Klayton 0:00

Like the the technique I'm going to share first is the technique I use for everything.

Welcome

Klayton 0:12

Welcome to the World Kiln Podcast, where we discuss everything world building. I'm Klayton Korstjens, a world builder of 30+ years, from multiple D&D settings, including home to the eight-year-long campaign I DM for, to my 25-year passion project book series.

Tim 0:30

And I'm Tim Harris, author of the Aelaryn Saga, passionate world builder, Consumer, and Designer. On this podcast, we'll share our ideas, our breakthroughs, and the lessons we've learned in our experiences as world

In this episode...

Tim 0:41

builders.  

Klayton 0:42

In this episode, we'll be discussing general world building. Starting with what are three techniques you wish you would have known early on that you know now? Let's get into build.

Tim 0:56

So, this we'll address to you first. So, what are three techniques you wish you would have known early on that you know now?

Klayton 1:05

So I think what we should do is we'll bounce back and forth. Since we both have three, I'll do one, you do one.

Tim 1:11

Sure.

Klayton 1:12

That way we can make make sure that we put enough in here. I'm excited for this episode because and I was telling you this before we started recording. This has like the the technique I'm going to share first is the technique I use for everything. It is what I learned a long time ago. I wish I would have known before I learned it, but it is a it's literally how I have developed everything that I have.

The Power of Why

Klayton 1:43

And that is what I call the "Power of Why". Asking, Asking "why?" when you're building something will open up so many possibilities for what you're looking to build. Um Because I'll give you an example right here, right? So let let's say I'm gonna build let's

Building a Cult

Klayton 2:17

say I'm gonna build a cult, right?

Tim 2:19

Okay,

Klayton 2:20

okay, first what what does the cult follow? What do they believe? Okay, let's say it's a cult that follows the... so in in my world for D &D. Okay. The the Goddess of Death.

Tim 2:41

Okay.

Klayton 2:43

So this cult follows Myx. Well, okay, we have we have a cult, we have established followers. Why? Why do they follow Myx? Well, Myx is the Goddess of Death. And she's also the Goddess of Vengeance. Well, maybe they follow her because they want to exact revenge on a government. Okay? Why? Well, maybe at one point in the history twenty years ago, some key members of this government uh decided that they wanted to uh increase financial gains for for the government, so they enacted hidden slavery. Well, I I'd be pretty upset too if I found out that my family, or at one point, even myself, had been sold off as a slave. Okay, that makes sense. But why would they follow Myx? Well, because she's the Goddess of Vengeance. Maybe they pray to her in hopes that she will exact revenge on them, and they believe that they are the tools that she will use to exact this revenge. You see, you see where this is going? Just by simply asking why, we have come up with a cult that follows the Goddess of Vengeance because the government at one point had turned on them and started selling off their own people, and maybe even some of the members themselves, into slavery under under the nose of everybody else in the country. And they're they've created this cult and they want to worship her because they want to be used as the tools for... that right there, has a great story, has a great story arc. Right? You can do a lot with just that. That's all from asking why.

Tim 4:54

So one of the techniques is for the viewers is to ask why, so that there is an importance behind what that entails. So, like, for your for the cult to exist, there's a reason behind why it exists. It doesn't just exist for no reason. There's not really like, oh, they just do it because they thought she was cool. You know, you did it because they had a purpose of why they were needed revenge or why they had vengeance in their hearts. And so they decided that since this goddess is in charge of that, they could be the essentially the vessels that she would use to get the revenge that they're seeking. Or the in this case, the vengeance that they're seeking.

Klayton 5:44

Yeah. And that's the that's the great thing about what I like I said, what I call the "Power of Why". It gives whatever you're building meaning. And that meaning can be used in many different ways, but it's when you're building, especially for storytelling, what you have should most of the time. Because again, like we've talked about before, you you can arbitrarily create little things to fill space, right? And they don't you don't have to get too deep with them. But if you use the power of why, it will allow for whatever it is that you're building to have meaning in the world that you're building for the narrative structure you're trying to create.

