Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 12

Thread: World Origins

  1. #1
    Guild Applicant
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Dorset
    Posts
    4

    Post World Origins

    I'm curious to know how many here use some kind of origin story to help shape their world. My initial attempts at world building in the nineties never had a core origin story and I think that the lack of one had a negative impact one my world design. I'm about to embark on my first world building project in quite some time and this time I have a very specific origin story, a definite plan of how my world sprang into existence, and it's really going to help me define how my world looks. My origin story will have a very real impact on the geography and, in many aspects, the culture of my world.

    Do you go so far as to come up with an origin story for any of your worlds? Is it an absolute must for you or something that would just get in the way of your world design?

  2. #2
    Guild Journeyer philipstephen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts
    201

    Post

    i have an origin story for the world i am working on... but it is still a work in progress... and somehow is much too long and complicated to write easily...

    i started with the emergence of the supreme being and the fracturing of existence into a multiverse...

    and then it gets a bit crazy...

    but the story definitely informs the shape and flavour of the world i am mapping...

    phil

  3. #3
    Guild Apprentice Auth's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    WA State - USA
    Posts
    47

    Default

    I feel its necessary for me to have an origin story for any map I make. Some people can pull it off without any, but I feel I produce a better, more well rounded map when there's more to the map than just the map.

    Perhaps it helps me keep my focus, attention, and motivation longer.

  4. #4
    Community Leader NeonKnight's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Surrey, Canada, EH!
    Posts
    5,051

    Default

    I had a bit of an origin story at one time....I'll look if I can find what I had written down.
    Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User

    Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice!

    Any questions on CC3? Post them with CC3 in the Subject Line!
    MY 'FAMOUS' CC3 MAPS: Thunderspire; Pyramid of Shadows; King of the Trollhaunt Warrens; Demon Queen's Enclave

  5. #5
    Guild Journeyer
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    PEI, Canada
    Posts
    213

    Default

    The origin story for the world that my novel is set in is ripped from a physics textbook,...

    A massive cloud of inter spacial matter, mostly hydrogen plus other elements slowly pulled in on itself based on its own gravity. 99% of this cloud pulled in and condensed into the central star, the rest of the cloud globed up into planets and asteroids, or was blown out of the system by solar wind.

  6. #6
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Ascension's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    St. Charles, Missouri, United States
    Posts
    8,392

    Post

    My world origins are somewhere between Creationism and Big Bang; I get to be god but I use the tools of science and art. I just go with my hunches because over-thinking these details ruins the fun for me. I understand the science behind these things (tectonics and vulcanism, erosion, jet streams, ice ages, magnetic poles, tidal actions, etc. etc. etc.) but I'm not about to go modeling all of these things just for the sake of hyper-accuracy. I don't know everything, of course, so I just use what I do know to make it look plausible. I draw out some continents, put mountains where I think they would be, deserts and jungles come next, then put in the rivers and lakes, and lastly put down the towns...pretty simple stuff.

    I guess you could say that I'm more concerned with representing how it looks right now instead of worrying about how it got to be this way or where it's going in the future. Those things are more for the writers to put in so that they can come up with mythologies in order to make a culture more real but has little to do with how to make a world. Having a creation story is fun to write but it doesn't explain why this swamp is here or that mesa is there or why this river has so many tributaries plus you'd have to have a creation story for every culture...that's a lot of writing. No one culture has access to the whole planet so their mythologies are rather narrow -- the Greeks say nothing about how Zeus made the Grand Canyon, Mt. Fuji, or penguins. These stories cover the big picture stuff and not the minutia. To me, it also gets trite to say "Joe the Awesome Troll-Slayer died here so god put a mountain here". That mountain had to have been there before Joe.

    My main goal is to have the land shape the people and they in turn shape the culture and what we know about that world. I don't think that I could do it the other way around -- start with a culture and go backward to see how the world made them that way. My sense of wonderment has nothing to do with how the world was made but instead how that world molded fantastical creatures like bugmen or lizardmen and how that world created the cultures and their myths. If only I could write about such things instead of draw...



    then I'd probably wish that I could draw
    If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
    -J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)


    My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps

  7. #7
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Steel General's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Ft. Wayne, IN
    Posts
    9,530

    Default

    Sometimes I have a story first, other times the story comes after.
    My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...

    Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.



  8. #8

    Default

    I tend to avoid things like creation myths and religion on general principle. If I had created a awesome map that no one could beat I wouldn't be happy to find out that someone had stolen it and marketed it for millions, so why should I try to create a god?

    To be honest I don't think the average western Joe would care that much about yet another creation myth. However I do give my readers a starting point of some sort.

    An example: Wizard A grows up in village being mentored by Wizard B. A discovers immortality. 9 million years later the story starts as Wizard A picks up an apprentice called Wizard C. Wizard C is the Hero/Heroine and over time learns about Wizard A and the World. Plot devices to bind Wizard A's power may be necessary.

    The origin myth substitute is that before Wizard A people just lived in villages doing not much. It even comes with shake 'n' bake villains as Wizard C discovers Wizard A's enemies.
    The Transporter: Proof that scantily clad mud fighting men are entertaining!

  9. #9
    Guild Journeyer Syt's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Vienna, Austria
    Posts
    105

    Default

    Most of my 'verses has some sort of origin. I love history, so mapping out histories is half the fun for me.

    Religion/mythology is often much harder, but I try to have those root in either historical procedings in that world and/or derived from prehistoric attempts to find a moral code or explain the world.

  10. #10

    Default

    But does the origin story evolve from the map? Or the map from the origin?

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •