, I make more notes until almost everything has been seen, going back and rewriting parts that were too bland or niche. It's been fun
I'm starting to build my own world, that I hope to play dnd in with my partner :3 Its such a nice way to be creative because you're so free to just do whatever you want. I've never done it before but I'm in it for the journey ^~^
worldbuilding with others is also a very precious thing in my experience. my friends and i started roleplaying on this roblox game back in 2021 as a way to "experience normal teenage things" through our characters in the pandemic, and it grew into our own world with 60+ characters all living in it. we all have such a deep connection to this world at this point it's a part of me that will never truly go away. i love it so much that even though i do want to publish a story based on it someday, i'm still satisfied with it even if it never sees the light of day. my friends and i have gotten so much closer thanks to this world and its characters.
i love the idea of collaborative works and worlds, they're so much fun, and you get to make something special with other people. it's something i wanna properly do someday
i´ve been building a fantasy world for almost a year now I think and its just so fun to come up with all the insane lore , from the exctintion of the dwarves to the demonic dragon king who still thousands of years after his death still puts fear into the souls of everyone to the atlantians advanced alien technology everything is well put together and i´m so happy to continue writing the two first books in this world heck i´ve even put a lot of my love for speculative evolution in it, I deadass made up an evolution for orcs. another thing that i wanna put out there is that it can start very small, like my world it only started with a single island with dragons and dinosaurs and soon that island became just one of many continents with their own cultures and history
it's so funny where the initial seed for a world can come from. my oldest worldbuilding project came from me google image searching for Minecraft floating islands, and i was like "huh, what if the whole planet was floating islands and why would it be like that?" also good luck w the projects!
I love doing the strategy of using what I’m currently obsessed with to help add “lore” to my own worlds, it helps so much- especially with my art block lol
Hey buddy! You did a great job! I watched the whole thing. I'm a solo games development guy, and prior to that, a general arts guy. I really benefited from watching this. It's been important for me to reconnect with how this is done so that I can make stuff that makes sense. I think it's important to think about how much we might have lost touch with our "imaginations" when we're constantly bombarding ourselves with "content" and stimuli. Someone told me, if you're finding yourself having trouble doing this, turn off your computer and phone, turn off your lights, sit in a chair and force yourself to be bored! Your brain will get back in gear, like it used to do when you were younger!
yessss this is what i advocate!! disconnect from the product world and become restless enough to throw that energy onto a page (or whatever else you do)
I started a binder!! I’m such a fan of having an encyclopedia of sorts (I own all the Dragon Age and FFXIV encyclopedias!) and I love having two for the stories I’m working on. I also love scrapbooking/drawing so having a contained place to decorate/design concepts, having a “world bible” is so perfect. Edit: I’d also love to see how you world build too!
Hi! Do you have any tips on how to start with a binder? Do i search the internet for articles and history stuff to get me to start? I have many journals where i stick drawings of characters and write the plot in, but its more character oriented than world and i think a binder/encyclopedia is super interesting to refer to!
@@OrangeSun55 Of course!! This is still a fairly new system I've been doing with the two books I've been working on. So the subject matter will be different between those, and likely your own, but they'll follow similar ways of organization. So this is what I recommend to help you jump-start your binder: - Get creative with it!! I designed my own via Zazzle ($30~, so a bit pricey), but you can still use stickers, print-outs, markers, etc. to jazz it up. It really makes both my stories feel more 'real' to me. 🥰 - PLAN AHEAD! It doesn't hurt to get dividers and tabs and whatnot, but I'd recommend writing down a list of how you'd want to organize the binder. I'm a plantser more than anything, but this has helped me a bit from feeling lost/overwhelmed at the start. - I've divider both my binders at first with the most basic parts that you'd need as references: Characters, Settings/Locations, Fauna/Flora, Cultures/Races/Traditions/Histories, Maps/Photos/Images, Plot Outline/Timeline, Story Beats/Scenes/Blurbs, Research Notes/Sources/References. Of course all of these sections can be broken down to more minute details, but this comment is getting long enough as it is, LOL. But for instance, you can break down the Character section to include Main/Secondary/Antagonists/Misc characters. In your case with your character art, you can store all those in an Image/Photo section (while still having, say, one pic per character sheet in the Character sections.) But of course, you don't have to limit yourself to _just_ these sections alone! Please don't hesitate to add/remove other subject matter to your binder! For example, there's not really any magic systems in either of my worlds, but if you do, you'd definitely want to create a section for it! - Tools: Hole puncher, highlighters, glue stick, dividers (can never have too many dividers, LOL), tabs*; a folder maybe for temporary storage or for some stuff you haven't put inside yet. A binder with POCKETS, because that is wildly helpful, but totally optional. I also invested in a mini sticker photo printer so I don't have to keep using paper+tape to add pictures with character descriptions. 😂Stamps and scrapbooking stickers are also great for if you're too lazy to hand-draw your own layouts. Scrivener is also a fantastic alternative if you'd prefer to go the digital route for your story bible (and maybe a bit cheaper in the long run.) As of this comment, it might actually be on discount right now since it's November. * When it comes to tabs I like to use them up top, with divider tabs to the side. So basically divider tabs will specify Main/Secondary/etc. sections, while 'top tabs' will show _specific_ characters for easy reference. Never really explained to anyone how to make their own story bible binder, but I'm glad you asked. Now I kinda wanna make a dinky little blog post about it for future reference. 😂Lmk if you have any more questions, I'll be glad to help!
@ Thank you so much for the long comment and taking your time!:) I pulled out an old binder and tabbed it yesterday, being able to change around the pages and stay organized sounds the most freeing! Thanks so much for the tips!!🤩 Also, in my writing journal i try so much to incorporate world building and even info dump as i go, but as much as with where the plot takes me i can carve the world deeper, the story isnt about traveling the world its about living in it, so there will always be unvisited yet important places. A binder like this is honestly perfect and im so excited even tho i just started i can explode 😂🥹 Its so inspiring to see how others do their own world bibles or their ideas too!
@ Also do you think the binders size matters? I have an A5, which feels less intimidating to write in and itll look more full (which is pretty) and i write super tiny anyways. But an A4 has a seriousness to it thats just so formal? And legit and feels more fit i guess idk😅 I guess ı can always upgrade to a bigger one and the most important step is to have fun :)
@@OrangeSun55 SO glad I got you to try out using the binder!! Let me just say - don't stop using notebooks, though! Just recently I realized having a notebook (in addition to the binder) helps with taking notes, esp if you're not at home. When you have enough info in said notes, you can properly organize them in the binder. So if you wind up being like me, you'll just straight up organize your notes on a new page to put inside the binder in whatever section they will go in, LOL. I plan on using my typewriter to manually write them out. Looks cooler that way, lmao. Also it's an excuse for me to buy more notebooks. 😏😏 Also, now that you mention using A4, now I wish I tried that size out too, LOL. I didn't even consider that!!! I think I will if I wind up starting a new project. It'll feel like an actual book... in its own weird way. 😂😂
I was listening to this in the background and had a double take moment when you mentioned jan Usawi. I absolutely love their music and didnt entirely expect to stumble on their partners youtube video while following a youtube rabbit hole on world building. Crazy how the world works
i've been building my own world for about 8 years now. slow-going, but it's not for a published project, it's just for me, so no pressure. got 59 whole ocs in there. my favorite thing about taking it slow is that you get these moments where separate storylines or elements of worldbuilding or whatever suddenly click into place like they're two separate chunks of some sort of massive puzzle you've been building up. it's so satisfying when incomplete pieces of lore turn out to complete each other when you put them together in a certain way :)
I feel this so much. Putting cool ideas and characters into a world is one. But nothing can replace the feeling of making a new character / a piece of a the world that connects everyone's relationship together, or just made everything "makes sense."
Dude, not only this is video solid gold, but the music choice is amazing! I’ve known nobonoko for five years, now? He’s one of my absolute favorite musicians and best friends. I am so beyond happy that he’s getting the attention he deserved, even if it is way overdue haha! We’ve even done a song together, which adds even further in his worldbuilding (just if you’re interested in that). I love worldbuilding in my writing and music! Thank you so much, btw! I have been having a really rough day and nothing I tried that I love doing (music, writing, art, etc.) was working. I was really upset by this, and I just decided to click on your video while eating lunch, just because why not? And now, I’m in an absolutely great mood, now! Thank you, Uluscri!!
oh shit!!! i discovered nobonoko recently, and i'm floored by the power of the internet to connect people--was not expecting to get a comment from someone who knows him, so that's really cool. what's the song y'all collabed on? and thanks! i'm glad to have helped!
I think one of the most important lessons from this, at least for me, is remembering to simply make things because you want to, not with any expectation of publishing or trying to make money off of it, because, like you said, it'll be very quickly soul-draining to do so. I remember that, when I was younger, I'd do all sorts of silly little things like writing interviews between me and my characters, or doing crossover stories between my different worlds and universes and even existing IP sometimes. But there was a change, maybe during the pandemic, where all my writing became focused on finishing the series of novels I'd been writing up to that point, and I couldn't just make anything for fun. It all had to be published and it all had to be *for* an audience. But it's so liberating to just create for fun! It's difficult to get back into that after so long, but it's a very important lesson all the same. Thank you very much!
heck one of my favorite pastimes is to space out and make a species, then make every little detail about it, then build an entire damn ecosystem and habitat around it So fun
Its been at least a decade of building a world for my characters to live in. Can confirm, just do it in whatever feels the easiest way. Once you start, its like a spiderweb that just keeps going.
