I was talking with a friend of mine recently about worldbuilding and how to teach the skill, and I realized that I’m not sure where to start.

I think my perspective is warped. I’ve been making up worlds for stories and games for so long, the whole process has become second nature. I haven’t consciously examined the process of worldbuilding in a long time.

Given that I’m planning to run a class for people who want to be DMs (or GMs, or storytellers, or whatever the hell you want to call the person running your roleplaying game), I think I need a clearer approach. I do have some ideas.

Two pieces of advice come to mind immediately. First, don’t worry about consistency in all the little details, or about getting your worldbuilding “right.” Second, steal liberally from other stories and settings that you like—take big chunks that you enjoy and tie them into your new setting, scraping away any details that feel too clearly like the original source material and get in the way of you having your own fun.

I’ve written enough about (in)consistency that I’ll focus on that for today. I might come back to the “steal liberally” part of my advice next week.

That first bit, about consistency, comes from decades of experience. As long as the big pieces of a setting don’t clearly contradict each other, as long as you can hold them all together in your mind and have fun with them, you’re good. Where your smaller details create logical inconsistencies, you can settle on one detail or another being “the right one” at some later point. You don’t need to fix them at the start. Trying to fix them at the start will get in the way of your forward progress.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

In fact, I like to embrace inconsistency. For me, having big and inconsistent or clashing elements of a new world sparks my creativity. This is part of the reason that I enjoy the random generation tables so common to Old School Renaissance versions of D&D. I try to reconcile the disagreements, or find ways to tie the clashing elements together or pit them against each other. Those manufactured conflicts create interesting places for stories to happen.

That inconsistency also fuels epistemological conflict. Our own world has big arguments about what is true or false, about what is the right thing to believe, and it can be difficult to know what knowledge about the world is objective fact or subjective interpretation. These clashing inconsistencies can be the foundation for similar conflicts in your new world, and can lay the groundwork for revelations in your story world down the line.

Finally, reader response theory helps us understand why the inconsistencies might not even be seen as such by your players, and might lend additional depth instead. Your version of the world exists only inside your head. The same is true for each other player. No player at the table will experience the game and its world exactly how anyone else does, and they may interpret the setting in ways you never anticipated. In some cases, your players may justify inconsistencies without you ever having to find answers on your own. Of course, you should check if your players find the inconsistencies too notable or jarring to enjoy the game—but if they’re fine with what you’ve got, don’t bother fixing it. Fixing what’s working well enough is a waste of your effort and focus.

Right. I know there’s more to be said here, but I’ve said enough for now. I’ll plan to write more about stealing / sampling / paying homage to other stories next week.