Worldbuilding Advice: Why I Take Most Of It With A Pinch of Salt

You'll see them all over the internet.

Articles entitled "Worldbuilding 101", "How To Get Started In Worldbuilding", and "Top Tips for Worldbuilders". You'll also see plenty of interview write-ups with titles like "Expert Loremaster Explains Why XYZ-Thing Is A Mistake" and "ABC-Thing Makes You A Better Worldbuilder/Writer/Designer".

On the one hand, it's great that there are so many resources available to refer to when you're stuck or just starting out. One quick search using your search engine of choice (a real search engine, I should add, NOT some crappy AI rubbish like ChatGPT) and you'll find hundreds upon thousands of articles and websites, all promising to make you a better worldbuilder or offering insights into the secrets of "professionals". It's a veritable smorgasbord out there; something for all stages of worldbuilding and level of experience, with the added bonus of it being available right at your fingertips.

The other hand, however, is laced with information overload, contradictory advice, and "surefire plans" or "perfect timetables" that you can never quite seem to get the hang of, no matter how hard you try. This is how I ultimately gave up on ever finding the "perfect advice article" and now simply take all articles with a pinch of salt.

I created this map of A'arde after I had already established lore surrounding the history of the world and certain locations within it. I used that lore to help me shape the landmasses.

Worldbuilding Advice Is Not One Size Fits All

Looking for worldbuilding advice is inevitably a double-edged sword; there's plenty of it out there, but so much of it will simply overwhelm you and push you into self-preservation mode, where you batten down the hatches and just pretend that it isn't there.

I should know. I've been there, and done that.

Misleading article titles aside (that's a whole other topic of conversation), it can be really difficult to sort through the advice and figure out which of it is actually relevant. Not just to the worldbuilding process as a whole, but to you as a worldbuilder. Your personal needs. Because oddly enough, you are the most important part of your worldbuilding.

What people seem to forget, or don't seem to want to know or accept in the first place, is that there is no single optimal process for worldbuilding. It's an argument I've seen countless times on various forums and Discord servers I'm part of, where one person demands that somebody lay out the process for them from start to finish, six people each show them six different processes, and the original poster then gets angry and shouts at everyone for "giving stupid opinions" or "sending useless advice". I have also had the "privilege" of seeing someone get angry and send messages along the lines of "I guess my Autism makes me stupid then", or "Autism is a barrier to worldbuilding", when nobody could give this person a precise answer for where to start, despite ten different people each offering suggestions about where they might want to begin, only to be rebuffed by the OP because "if I start there I'll need to know XYZ-thing first so I can't start there".

For the record, I would like to state that Autism is in no way an insurmountable barrier to worldbuilding. I have Autism; as do many of my worldbuilding TTRPG friends. Of course that does not mean that it doesn't have its challenges; hyperfixation is a common one that occurs for me - I'll find myself sliding down a rabbit hole of information on various linked topics for hours after searching for an alternative name for a zombie in other languages. The need for structure and precision can sometimes impact the flow of creativity by forcing focus onto administrative tasks like tags, category management, and formatting. I often can't help myself, and go into perfection mode.

But then that brings me back to the point of there not being a single surefire method for worldbuilding. It depends on you, as a person, and how your brain works or sorts information. I am the kind of person who likes logical layouts and deep lore. I can, and have, written in depth about mundane items because they have cultural significance to an NPC or side character in one of my stories. Am I ever going to use this item in my games or stories? Who knows. But I know that it's there if I ever do need it. If I'm ever asked about something that I don't have anything written down for, I will make something up and then expand on it later, linking the new information to the player or players that asked about it so that they can clarify. I recently had to do this with Deed of Wardship, which was offered to one of my players in my Monday game. I hadn't created the details, though I knew what the basics were, so I rattled off the information I had in my head, took my own notes, and then sent them the full article the next day. Hyperfixation was my superpower in that moment! But what made it fully possibly was the fact that I had a stable foundation that I could build from; something to refer to and infer details based on what I already had. Extrapolation from preexisting data. This is how I work.

But how I work is not how my husband works, or how my old DM works, or how our Homebrew Havoc DM, Lolly, works. What's important to me in worldbuilding is not the same as what's important to Kae, or Rhan, though Lolly and I share many similarities. And even when similarities are present, that does not mean that our workflow is identical.

While Lolly and I have many similarities in how we view worldbuilding and the depth of lore we love, we have slightly different ways of approaching it, get annoyed with different things, and have variations in the way we present work. The fact that we have these differences means that we make great Worldbuilding Buddies because we understand the other's base processes and ideas, while also being able to look at things from slightly different angles. I have been known to ask many a wild question about odd things, both for my own worldbuilding ("Is there a medical term for a slow leak of something?") and for hers ("Okay, but do you think that would class as more Baronial or Classical? Because that will change the aesthetic.")