Building out from Consequence

Klayton 6:33

 

Tim 6:33

Which honestly kind of connects to my first one as it is. It's like you know, literally building outwards from consequence. So in this case, you're building your why, you're building the consequence by saying that they have this cult was wanting vengeance for being slaves or even having their family, their their ancestors, whatever it is, be in that enslavement. You know, they're creating it, and you're not just creating it because this is cool, you're creating it for a reason. Um, which in this case is your consequence. So they want to be this, they want to be this person to be the vessel to become the person that's creating this vengeance to exact justice in their in their eyes for this thing that happened to them or to people that they know. So, I mean, honestly, another thing that I would say towards that is, you know, like um for building outwards for consequences. Uh, one of the examples that I had was if this exists, what changes because what changes because of it? Um, you know, so like an example is if teleportation exists, what happens to the roads, the armies, uh trade borders, things like that, where you know, if you have teleportation, do the roads go bad? Do does it does it have consequences because they're constantly moving? So if people are teleporting to different cities because they're not using the roads, what happens to other means of transportation? You know, what happens to all the wagons and horses and things like that that you would have in your world? Um, so you know, the consequences affect so things that you create affect how other things are being done. You know, um, so you have to think about not only like in your case, this cult has vengeance, but now with that, maybe say that they did have, they were the ones to exact this vengeance. But now, say they took care of these higher-end families that were the ones that had all these slaves. Now, what happens once they who may be in charge of these huge, you know, farming producting, producing um lands. So, what happens to those lands now that they don't have the slaves? Like, what do they do to take care of that? So, there's always consequences to the actions that happen now that they're not here, now that they took care of their revenge, now that you change something, you know. So, I I agree with you. There's always a reason why, and then there's always consequences that come because of that.

Klayton 9:30

Yeah, no, I completely agree. Understanding and thinking about consequence is a really useful tool, and a really, I would say a fairly necessary one, too.

Tim 9:42

Oh, definitely.

Klayton 9:42

Because I I think if you don't think about consequence, what ends up happening is you could have immersion-breaking elements that will pull your your audience out of the world that you're that you've crafted for them, right? Because okay, you using your example, right? Well, let's say that the the cult exacts revenge on a family, right? And they've uh murdered this wealthy, we'll say, we'll even say noble family. The the cult has gone in and just decimated them. Well, now the slaves don't have owners, they leave. Well, but this was even though it was slaves, it was a highly producing farm, like you said. What happens to the food production?

Tim 10:32

And what happens if that was one of the major sources for that town that they

Klayton 10:36

for the region

Tim 10:37

for that area, right? Right?

Klayton 10:38

So now, because of the cult, they have now created the beginning of a famine in this region because of their exacting revenge. So

Tim 10:48

Why's and Consequence?

Klayton 10:49

Why's and consequence, right? So those I I love that your your first one

Tim 10:56

coincides with what you were just saying, and

Klayton 10:59

followed why, because they they work so well. Um and actually it kind of breaks a little bit, it segues a little bit into my next technique,

Subsequent Components

Klayton 11:09

which is breaking down a design into its subsequent components. Um because along with why and consequence, right? When you if you take what you're gonna build, going back to the cult, so break it down. Well, you have what are they? What do they do? So what are they? They're a cult. What do they do? Well, cults worship things. They they worship things and they follow beliefs that nobody else believes. Right? Okay, well, if they worship things, then the next then the next component, well, what what or who do they worship? They could cults worship an idea, cults worship a um a deity, they worship a person.

Using real-world examples

Klayton 11:57

Um you could look at like a good thing to do is also by doing that look look at real-world examples of things. So you've got um um the Heaven's Gate cult, you've got Nxivm and Keith Raniere, um, and all of his insanity. You have the Rajneeshees, I think the the Red People in Oregon back in like the 70s or early 80s. Um you have all these different cults. They all believe in something, and a lot of it is they have a leader who instills an idea, whether it be from a god or a concept or whatever. So going back to the components, well, okay, so who's in charge of this cult? Well, you have a leader. The leader could have been the foundation of the cult, it could have been the leader who watched his entire family, including wife and let's say he had a wife and three daughters. Well, they were all sold off into slavery. That's not gonna end well for women in slavery.