I would LOVE how a 'How I world build video'. I have so many characters, lore, stories and settings and it feels so 'done' and already existing as its so fleshed out in my head. Yet I sometimes realise that none of it has been born into this world, none of it is physically produced. I would love to know different methods of noting down and archiving it all in a satisfying way!
Very good video, i enjoyed. I began making my own ttrpg around 3 years ago after DMing for a group of friends. I put hours of work into every session but eventually things fell apart and the group stopped playing so i was reasonably upset cuz of the efforts i put towards it. So i used that material to begin my own fantasy world all beginning with some premises. It would be horror fantasy in a fictional world a few hundred years after a major event called the convergence which brought otherworldly horrors from strange beasts to new diseases. All the cities would be fortified and protected by giant walls while theocracies would fight for control over the land that remained. After a while, as resources grew scarce, excursions would leave the walls to expand and explore, which is what the player character will be.
as someone who feels really sad that i'm not one of those creative people that can spend their time daydreaming and imagining things, this feels like something that might be helpful to me. thanks a lot for this
I really admire the way your brain thinks and your mentality - it is such a freeing moment from the perfectionistic don't-try way my brain likes to think of things!
i’m doing a world where i plan to just make it over the years. eventually make it into a comic. but i don’t want to rush it. i build it through small bursts of inspiration, falling back on it when my other ventures end or fail to keep me entertained. it’s so fun.
got a good half of the magic system solidified before i even decided upon proper culture for each of the city-state civilizations. i love popcorning world building, popping from character to land to god to character
While watching this at 2x speed, I remembered all the times I drew stuff (when I was a kid and more recently) and then the world built off of that. I think I would enjoy doing some more sketching (big projects and simple sketches).
1:52 the fact that in my story a lot of the setting happens in a literal void. And most universes are composed of a void filled with some occasional islands
A worldbuilding project I’m working on is a first time one for me, I decided to be ambitious and build an expansive universe! I was pretty stereotypical when coming up with the idea to implement gods and stuff. But I feel like I made it unique enough :3 My project takes place in the year 57,000 on the human calendar, the universe itself is 80 trillion years old, and it revolves around powerful gods that watch over galaxies. For every galaxy there is 1 god that is omnipotent to everything happening inside of it. But 35 trillion years ago, a massive war broke out between galaxies after the races in said galaxies were trying to invade others. Countless gods and mortals died and flooded the Sanctum (the afterlife). The sanctum broke from all the souls in it and the supreme god repaired it, making every free soul fuse into a god devouring deity who eats the souls of disobeying/dying gods so the sanctum won’t flood and break again.
A year ago, today, I started off with Tribal people worshipping a tree-like god. Now I'm here learning how to construct an entire planet with earth-like qualities! I feel like I've still got a lifetime of imagination in me to continue this world-building, and I don't plan to stop!!! It was because I had so many story ideas, but didn't want to put it into our world, so I'm making it my passion to make my own to make my own stories in it.
Hi, I have thought of Worldbuilding not to long ago as I kept making up fictional scenarios off of surreal imagination on some of my irl experiences (especially over television) thanks to my tendency of day-dreaming or dreams as a way of giving off unique ideas for a story. I would like to thank you for uploading this while I recently became involved in the process of writing one for my own as a way of coping from stress but did it out of boredom. I’m not sure what my purpose for creating one but I know that I am invested in making Sci-Fi fantasy just like Avatar or Harry Potter for inspiration.
ive been working on the same world since i was 10 years old (i am now 20). i filter most of my thoughts through a lense of "how can i relate this to my world", for better or for worse. i love making up creatures for it and i think im over 100 species ive drawn, named and given at least a quick description to now, not counting things ive only doodled once in my sketchbook. one thing i love about such an "old" original world is how complexity will arive on its own. ill relate an idea i typed down last year to my new one, fill out a new region with species i made when i was 14, build upon old ocs, etc... and it just feels so fun to work on
Sometimes I’m not super kind to the person in the mirror, and so…as someone who’s frequently daydreaming, watching moving pictures and background music in my head, who feels a lot of shame thinking of the empty journals and notebooks I collect but never fill…THIS was something I really needed to hear, something that made my chest fell a lot lighter, so thank you for that. Think Imma go write some stuff.
Used to world build all the time in middle school and high school but somewhere along the way I stopped. This video has inspired me to get back into it again :)
My problem isn't that I don't world build. It's that I got too many worlds. 💀 Every five seconds, I get a cool idea for a new world that doesn't fit it with any of my previous in-progress worlds. The side effect is that I end up making no progress on any of them.
Maybe create a group of people who have created portals to all of your worlds? That way you can connect all of them together? Just an idea. It might not work in your world
You could also try putting all these worlds in a single dimensional plane or planet? Maybe have it so each "world" is a separate country/region/realm, etc.
I absolutely endorse and encourage people to world build, just for the fun of it!^^ I made a website to try and compile the information and art there ^^ sadly, whenever I show it to people excited to give it a look, I never see them again. I'm worried they got abducted into my stories.
I really appreciated not only the subject matter of this video, but the angle from which it was presented. World building is something that has always intimidated me and hung a bit heavy around my aspiration to write something more than a poem or stream of consciousness. Thank you for breathing new life into my ideas and making it feel more approachable. This may have been the push I needed.
Oh boy I have a world I’ve been working on for years, for my main story idea. The story is a science fiction with some fantasy elements. It technically falls into the category of dystopia as well, though the characters don’t realize it at first. There’s a big social commentary element to the dystopian aspect as one would expect. The main characters live in the higher levels of an inter-planetary empire where you’d think they wouldn’t have many problems, however there are certain thematic societal problems that still affect them greatly, especially since the main antagonist, a dictator who immortalized himself by uploading his mind into an incredibly advanced robot body, is also the great great (a lot more greats) grandfather of one of the main characters and is super controlling over his family. The characters are a humanoid alien species with some fairy-like and bird-like elements. They have some weird crystal powers and stuff. The main planet the characters are from is a small ringed world with a high density of rainforests and jungles, and lots of colorful and strange wildlife and plants. The story mainly kicks off when one of the main characters invents a machine that allows for hyper-jumping abilities, giving the empire the ability to expand to other star systems. However said character quickly realizes how badly such a device is used by the empire and there’s a lot of political divide and stuff. I’ll leave it at that because I need to be actually WRITING and I don’t wanna put EVERYTHING in this comment lol, but I hope this sounds interesting at least. Writing and worldbuilding is really fun but really hard.
I once came up with a story about sand worm hunters. Essentially there is a ship building company who creates ships, boats, storage carriers capable of traversing the sand like it was water. To make these ships people would need to hunt sand worms, since their protective shell is the main material used to allow the ships to travel sands like it was water. The issue is that i had no idea what story to tell from this world.
You could do something like the mc and his group are a bunch of new recruits who are send for the next mission along with the seniors to hunt the sand worms. Things go wrong and the mc and a few of his friends manage to find themselves in a weird place. Turns out, the past hunters who were sent and never returned, some of them were sucked by quick sand and ended up in an open area beneath the surface. Unable to escape, they started building a civilization there. Also, you can understand what the sand worms are saying if you listen to them through the sand. So, these people got attached to these monsters who also helped them get food. Maybe that is the main reason that the sand worms are being spotted more, because the population of the underground has increased a lot. The chief of this place is the mc’s father who went missing years ago. Now, when that find out that the worms have been sacrificing themselves for survival (they find out from his son and their group), they started building find a route to escape again (they gave up initially after trying for a few years when they first fell into this place). They manage to escape and try to negotiate with the head of the shipbuilding company but it does not workout. The shipbuilding company, backed by the government decide to flush out all the sand worms using these people and do so with very high success. The underground people decide to go to war (a necessary ending for any fantasy story🫠)
Maybe the mc gets close with one of the sand worms that dies in the company's attack, or his father dies in the war, or both. Also, once the war is over, they could start facing backlash from their trading partners who rely heavily on the construction of ships by this company. There could also be sand worms who want to harm humans for whatever reason
Thank you so much for making this video, it really helped me view the world I'm writing in a new light and honestly helped me untangle a lot about it. Thank you for inspiring me and so many others ♡ Apologies that the rest of this is quite long so I wanted to start with the most important thing ^v^ . . . I've been writing a book? or comic? or whatever it turns into for the past 5 years and I have a colorful cast of characters that I love with my whole heart. I love writing interesting characters and the way they feel and experience the world and each other but I neglected the actual world in the worldbuilding for most of this time. Mostly because it's supposed to be semi-realistic but I'm not particularly fond of the world that we all call reality, I'm much more partial to fantasy and it only occurred to me while watching this video that I can make it whatever I want, it doesn't have to be one to one with our reality. And realizing this felt so freeing. I realized I do know a whole lot about that world but I never allowed myself to imagine it because it would be considered unrealistic. Thank you so much for giving me this mental and creative freedom. I'll be going to write down all the little silly details that I realized I already know and do my best to not restrain my creative freedom concerning this in the future. Here I come silly world with modern cities, magic systems, alternate dimensions and fantastical magic forests and creatures ♡
Wow what a video! This is what I wish yt videos were like but so few are. Relaxed not pushy, sparking a creative pulse to follow. Really inspiring. This was so awesome to see. I will do as I was told by this vid and give world building a chance, meanwhile I will also await your next video. Keep up this exact format, so great!
