Beginning

Tim 0:00

Which your wife took a real fancy to.

Klayton 0:03

Boyfriend. Right. Just have this big burly tree of a man. Uh, eight foot nine, four hundred and eighty pounds, just built like a brick house. And immediately my wife goes, "Well, hello." And I instantly went, crap.

Tim 0:24

That's like even a great little difference between things that were arbitrary that became meaningful.

Klayton 0:39

Welcome to The World Kiln Podcast, where we discuss everything worldbuilding. 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, to my 25-year passion project book series.

Tim 0:56

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 builders.

Klayton 1:09

In this episode, we'll be discussing some general world building. Starting with " What do you believe is the difference between meaningful and arbitrary worldbuilding?" Let's get into the build. Alright, Tim. This one I'm gonna soft pitch at you. What do you think the difference is between meaningful and arbitrary type

Arbitrary Vs. Meaningful

Klayton 1:32

of worldbuilding?  

Tim 1:33

Well, first off, meaningful, I think, is something that you is gonna affect a huge area. Well, say it's not even gonna affect a huge area. It's gonna affect a lot of people. It's it's got consequences. It is something that will uh change how something is done, whether that's a kind of as we've talked about in other um in other podcasts so far, you know building up to say the cults, uh, we you have a meaningful reason behind why. Um you have consequences behind what all those actions are, where you have arbitrary, which isn't necessarily a it's not something that's going to make a huge effect. It's a small thing. It could be where an example of everyone wearing red um because their ancestors survived a civil war, and uh red becomes a symbol of their loyalty. So refusing to wear that um becomes

Klayton 2:47

iconography

Tim 2:48

right, is interpreted as a politic uh political descent. So it's it's more like people frown upon you not wearing it because they don't feel like you're loyal, but it's not gonna affect the world in a huge way, if that makes sense. Um so arbitrary is kind of you looking at it and saying, okay, this can affect a bunch of people, but it's not gonna affect, say, the resources, it's not gonna affect the way that everybody does their daily lives in the world that you're building. Do you have any thoughts on any of that?

Why they wear red?

Klayton 3:27

Um, so I would say, like your example of so you have a certain town and they were red. And they were red because their ancestors survived a civil war. And that civil war, that action, is a way that they remember the battle fought by their ancestors. I would absolutely call that meaningful, even if it's on a small scale, right? Because arbitrary would be like they wear they wear red. Everybody wears red. Well why? It's just their town's color or their city's color. Okay, that that's arbitrary. You're just creating it for the sake of creating it. Now that's not that's not necessarily bad. Um I was starting to tell you this earlier. I I believe that there's a stigma on arbitrary worldbuilding. Because I've heard a lot of people go, well, everything has to have meaning. I disagree with that completely. I don't think everything has to have meaning. There should be meaning in a lot of things that need meaning. Does that make sense?

Tim 4:39

Yeah.

Klayton 4:39

Um I don't like the first thing that I think of when I think of meaningful meaningful versus arbitrary is the purpose behind building. Why, and this goes back to the "Power of Why", right? Why is that thing important? Going to your example of the shirts, the the everybody wears red, right? In one way or another, whether that's well, they wear red shoes or they've got a red hat, they wear a red shirt, or something about everybody's apparel on the day-to-day is red. Why? Because they remember through that small act the sacrifice or the joy or whatever it is that they felt that their ancestors had when they uh overcame the civil war. Which is why if you don't wear it and you refuse to wear it, they look at it as dissent and disloyalty because who are you that you're saying you shouldn't be wearing this thing to remember the people who came before you? In modern aspects, right? In today's time, that would be the same thing as saying, you know, you're you're a former military. It'd be the same thing as you saying to me, well, you don't celebrate 4th of July, so you're disloyal to all armed services that came before you.

Tim 6:15

It makes complete sense.