Tim 13:02

Nope,

Klayton 13:03

right? So the leader of this cult, but by breaking down the components of it, it also helps you to flesh out whatever it is you're designing, which can ultimately fit right into understanding why and asking why and what consequences are. Because as you're filling it out, right, you're going, okay, and and we just did it with okay, now we have a leader. Well, the leader is he had his family do this. Well, the consequence was he started this cult, which now all of these things have happened,

Tim 13:36

right?

Klayton 13:36

Right?

Connecting everything

Klayton 13:37

 

Tim 13:37

Yep. Which honestly actually gives into one of my other ones, which actually is connecting everything. So like everything connects, um, whether that's geography, which could affect how the food is, um, the food, which also can affect trade, trade, which affects the wealth and the money flowing in. Um, then you have your wealth, which affects politics, right? So you have you have you have your wealth that's always paying for all the politics. The people that are more wealthy than others are gonna be the ones influencing more, um, which again then then can affect conflicts, which can be with your politics, could be the history, the religion, you know, it could affect you know your magic, your climates, all kinds of things. So having it connect to everything. So, like, just like we were talking about with if

Go to our website!

Tim 14:33

you want to stay updated on new episodes or world building info, go to our website, theworldkiln.com, and sign up for our email notifications. As a thank you, we'll send you a special gift to help in your next world building project. Now, back to the forge. This one guy who had his family taken for the slavery. So then he now is a cult for this vengeance deity so that he can exact revenge. Then he takes his vengeance out on this family who's in charge of these slaves that are in charge of all this uh farming land that influences, say, a region of, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be just one kingdom, it could be a kingdom with a bunch of different areas. Now all the slaves are gone, so now that takes away not only the food, but that's also the income coming in, and for maybe they use it to trade out because they have a bunch of farming lands there. So if they don't have enough food now, they don't have the income coming back in because they were using the income that they brought from this farm to give to other kingdoms for other trades. So now you have a whole huge consequence, and it connects everything. So you have all of these connections where it completely affects the the honestly, the in in a sense, it could affect the whole world, not just the kingdom, not just one thing or another. So you are constantly running into this world just from this one person's choice, and it doesn't even have to be this cult leader that had his family taken. It could have been the people that took the family in the first place, right? For slavery. Originally, it was this one person who got his family taken, which started this whole, you know, why consequence. It ended up connecting everything, it ended up causing all these different consequences and and and problems in a whole region of an area just from one choice.

Klayton 16:43

Yep.

Tim 16:44

And I think that that's knowing when you're talking about techniques and what would um and and knowing you know if if you knew it better. Like in the beginning, when I was first doing it, I didn't connect everything. I didn't ask those questions, like why? And it didn't make for a great story because you were like, oh, this is really cool. I want to create this, and like I want to create this magic system that you know everybody has it, but then you don't ask the question, why? You just had everybody do it, and then there was no there was no story behind it, there was no consequence, there was no actions. You know, you want, I think everybody, you know, playing playing video games or doing anything, they want all the coolest stuff, but you know, the thing is, is like if you do start that way, let's say you start your world that way, you got all the coolest stuff. You have this character that you created that has this world and he has all these things, and he's the most powerful person in the world because you created him. There's no consequences to him. He's always gonna be the person that can overpower everybody, that he can always out talk everybody, that he has all this stuff, he has the infinite infinite infinity gauntlet, right? Like he has all the power to

Klayton 18:01

There's no stakes.

Tim 18:01

change so and there's nothing to grow to, like, even as a character, like when you're playing a game, you get to that point, you're bored. Like, you're like, okay, well, everything. What else do I do? I can just

Klayton 18:13

What else is there? Yeah.

