 Welcome to MAPCRO, the RPG art show. My name is Kyle and this video is brought to you by my newsletter. That's right, if you head on over to KyleLatino.com today and sign up for my newsletter, you too can get a map of the Wine Dark Sea. Check the description below for details while I serve up some hot takes today on Worldbuilding. Now first, I want to make a disclaimer, and you can basically put this at the front of any of my videos. If you disagree with this, if you want to keep doing what you're doing, by all means, do so. Make the things that make you happy and keep you making. Your own journey for creative joy is far more important than any of my busted opinions, so keep that in mind. But tell me if this sounds familiar, or if this sounds like something that you've said. A Game Master might lament and say, I put all of this effort into this world building and making sure that it all makes sense, and my player characters are not curious, they don't investigate, and they don't find out about any of the stuff that I've been writing for the last two months. Well, I have a theory why that is such a common refrain in our hobby. In my lifetime, I believe I have not only seen the usage of the word Worldbuilding Skyrocket, but also basically the coining of the phrase, which really wasn't used that way until like around the year 2000. I have a theory about this that authors historically have not really cared about what we have come to know of as Worldbuilding. This term has been used to describe oftentimes retroactively books or comics or movies that have a rich and detailed explanation for why the world is the way it is. Authors like Tolkien or Frank Herbert are oftentimes lauded as like the defining Worldbuilding authors, but I would be astonished to learn that any of these big Worldbuilding authors out there sought to use their novel as a way to shovel the world into our mouths like a jam on crackers or something. The Worldbuilding exists only to serve the character's journey, and the character's journey only exists because you, the reader, exist and the author feels like they have something they want to share with you that they think is important. In our time of trailer analysis and lore videos and Wikipedia's, we really think of Worldbuilding as something that is altogether separate from characters, and I think this is much to the detriment of how we understand stories, and it really comes to a head at the gaming table. This is why Game Masters have this oft-repeated lament that nobody cares about my Worldbuilding. Well, that's because your Worldbuilding doesn't care about the characters in it. That is to say, the player characters, the main characters, your protagonists are not at all involved in the Worldbuilding. Now, there are several reasons for this, and most of them have to do with the idea of selling adventure modules separately from people's actual play experiences. The need for this to be a product that has all of this information that's just ready to go means it's necessarily completely disconnected from the players at your table. This is why I find discussions about Session Zeroes and getting that kind of understanding and buy-in early is so important now. It's a way of including your players in deciding on what challenges are going to help bring out their characters in play, and sometimes that just means kind of explaining the adventure module that you want to run and saying, does that sound interesting? And if they say no, find a way to compromise, or just say maybe skip out on this one because I really want to run this module that I just paid for. Some Game Masters love to brag about how they don't do any prep at all and more power to them, but if you're like me and you kind of enjoy kind of planning out what some of the things could happen and what some of the characters they could meet are, my suggestion to you would be make sure that your Worldbuilding is at the character level. Make sure that they all come with verbs or hooks that come with them for the players to interact with. This is why, for my money, NPCs, non-player characters are the richest vein of Worldbuilding that you can put in your game. NPCs come with so many verbs attached to them. You can talk to them, you can barter with them, you can spy on them, you can fight them, you can apologize to them, they will reveal the world and their own point of view through this non-linear activity with them. When your player characters take a left turn and start talking to, let me check my notes, Herkimer, the farmer at the end of the tavern, you didn't think that anybody was going to talk to and was only named Herkimer when they asked, what's your name? That is revealing world, what are his problems? What are his troubles? What is his view of the characters at the bar with him? This is revealing world and you don't even have to have a plan for it, just let the world reveal itself for your characters and don't worry about keeping a binder full of all of these consistent notes until your player characters show an interest that they want that kind of depth or have that kind of curiosity for what's in front of them. The characters are the world building and the world is only interesting because the characters are in it, both your NPCs but also your player characters so that world building these characters need to be pointed at your player characters and NPCs very naturally fit that utility and if you're still not convinced I would suggest to you that it is easier for a story to have great characters in it but terrible world building and still be enjoyable than it is for a story to have excellent world building but terrible characters and still be enjoyable. Alice in Wonderland for instance really strikes me as a book that has wonderful characters but really no world building to speak of. I can feel myself wanting to go on and on and on about this so I think it's time to end the episode. If you have any stories about your game about some big world building payoff that actually worked at the table please share it in the comments. If you heard something that was thought provoking but you didn't necessarily agree with it maybe leave a like and if you want to hear a more naval gazing commentary while I draw things subscribe to the channel or to my newsletter that's where once a month I'm going to make announcements about ongoing projects and new merchandise and you can also grab yourself a 22 by 17 inch of the wine dark sea. I promise all the world building is on the map there's no lore you can just get going and have fun. Well the old roads is all proofread and the pdfs are ready to be emailed maybe this weekend so maybe I will see you on the old roads. Until next time, farewell.