Klayton 6:17

Um so even something, even in a small area, in a small scale, there's meaning, right? What is the meaning behind why something is the way that it is, is meaningful. Arbitrary is just making something up for just for the sake of making something up. And I don't think that's bad. I really don't. No, I

Arbitrary isn't bad

Klayton 6:41

do it all the time.  

Tim 6:41

Well, you need it even for small things when you're creating a story. You have little things that you talk about, you know, a daily life of someone, an arbitrary thing of them baking for themselves, uh, you know, them cleaning up after themselves. It's not really an important thing to the story, but it does describe that person. It does give a feeling of normalcy, right? So arbitrary isn't a bad thing, and it is needed for storytelling. Um, you can't have everything that you talk about being meaningful the whole way through. There's gotta be done.

Klayton 7:19

You'll never get anything done. 

Tim 7:19

That's what I'm saying. There's so many characters into a story, and so many characters into you know, a D&D setting, any worldbuilding, you need to have arbitrary, which is just as important as meaningful stuff, because you need to have the normalcy in places. You're not gonna have a meaningful, you know, person who's in a alchemy store. You know, you you have the person who's there daily, that's his job, right? But it it's meaningful to the point that he's needed, but his day-to-day chores of constantly making sure that his stocks are full and that his his uh place is cleaned and is presentable, those aren't things that are meaningful to necessarily the story, but it is it's it's an arbitrary thing. It's it's something that's it's important, but it's it's not a meaningful purpose behind what needs to be told in a

"Depth of Feel"

Tim 8:22

story.  

Klayton 8:23

Um I agree with that. Um and it kind of kind of a segue, actually, that that that plays well into something that I have written down in kind of one of my points is the difference between arbitrary and meaningful is "depth of feel". So meaningful, you know, in the in the in the last episode we built that we built that cult, right? And we we talked about consequence, we talked about why, we talked about um breaking it down into components, but those are all to create depth in something, right? The the term fleshing something out um arbitrary like you talked about with this like the shopkeeper, we'll use that that example. But yeah, they're going around, they're gonna go around, they're gonna keep their shop clean. They want to make sure that their their stores are are filled, that they have stock, that they can sell what their prices are. Is there meaning behind it? Of course there is. Everything has a meaning, right? Everything has a purpose. Right. Does it play any effect into the story that you're telling?

Tim 9:36

No.

Klayton 9:37

Nope. I'll get I'll give you an example. Um, or I'll use an example, let's say, out of out of our campaign, okay the Captain's Quarters. Okay. In Brinehaven.

Tim 9:50

Uh-huh.

Klayton 9:51

Okay. You guys have gone in and out of that tavern a countless number of times, above and below in the secret crow hideout, right? Right. Did we at any point go into why that that particular tavern is the hideout for the crow?

Tim 10:17

Not even once, no.

Klayton 10:19

Because it doesn't matter. Because it's an arbitrary thing. Now, did that make the tavern feel any less real to the story? Did it make it feel any less important or any less like a tavern?

Tim 10:33

No, because you still had to go in there, you still had to talk to the tavern owner or bartender and ask them, tell them the specific secret codes so they could let you in and all that stuff. So it still felt like you had to walk into a tavern. You could still order a drink, you could still see that there's people in the tavern, but to understand the history or the background or why it was there.

Klayton 10:54

Okay, at that point now, I have none of that.

Tim 10:57

And and honestly, none. And I mean, I'm sure you would have come up with it if we had asked. If you're like, you know what? This is what we got going on.

Klayton 11:03

I probably would have just made it. I probably would have.

Tim 11:05

You're right. It it wasn't something that even us as characters had thought meaningful enough to even ask, because you brought up what was meaningful enough for us to make those assumptions to go, okay, this you have to make sure you give them the secret word so that we know because there is a place underneath that as we came down to here, you had told us Graele had given us the which is one of the people there. She's the one who gave us the code to come down and like the passcode, and and then they told us where it was. Then we had to go back in the back and go downstairs, and then we had to meet Illas, the big old bounce the big old yeah, exactly. The uh bouncer, you know.

