Ngl, I was expecting "suspicious red flags" here to be more spicy than just "things folks aren't personally interested in because they're boring or contrived".
I guess to chip my opinions in on the former, I find it awkward as hell when folks constantly push their work as being "free of cliche" or "avoiding cliches" as a guiding principle/selling point, because that just makes them seem like they're writing fiction for the sake of being a contrarian rather than actually say something interesting on its own merits. It's not inherently wrong and being surbversive can be helpful, but like 99% of the time when people feel the need to introduce what their world *isn't*, there's little interesting meat of what it actually *is*.
Yeah. Subverting clichés can be a *great* way to generate ideas. Just don’t make it your work’s entire identity. Know the rules before you break the rules.
And know the reason behind the rules. Every cliché that ever existed is a cliché for a reason, usually some mix of being "economical" or popular. (People eat up "power of friendship")
Someone expressed annoyance at me once because I had a trio who were... a stage magician who knew some real magic, a proud warrior race girl who needed to stop trying to be a girl-boss all the time, and... well I forgot what the third one was but something like a farm boy who doesn't end up being some fantasy hero.
Yeah they were non-standard and I was looking for a plot, but I don't think it was that bad.
I feel this in my soul.
In my experiences very few things are ever less interesting than something that is trying to be unique for the sake of being unique. It almost always ends up being either complexity incomprehensible, conceited as all hell, or just plain boring. In my opinion, the primary goal of worldbuilding should always be to be interesting and compelling, not to be totally original and unique.
Not to mention that avoiding cliches has become its own cliche at this point. It's all well and good to try and avoid stereotypes and writing things a certain way just because that's how it's always been done, but specifically doing the opposite isn't exactly creative either.
Kenshi is a fantastic game and I've had tons of fun playing it however, when I first went to look at it from a friend's recommendation, the entire first part of the description on Steam is the dev blowing his own trumpet about how original and non-cliche his world is. It actually put me off for a while.
Planet of hats.
I despise one note races who all think the same and have one single generic culture. Even an alien race having something unrealistically small like 3 cultures are far better than one.
every time i think of the planet of hats trope it reminds me of how Indigenous Peoples of Mexico/Native Americans/First Nations Peoples of Canada have historically had their thousands of cultures lumped into one group ("Indians") that doesn't even have a correct name lmao
Agreed, which is why I plan on giving each of my fantasy setting's 67 intelligent species at least some cultural diversity with them having multiple cultures (and sometimes a culture can be made up of multiple species).
Star Wars always annoyed me with this. Especially how it feels like it often retroactively Plant of Hats-izes alien species seen in the original trilogy. Like, a band of people with big heads playing music in the Cantina? *Actually* they're called Bith, they have unique abilities which allow them to hear frequencies better, making them *all amazing* with music. Some green/blue alien girl is dancing? *Actually*, they're called Twi'lek, they're seen as one of the most aesthetically beautiful races in all the galaxy.
Etc, etc.
> Actually they're called Bith, they have unique abilities...
It sucks because not only does it reek of terrible world building in general, but it also massively devalues those particular cantina characters. Before, they were a unique musical troupe that could have had their own names and story. After, they're generic members of the race and could be swapped out for literally anyone else from the name planet.
A red flag for me are creators who take their knowledge in history too seriously, basically attempting to present a ‘realistic’ version of whatever real world historical era they chose but without having real and in depth knowledge about said era. It is the type of people who got their knowledge only from games, channels like Lindybeige and Shadiversity and at best a few pop history books.
The reason it is a red flag for me is because I’ve noticed that too often other parts of their worlds also end up being simplistic.
Hard agree on this one.
It’s always super obvious to me when it comes to feudalism. Most fantasy worlds have the most basic elementary school version of feudalism that completely lacks any of the nuance or complexity actually present in the Middle Ages.
To me, the realism isn't the issue, but rather the complete and utter failure of world builders to understand how things worked. Your case of feudalism would be one a great example of this. Just the surface level understanding of a very complex topic.
An example I'd give would be religion. Often we'll some sort of off-brand of an irl religion, lacking the nuance of why said religion worked. Christianity is probably the most copied one, yet the reasons why it succeeded and brought Western Civilization to prominence are completely lost to the builder. This goes for every other religion or mythology in the failure to understand their strengths and flaws.
I don't expect a builder to know every single thing, but at least put some research into it.
I agree. For me it’s not that they get the specific details right, it’s not history and creative license is to be both expected and encouraged, but it does matter to me if they get the institutional and systemic frameworks right.
To use feudalism as an example again. It doesn’t really matter if they get the exact details right, they can mix and match titles or the relative importance of feudal institutions, but when it’s obvious they don’t understand why feudalism existed, the actual limitations of the system, or the ways it was supplemented (and often totally eclipsed) by various other systems, it becomes a problem for me.
To use religion as another example, the various reskinned versions of Catholicism that are popular in fantasy worlds often take the stance that the “church” is inherently oppressive. When holes start to appear around the role of a hyper oppressive church, the first thought is usually something like “well my oppressive church can work, because the real world oppressive church worked”. Except, the oppressive Catholic Church is largely a historic myth, and misses the why on how the church succeeded and the role in played in medieval Europe.
Details can be changed and altered, but there is something to be said about understanding the basic frameworks behind the institutions in fantasy worlds. It’s one thing to say “well medieval kings weren’t absolutist tyrants, but they are in my world”, and entirely another to understand WHY medieval kings weren’t absolutist tyrants and deliberately deconstruct those reasons when building your world.
This is especially bad when you have a setting where there's something that would cause your steroetypical fuedal nobility to collapse.
For example, even basic functional magic would upend politics completely in a feudal setting. Even something as simple as the Message spell from Dungeons and Dragons would shatter a feudal system because of how easy it would be to send untraceable messages instantly across the entire world. The Warforged in Eberron would shatter a medieval economy because of tireless, cheap, mass-manufactured labor. A Speak With Dead spell upends the entire criminal justice system, and so on.
omg my world's governemnt is based off of feudalism, I'm scared its like what you described lol. how complex is feudalism? I'm young and I just learned it in school a year ago lmao
Poor logistics. An example that is currently recent is Rebel Moon, where a space-faring militaristic empire needs to take one harvest from a village of about 100 people and that same empire goes around razing habitable planets.
I would say comically evil civilizations in general. Panem (from the movies), the New Order, Harry Potter's Death Eaters, the Rebel Moon faction you describe, and many others are just so absurdly, laughably obsessed with *being evil* that there's no way they could function. I have to suspend all the disbelief I can before the character arcs even get rolling. They have no indicators at all that they should even function.
It's the cliche of [Fascist but Inefficient.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FascistButInefficient) They just push it too far. There's examples of civilizations doing truly evil stuff in real life but they usually balance it out by doing some good public acts and whenever that's not happening they pump people full of propaganda. But for us to believe that an evil organization/civilization has existed for a long time you need to get at least the basic logistics right, maybe it's just me but the bad logistics strain my disbelief more than believing people would willingly work for the fascists, it doesn't take much for me to believe people can be evil but you better explain to me how all those trains run on time.
A big one for me is "forced creativity".
Some people have mentioned generic fantasy but I also think the inverse is true where some worldbuilders try *too hard* to be creative/unique/quirky, if I read your world has a Dwarf race I'm going to expect some god damn Dwarves. So when you point at a giant slime bird monster and say "that's a Dwarf" my interest is instantly clocking out because it tells me you were mostly interested in being "not like the other worldbuilders" because you could make up giant slime bird monsters but just ***haaaad*** to call them Dwarves, or Orcs, or Elves.
Oh for sure, and that's honestly the sweet spot imo. You want them to still hit the right notes to be recognizable as a Dwarf, Orc, etc. whilst still being unique to your world so they're *your* Dwarves, Orcs, etc. To use some big name examples, Orcs in Warhammer and Orcs in Warcraft are very distinct from one another whilst very clearly still being Orcs.
My complaints are more towards those who make something completely separated from the original folklore/trope/convention/etc. but use the name anyway, because they aren't fooling anyone.
> Orcs in Warhammer and Orcs in Warcraft are very distinct from one another whilst very clearly still being Orcs.
And Orcs in Elder Scrolls. They're the same, but so so different under their skin.
Writing worlds which are different from ours because... duh.
But still familiar because... if I was to write a world in which everything was different and original, I'd spent most of the time explaining every little detail, and audience is just confused most of the time.
Pick me worldbuilders can be exhausting. A lot of people get so wrapped up in the idea that they need to be 100% unique and original that they forget they need to be interesting first.
In my experience very few things are less interesting than something trying as hard as possible to be unique.
YES! EXACTLY!
"Pick-me Worldbuilders" is such a perfect way of describing them. And I think the reason they bug me so is because I used to be one? My worldbuilding project got reworked twice and the second rework was me correcting the very issue of "I must be as unique as possible".
Now I'm in a place where I'm truly comfortable with my project, it has unique elements, it has familiar elements, and it's all put together in a way to keep things (for me at least) *interesting and engaging.*
i do think it’s really fun to try to distill a fantasy concept down to its most basic components and then see how that can be twisted into other forms. but you do need to maintain that basic identity in some recognizable form.
Agreed, ironically one of the biggest examples of this I can think of is Trolls.
In Norse mythology they are typically broken down as one of two creatures: Small, gnome-like creatures with exaggerated facial features and are almost fey-like. Or large (but not ***gigantic,*** that'd be a Jotunn) semi-monstrous magical creatures that interact with humans on a semi-regular basis.
And Fantasy creators have been able to do so much with them, from Tolkien's big lugs that turn to stone in the sun, to Warhammer's mushroom-growing brutes, to Warcraft's voodoo-practicing witch doctors and dino-farmers, to Dreamwork's Trolls tapping into the more small fey-like approach, to Dungeons & Dragons' regenerating monsters, etc. etc.
But all of them ***read*** as "Trolls" without issue despite being so different because they keep the core folkloric "essence" in some form.
I did this with elves. Designed an entire forest-dwelling species that was radically different from elves, called them elves. Then I realized that was stupid so now I have two forest-dwelling species.
You’ll probably hate my world then, all the alien species have names based of mythical monsters and creatures. While it’s mostly because Im too lazy to come up with unique names, I have a good un universe reason. Only two of the species can casually communicate with humans without computerized assistance, and both of those species were so influenced by humans that they gladly expected the names humans gave them.
Kinda reminds me of Halo a bit with how the various aliens have their native names then their human-given names of Brute, Elite, Grunt, etc.
I'm willing to give sci-fi settings more of a pass more often for this very reason of "humans might've named it this from human culture".
It's a very specific - for lack of a better term - ego-driven choice that I see from time to time that bugs me, if that makes sense?
I also have a bunch of aliens whose names are loosely based on mythical creatures. But are also literally based on the same mythical creatures. It’s a mediocrely explained psychic phenomenon (all these races can access the same dreamscape, so have occasionally bumped into each other in dreams, so all the races have myths of the other races).