For me, World Building is an extremely interesting educational tool. I like to use our own world as a reference. In my fictional world, I cant just yeet a straight line across a map from one point to another and call it a day if I use our own world as a reference, because shit dont work like that on our world. I then have to learn how rivers work, where they start, where they end, how they shape terrain and how the terrain shapes them.Then it goes own, to what terrain attracts people, what resources would make those people grow into a civilization, what would make that civilization fall, what kind of civilization it would be. To use our own world's physics, terrain, histories, laws, countries, ideas in my own way I first need to learn how these things function on our world, so I continuesly sink into random rabbitholes about every topic from economy, to geography, to history and so on. Very rewarding and interesting process
I'm a little new to worldbuilding, but so far it's been a great vehicle to learn about and reinterpret things about real life that I'm interested in. Where i run into problems is the practical organization of the information I have so to hear about your process would be interesting. Great video btw. I love finding high quality in small channels
I'm a second year literature student with (hopefully) an MA and Phd on the horizon. I've gotten to take the best of literary and linguistic theory alongside my favourite historical periods to create a world to base the best of literary theory I've come across into practice, exploring them in a variety of personal and submitted essays, short stories and poems. Its so cool to essentially make a medium which is the product of my current education which I can then use to consider and interact with theorists and concepts. Once I get to the end of the very long road in my education it'll be a wonder to see how it'll lead to revisions. But essentially each poem can be shown in a character, every essay reflected in a laws and nature and history. My next task is complete short stories, or maybe an audio drama? Might mix in some of my essays and convert them into video essays. Essentially, I couldn't decide which medium I wanted originally and I still cannot going forward so my point in saying all this is that give different shit a go and see what sticks, maybe the different medium will lend a surprising new perspective? World building is a reflection of the self and therefore a living receptacle of the present stronger than written words, and that's pretty fricken neat :p
This really helped me out! My views have been down, I make Littlest Pet Shop content... I know, very 2015. The urge to creature a mature sci-fi series inspired by the SCP universe has been in my bones for about a year now. Something more puppeted, with time put into sets and lighting and music... something bigger than what I've been making for so long. I've gone around and around thinking of the best way to monetize it to bring in a new audience that might appreciate it... but I think I need to just make it because it would bring me joy and help me creatively express myself. Thank you!
I absolutely love world building! It’s so much fun! What so interesting about world building is you create rules, guides, and answers to questions that pop up on your plot. It gives your story a place, a setting. Stories are important but when I watch a movie or read a story, I always have the thought, “What more is there to the world?” If there’s no world building thought in it then I become disappointed with that question. However, if the world has something really truly structuring it then that question is one of intrigue. It’s one of the biggest elements of immersion. Right now I’m working on a very large project and I’m solidifying my world before I lay out the plot. I am adding so much, but in reality less than 20% will be explained or noticed by the reader. I have history, culture, time period, technology, and mythical things that are being fleshed out.
I'm writing a book right now but I started with a few years of worldbuilding, I'm basing it upon a period in my life where my hallucinations and delusions were rampant (I have schizophrenia) so its ending up as a really surrealist world and I really like it!
@@cryingwatercolours Sometimes there can be, its a crazy learning curve but I think its worth doing anyways. I think for myself if I don't turn my experiences into something creative I can feel really overwhelmed by them, but there definitely are moments where focusing so much on certain hallucinations and delusions can bite me in the ass. But for me the curiosity of how I can turn something so internal and all consuming into something explainable can be really beificial. Hope this answers your question! ;p
I’ve been fleshing out a fictional nation as a setting for some dnd campaign in the future. I call it Zhejiang, and it’s based off of 14th century China, 19th century Nantucket whaling culture, and Monster Hunter. The people of Zhejiang are a proud seafaring folk, who sail across the great southern ocean, hunting titanic beasts larger than the largest whales, and bring them back to mainland Zhejiang. There their bodies are disassembled and used for a myriad of purposes, food, clothing, magic weapons, and even buildings. I have a ton of ideas for how Zhejiang operates, from how their monster-based economy works, to their politics, and even what jokes they find funny, but since I cant figure out how to put some super evil bad guy into this world, I doubt I’ll ever actually play dnd with this setting. I love it to death though.
RAHHHH!!!! I LOVE WORLDBUILDING!!!! This is the best video essay to plan my art finals to, thank you so much!!! I know I’m about to enjoy this video >:D Edit: I DID INDEED ENJOY THIS VIDEO!!! 11/10!!! I get so excited about worldbuilding, it’s like my number one favorite thing ever! I’m currently working on a graphic novel(s) and it’s prequel novel(s) and coming up with all of the intricacies within the world is just so much fun :D
Half way through the video about world building and writing- that is fanfiction for me. I love fanfiction for the inherient non-profit mindset of it, so many stories are told just for the sake of it, for the enjoyment of others. Some of those world buildings, still haunt me. I read one that was set in a pirate universe and had a really soft magic system that just seemed so natural, and so lived in. I only rexently starting to write fanfiction again after overcoming the 'oh no its cringy teenager shit im so over', and uve not published a single word, and i dont know if i will, but writing has been so freeing to my mind again.
My worldbuilding journey started thru conlangs, of which I have only made one that's substantially detailed. I wanted to make a world for my conlangs, and it's developed from there. I'm also realising I'm doing both inside-out and outside-in worldbuilding at the same time, which I'm not sure how well that'll turn out lol Honestly, and sorry for any existential crises I may or may not induce, I think the best part about worldbuilding is that you are God for the characters that you create, just as us earthlings are creations of another such God. It can also be said that the entire known universe was built by this God. I also find it so cool that, speaking from the soul pov, we can take on human form to create our own little D&D adventure for a lifetime on this beautifully crafted planet, even if it has seemingly turned into a nobledark scenario.
I’ve never tried worldbuiling (mostly because it’s not my thing) but for a year, I’ve had a bunch of alien ocs and I wanted to elaborate their story so maybe I’ll try worldbuiling to work on their story! This video pushed me to try things out so thank you :)
It's perfectly acceptable to just come up with the lore around your characters! If you want to expand more then great, but if not then at least your characters will have just a bit more depth!
Really great video! I’ll definitely be taking a lot of this advice! On daydreaming, I’ve been listening to music in languages I don’t speak, and just feeling the emotions of the singer. I can try to add a story to it as well. Only after I’ve reflected on how it made me feel do I look up the translated lyrics. It’s fun to see how close or far off you were!
thanks! and mmmm i also listen to a lot of music in languages i dont know! icelandic (listen to JóiPé and Króli), swedish (listen to Hanna Järver and Felicia Takman), german (Cro is fun), and japanese (listen to Reol and the Shuta Hasunuma Philharmonic Orchestra) especially. and i also also do that daydreaming of what the songs mean, except i always forget to look up what they actually mean lol
Since I can remember, I have a set of characters in my head that reflect certain aspects of my personality. Each one of them is a personification of a emotion or a line of thought or a action. And I built the world around them, with MANY variations of the same stories. I have been on 3 major "world reforms" when I completely changed the world except the main cast of characters. I created my main protagonist in the worst time of my life, he is a personification of that time when I felt so alone, lost and broken. I literaly cried when I reload the saddest "scenes" in my head. Its crazy, like the world I created is real somewhere, and I got real memories. To put simple about this world: the story core is about a alien invasion of Earth, but its like the War on Terror instead of the big epic battles in movies. The story is in the perspective of the aliens, and they do struggle against the human resistance.
i'm an artist and i've been building my world through writing for 3 years now. it's something i can retreat to after getting burnouts from making art. now im developing some of my art and even my thesis around it.
Yep, i am currently building my world via music. I am expending it with tons of text too. I am planning to expand this universe in the following years and hopefully write a few books on it. The goal is to see this world be turned into a movie before i die!
Thank you for helping me realize that I can create a highly complex world without having to put it to any public form of media
ofc!! glad to have helped!
Literally, just for fun
This stuff is like a drug. I used to pace around my room 6+ hours nonstop just daydreaming, writing, and drawing, till I got scolded for neglecting dinner.
I still do that and I do not ever plan to stop
Never stop, shouldn't stop
Only be happy to be proud of yourself
Maladaptive daydreaming
I used to do the same when I was younger, but now I cant do it as well and it makes me sad
@@JulianVicworld building as a hobby is not the same thing as maladaptive daydreaming and even if you have had a formal diagnosis i would be very careful in telling other people that they have something like that
@@JulianVic me too once I got into university + full time job I don't have nor much time neither energy to daydream
4 years ago, I was bored, so I started making a language. It's been through 5 spelling reforms, I've written a journal in it for a year and a half now, and I've made a giant reform of it twice now. I write music in it. It's what got me to worldbuild. In this world there are pine marten (a mustelid) like people. There are religions, education systems, stereotypes, cyphers, cultures, art, dancing, musical instruments. I love building it. I have so many stories and characters in my head. One day I'll put the pen to paper, make the code, put paint on the brush. One day.
(Edit: i didn't expect this many likes or replies. Literally. This is the most attention I've ever gotten on the internet.)
hoooollly shit you're living one of my major goals in life with writing journals in your conlang. I've got a journal ive been writing for about 8 years now and a personal conlang that I've been making for about a year, but i havent gotten to the point where i can write full sentences and ideas in it reliably. and the world sounds cool, so keep nurturing it! im curious about those cyphers (something I've never really delved into in my worldbuilding)
that is literally the coolest thing ive ever read
Cool, that's how Tolkien started writing the Lord of the Rings.
let me know when you start putting it out there, pls
Acctually creating a unique language is hecking awesome!