Klayton 11:49

  The guy I created as a doorstop

Tim 11:52

Which your wife took a real fancy to

Klayton 11:55

My wife's boyfriend.

Tim 11:56

But the you're right, the meaningful versus the arbitrary, like it was meaningful with what we needed to do, but it wasn't necessarily for

Klayton 12:08

so I'm sorry, I'm I'm not trying

Arbitrary becoming meaningful

Klayton 12:10

to interrupt you.   I just this is very interesting because you just made a very valid point to the whole arbitrary and meaningful thing.

Tim 12:16

Illas.

Klayton 12:18

Yes, yes, yes, Illas.

Tim 12:19

It was hundred arbitrary and it became meaningful  

Klayton 12:22

completely arbitrary. I literally built him because have, you seen Who's Framed Roger Rabbit? Oh, yeah. Okay, the scene when Eddie Valiant is getting into the club, the gorilla

Tim 12:38

comes up and he tries to bounce out

Klayton 12:40

as I was designing the KROW and this hidden entrance underneath the tavern and be the I'm like that image popped into my brain, and I went, okay, I'm gonna use that because that's funny, right? Just have this big burly tree of a man,

Tim 12:58

half ogre, half orc

Klayton 12:59

half ogre, half orc, right? He's oh, he's uh eight foot nine, four hundred and eighty pounds, just built like a brick house. And I'm like, he's just gonna be the doorman, right? Just to pay homage to that funny scene, right? Right. And you guys walk in the door, and I describe Illas, and immediately my wife goes, "Well, hello." And I instantly went, crap.

Tim 13:31

And that's

Klayton 13:33

now I have to build something for this.

Tim 13:35

And that's and that's a good, that's even a great little difference between things that were arbitrary that became meaningful. And honestly, that could even be the exact opposite, where you have something that you did think that was meaningful, but say the characters didn't really go that way. So it became more arbitrary than it did meaningful because there wasn't much behind it until we actually do decide that that's something that we wanted to head towards, you know. So in this case, you went directly from something that didn't mean anything to all of a sudden he's now part of our campaign.

Klayton 14:12

Can you tell me who the other one is?

Tim 14:15

Of course. You went from having to go into the red brands and we had to fight off these bugbears that were picking on this little little goblin named Droop, which actually is named in

Klayton 14:29

in the Mines of Phandelver.

Tim 14:33

And yeah,

Klayton 14:34

his name is actually Droop in the Mines of Phandelver.

Tim 14:37

And because of your voice that you chose, in that case, to make Droop, that's where

Klayton 14:45

Adam's over there shaking his head.

Tim 14:46

That's where his this arbitrary little goblin now became a meaningful person in our in our campaign.

Klayton 14:54

Meaningful? He's part of your party now.

Tim 14:56

Exactly. The two people that were arbitrary, you had those two, are now NPCs that we will especially the the two girls. If you lose Droop or Illas, oh, your wife for one is gonna kill you. But two. You also have Adam's wife that's gonna kill him because Adam lost Droop that other time, and guess who was pissed off at him for a while? His wife. Yeah, you lost Droop, and then so was your wife.

Klayton 15:23

Okay, to clarify, he didn't lose droop.

Tim 15:27

Oh, he made him disappear, that's what he did.

Klayton 15:30

he didn't lose droop.

Tim 15:31

He made the harpy come and grab him. Anyway, it went from arbitrary to super meaningful, and the longer we went, the more meaningful those two characters became.

Klayton 15:41

Yes, and that that is actually a valid point between between meaningful and arbitrary. It's hard, not to say that it can't be done, but that's an interesting point, is it it's hard to have something that's already has meaning and make it arbitrary.

Tim 16:00

That is true.