So What Should I Bear in Mind When Looking For Advice?

Worldbuilding articles are not always written with people like you or me in mind. Some articles are written by someone with a very different background, while others have been compiled by someone who has never done a day of worldbuilding in their life and they are just going with whatever their research says. Research that typically only involves a limited portion of the worldbuilding community.

For that reason, when anyone asks if I can point them to any articles, I always preface my suggestions with the note that "these are just ones that I personally found useful". My suggestions are never gospel - it's up to you to figure out what parts of my advice are useful to you, and which are not.

For example...

If I read an article that says "start with a map", I know that it will be less useful for me. I never start with maps. All of the worldbuilding projects I have ever done have started based around a person. A character. Someone that I have then expanded my view outward from. Whether that person is a PC or NPC in a game, a character in a new novel, or just some random idea that has popped into my head, I inevitably start with how the world looks and feels to them.

This is also true of smaller portions of worldbuilding. I find that using a person, such as a local figure, as an anchor or starting point helps to focus the direction I need to take. When I started writing about the Isle of Swords, I began by identifying who the player character group was going to meet there (Ada Adelaide), and everything then built up around that person.

I recently started worldbuilding a new location in my world, A'arde, because it's where one of my player's character is from, and he asked about it specifically during a session when previously, it had never come up in conversation. They wanted news as to how the area was faring, and if anything significant had happened. Luckily, I had a little out of game time to come up with some vague details, branching out from what I know of this character, their life in their village specifically, and resulting in there now being a fight going on for ascension of the Imperial Throne, which has led to some instability in the region. Not outright war, just upheaval for the moment. But it has given the player something to think about, and a potential new direction for the character to look to once the current arc officially comes to an end. If I had taken the advice of the article that told me to start with a map, it's unlikely that I would have come up with anything quite so detailed, because my mind would have instead become bogged down with things like topography and the positioning of borders.

In my experience, articles that are aimed at "how to start worldbuilding" or "how to do worldbuilding" should be taken as suggestions, rather than outright facts or how-to guides. There is no single right answer to the question "how do I worldbuild?", unless you count "however works for you" as a viable answer. But that doesn't mean that reading those kinds of articles is a waste of time; you just need to alter your expectations for what you hope to gain from them.

Read lots of them, from lots of different people. But ultimately remember that those people are not you. One of their methods may work for you beginning to end, sure, but it's more likely that you will feel most comfortable using a combination of ideas from multiple different sources. That's why you read lots of them. To find that perfect combination of ideas that works for you.

Articles that feature "101 tips for worldbuilders" or other such titles are typically more valuable, as they tend to offer suggestions for how to work within specific parameters, rather than acting as step-by-step guides. For example, tips such as "if you like to X, then you should try doing Y as it may help you to do Z" are infinitely more useful than "start at A then do B" if starting at A is not feasible for you. You can pick and choose from these lists what options are relevant to you, rather than being made to feel like you are "doing worldbuilding wrong", which is actually quite a crappy thing to be made to feel.

There Is No Wrong Way To Worldbuild

Some people may disagree with me here, but to me, there is no wrong way to go about building and writing your world. If you have found a process that works for you, and you are happy with the content you create, then nobody else has any right to tell you that you're doing it wrong or sub-optimally. And even if you find that a certain aspect of a process doesn't work for you, then consider it part of the learning process. It's not wrong, it's just not how you work. You should never feel guilty, or allow anyone else to make you feel guilty, for that.

I will concede that there are parameters that may need to be taken into account, particularly if you are worldbuilding for publication or a client, or as part of a TTRPG or other game you are running. But those parameters are typically there to ensure that specific information is delivered on time with a certain degree of solidity. Those constraints are there for business or game purposes, not worldbuilding ones. But these kinds of constraints can also be adapted for other uses. Setting yourself personal challenges or targets can be a great way to focus your energies if you have a particular aspect of worldbuilding you would like to achieve.

In Conclusion

Worldbuilding is as unique to each writer as their fingerprint, and advice that is centred around worldbuilding cannot possibly account for each individual's background, levels of neurospice, and personal processes, amongst other things. Even "professional" advice should be taken with a pinch of salt, as it is one person's opinion within a sea of other opinions. Finding the workflow that's right for you can take time - unfortunately there's no easy way around that. Trial and error will truly become your friends. But you should never settle for a process that doesn't feel right to you just because "an article said to do it like this". Find other articles. Talk to other worldbuilders. Expand your horizons. Listen to your gut, your heart, or whatever other organ is talking to you about what feels right and wrong. Chop and change things up, and don't be afraid to try something completely new and wild, once in a while!

In the end, the only person that can truly know what works for your worldbuilding is you.