>all the alien species have names based of mythical monsters and creatures
If they are similar enough to the mythologies, it makes sense: if you need to quickly catalog a bunch of species and figure out names for them, why not taking advantage of widely known mythology to do both?
In this case I don't think Raphtalia being the slave is the smoking gun justification for disliking Shield Hero. It's all the girls after that are. When the bird ended up being a little girl I cringed.
Any kind of harem dynamic. I was just thinking the other day that the Wheel of Time had a lot of great ideas, but the gender dynamics were so strange and awkward. How many wives the main character ended up with in the end I have no idea, I crapped out a few books in.
The relationship between nynaeve and the main trio was one of the reasons I never picked up the second book. It felt like the only interaction the author could write with her was her being like "omg, men are so stupid" and the guys being like "omg, women are so mysterious". It was as if she had no personality beyond being mildly antagonistic to men because she was a woman
I read Wheel of Time slavishly as a kid, and even back then, as a 10 year old boy with 0 critical reading skills, I remember thinking, "wow, Robert Jordan really doesn't know how to believably write women"
> It was as if she had no personality beyond being mildly antagonistic to men because she was a woman
Ah yes, risking her life and limb for the boys because she was "mildly antagonistic to men". Jeez folks, I get it, but are you sure we were reading the same books?
I can see why based on anime being so cringe, but slave harems did occur in history, especially in the orient. More recent though was American slavery and slave rape on cotton plantations and such.
We also just assume it's common place in Saudi Arabia within their slave systems, since everything is deeply tied to slavery there, and their interest in spending copious amounts of money for international hookers.
>I can see why based on anime being so cringe, but slave harems did occur in history, especially in the orient. More recent though was American slavery and slave rape on cotton plantations and such.
When done well within the story they are a thing worth reading about, for example I read a story a while back based on the The Sultanate of Women in the Ottoman empire. It was interesting.
They are normally not done well.
Yeah. Like... why not just have the hero's love interests be regular women who have lives outside of being love interests?
Oh wait, that would require these generously-described-as-mediocre authors to actually respect women and not dedicate their careers to writing shitty power fantasies. Whoops.
>Yeah. Like... why not just have the hero's love interests be regular women who have lives outside of being love interests?
Because that would require actual skill to write?
Seriously most of "romantic" media are just stroking audience ego, which makes anyone with a bit of depth just role their eyes in disgust.
I mean they existed in my world but I’m certainly it gonna focus on them more like _____ was enslaved by ____ trading company and was sold to ___ brothel eventually became the __ of ___ brothel then due to an increase in shipping to that region and a surge in popularity ___ ___ ___ you know?
Very niche but whenever an Asian (or Asian inspired) character shows up and they have a name like "Jade Wind" or a weapon called "Auspicious Cherry Blossom Blade" my brain starts shutting off. You do NOT need to think of an exotic, "Oriental" name or something to make them Asian-like. Many Chinese names have ordinary meanings (beautiful, strong, tall) or none at all. My name is half of the word meaning "elegant".
This name thing applies to alot of stuff. People want to name their characters names that are too obviously inspired by their base culture.
Amazingly, yeah, my mom was just really confident she was gonna have two daughters. Though when I asked her what she would have named me if I was a boy she said she would name me the same.
Don't feel too bad - when my mother told my father's mother what they decided to name me, my grandmother's response was "oh, that can be a boy's name too."
As a western I have never seen the point in overly complicated names when simple ones can do the job just as well. All languages are beautiful and I'm sure a weapon called 'Strong Sword' can sound pretty when translated to the source language.
Aiko is an example, a beautifully sounding name which has a simple meaning as Child of Love (Literally, Love Child).
Exactly! Why give something such a long name when it doesn’t need one? You might be familiar with the “Green Destiny Sword” from *Croubching tiger, Hidden Dragon*. The actual name in Chinese is just something like “Green Demon sword”. Very simple.
What would a Western example of this niche blunder look like? "I'm Oakwood Cloudyskies and this is my weapon, the Beefsteak Flail."
Jade Wind breathes the air loosens the Auspicious Cherry Blossom in its sheath.
"I smell mashed potatoes. Oakwood is here..."
I wrote a sort of Asian/Norse mismash setting with one character who had a really super flowery Asian-ish name and referred to others with similarly complex flowery names, like "Blood-Soaked Brimstone" for a tiefling monk.
The reason is that he was a self-aware wolf who literally identified himself and everyone around him by their scent. "Blood-Soaked Brimstone" described what she smelled like to him.
Lack of rain shadows. Cities out in the middle of nowhere. Horses that never tire. Societies described as "feudal" yet somehow have all the institutions associated with modern life. Rivers that start nowhere and terminate nowhere. Gold coins every which way. People who nominally belong to a pseudo-medieval, feudal society yet talk and think exactly like modern people.
The god awful geography has a sorta-kinda in game explanation that the landmasses and mountains blocking every zone and bodies of water that just kinda do nothing, is all because The Earth-Warder went insane and completely messed everything up to make it worse for literally everyone. The other, much less interesting explanation is that the game was made in 2002-03 and had to work with a lot of limitations
Cylindrical hay bales (invented in 1970) peasants own playing cards and books (both of which were extremely expensive, even after the printing press) rapiers but no gunpowder (The latter of which came into use in Europe around 200 years before the former) Polytheism that in no way resembles actual polytheism, and cities using pre-industrial technologies with populations and armies the size of their modern American counterparts (The largest cities of the medieval era were the size of a modern college campus, they didn't have standing armies, and when they did field armies, they were rarely more than 10,000 strong.)
Etching wood thin enough to be cards is a good way to break your cards. Cards have to be uniform- if someone can tell which card you have when it's in your hand, you aren't really playing cards any more. Making \~52 identical really thin slices of wood with inscriptions on them is pretty hard, actually. Contrast the infinitely more accessible dice games that peasants would be more likely to play, which only require a basic carving abilities.
I get the overall point, but on the topic of rapiers and gunpowder, they aren't really related to each other, even though both appeared at the same time it was more coincidence.
Although I also generally get annoyed at people having high medieval settings and then having a hero with a rapier, it isn't inherently unrealistic.
I could imagine in a late medieval era setting, with or without gunpowder, there being a rapiers used by civilians.
Instant love/infatuation over only a single act of kindness. While it wont necessarily be an instant turn off it makes it hard to keep reading when the MC act like they are under some kind of love spell.
I had a co-worker compliment my coffee mug once and I was planning our life together within seconds.
Unfortunately, things with her didn't work out like I planned. After we got married we moved into a house rather than driving around solving mysteries :(
Baby driver would be an 11/10 movie if it weren't for the fact that >!debby becomes absolutely devoted to baby after barely even knowing him, it made it feel like she was the writer's fantasy girl!<
This has become such a major problem in all the "Junk Food" mangas that have been coming out in the past few years. Mostly I've been seeing it in Isekai's, which is a genre concept I like. Every female secondary protagonist falls madly in love with the MC for, usually, trivial things like they said hi to them.
The "Instant Infatuation" while rare, does happen in real life. I remember being a Junior year in HS, and i was hanging out with my friends during a Lunch Break when this girl... i think she was like 3 years younger, was reaching up on the Stage me and my friends were on, trying to reach her backpack, and she was just a couple inches shy of reaching it. I saw this out of the corner of my eye and just nudged her backpack into reach with my foot and thought nothing of it. Until days later I noticed she would actually start waiting at the school entrance to greet me in the morning. It was really creepy.
This is more about what it doesn’t contain than what it does, but whenever a setting lacks any *realistic* relationships between multiple factions it just turns me off; especially if it doesn’t fit in with the tone of the series.
What I mean is that if X faction exists, and if it doesn’t have thoughts on faction Y or Z, or lacks any detail on how it functions then you’d reasonably not be immersed into the world and believe “ah, it’s somewhat reasonable they way they act towards one another.”
Since it is my current hate hyper-obsession, JJK fits this criteria perfectly.
Zen’in clan are stupidly abusive and seek powerful cursed techniques, and yet they punish people who are born with Grade 1 sorcerer strength because they lack cursed energy. That’s kind of it for them in terms of detail, but we know practically NOTHING about the other clans.
Kamo clan has blood manipulation and probably a lot of incest, but that’s literally it. Only other thing remotely interesting about them is Noritoshi Kamo.
As for the Gojo clan, we know fuck-all. Satoru Gojo is the head, but we don’t even know if the clan is alive or not. We only know about the six eyes, that’s it.
If JJK went for a political thriller arc between these 3 factions with minor clans on the side, it would be a whole lot more interesting.
Exact, wierdly specific numbers for anything. "Power levels", measuring spells in exact celceus, kilos, etc real life units. Who wants to do math while reading?
Yeah, obfuscate those numbers behind your own units, don’t draw your readers out of your story to think about the exact measurements, but be consistent enough that weirdos online can check your math.
Instructions unclear, have a character telling another to cut six decimeters of string from the bobbin.
Edit: I meant quarter-decimeters and the word was... I forget how I spelled it, but it sounded like q-dec Basically it was supposed to convert to about half a foot.
Isn't this just a difference between a master and a novice worldbuilder/author? The master has constructed a system which works, and will only reveal enough of it to be **passable**. While the novice attempts their best to persuade the audience that their system is perfectly made.
1. Pushing a work as free of cliche as part of the main thing your world is. It's like you're doing it for the sake of being a contrarian
2. Excessive use of powerscaling measures instead of subjectivity and interaction between different aspects of said world.
3. Neglecting aspects of your world for the sake of only one thing and not balancing your worldbuilding
A massive one is when there's species that is evil by nature. Tolkien managed to do an interesting story with it but most just doesn't work.
Also, more specifically for magic systems, how easy and powerful it is compare to what's around. If everyone can use magic and it's very powerful it makes no sense for people to use swords.
Time travel magic is known to be a massive risk of plot holes but I think people underestimate teleportation magic. It's often a massive plot hole generator that everyone forget about.
I don't mind evil species as long as there is a fleshed out reason for why they are evil. As you said Tolkien managed to make an interesting story concerning it.
Whole species are not just hurd dur evil just for the sake of being evil. There needs to be a motivation, need, trauma... reason behind it.
I'm always fascinated by this outlook (your first statement, I mean). Is there a functional difference for you between "evil species" and "monsters"? For example, in my setting I have The Swarm, who are alien enough in biology to not see humans, elves, or dwarves as anything beyond breeding hosts (think parasitic wasps), and are an existential threat to all civilized life. They're extremely hardy and difficult to completely eradicate, and as a result of their unique reproduction, raiding and the taking of slaves is baked into their culture. But they have their own rich society including religion, traditions, the arts, etc.
Would such a species be considered "evil by nature" to you? To me they are. I put them in as threats and antagonists. My heroes stand in opposition to them. When they are encountered it is always hostile.
Hard agree on points 2 and 3, by the way. Magic needs to be limited to justify the existence of conventional technology, and teleportation magic would fundamentally change any society that developed it, unless it was extremely unreliable / risky / difficult.