For anyone who plans to make their own world: only make it geographically accurate if you really enjoy that stuff. Worldbuilding communities talk a lot about how mountains are always in the wrong places on maps due to the tectonic plates beneath them and how there shouldn’t be a river or a forest in that area. Unless those things really excite you, trying to make my map geographically accurate drained me to the point where I just said there were no longer any geography rules because I can make those rules. Don’t make anything accurate if having restrictions on your world steals your enjoyment
As a geologist myself, nature is weird and wild, so do whatever you like and the see if you can explain it scientifically later (if you wish), there are enough theories and possibilities to do anything
Tectonic plates don't exist
This is so important to remember.
There was one world I abandoned at some points because of how "stuck" I ended up being when trying to follow most of thoses "rules"/advices. Now, I'm more on a "dreamy" mood, so, who cares if the mountains are in the "correct" position, if the whole world is actually floating continent above clouds!
yes!! i have a world i created for a dnd game and the part that originated the entire concept for the world was “what if there wasn’t a moon in a fantasy world? it could be cool for there to be a star or 2 people use to tell the time at night” i then realised that this wouldn’t be possible for a world with life and got quite upset but decided eventually “oh well, it’s my world, i don’t care” and that’s the mindset i’ve had going forward because who cares about geography or science when the world itself is filled with magic
@ fr and it’s so much more fun
One of the fun things about worldbuilding to me is sometimes it's "The god who watched over this world for eons has died and people are now forced to either desperately cling to old faith or turn to beings that were once deemed unholy for protection and guidance."
While other times it's "Goblins used to be giants who thought they were so unstoppable they tried to wage war with the gods, only to be cursed by those very gods and made tiny. Ever since they've been trying to crack space travel to reach the domain of gods again so they can get revenge."
lol that's an awesome justification for space travel
@@uluscri To add, Lovecraft has a similar view in his musings and writings over these old gods. It seems like whenever an artist adds an impression to a piece, it's almost as if he himself must justify that he is a creator in poetic form which is why there's always tales of violence, cults, political powers etc. I guess my challenge to you would be, are you able to find a built world without these conflicts? The conflicts are seemingly obtuse because every world needs some sense of agency but as creatives, can we find ways to build conflict externally from our ideas. Moreover, is religion the tool for an escape into that would or back out of it. Lovecraft would most likely say that religion is both the way in and the way out. Anyways, as far as the goblins go, I love this dark fantasy type, but there needs to be more blends between certain literary genres to create uniquely written and imaginative landscapes. Thanks for the video. Love to hear what you think.
i daydream story concepts all the time. the actual fun part is trying to create a world where those stories can all fit. ive had a universe ive been building for almost 10 years now born from this
mmmm the well-baked quality of a 10-year old world. one of my worlds should be about 10 years old now (the Universe of Gen from one of my other videos), and it's awesome to go back to and write lore and stories for.
How do you do this? I have been adding random paragraphs to my notepad but I constantly want to go back and change everything and it's hard because it's not a linear process either so putting it in a notepad with an order doesn't make much sense. So I juste have a collection of small worlds that are kind of separate
@@maxcarvalho3202Honestly I get that at times too. Usually I try to imagine a few key characters in each plot and then in my head establish some basic rules on how the magic or political systems work and then I just keep asking myself questions like “why did they decide to worship elephants?” Or “why are the people in the East more modernized but the West more like religious zealots that don’t want to change even a single thing?” And I just keep adjusting my ideas if I come up with a better one but usually the changes aren’t super extreme. I don’t stop myself from making changes on previous information but usually I can move forward by asking myself more questions that force me to build on what I already have rather than questions about if what I have already is good enough if that makes sense. Usually I just keep asking questions of myself and trying to imagine what readers might be confused about or how I can connect certain people or groups of people to make each other feel more complex and interactive. Not sure if any of this rant will help you but I hope you got something out of it. Good luck!
Worldbuilding is such a thrill! I recently created an entire world for a D&D campaign, and it was a blast. I crafted a unique map with diverse regions, bustling cities, distinct races, epic wars, and a rich history full of intrigue and depth. It was such a rewarding process to see everything come together. Great video!
thanks! and i hope the campaign is/was successful and swell simultaneously!
I've made so many Pathfinder 2E characters each built to fit together PF2E has so much content to use
Most recent books are stupidly thick and or quirky
that's so cool! the reason i even started worldbuilding in the first place is becuase of D&D!
Yesss!!! Worldbuild!! Make worlds!!!! That's literally a thing you can do and that fact is so much more exciting than it gets made out to be
like, you just get to make a planet and throw some silly (often not so silly) guys and let them make histories and cultures and it's awesome
@@uluscri I am so happy that someone else loves the flying spider-squids that used to be rocks!
The RED ALGAE is the POWERHOUSE of the CHEMOPHYTA!
This video filled me with such a visceral childlike excitement that I started daydreaming of a new world before I was even halfway through the video. Thank you so much for making this.
its strange that minds like this are so uncommon. world building saved my life. it gave me an escape when life was hard. all of my world I hold very dear to my heart. i keep them only in my mind for the magic to me of it all. like a growing multiverse in my mind.
I write sci-fi and I have one master folder for one of my books and it HAS SO MANY DOCUMENTS INSIDE, it’s so fucking full and there are so many different things in their from planet environments to the overarching galactic government structure to a stations cultural practices around fight rings. I also have a very disorganized note in my phone that makes no sense to literally anyone but me and a channel in a server with my friend where literally half my plot is and a very chaotic milanote
Oh fuck yeah! I'm more of a fantasy person, but I vibe with that so much. Notes on notes in folders in folders, that's the wayyyyy!
this is so freaking motivating, im looking forward to trying something just as cool!!
@ I believe in you! You can do it!
u guys should try obsidian if u havent already i love it
@@spawel1 ooh what’s that
When I was young, in high school, I was in such a dark place emotionally and mentally. I had severe anger issues, I’d felt betrayal, heartbreak, death of family and felt incredibly isolated, it was just at the right time that a world presented itself to me in my head, an alternate reality that acted as a safe space for me to project myself mentally, I was convinced this place was real but just out of our reach.
I called this place the void and it saved my life. World building can really change your life.
You can tell this guy has a love and passion for the art it’s rlly encouraging hearing him speak so passionately
my favorite daydreaming world building ive been doing recently is figuring out how the fully improvised characters in the show by dropout, called Very Important People tie together.
They add so much on the fly its kinda hard to keep up with but makes for such an interesting culture and history. Truly never seen a world more bizarre, which makes sense considering its all made up on the spot and they didn't mean for them to be all in one real world.
but thats been pretty fun recently
I have a world building project that honestly started in like 2006, but picked back up in 2019-present. I write a lot about the world, have created a language, characters, history, war, and using illustration skills plus Minecraft as a physical representation of the world. I’ve drawn maps, and included my sisters, husband and friends to discuss geopolitics. It’s so freeing.
World building, in my head or on paper, is one of many ways I have coped with mental health issues throughout my life.
It's fun, it's satisfying, and it is a safe and creative form of escapism.
I also highly recommend it.
I'm 29 but I've been worldbuilding for almost 25 years, and finally started making real stories instead of just keeping it all in my head or scattered notes that go nowhere. For me I was just a lonely and all too curious kid with a family life that made me want to be anyone else, anywhere else. Now I have some real life experience and it feels like I can take all my thoughts and feelings and make something that's so much bigger than me. I'm doing it for my 1 year old son, but I'll be damned if it doesn't feel like I need it like I need air or water. It's never too late to invest in yourself, in whatever form feels right.
I've been worldbuilding since like 4th grade, and now I'm a sophomore in high school, so like 6 years, going onto 7.
My most recent world I'm working on is controlled by two deities/beings, basically like yin and yang (I haven't quite figured out their place in the world, but they're definitely important). One deity created the high elves, which then caused the other to create humans as an opposing force to the high elves.
Because the elves saw themselves as superior to humans it resulted in the elves developing a slave based economy, and due to interbreeding it resulted in the elves, and then the half elves.
The most interesting system thats in the works is the magic system, basically every organism absorbs mana through special organs, and in the brain there's a specific part of it that specifically deals with magic, and the more you cast spells the larger it grows (a potential interesting thing could be like magic sickness as that part of the brain grows, it could take over other parts of your brain, or it gets too big and you just die from internal pressure). But anyways a way it's processed is through language, so casting it with words is like a little cheat code for your brain, as it activates the neurons to cast the spell, same with magic circles (I wanted an explanation for why spells are cast, cause it always felt stupid, but this gives a reason, but also allows you to do the casting in your head with enough practice(kinda like doing math in your head)). Souls also interact with magic, as when someone dies they manifest as magic and can still hold power over the physical world, and other people can influence their power, as someone who believes in them will give them more power, extending their life and influence over the physical world. This can result in little village deities, but also deities that are overruling if enough people believe in them.
