How much worldbuilding is too much?
>>46177653
There isn't too much. But, accept that your players won't know a major part of it
>>46177653
When it stops being fun for you.
>>46177653
Build as much as you need. Unless you're literally playing with touhoufag your average player is in it for the experience, not your setting consistency.
>>46177667
I'd argue that too much is possible. When your pre-established details begin to throttle your ability to make decisions on the fly or--worse yet--restrict your players' ability to explore their own stories, you have too much worldbuilding.
There is no maximum amount of worldbuilding, but 'too much' varies from person to person
Just remember the minimum required is zero
>>46177653
"Too much" is the point where you lose enjoyment due to the sheer amount of work required for something no one may ever end up using.
I don't think there's such a thing as too much worldbuilding, but I do think that you can harm a setting with worldbuilding. Look at Tolkien, the poster boy for excessive worldbuilding. Now, his worldbuilding is great! It's rich, realistic, consistent, and compelling. But LotR suffered because of how he implemented the world: he tried to show off as much of his worldbuilding as possible. Contrast this with the Hobbit, which takes the tight, fast-paced episodic structure of the Odyssey and breathes new life into it with vibrant characters and a vibrant setting built only as far as the plot needs: JRRT wrote The Hobbit before he had really started to develop Middle Earth. There was nothing to show off but what he thought up for the book itself.
Does this mean he built too much world? I don't think so. The worldbuilding itself was no problem; he could have made Middle Earth even bigger and it wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't tried to shove the heavily-laden camel of world he created through the eye of the needle that is a novel. The solution? You write other, non-novel books, which is exactly what he did with the Silmarillion, and it worked great. It's not about how much world you build, it's about what you do the world. Some say that JRRT was a great worldbuilder but a so-so storyteller. I don't quite agree with this: The Hobbit is superbly written in setting, tone, and plot. It does use a simple and hard-to-mess up narrative structure, but the finesse demonstrated within that structure can't be ignored.
In a /tg/ context, you have to make sure that you're DMing The Hobbit, not The Lord of the Rings. Tell them what's important to the campaign and what they're interested in, not a word more. You can build as much world as you want! I'd argue that more (good) worldbuilding is always better, since it's just more foundation to build upon, even if the you can't see the foundation from outside the building. But don't use any of that world unless there's a reason to.
>>46181430
Also, note that some settings benefit more from lots and lots and lots of worldbuilding than others. Planescape was specifically designed to be an ever-expanding setting. If you're going to explore the multiple infinities of the great wheel, you're going to want a lot of content.
>>46181430
When you develop an Elf-Celtic language along with an Elf-Finnish language, and then derive them both from the same proto-Elf-Latin language, you've officially gone bonkers.
>>46177653
>How much worldbuilding is too much?
WTF
What kind of question is this? There is NEVER too much worldbuilding.
The only problem is that you will have to worldbuild all the this stuff, if you have a 500 page world, you had to do all this mess.
Other than genned dwarf fortress, reality what is the biggest world ever?
>>46183319
I think the reason why we love Tolkien is because of how bonkers he is.
>>46181430
>Thousands of years pass
>Huge tracts of land are still totally uninhabited
>Technology hasn't moved an inch
>Realistic worldbuilding
u wot m8
>>46183524
Sorry, did I say "realism"? I meant "plausibly verisimilitudinous".
>>46178011
I'm gonna agree with this one. There's a sweet spot of worldbuilding you should try to reach between having enough established details to work off of and having enough empty space in your lore for you and your players to fill in as you go along.
>>46183370
Size or density? Density is Glorantha. Size would be... Planescape? Anything that can rival dozens of infinite planes and countless Primes?
>But, accept that your players won't care about a major part of it.
FTFY
Players will only ever care about the shit that directly affects their goals. So what if you took the time to plan out the tax laws of every backwater kingdom in the realm; will that information affect the PC's attempt to kill a Lich? No? Then it's completely superfluous and a waste of time.