Klayton 16:02

But it's very easy to take something that's arbitrary and make it meaningful, right? Because in order to do that, i.e. Droop, Illas, you have you need to give it meaning, you need to give it value, you need to give it purpose.

Tim 16:20

But once it has that, it's hard to take that away.

Klayton 16:24

Because it's already established.

Tim 16:25

And people would be like, wait, all of a sudden this person just disappeared. This thing was meaningful doesn't matter anymore? What's up with that? Yeah. So it is really difficult, and I'm sure there's very few situations where you could actually go from a meaningful situation where it had some meaning, but it wasn't strong enough to make a big difference, to where maybe it went back to it. It was kind of meaningful, it was making its way to that, but it didn't really make its way there. So, but you're right. There's a lot of situations, especially when you're gaming. I I it it's it's more gonna happen when you're playing, say, a D&D campaign or a campaign of anything, it could be any of the games, where your characters are influenced the story as it's coming through, where that specific situations will come in, where something, it doesn't even have to be characters or NPCs that you have, but something that was arbitrary becomes meaningful. Where you write a book, you're gonna be deciding that. You don't have people coming in here and deciding that something changes and becomes a meaningful that was arbitrary in the first place as you're writing something, or you know, a director or a screenwriter that's writing this movie, they're the ones deciding how that movie is gonna play out and how arbitrary meaningful things are gonna happen. But it definitely does happen.

Klayton 17:44

If you want to stay updated on new episodes or worldbuilding info, go to our website, theworldkin.com, and sign up for our email notifications. As a thank you, we'll send you a special gift to help you in your next worldbuilding project. Now back in the forge.

Tim's experience

Klayton 18:01

To your point about the book, and I was just thinking about this. When you're developing your world, right? I don't I'm gonna ask like I'm gonna ask you this question. Did you ever find moments where you made something meaningful, but you're like I don't know that this actually has as much meaning as I want it to be, and I don't really need this anymore.

Tim 18:29

You know, there are parts when you're in something or starting to write something where you're you start writing So an example, especially in in this book, the very first draft that I wrote was very detail-oriented. There was a lot of things that were you gave a lot of details of how stuff works. One of the situations in the original that isn't in this one, was actually where Ilae goes after going through the caverns and underneath and kind of going through the forests and all that stuff, she came back up and she actually went to see some of the people from the Saerathin Accord, which is kind of their their guild. Um so but she in this in this section, she explained how all of the Aelaryn crystals work, how all five of them work. Every single one of them, and she would explain like what each one of them did. Now, explaining it, sure, it helps with the story, it's meaningful, but it's also too meaningful in a way. It explains so much that it also takes away from your story, and it's stuff that also isn't meaningful in the point that you're looking at at this time, like it's not gonna help you understand all that right now. In the long run, it's better to explain it as you go. So as each book goes, you have this one that it kind of explains this how the um how one of the crystals works, then you have the next one that the next book that'll explain how another one works, and it gives more depth to the books because it kind of explains throughout the storytelling why it's important and what it how it affects things versus just explaining it, and then everybody's like, Oh, I already understand this, so why do I need to know this in this book? And it it so in the long run, having a lot of stuff to over-complicate and over-detail things doesn't make for great storytelling. You want them to find out as they go, you don't want the store the characters to just tell the readers, the viewers, everything that's going on before they get to find out themselves.

Klayton 21:07

I had that same problem.

Tim 21:08

And that's and I think that's part of it, is like you would explain through the characters almost like they know everything. And so they're explaining it all. Like, this is all the details, this is how everything works, this is how it goes. And there's no there's no nothing for the the listener, the viewer, the reader to go to and go, okay, how am I growing as a person? Like, how is this how's this character going? I want to grow with this character, I want to learn how this works. So it becomes everything in there is too meaningful, and you don't have enough arbitrary anyway, so that the story grows as it uh together, like you don't go and learn it all with this person and go, Oh, I just figured this out. This is how this is going. Like, oh, this is why. This is happening. So yes, I've definitely run into that, especially in the first one. And it taught me how to not write a lot of detail and have better character building. In these cases, you can put too much meaning and too much detail into something that you're doing. World building and whatever.