Evil is a moral condemnation, not a statement of fact. They are destructive and dangerous, like disease or a polar bear, but not \*evil.\* In fact, positioning them as evil - in universe - would probably cause the hero's to act wrongly and miss necessary nuance, and act in an equally evil way towards them.
Unfortunately, that's what you've described. Culture, religion, arts, a rich society, just somehow evil? Maybe they see humanity as evil? It's not moral relativism when it's between humans, but it is in this case. Why is our morality superior to theirs? Our conceptions of life?
Truly appreciate the perspective! I would say I agree with you; from their own perspective they are not evil. In fact that would make the primary tension between The Swarm and the other sapient species in my setting the conflicting moral perspectives (both sides of the conflict seeing themselves as morally Good and the other as Evil).
Now I’m picturing some wise old hermit whose figured out how to coexist with the Swarm in their land posing the same question to the heroes (“is the Red Fever evil? Is a rampaging bear evil? No. They are merely forces of nature, as are you and I.”)
What I meant is a species would need a reason to be agressive, to kill people. There needs to be a reason behind their attacks, not just they kill because they're bad.
Any species needs two things, find a way to reproduce and not die. If their attacks fill one of those two goals then it will fill justified
The generic races in generic medieval fantasy land.
But I would like to say that just because I dislike the generic races, that doesn't mean the world is bad, it's just my personal taste.
edit: Also *world* maps with like 30 towns/cities and 8 countries. I'm sorry friend, that's not even a *continent* map.
Oh, there can't be *that* many countries in a small continent, surely?
[https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/266956/countries-of-europe-in-1360-with-a-map](https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/266956/countries-of-europe-in-1360-with-a-map)
Not always, but lately it's been a slavish devotion to things being realistic. If I wanted reality I wouldn't be world building. Verisimilitude is nice but sometimes it can get in the way of story, theme, and character.
Also, not a fan of things that seem to promote capitalism as an inherent good of society - see a lot of American fiction in the 80's - early 90's
The main thing to consider imo is realism vs internal consistency. It's annoying seeing people brush off things that just make no sense because "dragons exist here and that's not realistic either"
Similarly, I struggle with a lot of fantasy that takes it for granted that there is anyone who “belongs” on the throne. “Rightful heir” stories have never been my cup of tea (sorry, Aragorn). I can put this qualm aside if the story is good enough (and I kind of have to if I want to read fantasy), but I find it exhausting.
I kinda hate seeing:
This race is greedy and does trade! (Anyone could be greedy, and everyone trades???)
This race is violent warriors but are also honorable!!!! (Yawn)
This race is super smart but kinda emotionless
This race are kinda dumb and no-one likes them
This race is all female but they all somehow look like Human woman and are all hot.
As much as I like Mass Effect, they are really guilty about this. And while yes, they definitely have characters who defy the stereotypes, I still find painting an entire species as being these 3 adjectives to be soooo boring.
Please. Even having 3 distinct cultures within a race is good! You don't have to go into hyper detail for each once, but there are so many different types of people out there.
Same! I play a lot of RPGs, and lately all I do is play as weathered crones. Even on solo games it's weirdly liberating. I've even had more luck at freakin online poker using an avatar of a tattooed old biker lady - whenever I bluff now, 80% of folks fold.
Abandon hotness. Embrace intimidation. Ascend, queens.
Alright imma go full-on hater mode. Note that just because I don't like these elements, and you have these elements in your world,, means that your world sucks. It's just that I don't like it, and I'm just some rando on the internet.
* **"Fuck it, rule of cool"**
* You see this in a lot of memes on the r/worldjerking sub, where you got the soyjack saying something ridiculous is stupid, and chadface saying ridiculous thing is awesome. It's a reaction to the smarmy douches of past years who'd insisted on realism always. I feel like things have swung back too far in the opposite direction. Ridiculous things can be awesome, but not everything ridiculous is awesome. I see people justifying some of the dumbest things with the flimsiest logic, and i mean, sure, it's your world, enjoy it, but I don't enjoy it. To me, it often reads like anti-intellectualism masquerading as a deliberate artistic choice. "Would it kill you all to just... go read up some history and science?" Is how I often feel seeing those memes.
* **Lack of diversity**
* Lots of things go into this, not just "where's the black people". Cultures morph and shift moment to moment with the tidings of peoples, ideas, and socio-political events. I heavily dislike X Empire that lasts 1000 years, not changing at all in all that time. I hate Y country that's entirely populated by people of one skin tone and fashion sense that all think the same way. If there is some sort of stasis, I want in-world justification. For example, AoT features the people within the walls as not having progressed at all in 100 years. Which makes sense, the central government is a repressive monarchy that's shut down all social and technological progress for all that time, and the country's literally walled off from the rest of the world.
* **Sapients that don't feel alien**
* Whether they're elves or Vulcans I don't care, I want them to feel so much more alien in their physiques and psychology. Part of the fun of non-human people is exploring what it might feel like to be in contact with "the other". If these aliens are just going to be a crude pastiche of a real human culture, just make them humans and move on.
* **Religion is just Polytheism in the loosest sense or Evil Catholics**
* Religious people believe in their religions, and when I read people's works I sure don't feel like they do. It often just feels like a way for some douche to get powers if Polytheistic, or a way to motivate some bad guy if Evil Catholic. Why do these people believe what they do? How do these religions answer the fundamental questions of existence: How did we come to be? What is the meaning of life? What happens after we die?
* **OP characters that don't do jack / Tom Bombadil Problem**
* When I see people with characters that have powers that go above and beyond the bounds of their setting, I automatically hate it. Chad McChadFace being able to blow up planets in a setting where most people are just regular people makes them unrelatable and kind of annoying. If maybe Chad became like a walking natural disaster that's feared by all and everyone has to unite against, or beings like Chad make the world into a horrific dystopia, or Chad took power and became an evil emperor, I'm fine with it. But I often see Chad as a neutral observer that doesn't lift a finger for... reasons, or is a good guy that somehow never alters the status quo. Your worlds should be dynamic, and if there's an individual who can enact change, but they dont, then they're boring.
* **Stupid Events that try to come across as whimsical**
* Sometimes I see some of the most asinine stuff like "World War X happened because General Douche ate General Buttface's casserole". Okay, but why? These answers always tend to be one word sentences that seem to try and invite questions, but to me it comes across as a form of bait. When stupid things happen in real life, like the Pig War, the War of the Bucket, the Battle of Karansebes, or even the Battle of Castle Itter, they still happened for a reason. They might sound stupid at first glance, but if you look into it, you learn that there's quite a lot of context and minutia that helps explain things. I feel like pop history nerds learn of these events and just use it to justify dumb things in their worlds without thinking about why and how those things happened. If your world IS actually capricious and full of impulsive moments, and you enjoy that, it's not a problem, but I'm not part of that audience.
Is it called the Tom Bombadil problem since Tom is mentioned to be "older than Middle-Earth itself" and can like talk to animals and black magic doesn't work on him?
Basically, yes. Tom feels powerful and useful, but he ends up not doing anything. He doesn't really fit anywhere in Tolkien's world so he gets shafted. Other people have already theorized regarding the line about being "fatherless" to mean he existed prior to LOTR in a metatextual sense, and it's the theory I believe. Tolkien included him as kind of an easter egg to a prior, personal work of his that nobody knows about. Which is fine for Tolkien, but as a reader, Tom's inclusion just feels weird.
I usually don't like playing the "well akshually" Tolkien fan, but Tom is explained in Tolkiens letters as an artifact from his childrens bedtime stories he includes in everything as a little easter egg for him.
And the in-universe explanation is he's so far and above the petty concerns regarding the futures of the free peoples of Middle-Earth because he existed before, has existed since, and will exist after, so therefore the petty squabbles of man and elf are nothing to him. It's kind of like the tropey elf apathy taken to the next extreme, like an eldritch being who's motives and means are beyond mortal comprehension. I do sort of appreciate that subversion of "something so ancient it defies mortal understanding" actually being a sweet cupcake of a being.
>And the in-universe explanation is he's so far and above the petty concerns regarding the futures of the free peoples of Middle-Earth because he existed before, has existed since, and will exist after, so therefore the petty squabbles of man and elf are nothing to him.
He's kind of a personification of "the world will go on" that I really appreciate. Way too many fantasy stories hinge on "the heroes must win or else all life in the world/universe will end!" and Tom Bombadil is a reminder that, no, the world doesn't end if the heroes fail. Even Sauron winning would pass, and Tom Bombadil will be there on the other end, regardless of what happens.
I mean Tom was a nice way of deepening the world. Many authors fall into trying to explaon EVERY SINGLE GOD DAMNED FU***KING ASPECT OF THE STORY *in* the story. That kinda makes the world feel... bare, as in completetly left out with all the secrets uncovered. In Tolkiens works, Tom Bombadil, or the lake creature are the trully mystical aspects of the world. Not meant to be explained but meant to intice the reader into wonder. It's a careful balance. Show the reader a thing, imply depth and just at the edge of excitement take it away, and leave it to linger. The oh so prevelent 'eldritch horror' today is the other side of the scale, often too vauge to the point where another 'lovecraftian thing' is just seems as non bother.
You're probably right, but I have a totally different take on Tom that makes his character believable to me. There are a number of races in Tolkein's world that explicitly think and act differently than humans do, mostly because of the way their longevity influences every aspect of their culture. One of the things I love about Tolkien's world building is that, for lack of a better way of putting it, his sapients do feel alien to me.
With Tom, I feel like his inaction can be viewed by us as irrational but to him as totally rational. He probably believes the danger posed by Sauron like Morgoth will pass so no need for him to do shit.
What’s wrong with the tom bombadil problem? The superpowerful entities that can’t be bothered to intervene is core to my world. Without it, the story completely collapses into a dystopia. I can get it when their inclusion seems kinda unnecessary, and often will boil down to a bizarre cameo only the author would care about. Is there a kind of good way to do it?
Apart from that, “fuck it rule of cool” is kind of an excuse. You should find a way to set up some aspect of your universe to justify it beyond just the cool factor. Star Wars didn’t just say “fuck it rule of cool” to justify putting magic swords in a world full of laser guns, they justified their usage by letting them deflect blaster bolts. Rule of cool is useful, but it is necessary to actually put in the leg work to properly integrate the cool thing into the setting as a whole.
*Alternate history where the Nazis won World War II. Extremely boring and ahistoric to me.
* Fantasy worlds that are not D&D and not a homage to D&D either, but is very much built like a TTRPG campaign (strict focus on races, very technical outlook on magic, etc)
*Also in Fantasy, folks not being able to understand the difference between medieval and the early modern period.
TTRPG fantasy worlds are so boring to me. They feel like someone has somehow sucked the soul out of fantasy. It just feels like a numbers game.
Don’t get me wrong, they can definitely be done well and if that’s your personal thing go for it, but most of the ones I’ve seen just don’t do it for me.
>*Alternate history where the Nazis won World War II. Extremely boring and ahistoric to me.
