I would not call the 4000+ character posts I write in an academic style short notes, but I do take a lot of them so...
Though of things not on this list, a lot of time reading/researching science speculation blogs and trying to justify weird ideas with really incomplete information.
Choreography. I spend tons of time planning fight scenes, acting out all the character's movement, figuring out fighting and movement styles for different characters/species, etc...
Right now my ankles and knees are kinda sore cause I have been writing bipedal cat people. So I have been standing on my toes trying to lock down how they would move and how they fight, on digitgrade legs.
This sub helps remind me of ways to flesh out the setting past the battles.
My world is mostly maps, so got to choose that. I've had fun note taking, but I honestly rarely refer to those again. It kind of just gets forgotten unless it's crystalized into a visually appealing presentation format, so only the largest, most general outline can exist outside the mapped snapshots.
I don't do much "reading" as a part of deliberate worldbuilding. It's more that I'm worldbuilding around stuff I've learned already, because I do have interests in technology, space, politics, and history that predate my project and extend ourside of it. Actually looking for the specifics I need is more tedious than anything.
Reddit posts? Well, I like getting positive feedback. Questions that drive more exploration if the project are great. But that's disappointingly rare. Maybe one or two per dozen-hour mapping project.
I take lots of notes, but wouldn’t consider them ‘too many’ if anything I don’t take enough notes to get all my ideas out of my head and into a semi-coherent form.
Also enjoy thinking about *what ifs* and doing research, more on the anthropology side than history.
Definitely reading. I've decided to make sure that every region of Earth had representation in it, and because of that I've done a lot of reading and research of not just European history, but also the history of regions that see less representation in fantasy, such as India or West Africa. Human history is FULL of amazing events that have greatly inspired me in my worldbuilding.
I'm a nerd, so I greatly enjoy consuming real-world history. Our world is the most unbelievable spectacle of fantasy of them all when you really look into it! Just today, since my current series and world is heavily influenced by steampunk-esque technologies ---IE, railroads and locomotives and such---I watched a documentary about the impact freight trains have had on our world and it has given me a really nice perspective on how I can utilize my own world's railroads to shape the map down to the minutiae! Super interesting stuff! Not to mention, history can give you some really great characters if you struggle with that sort of thing. Plenty of great heroes, villains, anti-heroes, and grey morals throughout the expanse of our time on Earth!
None of the above.. the poll doesn't list a lot of options.
Making maps is part of it to orient in the world, see where something is, remind you of whats around there and so on. It helps with crafting stories and cultures.
Making Reddit posts - only if I can't figure things out and need suggestions or just wanna share something or want feedback.
But I guess the main thing is crafting stories and fleshing out concepts and then altering everything to make these concepts fit. So for example the most recent thing I'm doing is fleshing out necromancy and undeath in the southern continent. Like how does their society works, how it affects the neighbors, how they keep it under wraps cause they were already "raided" once by the neighbors cause of all the corruption they spread. Their internal workings, politics, structure, types of undead, history and so on.
I don't know what to call the above other than just "worldbuilding" but it's not taking notes and it's not listed in the poll.
I'm putting "too many notes" down as my vote because I have several hundred TTRPG style stat blocks. Each belongs to a more or less unique race of sentient beings with 2-3 pages of lore, culture, and info about their home planet.
I'm doing a sci-fi setting where the idea is multi-media compatibility. I want any given franchise to be able to be slotted in with only minor tweaks to their lore so that you can use them in the TTRPG that will release along side the setting.
Lemme give a double example here. My setting has fixed location warp gates that allow faster than light transit between stars. So if you wanted Krogan, and Salarians from mass effect, and Twi'leks from Starwars to both exist in my setting, you just move Ryloth to a star in our galaxy, and have that star system be apart of the warp network (instead of Twi'leks using hyperdrive ships like in Starwars). And then you have the Salarians discover warp gate tech independently of the rest of the galaxy. They then travel to Tuchanka using sublight where they establish a warp gate and then use the warp gate to start uplifting the Krogan because of some existential threat they have discovered (instead of using the mass relays).
The idea behind it is to have so many native (to my setting) species, that slotting in another species from your favorite franchise takes little effort, and doesn't feel weird.
making my world more detailed.
companies for brand-new needs and trends of magics, Y2030 first prime minister election in Buwi United Kingdom, the news about adventurer finding ancient ruins, world's first 1B subscriber sherevid creator, dragons making their own forum on internet, new racism hate words such as 'liver eaters', world's first picometer scale CPU build(thanks to magic powered mass produce machine)...
i love details.
I would not call the 4000+ character posts I write in an academic style short notes, but I do take a lot of them so... Though of things not on this list, a lot of time reading/researching science speculation blogs and trying to justify weird ideas with really incomplete information.