Tim 18:13

take care of everything. Yeah, so having so and so this bringing all this back to the techniques is having these different techniques of asking why. It builds a story, it builds consequences to the point where you have to you have to grow in the world, you have to create and do all this stuff, and there is consequences to what you decide to do. You may be one of the more powerful people, but that doesn't mean that other people can't group together and take you out if you are the evil person in this group. If you are, you know, even if you are trying to do better, but creating a world that is believable, that makes sense, and that isn't gonna overpower everything that you're doing. I think knowing all of that stuff prior to would have made it a lot easier. Because you don't ever hear a story of you know, people that um can are that just get to the end and they're they're already they have to grow, right? They have to grow as a character, they have to grow,

Klayton 19:29

Character growth 

Tim 19:29

right? You're not just that person at the end of the story, because there would be no story.

Klayton 19:34

Yeah, you don't go from nobody to somebody, so something in the middle

Tim 19:38

you have to have these questions, you have to have, you know, why is this character this way? It why is this person this way? You know, how does this affect everything that that say your world is trying to build? Um, and how does it affect the community around it? How does it affect the kingdoms? How does it affect the wildlife? How does it affect, you know, you know, a fire, you know, coming into a place and destroying a bunch of stuff? It's going to affect not just the animals. It's not gonna just affect the the the trees and everything else, it's gonna affect people that need those trees for fires to keep themselves warm. It needs to affect um the different it's gonna affect the different, you know, building equipment, things like that. So your why, the consequences, those are all really important when it comes to building

Never stop learning

Tim 20:35

your world.  

Klayton 20:36

Yeah, yeah. Well, and and so interestingly enough, that their technique that I want to talk about kind of two together. Um but and I grouped them together because they they are kind of one in different ways. But it kind of encompasses everything we've been talking about, and that's um one, never stop learning, and two, learn a little of everything. Because knowing like we just literally built a cult and why they do what they do and the the consequences of their actions in the matter of this this episode, but we also had to rely on our understanding of some things, of a lot of things, right? You know, history of slavery, how people formulate um cults, how they how cults start, how they um how like economically, if something falls, how that affects other things. The the examples you were giving earlier about well, this affects this, this affects this, affects this. Affects this. Like you have you have to be able to know those things. You have to be able to understand how systems work. So, you know, I'm constantly learning new stuff. And I can apply those things, including like world building techniques. Like I learned from other people all the time. I watch YouTube videos and podcasts and stuff. And I'm constantly going, oh, that was a cool idea. Like I, and immediately my brain goes to, oh, I can think, I can think of a couple ways that I can apply that. Um, but by learning, never stop learning, and by learning a little of everything, it allows you to help with the whys and the consequences and breaking things down and why and how things are affected. Um, I think that's a really important thing for people to learn because I know something that I did when you know years and years ago when I was younger was I relied on my own knowledge to create things, and that doesn't

Do your research

Klayton 23:02

work out so well.  

Tim 23:03

I agree. That's that's that's exactly the kind of the same thing. Like I I think that that like my last technique would be similar to yours, it would be research, right? So those little things that between you start having an idea, but like I said, for the example, like a fire starts, say it's in the forest. How does that spread? How does that look? You know, if you're adding to your story and you don't understand how that would affect the world, you need to research, okay, how how would I how would I look at a wildfire, right? Check a wildfire, see how does it spread in and why does it spread? If there is completely wet grass and wet everything because it had just rained, more than likely it's not going to. So in your story, if you start saying, you know, we had a you know torrential rainfall and then a lightning hit and it struck and it causes wildfire that broke burned down a forest. Well, that doesn't necessarily make sense if you had this torrential rainfall and everything's super wet. It might have caught something on fire, sure. But would it have completely burned down a forest over that? Probably not. It might have burnt certain parts of it down, sure. But understanding how something works so that your story is believable.

Klayton 24:25

Yeah.

Tim 24:25

So researching

Klayton 24:26

Yeah, 100% 

Tim 24:26

and making sure that your story is believable because there are people that do know how that works. So when they do read your story and they're like, that doesn't make sense. That's not true. That's not accurate.