This system resulted in the creation of the succubus, basically there was this minority religion followed by a group of humans with traces of elven blood. This group of people were polyamerous and nudist. and when a much larger group of people contacted them, their religions clashed and the more powerful one cursed their entire group to consume the ones they loved, and gave them shapeshifting abilities to lure over other people more easily, but once this religion died out and the god who cursed them died, the curse wore off, but they were left with a new body. And due to the shapeshifting ability it has allowed the succubi to take on many demi-human forms.
I'm really excited to delve more into the succubi, as they explore themes of culture and religion I'm not used to, and how tragic events can effect a culture while also exploring trans-humanism and transgenderism more thoroughly.
Well anyways, that's my progress on my current worldbuilding progress
Around the time this came out, the algorithm placed it on my timeline and I saved it to watch later. For some reason, today I finally did and I am so glad. This is one of the best videos I've watched in a while and you, friend, have such a way with explaining things and inciting that timeless childhood wonder. I've been feeling kinda unmotivated lately, you know.. between school and work, relationships and social media addiction, etc. It has me feeling like I can barely string a single sentence together sometimes, much less create cool things! Sometimes I feel like I've used up the entire limited supply of creativity I had available in my body and now the well just dried up. Being reminded that it is something that lives inside me always, that I just need to feed and nurture it back to health, that there is no right or wrong way to create... This is a priceless reminder
What an inspiring video. I really like your ideas about exploring via daydreaming, and imagining the lore of areas you're in. Recently while driving I remembered how as a kid I would imagine cats running alongside the car on long road trips, so I decided to try to imagine that again. It felt very invigorating and exciting... I find it funny how that simple thought made me feel myself again. Great video!
this video really made me rethink things. i realised that i’ve been so clouded by ‘why do this thing if not for someone to see’ and ‘what if its a waste of time’. this line of thinking. when really.. i shouldnt care. i should let my creativity be free, i should build the worlds ive been dreaming and trying to forget. i’m going to make that planet of wholesome cute food animals because who’s going to stop me? no one’s even going to see it. it’s my world.
thank you for making this. you are an inspiration, truly.
thanks for the inspirational stuff. Theres also a channel called Monstergarden where an illustrator worldbuilds an amazing universe. Also also, worldbuilding a mythology term coined by Tolkien is "Mythopoaea" and i think it sounds so cool
o ye ive seen monstergarden, very good channel
Worldbuilding and creating art pieces for those worlds is something else.
I'm a forever GM in my dnd group and I love worldbuilding, but it sometimes feels like a chore. My game group is really chaotic, so I can't just do cool stuff for the sake of it, without thinking of the consequences of stupid or ill-intended actions by my players. I love it, but it's a lot of work.
This video has inspired me to create something for the sake of it, like, what if I tweaked some physics laws in order to make magic possible? I could write a diary of a magical scientist in that world describing the experiments they carry in order to arrive at those laws, it's going to be soo cool, thanks for making the video!
oooo tweaking physics is right up my alley (as a physics major myself, teehee). and thanks! hope the project goes well!
im currently working on a world that is set in the year 2120, where almost the entirety of humanity lives in a Megacity that extends deep into the ground, called “The Rack”, or colloquially known to the residents of the Megacity as “Darkwell”.
in this version of Earth, roughly fifty years prior to current day, a strange phenomenon occurred, where in random places all over the planet, magical creatures of nearly every variety began to appear. fairies, centaurs, minotaurs, and even, on rare occasions, dragons.
though, these creatures were hunted for their bodies, just as we did with elephants or other animal pelts. the blood of these creatures all seemed to contain an unknown essence that allowed physical/mental stimulation and enhancement.
now, in 2120, many multi-billion dollar corporations have figured out a way to synthesize these magical aspects of these creatures into microchips, planted into the brains of those willing to accept them. they’ve bastardized the concept of “magic” and turned it into a commodity.
I figured I was gonna like this vid cuz of the gentle lapslock and encouraging title, and then your VOICE is so SMOOTH AND BUTTERY - very gender envy - and THEN you have amazingly detailed citations!!! I'm sold, you're gold! :D
thanks you!! i now know what lapslock is and yes!! i like using it when it feels right. yet another thing i can give that nameness lol.
citations. are. my. shit.
I wasn’t as into worldbuilding when I was first starting out bc things like geography and wars and economics didn’t particularly interest me, I was never great in history class, but then I took art history in college and I was hooked. I love building magic systems so I started thinking about how the existence of this magic in the world would effect the world’s culture and their art, like a world where their magic is similar to “weaving” things into the fabric of the universe, so weaving and textiles are a HUGELY important part of culture and the more complex and detailed a person can weave clothing, the more highly regarded they are. It also influenced their architecture so the fancy “palace” type buildings have tiled designs that reference weaving patterns whereas as peasant houses would be far more simple but still draw some influence. Also, I figured that spiders would be important in their culture, because of the association to weaving, and so on and so forth, which eventually *did* lead me to figuring out some stuff about geography and politics and history. It’s very fun and I tend to think culture/art history first now when developing fantasy and even sci-fi worlds.
fuck yeah! i love how everyone has different starting points for their worlds--i tend to start with magic, maps, and history. the art and culture are places where ive historically lacked in, but im working on that side of the world with my current project, since it can add so much depth and life to a place.
wow, really high effort video, I didn't even realize you only had 300 subs till I went down here. personsally, i love detailed worldbuilding that has every small detail, i love that thrill of making a world filled of detail and family trees
yeah really! i watch a lot of creative and self-help videos and i thought this was from a big account! i subscribed😌
thank you!
and mmmmm family trees. one of the first things i did when i was originally creating my longest-running world was make a royal family tree. i havent in a while, but i should do that...
A channel called Rick’s creations got me really invested in world building and ever since I’ve just been able to produce so much great concept art without art block. From an artists perspective, worldbuilding is great
One of my favorite memories from last year was going to a friend's house and locking ourselves in her room so she could explain her entire worldbuilding and ocs for 2 hours straight, including old artwork inside bulked binders, to the point where we were late for a school event later that evening. I had so much fun, I love when my friends explain their worldbuilding to me and we become so invested we seem to get lost in them for a few hours, asking questions about everything and them having (or not) answers for it! As of late I'm trying to build a world with my girlfriend and we're making it as self indulgent as we like :]
I love this so much! I once talked to my mother about my project for hours straight and I didn't even get through half of it. She said "That was information overload. Just write the book already so I can read it!" hahah
If a friend ever asks me about my creative projects I will be so down to do the same.
@@NightmarelizedDina ohh hope you do get to write your book tho! Maybe then your mom writes an hour long review of it after she can finally process everything lmaoo. Also hope you can explain your lore to a friend too :D
@@lapiecelazuli haha maybe one day!
As a long time creative and day dreamer, I got serious about writing it down and officially started back in highschool with my fantasy and sci Fi project, kinda rushing into it which made a messy first draft, until I took a step back and did some further reading into older works of fantasy and sci Fi to get a deeper understanding of the genre and it's foundations, up until now, I've deconstructed and reconstructed both projects of my fantasy world that's closer to our world than we may expect, to many countless worlds beyond ours, and I can't wait to show it to the world, within this decade, soon.
oh god i relate with the "within this decade" sentiment. exhibit a: i've been making a universe for nigh 10 years and my upcoming novel series for 3, and have no publishing goal in sight. at the very least, i'm planning on starting the novel series as a webnovel, and posting the first chapters by the end of the year. it's about the small steps!
Worldbuilding as a hobby has been something I've done for a very long time without realising, I've always 'scrolled' through stories and environments in my head when I get bored, whether it's on a road trip or waiting in a queue. I've made up hundreds of worlds but only developed a handful, but my approach has always been to write down the key elements of the world (major settlements, environments, general lore) but approach the world as a character living there when I daydream. It allows their arcs to be more developed and concise each time since I only remember the key elements, but lets the world become more filled in as they explore. Each time they get to a new location, I make more notes until almost everything has been seen, going back and rewriting parts that were too bland or niche. It's been fun
I'm starting to build my own world, that I hope to play dnd in with my partner :3 Its such a nice way to be creative because you're so free to just do whatever you want. I've never done it before but I'm in it for the journey ^~^
worldbuilding with others is also a very precious thing in my experience. my friends and i started roleplaying on this roblox game back in 2021 as a way to "experience normal teenage things" through our characters in the pandemic, and it grew into our own world with 60+ characters all living in it. we all have such a deep connection to this world at this point it's a part of me that will never truly go away. i love it so much that even though i do want to publish a story based on it someday, i'm still satisfied with it even if it never sees the light of day. my friends and i have gotten so much closer thanks to this world and its characters.
i love the idea of collaborative works and worlds, they're so much fun, and you get to make something special with other people. it's something i wanna properly do someday
Instant subscription, I love simply listening to discussion of how wonderfully vibrant creativity and imagination are
thank you!!!
i´ve been building a fantasy world for almost a year now I think and its just so fun to come up with all the insane lore , from the exctintion of the dwarves to the demonic dragon king who still thousands of years after his death still puts fear into the souls of everyone to the atlantians advanced alien technology everything is well put together and i´m so happy to continue writing the two first books in this world heck i´ve even put a lot of my love for speculative evolution in it, I deadass made up an evolution for orcs. another thing that i wanna put out there is that it can start very small, like my world it only started with a single island with dragons and dinosaurs and soon that island became just one of many continents with their own cultures and history
it's so funny where the initial seed for a world can come from. my oldest worldbuilding project came from me google image searching for Minecraft floating islands, and i was like "huh, what if the whole planet was floating islands and why would it be like that?"
also good luck w the projects!