Don't tell me, show me

Tim 22:29

 

Klayton 22:29

Oh, I agree. I I as you're sitting here kind of explaining what you were going through, it it dawned on me that that as a perfect example of the telling and not showing. You know, because there there's the uh you know, show me uh especially in in you know novel writing, show me. Don't tell me, show me. Um and that that's that's a good example because it's somebody explaining it as opposed to

Tim 23:03

finding out for yourself,

Klayton 23:05

applying how it works so that the the reader can discover it in an organic way.

Tim 23:14

Yeah. Um it's hard. It's hard to and even then, like, I feel like there could have been definitely some things in the first one that I could have done differently. Not that it's not not that it's not good, but it could have been better, you know what I mean? Like as you're going through and you get to the next one, you're like, oh, I could have added this, and I could have made it sound so much cooler, and it would have made this scene a little bit better. Not that it's not good, not that I wouldn't still like to have this one out, but I think you over criticize yourself when you're going through these things.

Klayton 23:46

You know what they say, you're your own worst enemy.

Tim 23:48

You are

Klayton 23:48

You are your own worst critic,

Tim 23:50

yeah. Even going through the second book, you know, I've gone through multiple rewrites, and they have it, and even then they're still looking at it going, okay, we still need to fix this.

Technical Difficulties... again... (sigh)

Tim 24:05

 

Klayton 24:05

Technical difficulties.

Tim 24:07

Well, to go back to it, the having having too much information writing, meaningful. You have, I mean, all of it's meaningful, but if you have too much, it takes away from the story. So honestly, making sure that as you're writing it, you also want to have the main points that you're trying to get through the story and not try to add too much information to where it makes it difficult for the reader to not get their information too soon. Like you said, you want to find it naturally, you want to have them get it to a point where they can actually find it out through a natural progression of the story and the character development versus having the characters almost know everything and give them all this detail about what's going on and almost like they know everything before they should know everything.

How much info do I give?

Tim 25:04

So I don't know if you've run into those kind of issues writing, because I know you've you've been writing your book, uh, or even in worldbuilding when you're trying to DM something, like how do you keep from giving too much of that meaningful information that you need to for the characters when we start asking questions about how things go without one character going, oh yeah. Um

Klayton 25:32

Info-dump!

Tim 25:33

right. I'm part of this Animus Prisoma that you're trying to thwart, and I don't like how they're doing anything anymore. So, you know what? You go ahead and ask me everything, and I'll give you everything that I know about all of it. You know, it's like there's gotta be a line because otherwise it doesn't become meaningful for even the characters to develop because they're you've pretty much given them all the information. They're like, oh well, I just need to go do this, okay, bye-bye. Instead of having to figure it out for themselves and figure out how how they need to go about trying to find it. Like, who do I need to talk to? Where do I find this? What places do I have to go to? You know, you can give bits and pieces, but how do you do that? How do you how do you as a DM figure that out?

Klayton 26:19

It is not easy. I find myself stumbling into that all the time. Um having you know the background information because you know, when you've created the world that everybody's playing in, you know, I think a key thing to storytelling which is directly tied into worldbuilding, right? Because they're they feed off of each other. Your story needs a believable world to be a believable story, right? It's a cyclical exchange. Yeah, but part of having a good story and telling a good story is knowing when to give that information.

Tim 27:07

I, you know, even when I've tried to be a DM sometimes, that's hard. That's hard to find the right time and to give the clues in.

Klayton 27:16

I still fail with that all the time.

Tim 27:17

And it's even to like where you try to give the clues in the right spots, where people actually do catch them, and you're like, wait a minute, how do I go and find that out?