Klayton 24:36

Yeah, you never know that you're gonna read your story.

Tim 24:38

There's always gonna be someone that and and I'm not saying that everything that you write is gonna be 100% accurate. There's gonna be things in there that you may have researched, and it may not be as accurate as what is actually out there, true, you know, someone else that's actually done that before. Yeah, um, and they're like, yeah, that's what they say in the books, but that's not actually how it is in real life. You know, you get that all the time too. But in the long side of it, or the short side of it, I should say, like you said, you know, making sure that you kind of look those things up, knowing a little bit, research, you know, make sure you understand that prior

Bonus Technique!

Tim 25:22

to.  

Klayton 25:23

I'm gonna add a little bonus thing in here as a little bonus technique, and this is something that I that I also that I do. Some people will agree with me, some people won't. And that's make things for you. Yes, uh, you know, we've been talking about all these different techniques, you know, why, consequence, components, you know, breaking down how things are affected. Um at the end of the day, if you're just creating for other people, you're gonna lose the joy in it. No, and that may not be the case for everybody. There may be people who are just like, oh no, I love to just make for everybody else, and that's fine. But your your passion and your joy is the creation to let other people experience it. Right? And when I I got in I got into a real long place when I was developing Y'ya, where I was creating things and I'm like, oh, I think if I don't develop a reason for this, somebody's gonna catch it. And then I'm and then it's gonna be a problem. And I had to realize, you know what? Doesn't really

Don't build everything

Klayton 26:47

matter.  

Tim 26:47

Well, I mean, even even if you think about that, like, just because you haven't created something doesn't mean someone won't ask. And you know what? It's okay to say, you know what, I haven't gotten that far yet. You know, I haven't thought of that far yet. That is not something that this world needs yet, but I am working on it. Or if you're not, you know what? I haven't, I'm not gonna get there yet. I'm not gonna, there's not really anything that I've thought about that. And some maybe someone goes, you know what, I had thought about that, and this is what I thought, this is what I'm thinking, and you go, you know what, that's a great idea. Or maybe you won't like what they have to say. But you don't have to flesh out everything. And maybe even even then, like you said, things for yourself. You could flesh that out and only keep it for yourself. It doesn't have to be for everybody.

Klayton 27:36

I have so much stuff that I have made that will never see the light of day. So much. I mean, you and I've talked about some of a lot of the things that I that I've made that I mean, whether it's Y'ya or Tarildor or Uthirrya like there's things that you and I've talked about that will never be in the campaign.

Tim 28:00

But you know what? It's still it's still in that case, it's one of those things, like you said, it's it's for you, or it's even for us to talk about because I love listening to it. So you know the thing is it's just eat just because you won't use it, or you know what, maybe you have used it a little bit, but it's not something that's gonna come out to an because you've done more than one campaign in that setting.

Klayton 28:21

Yeah,

Tim 28:22

you know, and doesn't mean that that little piece didn't get used once, it may never get used again, but you know what, you did get to use it at least that one time, you know.

Klayton 28:33

And that's fun. All right. Um I think we're we're kind of at a good stopping place. Uh so

Wrapping up

Klayton 28:44

we want to thank you for listening to this episode of The World Kiln Podcast.

Tim 28:48

Please tell us your thoughts on what are three techniques you wish you would have known early on that you know now in the comment section.

Klayton 28:58

We'd love to hear the different methods, ideas, and techniques that you use when you build your worlds.

Tim 29:03

If you like what you heard, subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to get notified of new episodes.

Klayton 29:11

And don't forget to head over to our website, theworldkin.com, and subscribe to our email list to get notified on new episodes, exclusive info and offers, and additional world building tips.

Tim 29:25

As a bonus and our way of saying thanks for signing up, we'll send you a step-by-step fill-in checklist for building believable settlements, whether that be a small village or a bustling metropolis.

Klayton 29:37

So, remember to stay creative,

Tim 29:40

keep forging,

Both 29:41

and we'll see you in the next building.