@@uluscri thanks, yeah inspiration can come from everywhere, I have a whole country in my world that is literally medieval pacific rim
I love doing the strategy of using what I’m currently obsessed with to help add “lore” to my own worlds, it helps so much- especially with my art block lol
Hey buddy! You did a great job! I watched the whole thing. I'm a solo games development guy, and prior to that, a general arts guy. I really benefited from watching this. It's been important for me to reconnect with how this is done so that I can make stuff that makes sense. I think it's important to think about how much we might have lost touch with our "imaginations" when we're constantly bombarding ourselves with "content" and stimuli. Someone told me, if you're finding yourself having trouble doing this, turn off your computer and phone, turn off your lights, sit in a chair and force yourself to be bored! Your brain will get back in gear, like it used to do when you were younger!
yessss this is what i advocate!! disconnect from the product world and become restless enough to throw that energy onto a page (or whatever else you do)
I started a binder!! I’m such a fan of having an encyclopedia of sorts (I own all the Dragon Age and FFXIV encyclopedias!) and I love having two for the stories I’m working on. I also love scrapbooking/drawing so having a contained place to decorate/design concepts, having a “world bible” is so perfect.
Edit: I’d also love to see how you world build too!
Hi! Do you have any tips on how to start with a binder? Do i search the internet for articles and history stuff to get me to start? I have many journals where i stick drawings of characters and write the plot in, but its more character oriented than world and i think a binder/encyclopedia is super interesting to refer to!
@@OrangeSun55 Of course!! This is still a fairly new system I've been doing with the two books I've been working on. So the subject matter will be different between those, and likely your own, but they'll follow similar ways of organization.
So this is what I recommend to help you jump-start your binder:
- Get creative with it!! I designed my own via Zazzle ($30~, so a bit pricey), but you can still use stickers, print-outs, markers, etc. to jazz it up. It really makes both my stories feel more 'real' to me. 🥰
- PLAN AHEAD! It doesn't hurt to get dividers and tabs and whatnot, but I'd recommend writing down a list of how you'd want to organize the binder. I'm a plantser more than anything, but this has helped me a bit from feeling lost/overwhelmed at the start.
- I've divider both my binders at first with the most basic parts that you'd need as references: Characters, Settings/Locations, Fauna/Flora, Cultures/Races/Traditions/Histories, Maps/Photos/Images, Plot Outline/Timeline, Story Beats/Scenes/Blurbs, Research Notes/Sources/References. Of course all of these sections can be broken down to more minute details, but this comment is getting long enough as it is, LOL. But for instance, you can break down the Character section to include Main/Secondary/Antagonists/Misc characters. In your case with your character art, you can store all those in an Image/Photo section (while still having, say, one pic per character sheet in the Character sections.) But of course, you don't have to limit yourself to _just_ these sections alone! Please don't hesitate to add/remove other subject matter to your binder! For example, there's not really any magic systems in either of my worlds, but if you do, you'd definitely want to create a section for it!
- Tools: Hole puncher, highlighters, glue stick, dividers (can never have too many dividers, LOL), tabs*; a folder maybe for temporary storage or for some stuff you haven't put inside yet. A binder with POCKETS, because that is wildly helpful, but totally optional. I also invested in a mini sticker photo printer so I don't have to keep using paper+tape to add pictures with character descriptions. 😂Stamps and scrapbooking stickers are also great for if you're too lazy to hand-draw your own layouts. Scrivener is also a fantastic alternative if you'd prefer to go the digital route for your story bible (and maybe a bit cheaper in the long run.) As of this comment, it might actually be on discount right now since it's November.
* When it comes to tabs I like to use them up top, with divider tabs to the side. So basically divider tabs will specify Main/Secondary/etc. sections, while 'top tabs' will show _specific_ characters for easy reference.
Never really explained to anyone how to make their own story bible binder, but I'm glad you asked. Now I kinda wanna make a dinky little blog post about it for future reference. 😂Lmk if you have any more questions, I'll be glad to help!
@ Thank you so much for the long comment and taking your time!:) I pulled out an old binder and tabbed it yesterday, being able to change around the pages and stay organized sounds the most freeing! Thanks so much for the tips!!🤩
Also, in my writing journal i try so much to incorporate world building and even info dump as i go, but as much as with where the plot takes me i can carve the world deeper, the story isnt about traveling the world its about living in it, so there will always be unvisited yet important places. A binder like this is honestly perfect and im so excited even tho i just started i can explode 😂🥹
Its so inspiring to see how others do their own world bibles or their ideas too!
@ Also do you think the binders size matters? I have an A5, which feels less intimidating to write in and itll look more full (which is pretty) and i write super tiny anyways. But an A4 has a seriousness to it thats just so formal? And legit and feels more fit i guess idk😅 I guess ı can always upgrade to a bigger one and the most important step is to have fun :)
@@OrangeSun55 SO glad I got you to try out using the binder!! Let me just say - don't stop using notebooks, though!
Just recently I realized having a notebook (in addition to the binder) helps with taking notes, esp if you're not at home. When you have enough info in said notes, you can properly organize them in the binder. So if you wind up being like me, you'll just straight up organize your notes on a new page to put inside the binder in whatever section they will go in, LOL. I plan on using my typewriter to manually write them out. Looks cooler that way, lmao. Also it's an excuse for me to buy more notebooks. 😏😏
Also, now that you mention using A4, now I wish I tried that size out too, LOL. I didn't even consider that!!! I think I will if I wind up starting a new project. It'll feel like an actual book... in its own weird way. 😂😂
I was listening to this in the background and had a double take moment when you mentioned jan Usawi. I absolutely love their music and didnt entirely expect to stumble on their partners youtube video while following a youtube rabbit hole on world building. Crazy how the world works
that's AWESOME! what a wonderful world we live in
7:01 what a pretty place. I love the shots of nature as you talk about this stuff, it weirdly drives home the point.
i've been building my own world for about 8 years now. slow-going, but it's not for a published project, it's just for me, so no pressure. got 59 whole ocs in there.
my favorite thing about taking it slow is that you get these moments where separate storylines or elements of worldbuilding or whatever suddenly click into place like they're two separate chunks of some sort of massive puzzle you've been building up. it's so satisfying when incomplete pieces of lore turn out to complete each other when you put them together in a certain way :)
I feel this so much. Putting cool ideas and characters into a world is one. But nothing can replace the feeling of making a new character / a piece of a the world that connects everyone's relationship together, or just made everything "makes sense."
Dude, not only this is video solid gold, but the music choice is amazing! I’ve known nobonoko for five years, now? He’s one of my absolute favorite musicians and best friends. I am so beyond happy that he’s getting the attention he deserved, even if it is way overdue haha! We’ve even done a song together, which adds even further in his worldbuilding (just if you’re interested in that). I love worldbuilding in my writing and music! Thank you so much, btw! I have been having a really rough day and nothing I tried that I love doing (music, writing, art, etc.) was working. I was really upset by this, and I just decided to click on your video while eating lunch, just because why not? And now, I’m in an absolutely great mood, now! Thank you, Uluscri!!
oh shit!!! i discovered nobonoko recently, and i'm floored by the power of the internet to connect people--was not expecting to get a comment from someone who knows him, so that's really cool. what's the song y'all collabed on?
and thanks! i'm glad to have helped!
@@uluscri It's unreleased at the moment, but it's going to be a double! I'll let you know when it's out, if you'd like!
oh yes do let me know! i would love to check it out
I think one of the most important lessons from this, at least for me, is remembering to simply make things because you want to, not with any expectation of publishing or trying to make money off of it, because, like you said, it'll be very quickly soul-draining to do so. I remember that, when I was younger, I'd do all sorts of silly little things like writing interviews between me and my characters, or doing crossover stories between my different worlds and universes and even existing IP sometimes. But there was a change, maybe during the pandemic, where all my writing became focused on finishing the series of novels I'd been writing up to that point, and I couldn't just make anything for fun. It all had to be published and it all had to be *for* an audience. But it's so liberating to just create for fun! It's difficult to get back into that after so long, but it's a very important lesson all the same. Thank you very much!
heck one of my favorite pastimes is to space out and make a species, then make every little detail about it, then build an entire damn ecosystem and habitat around it
So fun
Its been at least a decade of building a world for my characters to live in. Can confirm, just do it in whatever feels the easiest way. Once you start, its like a spiderweb that just keeps going.
Wow this is really good, deserves way more attention then it’s getting! Really reminded me I need to be the creative person I am, and Everyone is!
I would LOVE how a 'How I world build video'. I have so many characters, lore, stories and settings and it feels so 'done' and already existing as its so fleshed out in my head. Yet I sometimes realise that none of it has been born into this world, none of it is physically produced. I would love to know different methods of noting down and archiving it all in a satisfying way!
Me when writing:
World building 100.
Story telling 10.
"just you and the etch a sketch that is your short term memory" I liked that one
thank you!!
Very good video, i enjoyed. I began making my own ttrpg around 3 years ago after DMing for a group of friends. I put hours of work into every session but eventually things fell apart and the group stopped playing so i was reasonably upset cuz of the efforts i put towards it. So i used that material to begin my own fantasy world all beginning with some premises. It would be horror fantasy in a fictional world a few hundred years after a major event called the convergence which brought otherworldly horrors from strange beasts to new diseases. All the cities would be fortified and protected by giant walls while theocracies would fight for control over the land that remained. After a while, as resources grew scarce, excursions would leave the walls to expand and explore, which is what the player character will be.
as someone who feels really sad that i'm not one of those creative people that can spend their time daydreaming and imagining things, this feels like something that might be helpful to me. thanks a lot for this
I really admire the way your brain thinks and your mentality - it is such a freeing moment from the perfectionistic don't-try way my brain likes to think of things!