Klayton makes something meaningful

Tim 27:26

You know, one of the one of the things that I noticed that you did in one of our campaigns is you put the White Wrath stamp on these barrels when we first did it, right?

Klayton 27:39

Yeah 

Tim 27:39

And granted, granted, it wasn't something that we thought of as being super meaningful at that point because it's more of a background for my character, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't something that was important, but it wasn't something that we were going to do right then and there. So it was something to bring up, but to have that info and know where to put that just to feed the little things to get people interested in it, that's hard. That's not an easy thing to do, is to just know where to put those and then know how that connects back. Like if we would to go and search for that, how that connects back, and you have to actually create the story that would connect to those barrels with those stamps on it, going, okay, if he did ask those questions to you to the people that are in that area, say the Black Spider or something, and we started asking it and actually info dumped from them, not just the Animus Prisoma that he's in charge that he's in, but the background, how would that interconnect? You know, like you have all these avenues that you have to keep together, and all the backgrounds plus the main story that we're trying to go through, and not dump at the same time. So, how do you keep all of that together and it without it over overdoing it? Because that's a lot of, in this case, meaningful stuff. Like it's not it's not an arbitrary

An example from D&D

Tim 29:06

thing.  

Klayton 29:06

Well, that's interesting that you bring up those barrels because that's that's a in and of itself is a case of something that appears arbitrary, that is actually meaningful.

Tim 29:21

Right.

Klayton 29:22

Um because the White Wrath being tied back to Malark, your character, and Gorvalax, the white dragon, um, whose title was The White Wrath, it it the Cult of the White Wrath, that symbol appearing on it, the rest of the party had no idea what that was. Right. Because that was something to them, it was arbitrary, it didn't matter. Malark, it was a meaningful moment. It was something that had meaning behind it because you knew what that meant. Nobody else did. So I think there there is a place for arbitrary, like we were talking about, arbitrary to become meaningful. The ability or knowing when to place the is like any other skill, a skill to be learned and worked on.

Tim 30:22

But also, what you had just mentioned there, something that is arbitrary can also be meaningful in the sense that, say, for Malark, that complete thing is meaningful to him, but it's also an arbitrary thing. So it's actually two in one because anyone else that had nothing that anybody else in the world would have found that just about it as a barrel full of wine or whatever it was full of, right? No one else in say, you know, 90% of the world, other than say the Cults or you know, the people that actually have to deal with those barrels and things like that, it's arbitrary. There's nothing about it that is anything out of the normal than any other, say, wine barrel that they've had that anybody else had to drink. They would have just took it, drank it. Uh, it doesn't mean anything to me. But the people that it affected, that it became meaningful for those people. So you actually can have specific situations, like in this case, where it is two, it is both things at once. It is a meaningful thing, and it's also an arbitrary thing. It all depends on your point of view, your situation, like who you are. Like, did that person or does that thing, that white wrath, did that affect you? The rest of the rest of the party? It didn't affect them at all. They have, like you said, no idea. So it's an arbitrary thing for those characters. And honestly, probably a lot of people that were in that cavern, you know, it it didn't mean much to them. They know about it, but does it affect them? Not in any sense that wasn't like I needed it for food or wine or whatever. They're helping us, we help them, you know. So most people, it's an arbitrary thing, but it affected my character because he's that dragon's the one that killed my whole family. So I would want to know more about it. I care if this dragon's come back to kill people or do anything, or you know, so you can have things in your world that are both that have the exact same thing

Does it lead to more ideas?

Tim 32:34

for both.  