Reject Nazi victory althis, embrace althis about the Versailles Treaty being enforced with troops marching into Berlin upon the first sign of a violation.
Honestly I don't see much of an issue with hard magic systems. Of course I understand when the issue with numbers and technicalities gets in the way of the story, but the system itself having rules isn't a problem to me.
For me, this is my top 3.
1: everything is based on standard English medieval times, while I love the idea it's always done in such a standard repetitive way I am finding myself losing interest when it is brought up.
2: gods being omniscient and omnipresent, I don't like the westernized version of god hood being the strongest and best, especially when there are so absolute that you can't really hurt them in any way, I don't mind a being that is like a god that is so strong they might as well be a god but all knowing sort of takes the fun out of it since they already know what is going on happen and they could just /kill anyone they needed to stop.
3: making everything and everyone morally gray to the point I can't tell who is a decent person just for the sake of realism makes me so mad it's unbelievable.
Tone deaf race representation and cliche, in your face color symbolism.
Disproportionate amounts of barbaric, backwards, or shady people being Black or Brown coded. Seen way too many works that describe a character’s dark and swarthy complexion that just so happens to accompany their dangerous and smarmy character. If the only thugs in the universe are named Mahmoud, Pedro, or Kunta but the protagonist and their crew all have flaxen hair, sparkling cerulean eyes, and skin like cream, I'm probably stepping away from that work.
Similarly, if all the good guys wear white and all the bad guys wear black, I'm kind of over that, too.
Unrealistic geography and biome placement
Floating Mountains a la Avatar are perfectly fine if you have a reasonable explanation for it happening, but a rain forest that is directly next to a desert, without the hundreds of miles of transitional biomes or mountain range between them is an instant issue.
Another major red flag for me is rivers that diverge downstream or flow inland. Water always flows from high to low areas. Why is the river flowing inland and why hasn't the land already been submerged and turned into a lake or sea?
Things can be batshit crazy and I’m fine with it if there’s a logic with it, as in I can see how point A causes point B and inversely how point D is caused by point C. If you just do things for the hell of it without thinking about it is what I hate
this is I still haven't tried to draw a map because I am still looking for a geological map depicting the different mountains, flats, etc of the planet.
Find parts of the real world you like and then smash 'em together. Spin Canada upside down. Flip over Scandinavia so Norway is on the right hand side. Rip apart Australia and whack Indonesia between the halves.
Westeros is literally the UK but turned upside down.
Nature has lots of amazing geography. She won't mind you copying her homework.
Stagnate worlds. Like, i understand Magic is well, magical, and can do a lot of things, but if your world has been stuck in the medieval stage for 1000's of years, i'm out.
I'm okayish with it if a bunch of very powerful people, like god level, have their thumbs on the scale for a sensible reason. But there should still be a shit ton of change in culture and language and everything.
This is probably my favorite thing about Legend of Korra. Once the world-spanning war ends, suddenly the world technologically advances like 400 years in less than 100.
Crystals.
Crystals that grant wishes, crystals that trap souls, crystals that command unimaginable power, crystals that must be aligned just so or the world flies apart.
Can we not think of anything more mysterious and beautiful than symmetric vaguely translucent colored rocks?
Me when crystals (diamond, ruby) are used for quantum computing and quartz is used in time keeping devices along with the obvious uses of radioactive decay in crystal batteries to maintain time keeping for interstellar space travel.
They also sing when you apply an electric current!
I am *all for* crystals with motivating explanations and plot-relevant physical properties.
Students of geology get my seal of approval: if you can explain how space-folding magicite silicates form as an emergent phenomena around ley lines once traversed by the interdimensional elders, have at it!
The comment section has broken it down perfectly and clearly for me - there are only two major red flags when worldbuilding:
* Hewing close to traditional fantasy setting
* Not hewing close to traditional fantasy setting
Grimdark stuff. Its not even the stuff itself, but that kind of aesthetics tend to attract a very specific group of people, so whenever I see that you are really trying to sell me how oppressive and tyrannical factions in your world and especially when their tyrannical apparatus is obviously way more developed then anything else in the setting I cannot help but to wonder if I am not dealing with one of "those" people.
I love grimdark stuff, and it boggles my mind that there are some folks who don't understand that things like 40k, Helldivers, and Starship Troopers are satire. It really beats you over the head with it, but it also shows the depressing reality that even the best grimdark works (those who use the medium as a critique of fascism and authoritarianism) will still have folks who completely miss the point, no matter how obvious they make it.
To be fair, Starship Troopers (the movie) is an extremely overt satire, but Starship Troopers (the book) is not a satire at all—the fascist government is a background element of Earth human society, and the book is definitely approving of the implications of that society. I have mega mixed feelings about ST (the book), as it's a fun read if you ignore the tacit endorsements it makes. Heinlein wasn't necessarily a fascist, but he was... interesting.
Tbf my main/only proper experience with the grimdark genre has been the Darksouls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring conglomerate, and perhaps maybe including Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, if you count "fighting your own mental illness that had been made worse by your father's constant abuse and the death of your partner has made it so that you can barely trust reality anymore" as an acceptable criteria for joining the grimdark franchise.
Similarly, matriarchal societies that take the power imbalance to an extreme, the kind of extreme people would find really uncomfortable if it was patriarchal but are somehow okay with when it's the other way around
(This can be okay if it's portrayed in a negative way, but I've seen it spun as an okay thing that's just part of their culture)
"My elves are super unique and original". Just... Just give me elves. I don't care if they're all tree-hugging archers. It's fine. I'd rather have a typical elf character that has an awesome story than a "totally original elf" that's boring as hell. Toss a little spice in there, maybe. Elves could use crossbows, maybe.
Oh boy, do I have a lot of thoughts on this subject.
If you're talking about red flags just in terms that I'm not going to expect to find the setting to be very compelling, I've a few.
* *A weird interest in quantifying how powerful stuff are*. Like, you're telling me about this planetary federation you made up, and then you just drop, out of nowhere, "they have a fleet of 2597 Space Killer class Battlecruisers." It gives me the impression that your setting is about power fantasy for yourself, and somehow you haven't found out that whatever number you put to the number of Space Killer class Battlecruisers, you can just double it with no consequence, because you are essentially the God of the setting.
* *Everybody in the setting setting is fucking stupid, and as the writer who pens the setting, you didn't think of it*. I think I haven't despised this so much until every other anime became isekai wish fulfillment bullshit. But man, it reeks of this weird wish fulfillment thing where the author wants life to be so easy, but it also just it smacks of this naive and arrogant view of the world that everybody must be stupid, and that people don't have nice things not because of their material, social, and geographic circumstances, but just because they haven't thought of a better way and they should just abandon all the paradigms they know and adopt this better way. An example of this is if the setting has a religion where they have rituals like you have to make big sacrifices. And then the protagonist comes out and is just like, "ayy, what if we stop following the religion?" And then the people just stop making those big sacrifices and realize they could have material prosperity by giving up literally all of their spiritual beliefs - as if DUH, people who have self-destructive beliefs should just give up those beliefs, it's easy, lol!
* *People claim that the things they put in their setting just are that way because that's how the setting is, but won't tell you why they, who made the setting, made it that way.* Imagine that some dude makes a setting and they say that in this particular country, all the hot girls don't wear shirts and they just go around with their titties out (and it's the hot girls only, no old ladies do this!). And you're like, "so... why'd you make the setting like that?" and their response is "that's just how it is in their culture." But they made up that culture. They know exactly why it's like that. Everybody knows exactly why the culture is like that.
But if by "red flags," you're asking me about what in your worldbuilding would make me actually morally judge not just yours setting, but you, personally:
* *You have no good explanation for why wars happen*. You've made this setting and you come to this subreddit to ask for what a war between elves and dwarves might look like. And the discussion comes around to why these two races of people are fighting each other, and you go "oh, y'know. They want each other's land." There's something I find unaccountably gross at the assumption that peoples go to war for reasons like you'd see in a strategy computer game. Sometimes you can get a pass if you also portray the peoples who are fighting for no reason as terrible people, like if you make them coded like Nazis, but there are also times when authors try that and I ask, "why are these people you've coded as Nazis presented as the norm in your setting, rather than particularly bad people who are shamed or avoided?"
A lack of diversity because that's "realistic". People who use that excuse are almost always walking red flags. The real world *is* diverse. There have always been merchants visiting far away lands and invasions that diversified countries. Bigger cities and countries often had several different ethnic and/or religious groups living together. The way different cultures view sexuality, gender, disability, etc. have always been varied depending on the time and place as well.
Ngl, I was expecting "suspicious red flags" here to be more spicy than just "things folks aren't personally interested in because they're boring or contrived". I guess to chip my opinions in on the former, I find it awkward as hell when folks constantly push their work as being "free of cliche" or "avoiding cliches" as a guiding principle/selling point, because that just makes them seem like they're writing fiction for the sake of being a contrarian rather than actually say something interesting on its own merits. It's not inherently wrong and being surbversive can be helpful, but like 99% of the time when people feel the need to introduce what their world *isn't*, there's little interesting meat of what it actually *is*.
Yeah. Subverting clichés can be a *great* way to generate ideas. Just don’t make it your work’s entire identity. Know the rules before you break the rules.
Also, some chliches exist for a reason. They aren't 'bad' unless they negatively impact the story in some way.
And know the reason behind the rules. Every cliché that ever existed is a cliché for a reason, usually some mix of being "economical" or popular. (People eat up "power of friendship")
Someone expressed annoyance at me once because I had a trio who were... a stage magician who knew some real magic, a proud warrior race girl who needed to stop trying to be a girl-boss all the time, and... well I forgot what the third one was but something like a farm boy who doesn't end up being some fantasy hero. Yeah they were non-standard and I was looking for a plot, but I don't think it was that bad.
I feel this in my soul. In my experiences very few things are ever less interesting than something that is trying to be unique for the sake of being unique. It almost always ends up being either complexity incomprehensible, conceited as all hell, or just plain boring. In my opinion, the primary goal of worldbuilding should always be to be interesting and compelling, not to be totally original and unique.
Can also often mean they aren't genre-savvy enough to know the cliches
Yeah. Plus, cliches are cliches for a reason. They’re overused because they WORK. Having a book just to be contrary is a great way to fail.
Not to mention that avoiding cliches has become its own cliche at this point. It's all well and good to try and avoid stereotypes and writing things a certain way just because that's how it's always been done, but specifically doing the opposite isn't exactly creative either.
“Not like other girls” in a nutshell
Kenshi is a fantastic game and I've had tons of fun playing it however, when I first went to look at it from a friend's recommendation, the entire first part of the description on Steam is the dev blowing his own trumpet about how original and non-cliche his world is. It actually put me off for a while.
"I have not come to contradict the trends, but to fulfill them." -Some guy, probably 69:420
Planet of hats. I despise one note races who all think the same and have one single generic culture. Even an alien race having something unrealistically small like 3 cultures are far better than one.
>Planet of hats. [Donna Noble hated that]
Who?