>>46183524
The Black Death did it, bruh
>>46183524
Ever been to Africa?
>>46183692
If you have fun doing it; it's not a waste of time. Now, most people wouldn't find planning out tax laws to be very fun, but hey; no judging.
I would advise you stop worldbuilding once it won't contribute anything significant to the stories you're trying to tell.
That said, excessive world-building isn't bad in and of itself, but it takes away from time that could be better spent elsewhere.
>>46178011
>When your pre-established details begin to throttle your ability to make decisions on the fly... you have too much worldbuilding.
This one's the correct answer. The exact moment it starts getting in the way of you being on the ball at the table instead of helping is the moment where you hit "too much".
>>46183560
VERISIMILITUDINOUS
M
I
L
I
E
U
>>46177653
When your players try to leave your house and realize that the doors can't be unlocked.
>>46183623
>Density is Glorantha.
Naw mane, in terms of quantity of provided material both compared to the size of a region and in absolute amount, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy beat Glorantha out by miles.
>>46177667
i own a copy of the illuminatus trilogy with that cover
it's p old
>>46183849
Technology still got there, anon
There are some things that are fun to plan, but probably not something your players will find out about. Take trade routes. Your players will probably never know about them, but they might take a job guarding a merchant caravan, in which case having some trade routes planned would be useful.
>>46177653
Mechanical Dream
>>46183370
>>46183623
RIFTS!
>>46183692
>So what if you took the time to plan out the tax laws of every backwater kingdom in the realm; will that information affect the PC's attempt to kill a Lich? No? Then it's completely superfluous and a waste of time.
>>46188450
Where is this meme from?
in spite of popular belief, it is possible to have too much worldbuilding. It may be impressive that you can stack all of those bricks together intricately, but building a house instead of a fuck-huge wall is even more impressive.
http://www.theonion.com/article/novelist-has-whole-shitty-world-plotted-out-21193
For me personnally, I plan out the history, the culture(s), the politics and metaphysics and that's all. I just make the rest up. The secret is to make it look like you knew what you were doing all along.
>>46177653
I don't think you can have too much world building.
What you can have is too much uninteresting world building or world building that is shown in an uninteresting or inappropriate way.
>>46178011
I think about this a lot when working on ideas. I find I often get too eager answering questions about the world and have to reel myself back in and give the players room to breath. It's fun when you're just doing it for yourself but in a game it's definitely a balance.
>>46177653
I'm definitely in the minority here, but I don't see the point in making anything the players won't see, interact with, or experience the influence of on a reasonable scale. There's fluff, and then there's bloat. Writing out millennia of history can be fun, but if your players aren't going to be affected by it (or affecting it) there's little point in fleshing it out.
Take this map for example. How much of it are your players going to see? If the answer is "all of it", you're either A) lying or B) delusional. Point out specific areas, flesh out those areas, maybe make mention of the bordering areas, and leave the rest as terra incognita.
>>46177653
HARN is probably the most researched and highly developed setting out there. I can't even begin to describe the level of detail. If you can think of something relevant to a medieval society, there's a module covering it.
>>46195015
To be fair, if you're running multiple campaigns over the course of years in the same setting, it's not unreasonable to expect your players to explore every inch of the setting, especially if you're not so lazy that you start them in the same region every time.
>>46195178
can we get a link to some of those in pdf form, b0ss?
>>46183319
>>46183513
Nope. That's dumb. You've got it the wrong way around. Tolkien was a linguist or philologist or whatever. Developing the languages was the point, not the worldbuilding or the stories, but he found that the languages were too artificial without a history and culture and conflicts, etc. so he created all that, the worldbuilding and stories to support his languages, to make them more realistic. LoTR and The Silmarillion was just a necessary byproduct of that process.
>>46177754
Why Touhoufag?
>>46196422
because of autism
>>46198244
Since when?
>>46198481
His powerful autism is kind of his entire M.O. What I meant was that very few people join a tabletop game to experience a consistent setting so don't sweat over the details.