Creation is such a wonder that anyone can enjoy.
i’m doing a world where i plan to just make it over the years. eventually make it into a comic. but i don’t want to rush it. i build it through small bursts of inspiration, falling back on it when my other ventures end or fail to keep me entertained.
it’s so fun.
got a good half of the magic system solidified before i even decided upon proper culture for each of the city-state civilizations. i love popcorning world building, popping from character to land to god to character
While watching this at 2x speed, I remembered all the times I drew stuff (when I was a kid and more recently) and then the world built off of that. I think I would enjoy doing some more sketching (big projects and simple sketches).
1:52 the fact that in my story a lot of the setting happens in a literal void. And most universes are composed of a void filled with some occasional islands
A worldbuilding project I’m working on is a first time one for me, I decided to be ambitious and build an expansive universe!
I was pretty stereotypical when coming up with the idea to implement gods and stuff. But I feel like I made it unique enough :3
My project takes place in the year 57,000 on the human calendar, the universe itself is 80 trillion years old, and it revolves around powerful gods that watch over galaxies. For every galaxy there is 1 god that is omnipotent to everything happening inside of it. But 35 trillion years ago, a massive war broke out between galaxies after the races in said galaxies were trying to invade others. Countless gods and mortals died and flooded the Sanctum (the afterlife). The sanctum broke from all the souls in it and the supreme god repaired it, making every free soul fuse into a god devouring deity who eats the souls of disobeying/dying gods so the sanctum won’t flood and break again.
I just found your channel and it’s incredible thank you for sharing all of this wisdom!!!
A year ago, today, I started off with Tribal people worshipping a tree-like god. Now I'm here learning how to construct an entire planet with earth-like qualities! I feel like I've still got a lifetime of imagination in me to continue this world-building, and I don't plan to stop!!! It was because I had so many story ideas, but didn't want to put it into our world, so I'm making it my passion to make my own to make my own stories in it.
Hi, I have thought of Worldbuilding not to long ago as I kept making up fictional scenarios off of surreal imagination on some of my irl experiences (especially over television) thanks to my tendency of day-dreaming or dreams as a way of giving off unique ideas for a story. I would like to thank you for uploading this while I recently became involved in the process of writing one for my own as a way of coping from stress but did it out of boredom. I’m not sure what my purpose for creating one but I know that I am invested in making Sci-Fi fantasy just like Avatar or Harry Potter for inspiration.
ive been working on the same world since i was 10 years old (i am now 20). i filter most of my thoughts through a lense of "how can i relate this to my world", for better or for worse. i love making up creatures for it and i think im over 100 species ive drawn, named and given at least a quick description to now, not counting things ive only doodled once in my sketchbook. one thing i love about such an "old" original world is how complexity will arive on its own. ill relate an idea i typed down last year to my new one, fill out a new region with species i made when i was 14, build upon old ocs, etc... and it just feels so fun to work on
Sometimes I’m not super kind to the person in the mirror, and so…as someone who’s frequently daydreaming, watching moving pictures and background music in my head, who feels a lot of shame thinking of the empty journals and notebooks I collect but never fill…THIS was something I really needed to hear, something that made my chest fell a lot lighter, so thank you for that.
Think Imma go write some stuff.
I F**KING LOVE ROBOTS IN SCI-FI!!!!!!!
I AGREE AND I REALLY LIKE YOUR ENTHUSIASM!!!!!!
SAME! I GOT A ROBOTS TOO
I LOVE ROBOTS TOO WHY ARE WE YELLING
Thank you :>
i actually was trying to start writing my animated series for a while now, i think with this video i will :)
oh fuck yeah, Im glad to have inspired :)!!
@@uluscri im glad u did!
this video sparks joy!!! your voice is both very comforting and very inspirational i’m excited to get the brain juices flowing :3
Used to world build all the time in middle school and high school but somewhere along the way I stopped. This video has inspired me to get back into it again :)
My problem isn't that I don't world build. It's that I got too many worlds. 💀 Every five seconds, I get a cool idea for a new world that doesn't fit it with any of my previous in-progress worlds. The side effect is that I end up making no progress on any of them.
Maybe create a group of people who have created portals to all of your worlds? That way you can connect all of them together? Just an idea. It might not work in your world
You could also try putting all these worlds in a single dimensional plane or planet? Maybe have it so each "world" is a separate country/region/realm, etc.
@@g0bl1n88 like cosmere
I absolutely endorse and encourage people to world build, just for the fun of it!^^ I made a website to try and compile the information and art there ^^ sadly, whenever I show it to people excited to give it a look, I never see them again. I'm worried they got abducted into my stories.
oh sounds delightful, what's the website link? im sure i wont disappear ha! (the beginning of every horror story)
I really appreciated not only the subject matter of this video, but the angle from which it was presented. World building is something that has always intimidated me and hung a bit heavy around my aspiration to write something more than a poem or stream of consciousness. Thank you for breathing new life into my ideas and making it feel more approachable. This may have been the push I needed.
"✨️Magical Fairy Lands✨️
To
💢Magical Fairy Lands💢"
I just finished The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams last week so that hit hard lol
Oh boy I have a world I’ve been working on for years, for my main story idea.
The story is a science fiction with some fantasy elements. It technically falls into the category of dystopia as well, though the characters don’t realize it at first. There’s a big social commentary element to the dystopian aspect as one would expect.
The main characters live in the higher levels of an inter-planetary empire where you’d think they wouldn’t have many problems, however there are certain thematic societal problems that still affect them greatly, especially since the main antagonist, a dictator who immortalized himself by uploading his mind into an incredibly advanced robot body, is also the great great (a lot more greats) grandfather of one of the main characters and is super controlling over his family.
The characters are a humanoid alien species with some fairy-like and bird-like elements. They have some weird crystal powers and stuff. The main planet the characters are from is a small ringed world with a high density of rainforests and jungles, and lots of colorful and strange wildlife and plants.
The story mainly kicks off when one of the main characters invents a machine that allows for hyper-jumping abilities, giving the empire the ability to expand to other star systems. However said character quickly realizes how badly such a device is used by the empire and there’s a lot of political divide and stuff.
I’ll leave it at that because I need to be actually WRITING and I don’t wanna put EVERYTHING in this comment lol, but I hope this sounds interesting at least. Writing and worldbuilding is really fun but really hard.
i have these characters that i have been world building for since i was eleven and this video really inspired me to go deeper into it! thank you
I once came up with a story about sand worm hunters. Essentially there is a ship building company who creates ships, boats, storage carriers capable of traversing the sand like it was water. To make these ships people would need to hunt sand worms, since their protective shell is the main material used to allow the ships to travel sands like it was water. The issue is that i had no idea what story to tell from this world.
You could do something like the mc and his group are a bunch of new recruits who are send for the next mission along with the seniors to hunt the sand worms. Things go wrong and the mc and a few of his friends manage to find themselves in a weird place. Turns out, the past hunters who were sent and never returned, some of them were sucked by quick sand and ended up in an open area beneath the surface. Unable to escape, they started building a civilization there. Also, you can understand what the sand worms are saying if you listen to them through the sand. So, these people got attached to these monsters who also helped them get food. Maybe that is the main reason that the sand worms are being spotted more, because the population of the underground has increased a lot. The chief of this place is the mc’s father who went missing years ago.
Now, when that find out that the worms have been sacrificing themselves for survival (they find out from his son and their group), they started building find a route to escape again (they gave up initially after trying for a few years when they first fell into this place). They manage to escape and try to negotiate with the head of the shipbuilding company but it does not workout. The shipbuilding company, backed by the government decide to flush out all the sand worms using these people and do so with very high success. The underground people decide to go to war (a necessary ending for any fantasy story🫠)
Maybe the mc gets close with one of the sand worms that dies in the company's attack, or his father dies in the war, or both.
Also, once the war is over, they could start facing backlash from their trading partners who rely heavily on the construction of ships by this company. There could also be sand worms who want to harm humans for whatever reason
Maybe you can explore the origins of the sea worms also to connect with the rest of the story.
Thank you so much for making this video, it really helped me view the world I'm writing in a new light and honestly helped me untangle a lot about it. Thank you for inspiring me and so many others ♡
Apologies that the rest of this is quite long so I wanted to start with the most important thing ^v^
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I've been writing a book? or comic? or whatever it turns into for the past 5 years and I have a colorful cast of characters that I love with my whole heart. I love writing interesting characters and the way they feel and experience the world and each other but I neglected the actual world in the worldbuilding for most of this time. Mostly because it's supposed to be semi-realistic but I'm not particularly fond of the world that we all call reality, I'm much more partial to fantasy and it only occurred to me while watching this video that I can make it whatever I want, it doesn't have to be one to one with our reality. And realizing this felt so freeing. I realized I do know a whole lot about that world but I never allowed myself to imagine it because it would be considered unrealistic. Thank you so much for giving me this mental and creative freedom. I'll be going to write down all the little silly details that I realized I already know and do my best to not restrain my creative freedom concerning this in the future. Here I come silly world with modern cities, magic systems, alternate dimensions and fantastical magic forests and creatures ♡
thank you so much, and i hope the writing and worldbuilding goes well!!