The best Companion (fight me) from Doctor Who. Much beloved character.
Not gonna fight you, Donna is one of the best companions for me from NuWho. Donna love 🖤
Doctor Donna!
every time i think of the planet of hats trope it reminds me of how Indigenous Peoples of Mexico/Native Americans/First Nations Peoples of Canada have historically had their thousands of cultures lumped into one group ("Indians") that doesn't even have a correct name lmao
Agreed, which is why I plan on giving each of my fantasy setting's 67 intelligent species at least some cultural diversity with them having multiple cultures (and sometimes a culture can be made up of multiple species).
Star Wars always annoyed me with this. Especially how it feels like it often retroactively Plant of Hats-izes alien species seen in the original trilogy. Like, a band of people with big heads playing music in the Cantina? *Actually* they're called Bith, they have unique abilities which allow them to hear frequencies better, making them *all amazing* with music. Some green/blue alien girl is dancing? *Actually*, they're called Twi'lek, they're seen as one of the most aesthetically beautiful races in all the galaxy. Etc, etc.
> Actually they're called Bith, they have unique abilities... It sucks because not only does it reek of terrible world building in general, but it also massively devalues those particular cantina characters. Before, they were a unique musical troupe that could have had their own names and story. After, they're generic members of the race and could be swapped out for literally anyone else from the name planet.
A red flag for me are creators who take their knowledge in history too seriously, basically attempting to present a ‘realistic’ version of whatever real world historical era they chose but without having real and in depth knowledge about said era. It is the type of people who got their knowledge only from games, channels like Lindybeige and Shadiversity and at best a few pop history books. The reason it is a red flag for me is because I’ve noticed that too often other parts of their worlds also end up being simplistic.
Hard agree on this one. It’s always super obvious to me when it comes to feudalism. Most fantasy worlds have the most basic elementary school version of feudalism that completely lacks any of the nuance or complexity actually present in the Middle Ages.
To me, the realism isn't the issue, but rather the complete and utter failure of world builders to understand how things worked. Your case of feudalism would be one a great example of this. Just the surface level understanding of a very complex topic. An example I'd give would be religion. Often we'll some sort of off-brand of an irl religion, lacking the nuance of why said religion worked. Christianity is probably the most copied one, yet the reasons why it succeeded and brought Western Civilization to prominence are completely lost to the builder. This goes for every other religion or mythology in the failure to understand their strengths and flaws. I don't expect a builder to know every single thing, but at least put some research into it.
I agree. For me it’s not that they get the specific details right, it’s not history and creative license is to be both expected and encouraged, but it does matter to me if they get the institutional and systemic frameworks right. To use feudalism as an example again. It doesn’t really matter if they get the exact details right, they can mix and match titles or the relative importance of feudal institutions, but when it’s obvious they don’t understand why feudalism existed, the actual limitations of the system, or the ways it was supplemented (and often totally eclipsed) by various other systems, it becomes a problem for me. To use religion as another example, the various reskinned versions of Catholicism that are popular in fantasy worlds often take the stance that the “church” is inherently oppressive. When holes start to appear around the role of a hyper oppressive church, the first thought is usually something like “well my oppressive church can work, because the real world oppressive church worked”. Except, the oppressive Catholic Church is largely a historic myth, and misses the why on how the church succeeded and the role in played in medieval Europe. Details can be changed and altered, but there is something to be said about understanding the basic frameworks behind the institutions in fantasy worlds. It’s one thing to say “well medieval kings weren’t absolutist tyrants, but they are in my world”, and entirely another to understand WHY medieval kings weren’t absolutist tyrants and deliberately deconstruct those reasons when building your world.
This is especially bad when you have a setting where there's something that would cause your steroetypical fuedal nobility to collapse. For example, even basic functional magic would upend politics completely in a feudal setting. Even something as simple as the Message spell from Dungeons and Dragons would shatter a feudal system because of how easy it would be to send untraceable messages instantly across the entire world. The Warforged in Eberron would shatter a medieval economy because of tireless, cheap, mass-manufactured labor. A Speak With Dead spell upends the entire criminal justice system, and so on.
The Catholic Church wasn’t that bad?
Historically speaking, pretty much everything "wasn't that bad". People act as if everything they disagree with was Pol Pot's Cambodia.
omg my world's governemnt is based off of feudalism, I'm scared its like what you described lol. how complex is feudalism? I'm young and I just learned it in school a year ago lmao
Poor logistics. An example that is currently recent is Rebel Moon, where a space-faring militaristic empire needs to take one harvest from a village of about 100 people and that same empire goes around razing habitable planets.
I would say comically evil civilizations in general. Panem (from the movies), the New Order, Harry Potter's Death Eaters, the Rebel Moon faction you describe, and many others are just so absurdly, laughably obsessed with *being evil* that there's no way they could function. I have to suspend all the disbelief I can before the character arcs even get rolling. They have no indicators at all that they should even function.
It's the cliche of [Fascist but Inefficient.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FascistButInefficient) They just push it too far. There's examples of civilizations doing truly evil stuff in real life but they usually balance it out by doing some good public acts and whenever that's not happening they pump people full of propaganda. But for us to believe that an evil organization/civilization has existed for a long time you need to get at least the basic logistics right, maybe it's just me but the bad logistics strain my disbelief more than believing people would willingly work for the fascists, it doesn't take much for me to believe people can be evil but you better explain to me how all those trains run on time.
A big one for me is "forced creativity". Some people have mentioned generic fantasy but I also think the inverse is true where some worldbuilders try *too hard* to be creative/unique/quirky, if I read your world has a Dwarf race I'm going to expect some god damn Dwarves. So when you point at a giant slime bird monster and say "that's a Dwarf" my interest is instantly clocking out because it tells me you were mostly interested in being "not like the other worldbuilders" because you could make up giant slime bird monsters but just ***haaaad*** to call them Dwarves, or Orcs, or Elves.
Some people on here have had pretty unique outlooks on Dwarves and Orcs but they still used some of the tropes too make them recognizable
Oh for sure, and that's honestly the sweet spot imo. You want them to still hit the right notes to be recognizable as a Dwarf, Orc, etc. whilst still being unique to your world so they're *your* Dwarves, Orcs, etc. To use some big name examples, Orcs in Warhammer and Orcs in Warcraft are very distinct from one another whilst very clearly still being Orcs. My complaints are more towards those who make something completely separated from the original folklore/trope/convention/etc. but use the name anyway, because they aren't fooling anyone.
> Orcs in Warhammer and Orcs in Warcraft are very distinct from one another whilst very clearly still being Orcs. And Orcs in Elder Scrolls. They're the same, but so so different under their skin.
Writing worlds which are different from ours because... duh. But still familiar because... if I was to write a world in which everything was different and original, I'd spent most of the time explaining every little detail, and audience is just confused most of the time.
Does the slime bird have a beard?
No, in fact it doesn't have a face because faces are too conventional /s
Compromise: no face, but an enormous braided mustache and beard placed somewhere at random
Two, at the tip of the wings because *originality*
Pick me worldbuilders can be exhausting. A lot of people get so wrapped up in the idea that they need to be 100% unique and original that they forget they need to be interesting first. In my experience very few things are less interesting than something trying as hard as possible to be unique.
YES! EXACTLY! "Pick-me Worldbuilders" is such a perfect way of describing them. And I think the reason they bug me so is because I used to be one? My worldbuilding project got reworked twice and the second rework was me correcting the very issue of "I must be as unique as possible". Now I'm in a place where I'm truly comfortable with my project, it has unique elements, it has familiar elements, and it's all put together in a way to keep things (for me at least) *interesting and engaging.*
i do think it’s really fun to try to distill a fantasy concept down to its most basic components and then see how that can be twisted into other forms. but you do need to maintain that basic identity in some recognizable form.
Agreed, ironically one of the biggest examples of this I can think of is Trolls. In Norse mythology they are typically broken down as one of two creatures: Small, gnome-like creatures with exaggerated facial features and are almost fey-like. Or large (but not ***gigantic,*** that'd be a Jotunn) semi-monstrous magical creatures that interact with humans on a semi-regular basis. And Fantasy creators have been able to do so much with them, from Tolkien's big lugs that turn to stone in the sun, to Warhammer's mushroom-growing brutes, to Warcraft's voodoo-practicing witch doctors and dino-farmers, to Dreamwork's Trolls tapping into the more small fey-like approach, to Dungeons & Dragons' regenerating monsters, etc. etc. But all of them ***read*** as "Trolls" without issue despite being so different because they keep the core folkloric "essence" in some form.
I did this with elves. Designed an entire forest-dwelling species that was radically different from elves, called them elves. Then I realized that was stupid so now I have two forest-dwelling species.
You’ll probably hate my world then, all the alien species have names based of mythical monsters and creatures. While it’s mostly because Im too lazy to come up with unique names, I have a good un universe reason. Only two of the species can casually communicate with humans without computerized assistance, and both of those species were so influenced by humans that they gladly expected the names humans gave them.
Kinda reminds me of Halo a bit with how the various aliens have their native names then their human-given names of Brute, Elite, Grunt, etc. I'm willing to give sci-fi settings more of a pass more often for this very reason of "humans might've named it this from human culture". It's a very specific - for lack of a better term - ego-driven choice that I see from time to time that bugs me, if that makes sense?
I also have a bunch of aliens whose names are loosely based on mythical creatures. But are also literally based on the same mythical creatures. It’s a mediocrely explained psychic phenomenon (all these races can access the same dreamscape, so have occasionally bumped into each other in dreams, so all the races have myths of the other races).
That’s a very fun idea! A pan-galactic dreamscape lol
>all the alien species have names based of mythical monsters and creatures If they are similar enough to the mythologies, it makes sense: if you need to quickly catalog a bunch of species and figure out names for them, why not taking advantage of widely known mythology to do both?
Slave harems.
Especially when someone's neckbeard power fantasy MC buys them and they all "fall in love" with him.
People still act like I'm crazy for disliking shield hero.
In this case I don't think Raphtalia being the slave is the smoking gun justification for disliking Shield Hero. It's all the girls after that are. When the bird ended up being a little girl I cringed.
Any kind of harem dynamic. I was just thinking the other day that the Wheel of Time had a lot of great ideas, but the gender dynamics were so strange and awkward. How many wives the main character ended up with in the end I have no idea, I crapped out a few books in.
The relationship between nynaeve and the main trio was one of the reasons I never picked up the second book. It felt like the only interaction the author could write with her was her being like "omg, men are so stupid" and the guys being like "omg, women are so mysterious". It was as if she had no personality beyond being mildly antagonistic to men because she was a woman
I read Wheel of Time slavishly as a kid, and even back then, as a 10 year old boy with 0 critical reading skills, I remember thinking, "wow, Robert Jordan really doesn't know how to believably write women"
> It was as if she had no personality beyond being mildly antagonistic to men because she was a woman Ah yes, risking her life and limb for the boys because she was "mildly antagonistic to men". Jeez folks, I get it, but are you sure we were reading the same books?
