Hello everyone

Hello

Has anybody seen my concerns for Worldbuilding ? discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/17682/…

/me test

Boo. :P

Nyet, /me no work in rpg.seland

You can just use /me and leave it at that. Anyone familiar with IRC terminology will automatically convert it to an emote in their head, and anyone who isn't... well, will still understand you. :)

It's not as fun when the chat doesn't understand it though. :P

@Saffron Hrmm. In rpg.se we assume answerers should be familiar with the system they're answering questions about; in graphicdesign.se, the design program or medium; in sf&f.se, the franchise or work being asked about. I'm not sure worldbuilding should be any different.

Because worldbuilding is also about homemade worlds

That could potential hold a lot of infromation

@Saffron This is similar to Writers.SE, then. How do people handle it there?

@lisardggY it's worth investigating

Someone should ask them!

I think in most cases it's considered the asker's job to build his question in a way that doesn't require the entire world to be known by the answerer. It's not a site for reviewing your world, but to ask questions about problems you face that might also be relevant to others.

So in most cases, the question should stand on its own merits.

(I'd nominate myself, but my brain is currently filled with psychic plastic tentacles and leftover tofu.)

@lisardggY I do not agree, many question ask for a relatively extensive knowledge of the world for a quatlity answer

And reviewing can be part of the scope of worldbuilding too

It shows that the OP has tried something to solve his problem

I would try looking, but blim my brain is fried by monster design and random hp values.

I think SE's Q&A format isn't really a good fit for "Review my work" kind of questions. For coding, there was a dedicated CodeReview.SE opened to stop people posting these questions on SO/Programmers.SE, but I know a lot of people still don't think it fits - there's no clear right answer to a question.

I want to do X in my world, the closest I found was Y, but I still don't like it because Z, how could I solve Z without loosing X ?

@Saffron This is fine, but should be part of the question text. It doesn't necessarily require downloading external resources.

@lisardggY I think you are making assumptions that are a bit too strong

I'm honestly curious how detailed worldbuilding you'd need to be doing to need that kind of questions now.

We have two choices, either completely remove the right to post these kind of questions as too broad

Or help adding this information

It could be asking for a concise template at the end of the question

I'm going to move this to Area 51 chat so it's more easily locatable. And please, remember that chat discussions need to be turned into meta answers!

← 30 messages moved from RPG General Chat

There is, of course, also the option that we wait until it's a problem and let a solution grow organically.

While I think it's definitely important to think about these things beforehand, we probably shouldn't have a policy or procedure already chosen before we're staring the actual problem in the whites of its eyes.

@BESW Well, imposing something now makes it easier to accept for everyone, instead of having to change something that has already begun to take place

True

Is it possible to suggest a template in the answer in SE?

@Saffron My assumption is based on experience with other SE sites, where questions which require downloading external resources and extensive familiarity with the OP's precise situation simply don't work.

@lisardggY Well my point is that we should try to avoid downloading stuff while still allowing a wide range of question

Naturally, I think deeper familiarity will beget better answers, in theory. In practice, it will beget fewer answers.

tl;dr syndrome.

Well we agree then

But there's a middle part, it's not all black and white

Some question will be impossible to answer because it would require going through 10-20 pages of documentation

Some would require just a couple lines (these are fine atm)

The problem is in between

Do we have a way to facilitate the way the information is communicated through SE (like, according to the tag you put in your question, have a simple template that ask for critical information)

In SO, when someone needs to give a bit more context than can be put in the question, but less than a full project, they often use pastebin or a similar text-sharind site to show their code. This is a bit frowned upon, but accepted.

@lisardggY Can we have something similar?

@Saffron We don't. I know that similar requests pop up on meta.SE occasionally, but I haven't seen any response from a dev or SE employee saying it's under consideration.

@Saffron Pastebin isn't part of SE, just a useful 3rd-party service. The same can be used for Worldbuilding.

Yes but it's something that has been accepted in the culture as a "decent" solution

I haven't been in SO since Day One, but I'm guessing that it also took some time to be accepted.

Maybe we can push for something "better" in the culture of Worldbuilding

Also my concern is not only the "storage" part of the information

But the presence at all of this information

I fear that we might have a dire need for comments asking for the same thing for a lot of questions

Do you think that this concern is too soon to be risen, or too specific to be adressed atm ?

I think it's good to brainstorm possible solutions, but not to pick one until we have a problem for the solution to address.

I would say it's premature.

Like tagging policies, it should be emergent.

Made that an answer.

It's a good question that we can't answer definitively yet.

@LymiaAluysia Well, for example, if you're designing a world for an MMO: you need to balance concerns like allowing players to travel from one place to another relatively easily, with whatever level of immersion you want to maintain, and with the mechanical limits of your system (like how much of the world you can load at once), and with the implications of culture/technology/society that it implies.

D&D has major problems reconciling its adventure-based, fast-scaling, magic-item-heavy economic model with the low-tech medieval fantasy setting it so desperately wants to evoke.

I agree with the above. Attempts to dictate how people behave is less preferable to seeing how people behave and the community deciding that something is to broad.

You know, there is another solution

(Logical extrapolations of D&D culture and society from its available mechanics produce something totally different than what they actually present in their adventures.)

If people need more detailed information, or questions warrant it, they can always move to chat.

@BESW Oh, that makes more sense. I was under the impression it was limited to RPGs and such media, so.

I suspect there will be a mix of RPG worlds and writers

With the odd person asking a strange "what if" question.

What kind of question are you expecting? Stuff like "How do I make element X and Y consistent?" or "How do I put theme A and B together without a big mess?"

(Like the example where D&D's world should, by all rights, be a magitech setting.)

so,.. what is this room's topic?

@trogdor Area 51 is the StackExchange site where people propose new StackExchange sites.

I don't know. I mostly signed on because it was interesting and I like the idea.

ah

ok

thank you

I suspect that that should rather be "what kind of impact upon the city would an acgrrement between..." actualy

I see. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm used to, like, doing world building like magic systems and cosmologies than geopolitics and stuff, so. ^.^;

I'm glad the question wasn't as stupid as it sounded to me, only thing I could think of.

I'll probably be doing a lot with the fantasy politic and fleshing out cities

while I like sci-fi, its not my area of expertise

By the way, are question technical heavy, but clearly about worldbuilding allowed on this site

Or should it be asked on the technical counterpart ?

Example

How should sewers be scattered through the city to allow easy maintenance, and overall services to the whole city?

If its actually a physics / biology / engineering question, ask the relevant SE, if it requires people making stuff up or considering implications, its probably appropriate.

See, you could get someone who gives a great answer to that. But you probably won't get an answer from a city designer point of view.

Its hit or miss depending on the knowledge base

There's no "city designer" SE though

Yep

So that works here, though don't expect a great answer.

Sometimes I wish cross question would be a thing here :(

I agree

If we grow enough, suggest it. Rather than migrate it, just share answers between the question.

ded

@BESW These guys should get along with Worldbuilding