Wow what a video! This is what I wish yt videos were like but so few are. Relaxed not pushy, sparking a creative pulse to follow. Really inspiring. This was so awesome to see. I will do as I was told by this vid and give world building a chance, meanwhile I will also await your next video. Keep up this exact format, so great!
You are really underrated. I now realize how worldbuilding is involved with anything and everything, no matter what it is. Thank you! :)
For me, World Building is an extremely interesting educational tool. I like to use our own world as a reference.
In my fictional world, I cant just yeet a straight line across a map from one point to another and call it a day if I use our own world as a reference, because shit dont work like that on our world. I then have to learn how rivers work, where they start, where they end, how they shape terrain and how the terrain shapes them.Then it goes own, to what terrain attracts people, what resources would make those people grow into a civilization, what would make that civilization fall, what kind of civilization it would be. To use our own world's physics, terrain, histories, laws, countries, ideas in my own way I first need to learn how these things function on our world, so I continuesly sink into random rabbitholes about every topic from economy, to geography, to history and so on.
Very rewarding and interesting process
I've been working on a fancomic based on Devilman for like 4 years now, fell in love with making up lore for the comic now I can't stop worldbuilding
I'm a little new to worldbuilding, but so far it's been a great vehicle to learn about and reinterpret things about real life that I'm interested in. Where i run into problems is the practical organization of the information I have so to hear about your process would be interesting. Great video btw. I love finding high quality in small channels
I needed this... I'm sitting on a 14 year old Sci Fi i failed to find the drive to actually -Finish-
I'm a second year literature student with (hopefully) an MA and Phd on the horizon. I've gotten to take the best of literary and linguistic theory alongside my favourite historical periods to create a world to base the best of literary theory I've come across into practice, exploring them in a variety of personal and submitted essays, short stories and poems. Its so cool to essentially make a medium which is the product of my current education which I can then use to consider and interact with theorists and concepts. Once I get to the end of the very long road in my education it'll be a wonder to see how it'll lead to revisions. But essentially each poem can be shown in a character, every essay reflected in a laws and nature and history. My next task is complete short stories, or maybe an audio drama? Might mix in some of my essays and convert them into video essays. Essentially, I couldn't decide which medium I wanted originally and I still cannot going forward so my point in saying all this is that give different shit a go and see what sticks, maybe the different medium will lend a surprising new perspective? World building is a reflection of the self and therefore a living receptacle of the present stronger than written words, and that's pretty fricken neat :p
This really helped me out! My views have been down, I make Littlest Pet Shop content... I know, very 2015. The urge to creature a mature sci-fi series inspired by the SCP universe has been in my bones for about a year now. Something more puppeted, with time put into sets and lighting and music... something bigger than what I've been making for so long. I've gone around and around thinking of the best way to monetize it to bring in a new audience that might appreciate it... but I think I need to just make it because it would bring me joy and help me creatively express myself. Thank you!
I absolutely love world building! It’s so much fun!
What so interesting about world building is you create rules, guides, and answers to questions that pop up on your plot. It gives your story a place, a setting.
Stories are important but when I watch a movie or read a story, I always have the thought, “What more is there to the world?” If there’s no world building thought in it then I become disappointed with that question. However, if the world has something really truly structuring it then that question is one of intrigue.
It’s one of the biggest elements of immersion.
Right now I’m working on a very large project and I’m solidifying my world before I lay out the plot. I am adding so much, but in reality less than 20% will be explained or noticed by the reader.
I have history, culture, time period, technology, and mythical things that are being fleshed out.
I'm writing a book right now but I started with a few years of worldbuilding, I'm basing it upon a period in my life where my hallucinations and delusions were rampant (I have schizophrenia) so its ending up as a really surrealist world and I really like it!
@@whatistheultimatequestion oooh that sounds rlly interesting!! may i ask, are there negative consequences to focusing on that part of your life?
ooooo i like the surreal and the strange! good luck with the world! and i second the question from watercolours
@@cryingwatercolours Sometimes there can be, its a crazy learning curve but I think its worth doing anyways. I think for myself if I don't turn my experiences into something creative I can feel really overwhelmed by them, but there definitely are moments where focusing so much on certain hallucinations and delusions can bite me in the ass. But for me the curiosity of how I can turn something so internal and all consuming into something explainable can be really beificial.
Hope this answers your question! ;p
@@whatistheultimatequestion it does, thank you for sharing with me!
I’ve been fleshing out a fictional nation as a setting for some dnd campaign in the future. I call it Zhejiang, and it’s based off of 14th century China, 19th century Nantucket whaling culture, and Monster Hunter. The people of Zhejiang are a proud seafaring folk, who sail across the great southern ocean, hunting titanic beasts larger than the largest whales, and bring them back to mainland Zhejiang. There their bodies are disassembled and used for a myriad of purposes, food, clothing, magic weapons, and even buildings. I have a ton of ideas for how Zhejiang operates, from how their monster-based economy works, to their politics, and even what jokes they find funny, but since I cant figure out how to put some super evil bad guy into this world, I doubt I’ll ever actually play dnd with this setting. I love it to death though.
oh fuck yeah, that sounds awesome! i like the idea of a culture that subsists on giant whale monsters
RAHHHH!!!! I LOVE WORLDBUILDING!!!! This is the best video essay to plan my art finals to, thank you so much!!! I know I’m about to enjoy this video >:D
Edit:
I DID INDEED ENJOY THIS VIDEO!!! 11/10!!! I get so excited about worldbuilding, it’s like my number one favorite thing ever! I’m currently working on a graphic novel(s) and it’s prequel novel(s) and coming up with all of the intricacies within the world is just so much fun :D
Half way through the video about world building and writing- that is fanfiction for me. I love fanfiction for the inherient non-profit mindset of it, so many stories are told just for the sake of it, for the enjoyment of others. Some of those world buildings, still haunt me. I read one that was set in a pirate universe and had a really soft magic system that just seemed so natural, and so lived in.
I only rexently starting to write fanfiction again after overcoming the 'oh no its cringy teenager shit im so over', and uve not published a single word, and i dont know if i will, but writing has been so freeing to my mind again.
I love how this video reminded me of the world I used to build and immerse myself when I was just 11 years old. Cheers man♥️
My worldbuilding journey started thru conlangs, of which I have only made one that's substantially detailed. I wanted to make a world for my conlangs, and it's developed from there. I'm also realising I'm doing both inside-out and outside-in worldbuilding at the same time, which I'm not sure how well that'll turn out lol
Honestly, and sorry for any existential crises I may or may not induce, I think the best part about worldbuilding is that you are God for the characters that you create, just as us earthlings are creations of another such God. It can also be said that the entire known universe was built by this God.
I also find it so cool that, speaking from the soul pov, we can take on human form to create our own little D&D adventure for a lifetime on this beautifully crafted planet, even if it has seemingly turned into a nobledark scenario.
I’ve never tried worldbuiling (mostly because it’s not my thing) but for a year, I’ve had a bunch of alien ocs and I wanted to elaborate their story so maybe I’ll try worldbuiling to work on their story! This video pushed me to try things out so thank you :)
It's perfectly acceptable to just come up with the lore around your characters! If you want to expand more then great, but if not then at least your characters will have just a bit more depth!
This is such a nice wholesome video. Makes me want to build a world.
Really great video! I’ll definitely be taking a lot of this advice! On daydreaming, I’ve been listening to music in languages I don’t speak, and just feeling the emotions of the singer. I can try to add a story to it as well. Only after I’ve reflected on how it made me feel do I look up the translated lyrics. It’s fun to see how close or far off you were!
thanks!
and mmmm i also listen to a lot of music in languages i dont know! icelandic (listen to JóiPé and Króli), swedish (listen to Hanna Järver and Felicia Takman), german (Cro is fun), and japanese (listen to Reol and the Shuta Hasunuma Philharmonic Orchestra) especially. and i also also do that daydreaming of what the songs mean, except i always forget to look up what they actually mean lol
Nobonoko and other beepbox artists in background, amazing, once again my niche interests bubble up to the surface. Thank you for this video.
Since I can remember, I have a set of characters in my head that reflect certain aspects of my personality. Each one of them is a personification of a emotion or a line of thought or a action. And I built the world around them, with MANY variations of the same stories. I have been on 3 major "world reforms" when I completely changed the world except the main cast of characters. I created my main protagonist in the worst time of my life, he is a personification of that time when I felt so alone, lost and broken. I literaly cried when I reload the saddest "scenes" in my head. Its crazy, like the world I created is real somewhere, and I got real memories.
To put simple about this world: the story core is about a alien invasion of Earth, but its like the War on Terror instead of the big epic battles in movies. The story is in the perspective of the aliens, and they do struggle against the human resistance.
i'm an artist and i've been building my world through writing for 3 years now. it's something i can retreat to after getting burnouts from making art. now im developing some of my art and even my thesis around it.
Yep, i am currently building my world via music. I am expending it with tons of text too. I am planning to expand this universe in the following years and hopefully write a few books on it. The goal is to see this world be turned into a movie before i die!
Really high quality video i’m surprised this doesn’t have 2 million views
I love worldbuilding! I've always been creative, but now I have a wonderful universe to dump all my thoughts into.
I unironically love your little watercolor wolf!