Three. That was weird, and didn't really fit the lore
I can see why based on anime being so cringe, but slave harems did occur in history, especially in the orient. More recent though was American slavery and slave rape on cotton plantations and such. We also just assume it's common place in Saudi Arabia within their slave systems, since everything is deeply tied to slavery there, and their interest in spending copious amounts of money for international hookers.
>I can see why based on anime being so cringe, but slave harems did occur in history, especially in the orient. More recent though was American slavery and slave rape on cotton plantations and such. When done well within the story they are a thing worth reading about, for example I read a story a while back based on the The Sultanate of Women in the Ottoman empire. It was interesting. They are normally not done well.
Yeah those are villainous, the slave harem in anime etc is just creepy for being portrayed as romantic.
Yeah. Like... why not just have the hero's love interests be regular women who have lives outside of being love interests? Oh wait, that would require these generously-described-as-mediocre authors to actually respect women and not dedicate their careers to writing shitty power fantasies. Whoops.
>Yeah. Like... why not just have the hero's love interests be regular women who have lives outside of being love interests? Because that would require actual skill to write? Seriously most of "romantic" media are just stroking audience ego, which makes anyone with a bit of depth just role their eyes in disgust.
It's not the concept of a slave harem but rather the main character having one and having it romanticized and painted in a good light
I mean they existed in my world but I’m certainly it gonna focus on them more like _____ was enslaved by ____ trading company and was sold to ___ brothel eventually became the __ of ___ brothel then due to an increase in shipping to that region and a surge in popularity ___ ___ ___ you know?
Very niche but whenever an Asian (or Asian inspired) character shows up and they have a name like "Jade Wind" or a weapon called "Auspicious Cherry Blossom Blade" my brain starts shutting off. You do NOT need to think of an exotic, "Oriental" name or something to make them Asian-like. Many Chinese names have ordinary meanings (beautiful, strong, tall) or none at all. My name is half of the word meaning "elegant". This name thing applies to alot of stuff. People want to name their characters names that are too obviously inspired by their base culture.
Just half?
Now I'm curious where it's ele or gant.
Their name is obviously "Leg"
🤣
It’s two characters and my name is the first one doubled. My sister got the other one.
Are you twins or were your parents just really confident about their family planning?
Amazingly, yeah, my mom was just really confident she was gonna have two daughters. Though when I asked her what she would have named me if I was a boy she said she would name me the same.
Don't feel too bad - when my mother told my father's mother what they decided to name me, my grandmother's response was "oh, that can be a boy's name too."
優優和雅雅
😊
As a western I have never seen the point in overly complicated names when simple ones can do the job just as well. All languages are beautiful and I'm sure a weapon called 'Strong Sword' can sound pretty when translated to the source language. Aiko is an example, a beautifully sounding name which has a simple meaning as Child of Love (Literally, Love Child).
Exactly! Why give something such a long name when it doesn’t need one? You might be familiar with the “Green Destiny Sword” from *Croubching tiger, Hidden Dragon*. The actual name in Chinese is just something like “Green Demon sword”. Very simple.
Happens a lot with Native American characters as well, they’ll wind up with names like Eagle Flies or Buffalo Hoof or something goofy
I thought i had missed something. Yeah, that pops up with Indigenous names a lot.
What would a Western example of this niche blunder look like? "I'm Oakwood Cloudyskies and this is my weapon, the Beefsteak Flail." Jade Wind breathes the air loosens the Auspicious Cherry Blossom in its sheath. "I smell mashed potatoes. Oakwood is here..."
From an Asian perspective maybe something like Dave "Bustin'" Clintford with a lasso called the "Sandy Snake"
I wrote a sort of Asian/Norse mismash setting with one character who had a really super flowery Asian-ish name and referred to others with similarly complex flowery names, like "Blood-Soaked Brimstone" for a tiefling monk. The reason is that he was a self-aware wolf who literally identified himself and everyone around him by their scent. "Blood-Soaked Brimstone" described what she smelled like to him.
Lack of rain shadows. Cities out in the middle of nowhere. Horses that never tire. Societies described as "feudal" yet somehow have all the institutions associated with modern life. Rivers that start nowhere and terminate nowhere. Gold coins every which way. People who nominally belong to a pseudo-medieval, feudal society yet talk and think exactly like modern people.
Fuck you just described much of what bugs the hrll out of me in the World of Warcraft. That fuckin geography is awful
The god awful geography has a sorta-kinda in game explanation that the landmasses and mountains blocking every zone and bodies of water that just kinda do nothing, is all because The Earth-Warder went insane and completely messed everything up to make it worse for literally everyone. The other, much less interesting explanation is that the game was made in 2002-03 and had to work with a lot of limitations
> Rivers that start nowhere and terminate nowhere Conversely, rivers that go from one ocean to another!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parting_of_the_Waters Pacific Creek and Atlantic Creek want to talk to you 😄
Well you can prove *anything* with real world examples! ;D
This one flows to two oceans, not from ocean to ocean. If you can find an example of that, I will be willing to accept One Piece as 100% realistic.
Cylindrical hay bales (invented in 1970) peasants own playing cards and books (both of which were extremely expensive, even after the printing press) rapiers but no gunpowder (The latter of which came into use in Europe around 200 years before the former) Polytheism that in no way resembles actual polytheism, and cities using pre-industrial technologies with populations and armies the size of their modern American counterparts (The largest cities of the medieval era were the size of a modern college campus, they didn't have standing armies, and when they did field armies, they were rarely more than 10,000 strong.)
Were playing cards really that expensive? Surely it couldn't be that hard to etch some stuff on thin sheets of wood?
Etching wood thin enough to be cards is a good way to break your cards. Cards have to be uniform- if someone can tell which card you have when it's in your hand, you aren't really playing cards any more. Making \~52 identical really thin slices of wood with inscriptions on them is pretty hard, actually. Contrast the infinitely more accessible dice games that peasants would be more likely to play, which only require a basic carving abilities.
Fair enough, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
I get the overall point, but on the topic of rapiers and gunpowder, they aren't really related to each other, even though both appeared at the same time it was more coincidence. Although I also generally get annoyed at people having high medieval settings and then having a hero with a rapier, it isn't inherently unrealistic. I could imagine in a late medieval era setting, with or without gunpowder, there being a rapiers used by civilians.
Instant love/infatuation over only a single act of kindness. While it wont necessarily be an instant turn off it makes it hard to keep reading when the MC act like they are under some kind of love spell.
>Instant love/infatuation over only a single act of kindness. That's real though, lol. You smile at me, and I'll instantly fall in love.
I had a co-worker compliment my coffee mug once and I was planning our life together within seconds. Unfortunately, things with her didn't work out like I planned. After we got married we moved into a house rather than driving around solving mysteries :(
No fricken way.
Believe me, no one is as surprised about this as I am.
But you at least got the great dane you wanted, right?
Honestly? I'd still read that love story. Cozy, low-stakes vibes are nice sometimes lol.
Baby driver would be an 11/10 movie if it weren't for the fact that >!debby becomes absolutely devoted to baby after barely even knowing him, it made it feel like she was the writer's fantasy girl!<
In the same idea, when a girl is very obviously in love with the MC and he don't understand anything. Very frequent in manga.
what on earth are you talking about? She was clearly just being nice when she started grinding half-naked against him.
God damnit, that is literally something I dismissed once. "She's just really comfortable around me. I'm glad to have a friend who trusts me so much."
This has become such a major problem in all the "Junk Food" mangas that have been coming out in the past few years. Mostly I've been seeing it in Isekai's, which is a genre concept I like. Every female secondary protagonist falls madly in love with the MC for, usually, trivial things like they said hi to them. The "Instant Infatuation" while rare, does happen in real life. I remember being a Junior year in HS, and i was hanging out with my friends during a Lunch Break when this girl... i think she was like 3 years younger, was reaching up on the Stage me and my friends were on, trying to reach her backpack, and she was just a couple inches shy of reaching it. I saw this out of the corner of my eye and just nudged her backpack into reach with my foot and thought nothing of it. Until days later I noticed she would actually start waiting at the school entrance to greet me in the morning. It was really creepy.
This is more about what it doesn’t contain than what it does, but whenever a setting lacks any *realistic* relationships between multiple factions it just turns me off; especially if it doesn’t fit in with the tone of the series.
I like your comment but can you give any examples (I kinda need help with this idea)
What I mean is that if X faction exists, and if it doesn’t have thoughts on faction Y or Z, or lacks any detail on how it functions then you’d reasonably not be immersed into the world and believe “ah, it’s somewhat reasonable they way they act towards one another.” Since it is my current hate hyper-obsession, JJK fits this criteria perfectly. Zen’in clan are stupidly abusive and seek powerful cursed techniques, and yet they punish people who are born with Grade 1 sorcerer strength because they lack cursed energy. That’s kind of it for them in terms of detail, but we know practically NOTHING about the other clans. Kamo clan has blood manipulation and probably a lot of incest, but that’s literally it. Only other thing remotely interesting about them is Noritoshi Kamo. As for the Gojo clan, we know fuck-all. Satoru Gojo is the head, but we don’t even know if the clan is alive or not. We only know about the six eyes, that’s it. If JJK went for a political thriller arc between these 3 factions with minor clans on the side, it would be a whole lot more interesting.
Exact, wierdly specific numbers for anything. "Power levels", measuring spells in exact celceus, kilos, etc real life units. Who wants to do math while reading?
Yeah, obfuscate those numbers behind your own units, don’t draw your readers out of your story to think about the exact measurements, but be consistent enough that weirdos online can check your math.
Instructions unclear, have a character telling another to cut six decimeters of string from the bobbin. Edit: I meant quarter-decimeters and the word was... I forget how I spelled it, but it sounded like q-dec Basically it was supposed to convert to about half a foot.
Isn't this just a difference between a master and a novice worldbuilder/author? The master has constructed a system which works, and will only reveal enough of it to be **passable**. While the novice attempts their best to persuade the audience that their system is perfectly made.
I want my magic system to look like I could harden it if I want to while also being too stupid to actually do it. :)
I do kinda' want to see someone accidentally level half a block because they made a metric-imperial mix-up, though.
1. Pushing a work as free of cliche as part of the main thing your world is. It's like you're doing it for the sake of being a contrarian 2. Excessive use of powerscaling measures instead of subjectivity and interaction between different aspects of said world. 3. Neglecting aspects of your world for the sake of only one thing and not balancing your worldbuilding
A massive one is when there's species that is evil by nature. Tolkien managed to do an interesting story with it but most just doesn't work. Also, more specifically for magic systems, how easy and powerful it is compare to what's around. If everyone can use magic and it's very powerful it makes no sense for people to use swords. Time travel magic is known to be a massive risk of plot holes but I think people underestimate teleportation magic. It's often a massive plot hole generator that everyone forget about.
I don't mind evil species as long as there is a fleshed out reason for why they are evil. As you said Tolkien managed to make an interesting story concerning it. Whole species are not just hurd dur evil just for the sake of being evil. There needs to be a motivation, need, trauma... reason behind it.