Klayton 32:34

Well, and I I kind of the last thing that I want to touch on before we kind of close a shop is for me personally um one of the things that I think about in terms of is something arbitrary or meaningful is does this design, does this creation, this thing that I am making, does it lead to more ideas? Or does it just I've created it, it's a placeholder, and it just the creativity stops. Because if I'm getting more ideas, if the creative if the creativity just starts flowing, and I'm getting more ideas, and I'm getting more um paths away from okay, I have this thing, oh I could do this, oh I could do this, oh because of this, now I'm thinking of this thing, and because of that, I could think of this okay, there's something there that has meaning. Right? Or is it just I put a bunch of barrels in a room? Well, yeah. Anybody else? It's just a bunch of barrels in a room. But when Malark looked at it and he saw the insignia of the Cult of the White Wrath, now there's something else there. Now there's something more involved. Now there's a like I said, a "Depth of Feel". Now there's a purpose. Um development doesn't have to be done before it's implemented. Right? Now in that particular instance, it was. I already knew I already knew what was going on there, and I already knew that that's what those were. And if one of you, if one of the four of you made a check and noticed that, I knew that was gonna perk your ears immediately. Right? I had designed it that way. But that was also one of those things that because that particular instance was also in one of the different scenarios in the Mines of Phandelver when we very first started. I think it was in Wave Echo Cave.

Tim 34:57

That is the Wave Echo Cave, yeah.

Klayton 34:58

Which is already something that's a part of the Mines of Phandelver little module thing, right?

Tim 35:04

You just added those little bit snippets of the batting rounds in.

Klayton 35:08

Adding that one little detail in that moment of watch this. I'm about to turn something that's just completely arbitrary, that D&D, Wizards of the Coast, designed that way. As just an arbitrary thing, and I'm gonna turn it meaningful. Timing is a big thing when it comes to revelation and information.

When you learn is important

Klayton 35:37

When you learn about something, it can be just as inspiring, just as traumatizing, just as engaging as what the information is. Right? So like in that particular moment, going back to that example of the barrels, in that particular moment, you weren't even thinking about the Cult of the White Wrath. You weren't even thinking about Gorval ax, you weren't even thinking about any of that. But then all of a sudden you walk into this room that by the design of the company who made it, is nothing but just like broken down barrels that just happen to fill a room. Except you notice that when you when you look at it, you notice that there's a odd burnt insignia on the side. And you being Malark like, "what's the insignia?" Make an investigation check. So you got a decent roll. So you look at it and you see that it is a singular scaly eye, and you recognize this as a symbol, you recognize this insignia, and your face went from suspicious to understanding and revelation in an instant, and I went, this is the symbol of the Cult of the White Wrath, and that completely changed how that completely changed how you were handling the rest of Wave Echo Cave.

Tim 37:23

Right? It made you have to want to check everything because you weren't sure what was going on,

Klayton 37:28

but it was all about that timing, not just what it was, but when you discovered it.

Tim 37:33

Right.

Klayton 37:35

Um, that's why timing is to me is a is a big thing. And let me be very clear about this. It took me a long time to understand that concept.

Tim 37:43

Like I said, it's hard.

Klayton 37:44

It it is, it's really hard to, and I still mess it up all the time. I feel like I'm constantly coming into positions where I'm like, oh, I may have given a little too much information out. You know what? Next time, I'm gonna hold back a little. Right?

Tim 38:03

I don't need to get it.

Klayton 38:04

I'm gonna hold off on that one. Uh you got anything else?

Tim 38:08

No, I think this is uh this is a good

Wrapping it up

Tim 38:11

spot.  

Klayton 38:11

Okay, cool. Yeah, I think we should uh go ahead and wrap this up. Uh, we want to thank you for listening to this episode of the World Kiln Podcast.

Tim 38:21

Please tell us your thoughts on what is believable between the difference in meaningful and arbitrary in the comments section.

Klayton 38:31

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

Tim 38:39

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

Klayton 38:48

And don't forget to head over to our website, theworldkiln.com, and subscribe to our email list to get notified of new episodes, exclusive info and offers, and additional worldbuilding tips.

Tim 38:59

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

Klayton 39:13

So, remember to stay creative,

Tim 39:15

keep forging,

Both 39:16

and we'll see you in the next building.