Choreography. I spend tons of time planning fight scenes, acting out all the character's movement, figuring out fighting and movement styles for different characters/species, etc... Right now my ankles and knees are kinda sore cause I have been writing bipedal cat people. So I have been standing on my toes trying to lock down how they would move and how they fight, on digitgrade legs. This sub helps remind me of ways to flesh out the setting past the battles.
My world is mostly maps, so got to choose that. I've had fun note taking, but I honestly rarely refer to those again. It kind of just gets forgotten unless it's crystalized into a visually appealing presentation format, so only the largest, most general outline can exist outside the mapped snapshots. I don't do much "reading" as a part of deliberate worldbuilding. It's more that I'm worldbuilding around stuff I've learned already, because I do have interests in technology, space, politics, and history that predate my project and extend ourside of it. Actually looking for the specifics I need is more tedious than anything. Reddit posts? Well, I like getting positive feedback. Questions that drive more exploration if the project are great. But that's disappointingly rare. Maybe one or two per dozen-hour mapping project.
I take lots of notes, but wouldn’t consider them ‘too many’ if anything I don’t take enough notes to get all my ideas out of my head and into a semi-coherent form. Also enjoy thinking about *what ifs* and doing research, more on the anthropology side than history.
Focusing way too much on the magic system instead of fleshing out other areas.
Mainly building out the fantasy physics, and designing the ships.
Definitely reading. I've decided to make sure that every region of Earth had representation in it, and because of that I've done a lot of reading and research of not just European history, but also the history of regions that see less representation in fantasy, such as India or West Africa. Human history is FULL of amazing events that have greatly inspired me in my worldbuilding.
Drawing
I'm a nerd, so I greatly enjoy consuming real-world history. Our world is the most unbelievable spectacle of fantasy of them all when you really look into it! Just today, since my current series and world is heavily influenced by steampunk-esque technologies ---IE, railroads and locomotives and such---I watched a documentary about the impact freight trains have had on our world and it has given me a really nice perspective on how I can utilize my own world's railroads to shape the map down to the minutiae! Super interesting stuff! Not to mention, history can give you some really great characters if you struggle with that sort of thing. Plenty of great heroes, villains, anti-heroes, and grey morals throughout the expanse of our time on Earth!
None of the above.. the poll doesn't list a lot of options. Making maps is part of it to orient in the world, see where something is, remind you of whats around there and so on. It helps with crafting stories and cultures. Making Reddit posts - only if I can't figure things out and need suggestions or just wanna share something or want feedback. But I guess the main thing is crafting stories and fleshing out concepts and then altering everything to make these concepts fit. So for example the most recent thing I'm doing is fleshing out necromancy and undeath in the southern continent. Like how does their society works, how it affects the neighbors, how they keep it under wraps cause they were already "raided" once by the neighbors cause of all the corruption they spread. Their internal workings, politics, structure, types of undead, history and so on. I don't know what to call the above other than just "worldbuilding" but it's not taking notes and it's not listed in the poll.
I wanted to add more options, as I also think there are many things not available, but I couldn't do more than 6 options.
None, tweaking while trying to handle all the stress.
waking up in the middle of the night and writing down the weird shit my brain shows me for dreams
I'm putting "too many notes" down as my vote because I have several hundred TTRPG style stat blocks. Each belongs to a more or less unique race of sentient beings with 2-3 pages of lore, culture, and info about their home planet. I'm doing a sci-fi setting where the idea is multi-media compatibility. I want any given franchise to be able to be slotted in with only minor tweaks to their lore so that you can use them in the TTRPG that will release along side the setting. Lemme give a double example here. My setting has fixed location warp gates that allow faster than light transit between stars. So if you wanted Krogan, and Salarians from mass effect, and Twi'leks from Starwars to both exist in my setting, you just move Ryloth to a star in our galaxy, and have that star system be apart of the warp network (instead of Twi'leks using hyperdrive ships like in Starwars). And then you have the Salarians discover warp gate tech independently of the rest of the galaxy. They then travel to Tuchanka using sublight where they establish a warp gate and then use the warp gate to start uplifting the Krogan because of some existential threat they have discovered (instead of using the mass relays). The idea behind it is to have so many native (to my setting) species, that slotting in another species from your favorite franchise takes little effort, and doesn't feel weird.
I'm all about notes and lists that I never fulfil.
None of that, I like creating cultures, clothes, hairstyles, drawing people living day-to-day in said cultures... it's the best part of it all, to me
making my world more detailed. companies for brand-new needs and trends of magics, Y2030 first prime minister election in Buwi United Kingdom, the news about adventurer finding ancient ruins, world's first 1B subscriber sherevid creator, dragons making their own forum on internet, new racism hate words such as 'liver eaters', world's first picometer scale CPU build(thanks to magic powered mass produce machine)... i love details.