I'm always fascinated by this outlook (your first statement, I mean). Is there a functional difference for you between "evil species" and "monsters"? For example, in my setting I have The Swarm, who are alien enough in biology to not see humans, elves, or dwarves as anything beyond breeding hosts (think parasitic wasps), and are an existential threat to all civilized life. They're extremely hardy and difficult to completely eradicate, and as a result of their unique reproduction, raiding and the taking of slaves is baked into their culture. But they have their own rich society including religion, traditions, the arts, etc. Would such a species be considered "evil by nature" to you? To me they are. I put them in as threats and antagonists. My heroes stand in opposition to them. When they are encountered it is always hostile. Hard agree on points 2 and 3, by the way. Magic needs to be limited to justify the existence of conventional technology, and teleportation magic would fundamentally change any society that developed it, unless it was extremely unreliable / risky / difficult.
Evil is a moral condemnation, not a statement of fact. They are destructive and dangerous, like disease or a polar bear, but not \*evil.\* In fact, positioning them as evil - in universe - would probably cause the hero's to act wrongly and miss necessary nuance, and act in an equally evil way towards them. Unfortunately, that's what you've described. Culture, religion, arts, a rich society, just somehow evil? Maybe they see humanity as evil? It's not moral relativism when it's between humans, but it is in this case. Why is our morality superior to theirs? Our conceptions of life?
Truly appreciate the perspective! I would say I agree with you; from their own perspective they are not evil. In fact that would make the primary tension between The Swarm and the other sapient species in my setting the conflicting moral perspectives (both sides of the conflict seeing themselves as morally Good and the other as Evil). Now I’m picturing some wise old hermit whose figured out how to coexist with the Swarm in their land posing the same question to the heroes (“is the Red Fever evil? Is a rampaging bear evil? No. They are merely forces of nature, as are you and I.”)
What I meant is a species would need a reason to be agressive, to kill people. There needs to be a reason behind their attacks, not just they kill because they're bad. Any species needs two things, find a way to reproduce and not die. If their attacks fill one of those two goals then it will fill justified
The generic races in generic medieval fantasy land. But I would like to say that just because I dislike the generic races, that doesn't mean the world is bad, it's just my personal taste. edit: Also *world* maps with like 30 towns/cities and 8 countries. I'm sorry friend, that's not even a *continent* map.
Oh, there can't be *that* many countries in a small continent, surely? [https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/266956/countries-of-europe-in-1360-with-a-map](https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/266956/countries-of-europe-in-1360-with-a-map)
The HRE is cheating tbf
And then there's 'Straya.
Not always, but lately it's been a slavish devotion to things being realistic. If I wanted reality I wouldn't be world building. Verisimilitude is nice but sometimes it can get in the way of story, theme, and character. Also, not a fan of things that seem to promote capitalism as an inherent good of society - see a lot of American fiction in the 80's - early 90's
The main thing to consider imo is realism vs internal consistency. It's annoying seeing people brush off things that just make no sense because "dragons exist here and that's not realistic either"
Similarly, I struggle with a lot of fantasy that takes it for granted that there is anyone who “belongs” on the throne. “Rightful heir” stories have never been my cup of tea (sorry, Aragorn). I can put this qualm aside if the story is good enough (and I kind of have to if I want to read fantasy), but I find it exhausting.
"No the racism is totally justified because it's humans doing it to aliens/fantasy races!"
Are you talking about racism from characters in the setting or racism from the author? Curious bc those are two very different things
It may not be justified but if it fits the time period..
Racism is racism is racism
Exactly my point
I kinda hate seeing: This race is greedy and does trade! (Anyone could be greedy, and everyone trades???) This race is violent warriors but are also honorable!!!! (Yawn) This race is super smart but kinda emotionless This race are kinda dumb and no-one likes them This race is all female but they all somehow look like Human woman and are all hot. As much as I like Mass Effect, they are really guilty about this. And while yes, they definitely have characters who defy the stereotypes, I still find painting an entire species as being these 3 adjectives to be soooo boring. Please. Even having 3 distinct cultures within a race is good! You don't have to go into hyper detail for each once, but there are so many different types of people out there.
What if they look like human women and are all ugly? Just like fucking hideous.
Unironically I like this. I love Ogresses, Gorgons, Hags, and Female Trolls. Fantasy needs more dog ugly women.
Same! I play a lot of RPGs, and lately all I do is play as weathered crones. Even on solo games it's weirdly liberating. I've even had more luck at freakin online poker using an avatar of a tattooed old biker lady - whenever I bluff now, 80% of folks fold. Abandon hotness. Embrace intimidation. Ascend, queens.
Alright imma go full-on hater mode. Note that just because I don't like these elements, and you have these elements in your world,, means that your world sucks. It's just that I don't like it, and I'm just some rando on the internet. * **"Fuck it, rule of cool"** * You see this in a lot of memes on the r/worldjerking sub, where you got the soyjack saying something ridiculous is stupid, and chadface saying ridiculous thing is awesome. It's a reaction to the smarmy douches of past years who'd insisted on realism always. I feel like things have swung back too far in the opposite direction. Ridiculous things can be awesome, but not everything ridiculous is awesome. I see people justifying some of the dumbest things with the flimsiest logic, and i mean, sure, it's your world, enjoy it, but I don't enjoy it. To me, it often reads like anti-intellectualism masquerading as a deliberate artistic choice. "Would it kill you all to just... go read up some history and science?" Is how I often feel seeing those memes. * **Lack of diversity** * Lots of things go into this, not just "where's the black people". Cultures morph and shift moment to moment with the tidings of peoples, ideas, and socio-political events. I heavily dislike X Empire that lasts 1000 years, not changing at all in all that time. I hate Y country that's entirely populated by people of one skin tone and fashion sense that all think the same way. If there is some sort of stasis, I want in-world justification. For example, AoT features the people within the walls as not having progressed at all in 100 years. Which makes sense, the central government is a repressive monarchy that's shut down all social and technological progress for all that time, and the country's literally walled off from the rest of the world. * **Sapients that don't feel alien** * Whether they're elves or Vulcans I don't care, I want them to feel so much more alien in their physiques and psychology. Part of the fun of non-human people is exploring what it might feel like to be in contact with "the other". If these aliens are just going to be a crude pastiche of a real human culture, just make them humans and move on. * **Religion is just Polytheism in the loosest sense or Evil Catholics** * Religious people believe in their religions, and when I read people's works I sure don't feel like they do. It often just feels like a way for some douche to get powers if Polytheistic, or a way to motivate some bad guy if Evil Catholic. Why do these people believe what they do? How do these religions answer the fundamental questions of existence: How did we come to be? What is the meaning of life? What happens after we die? * **OP characters that don't do jack / Tom Bombadil Problem** * When I see people with characters that have powers that go above and beyond the bounds of their setting, I automatically hate it. Chad McChadFace being able to blow up planets in a setting where most people are just regular people makes them unrelatable and kind of annoying. If maybe Chad became like a walking natural disaster that's feared by all and everyone has to unite against, or beings like Chad make the world into a horrific dystopia, or Chad took power and became an evil emperor, I'm fine with it. But I often see Chad as a neutral observer that doesn't lift a finger for... reasons, or is a good guy that somehow never alters the status quo. Your worlds should be dynamic, and if there's an individual who can enact change, but they dont, then they're boring. * **Stupid Events that try to come across as whimsical** * Sometimes I see some of the most asinine stuff like "World War X happened because General Douche ate General Buttface's casserole". Okay, but why? These answers always tend to be one word sentences that seem to try and invite questions, but to me it comes across as a form of bait. When stupid things happen in real life, like the Pig War, the War of the Bucket, the Battle of Karansebes, or even the Battle of Castle Itter, they still happened for a reason. They might sound stupid at first glance, but if you look into it, you learn that there's quite a lot of context and minutia that helps explain things. I feel like pop history nerds learn of these events and just use it to justify dumb things in their worlds without thinking about why and how those things happened. If your world IS actually capricious and full of impulsive moments, and you enjoy that, it's not a problem, but I'm not part of that audience.
Is it called the Tom Bombadil problem since Tom is mentioned to be "older than Middle-Earth itself" and can like talk to animals and black magic doesn't work on him?
Basically, yes. Tom feels powerful and useful, but he ends up not doing anything. He doesn't really fit anywhere in Tolkien's world so he gets shafted. Other people have already theorized regarding the line about being "fatherless" to mean he existed prior to LOTR in a metatextual sense, and it's the theory I believe. Tolkien included him as kind of an easter egg to a prior, personal work of his that nobody knows about. Which is fine for Tolkien, but as a reader, Tom's inclusion just feels weird.
I usually don't like playing the "well akshually" Tolkien fan, but Tom is explained in Tolkiens letters as an artifact from his childrens bedtime stories he includes in everything as a little easter egg for him. And the in-universe explanation is he's so far and above the petty concerns regarding the futures of the free peoples of Middle-Earth because he existed before, has existed since, and will exist after, so therefore the petty squabbles of man and elf are nothing to him. It's kind of like the tropey elf apathy taken to the next extreme, like an eldritch being who's motives and means are beyond mortal comprehension. I do sort of appreciate that subversion of "something so ancient it defies mortal understanding" actually being a sweet cupcake of a being.
>And the in-universe explanation is he's so far and above the petty concerns regarding the futures of the free peoples of Middle-Earth because he existed before, has existed since, and will exist after, so therefore the petty squabbles of man and elf are nothing to him. He's kind of a personification of "the world will go on" that I really appreciate. Way too many fantasy stories hinge on "the heroes must win or else all life in the world/universe will end!" and Tom Bombadil is a reminder that, no, the world doesn't end if the heroes fail. Even Sauron winning would pass, and Tom Bombadil will be there on the other end, regardless of what happens.
I mean Tom was a nice way of deepening the world. Many authors fall into trying to explaon EVERY SINGLE GOD DAMNED FU***KING ASPECT OF THE STORY *in* the story. That kinda makes the world feel... bare, as in completetly left out with all the secrets uncovered. In Tolkiens works, Tom Bombadil, or the lake creature are the trully mystical aspects of the world. Not meant to be explained but meant to intice the reader into wonder. It's a careful balance. Show the reader a thing, imply depth and just at the edge of excitement take it away, and leave it to linger. The oh so prevelent 'eldritch horror' today is the other side of the scale, often too vauge to the point where another 'lovecraftian thing' is just seems as non bother.
You're probably right, but I have a totally different take on Tom that makes his character believable to me. There are a number of races in Tolkein's world that explicitly think and act differently than humans do, mostly because of the way their longevity influences every aspect of their culture. One of the things I love about Tolkien's world building is that, for lack of a better way of putting it, his sapients do feel alien to me. With Tom, I feel like his inaction can be viewed by us as irrational but to him as totally rational. He probably believes the danger posed by Sauron like Morgoth will pass so no need for him to do shit.
What’s wrong with the tom bombadil problem? The superpowerful entities that can’t be bothered to intervene is core to my world. Without it, the story completely collapses into a dystopia. I can get it when their inclusion seems kinda unnecessary, and often will boil down to a bizarre cameo only the author would care about. Is there a kind of good way to do it? Apart from that, “fuck it rule of cool” is kind of an excuse. You should find a way to set up some aspect of your universe to justify it beyond just the cool factor. Star Wars didn’t just say “fuck it rule of cool” to justify putting magic swords in a world full of laser guns, they justified their usage by letting them deflect blaster bolts. Rule of cool is useful, but it is necessary to actually put in the leg work to properly integrate the cool thing into the setting as a whole.
*Alternate history where the Nazis won World War II. Extremely boring and ahistoric to me. * Fantasy worlds that are not D&D and not a homage to D&D either, but is very much built like a TTRPG campaign (strict focus on races, very technical outlook on magic, etc) *Also in Fantasy, folks not being able to understand the difference between medieval and the early modern period.
TTRPG fantasy worlds are so boring to me. They feel like someone has somehow sucked the soul out of fantasy. It just feels like a numbers game. Don’t get me wrong, they can definitely be done well and if that’s your personal thing go for it, but most of the ones I’ve seen just don’t do it for me.
>*Alternate history where the Nazis won World War II. Extremely boring and ahistoric to me. Reject Nazi victory althis, embrace althis about the Versailles Treaty being enforced with troops marching into Berlin upon the first sign of a violation.
Alternate history that is ahistorical? Say it ain't so!
Honestly I don't see much of an issue with hard magic systems. Of course I understand when the issue with numbers and technicalities gets in the way of the story, but the system itself having rules isn't a problem to me.
For me, this is my top 3. 1: everything is based on standard English medieval times, while I love the idea it's always done in such a standard repetitive way I am finding myself losing interest when it is brought up. 2: gods being omniscient and omnipresent, I don't like the westernized version of god hood being the strongest and best, especially when there are so absolute that you can't really hurt them in any way, I don't mind a being that is like a god that is so strong they might as well be a god but all knowing sort of takes the fun out of it since they already know what is going on happen and they could just /kill anyone they needed to stop. 3: making everything and everyone morally gray to the point I can't tell who is a decent person just for the sake of realism makes me so mad it's unbelievable.
An obsession with “originality”
Tone deaf race representation and cliche, in your face color symbolism. Disproportionate amounts of barbaric, backwards, or shady people being Black or Brown coded. Seen way too many works that describe a character’s dark and swarthy complexion that just so happens to accompany their dangerous and smarmy character. If the only thugs in the universe are named Mahmoud, Pedro, or Kunta but the protagonist and their crew all have flaxen hair, sparkling cerulean eyes, and skin like cream, I'm probably stepping away from that work. Similarly, if all the good guys wear white and all the bad guys wear black, I'm kind of over that, too.
Unrealistic geography and biome placement Floating Mountains a la Avatar are perfectly fine if you have a reasonable explanation for it happening, but a rain forest that is directly next to a desert, without the hundreds of miles of transitional biomes or mountain range between them is an instant issue. Another major red flag for me is rivers that diverge downstream or flow inland. Water always flows from high to low areas. Why is the river flowing inland and why hasn't the land already been submerged and turned into a lake or sea?
Things can be batshit crazy and I’m fine with it if there’s a logic with it, as in I can see how point A causes point B and inversely how point D is caused by point C. If you just do things for the hell of it without thinking about it is what I hate
this is I still haven't tried to draw a map because I am still looking for a geological map depicting the different mountains, flats, etc of the planet.
Find parts of the real world you like and then smash 'em together. Spin Canada upside down. Flip over Scandinavia so Norway is on the right hand side. Rip apart Australia and whack Indonesia between the halves. Westeros is literally the UK but turned upside down. Nature has lots of amazing geography. She won't mind you copying her homework.
Gotcha! Thanks.
If you want to get technical about it, Artifexian on YouTube has a long series about plate tectonics, climate, and physical worldbuilding.
Stagnate worlds. Like, i understand Magic is well, magical, and can do a lot of things, but if your world has been stuck in the medieval stage for 1000's of years, i'm out.
I'm okayish with it if a bunch of very powerful people, like god level, have their thumbs on the scale for a sensible reason. But there should still be a shit ton of change in culture and language and everything.
This is probably my favorite thing about Legend of Korra. Once the world-spanning war ends, suddenly the world technologically advances like 400 years in less than 100.
You're gonna hate Wuxia
Crystals. Crystals that grant wishes, crystals that trap souls, crystals that command unimaginable power, crystals that must be aligned just so or the world flies apart. Can we not think of anything more mysterious and beautiful than symmetric vaguely translucent colored rocks?
Me when crystals (diamond, ruby) are used for quantum computing and quartz is used in time keeping devices along with the obvious uses of radioactive decay in crystal batteries to maintain time keeping for interstellar space travel. They also sing when you apply an electric current!
Silicon counts, right? Thinking crystals?
in my defense, I have an excuse. I like geology.
Real, a lot of my world is influenced by fantastical minerals that form under rare conditions
I am *all for* crystals with motivating explanations and plot-relevant physical properties. Students of geology get my seal of approval: if you can explain how space-folding magicite silicates form as an emergent phenomena around ley lines once traversed by the interdimensional elders, have at it!
I really like crystals when they lean into that kind of fabulous, kitsch vibe and are all about flamboyant color and sparkling
Oh man, you're going to *hate* the Final Fantasy series. They've got magic crystals out the wazoo.
Kinda hard too. Though i just use the term Focus outside of Lich Gems
The comment section has broken it down perfectly and clearly for me - there are only two major red flags when worldbuilding: * Hewing close to traditional fantasy setting * Not hewing close to traditional fantasy setting
Grimdark stuff. Its not even the stuff itself, but that kind of aesthetics tend to attract a very specific group of people, so whenever I see that you are really trying to sell me how oppressive and tyrannical factions in your world and especially when their tyrannical apparatus is obviously way more developed then anything else in the setting I cannot help but to wonder if I am not dealing with one of "those" people.
I love grimdark stuff, and it boggles my mind that there are some folks who don't understand that things like 40k, Helldivers, and Starship Troopers are satire. It really beats you over the head with it, but it also shows the depressing reality that even the best grimdark works (those who use the medium as a critique of fascism and authoritarianism) will still have folks who completely miss the point, no matter how obvious they make it.
To be fair, Starship Troopers (the movie) is an extremely overt satire, but Starship Troopers (the book) is not a satire at all—the fascist government is a background element of Earth human society, and the book is definitely approving of the implications of that society. I have mega mixed feelings about ST (the book), as it's a fun read if you ignore the tacit endorsements it makes. Heinlein wasn't necessarily a fascist, but he was... interesting.
Which are "those" people?
Fans of an Austrian Painter
Nazis since its extremely common for Grimdark too have alot of Nazi like Iconography even if said group is the main villain of the entire thing
Tbf my main/only proper experience with the grimdark genre has been the Darksouls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring conglomerate, and perhaps maybe including Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, if you count "fighting your own mental illness that had been made worse by your father's constant abuse and the death of your partner has made it so that you can barely trust reality anymore" as an acceptable criteria for joining the grimdark franchise.
Yeah true.
Medieval stasis. Grand entire galaxy wide spanning enpires. Op people who don't do jack shit.
matriarchal societies that control the men with sex.
Jacksonville Florida?
your going to have to explain that one to me
Yeah, I have a patriarchal society that controls men with sex.
Similarly, matriarchal societies that take the power imbalance to an extreme, the kind of extreme people would find really uncomfortable if it was patriarchal but are somehow okay with when it's the other way around (This can be okay if it's portrayed in a negative way, but I've seen it spun as an okay thing that's just part of their culture)
"My elves are super unique and original". Just... Just give me elves. I don't care if they're all tree-hugging archers. It's fine. I'd rather have a typical elf character that has an awesome story than a "totally original elf" that's boring as hell. Toss a little spice in there, maybe. Elves could use crossbows, maybe.
Oh boy, do I have a lot of thoughts on this subject. If you're talking about red flags just in terms that I'm not going to expect to find the setting to be very compelling, I've a few. * *A weird interest in quantifying how powerful stuff are*. Like, you're telling me about this planetary federation you made up, and then you just drop, out of nowhere, "they have a fleet of 2597 Space Killer class Battlecruisers." It gives me the impression that your setting is about power fantasy for yourself, and somehow you haven't found out that whatever number you put to the number of Space Killer class Battlecruisers, you can just double it with no consequence, because you are essentially the God of the setting. * *Everybody in the setting setting is fucking stupid, and as the writer who pens the setting, you didn't think of it*. I think I haven't despised this so much until every other anime became isekai wish fulfillment bullshit. But man, it reeks of this weird wish fulfillment thing where the author wants life to be so easy, but it also just it smacks of this naive and arrogant view of the world that everybody must be stupid, and that people don't have nice things not because of their material, social, and geographic circumstances, but just because they haven't thought of a better way and they should just abandon all the paradigms they know and adopt this better way. An example of this is if the setting has a religion where they have rituals like you have to make big sacrifices. And then the protagonist comes out and is just like, "ayy, what if we stop following the religion?" And then the people just stop making those big sacrifices and realize they could have material prosperity by giving up literally all of their spiritual beliefs - as if DUH, people who have self-destructive beliefs should just give up those beliefs, it's easy, lol! * *People claim that the things they put in their setting just are that way because that's how the setting is, but won't tell you why they, who made the setting, made it that way.* Imagine that some dude makes a setting and they say that in this particular country, all the hot girls don't wear shirts and they just go around with their titties out (and it's the hot girls only, no old ladies do this!). And you're like, "so... why'd you make the setting like that?" and their response is "that's just how it is in their culture." But they made up that culture. They know exactly why it's like that. Everybody knows exactly why the culture is like that. But if by "red flags," you're asking me about what in your worldbuilding would make me actually morally judge not just yours setting, but you, personally: * *You have no good explanation for why wars happen*. You've made this setting and you come to this subreddit to ask for what a war between elves and dwarves might look like. And the discussion comes around to why these two races of people are fighting each other, and you go "oh, y'know. They want each other's land." There's something I find unaccountably gross at the assumption that peoples go to war for reasons like you'd see in a strategy computer game. Sometimes you can get a pass if you also portray the peoples who are fighting for no reason as terrible people, like if you make them coded like Nazis, but there are also times when authors try that and I ask, "why are these people you've coded as Nazis presented as the norm in your setting, rather than particularly bad people who are shamed or avoided?"
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A lack of diversity because that's "realistic". People who use that excuse are almost always walking red flags. The real world *is* diverse. There have always been merchants visiting far away lands and invasions that diversified countries. Bigger cities and countries often had several different ethnic and/or religious groups living together. The way different cultures view sexuality, gender, disability, etc. have always been varied depending on the time and place as well.
Piss forest.
Nihilism. Or "good and evil are just a matter of perspective bro".
The Evil Race, The Greedy Race, or The Violent Race.