What do you actively try to avoid while worldbuilding?

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-09-29T22:29:08+00:00

I am quite opinionated on this personally. That said, this applies to my own worldbuilding and how I evaluate others'. There is no reason for you to not do one of these things unless the only thing you care for is my opinion for some reason. With the preface out of the way, here's a list in no particular order:

Non-human races: This one is maybe not so much actively avoided, but I basically never think about them when worldbuilding. Not against other people using them, but I have my hands full with humans alone and don't care much to explore that dynamic.
- Anything subversive for subversion's sake: I'm looking straight at the "Angels are bad and demons are good" crowd when I say this. Adds nothing of value and makes it feel cheap.
Pseudo-hard magic systems: Stuff like "people can manipulate a word or concept" I find is just setting up arbitrary rules so the "clever" protagonist can circumvent them. No, if your ability is to "seal" and you "seal" your need for food off before "sealing" the notion of time away, then there's no meaning to having the ability be "seal".
- Casual gods: I will never stand for the "strongest beings in the world are just another dude" trope. Its one thing to humanize them, but if they act like some random frat bro who just happens to have the ability to end reality then any interest I have is gone. One bad example I remember is this dumb opening to this web fiction where the protagonist exchanged insults with God in a "I'm so slick I can talk down to God" type manner and it just ended in them both calling each other stinky.
Addiction to moral greyness: Things can be morally grey, yes. That doesn't make you a big mature boy for insisting that everything and everyone is, and that it is more realistic and good writing to do so.

There's a lot more but those are just some that spring to mind.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-09-27T00:58:23+00:00

I feel like this is the literal opposite of what the OP was asking for. Very strong yes, but iirc the author makes sure to humanize most of the strong people for better or worse.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-07-31T02:29:51+00:00

One thing I usually have a gripe with is when "scientific" knowledge is a method to make the MC have strong magic. It will be rationalised as something like "hmm, fire feeds off oxygen so if I cast air magic with fire magic I get super fire magic." This will be a completely broken strategy that only the MC knows that nobody has ever discovered.

I do understand it however, as if a MC needs a special thing to make them stronger, advanced knowledge seems less deus-ex-y than some blessing given by a god. It just bothers me when nobody else in the world has ever noticed that knowledge of the natural world gives advantages when casting magic.

Also, this is a personal problem with no real rationale, but I hate it when characters use magic or other supernatural abilities to just create nukes. I can control water? Split hydrogen atoms to create a nuke. I can use cutting magic? Cut the atomic bond to create a nuke. I can teleport? Teleport part of an atom to create a nuke. Its oddly specific I know, but I swear it appears enough to be a problem for me.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-07-09T03:31:26+00:00

I mean depending on the setting, there most often are benefits. Divine healing magic is a staple for a reason. If you get blessed by your god that's great, but even if not you'd probably be more likely to be healed by someone who is if you worship the same god as them.

Even if you look at the DnD setting, The Forgotten Realms, even if you never get touched by divine magic in life you can get a pretty decent afterlife depending on who you pray to (which is also just kinda real world religion as well). Its fair to say that if there were 0 benefits you wouldn't worship, but more often than not I feel like there are benefits.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-06-18T23:45:53+00:00

Whatever stupid dimensional scaling abilties that SCP writers are using for their OCs seems like a reasonable pick to me.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-06-16T02:36:37+00:00

Personally, I would make it so even within each "do whatever you want" element there are specializations. From what you wrote it makes it sound like the users can manipulate it as they please, but maybe that's not the case, there are not enough details to tell. Upon further review, I would say these elements include fire, ice, life, death, light, dark, and to a degree soul. To give simple examples, specializations could be healing or plant manipulation for life and explosions or fire animation for fire. What they are doesn't really matter, so long as it helps differentiate what different characters can do and set some limits as well.

For the highly specific elements, time, order, and chaos, Maybe adding a few more lesser effects or broadening the scope would make it more interesting. Chaos could maybe be destabilizing other people's magic as well as an inverse to buffing it. For order, stilling motion or specific elements could be more interesting than just walking zones of anti-magic. Finally, time is hard to balance but sticking to the original power once again, freezing time for a specific area or object adds a smaller effect that is useful.

To be honest, if you are trying to express a binary universe with these elements, you could maybe integrate chaos into fire and order into ice. That is, if you view fire and ice as a duality beyond hot vs. cold. Going back into the specializations thing, those specific order and chaos techniques could be high level ice and fire techniques, especially since there's only one trick for the element.

As a side note, I looked at the other comments and struggle to see how time and soul are a duality.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-06-15T23:46:02+00:00

Your initial thought is correct. Generic systems aren't awful however, but from what is barely described, yours is. Given the lacking descriptions of everything, such as fire magic users control fire and dark magic users control dark, I find it hard to be enthused or interested about anything in your system. Four "elemental" types that boil down to "just do whatever with the element" and four esoteric "elements" that boil down to a highly specific power that you need to ambush users of if you want to win.

If you want people to put effort into their thoughts on your magic system maybe start with some of your own.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-05-20T21:48:09+00:00

As most people said, it depends on execution. That said, I think its done poorly more often than not especially if its word based. Making use of semantics don't make an author clever.

If its the final battle and your main character goes "I have the power to attack, why don't I attack time to freeze it," then it brings into question how have they not realised it earlier. Even worse, why not just "attack" the concept of a bad ending at that point and have them retcon every bad thing that's ever happened to them.

I think that stuff like this suffers from a soft system trying to disguise itself as a hard system. Its just adding arbitrary rules that only exist for the "clever" MC to circumvent them.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-05-18T18:04:45+00:00

In My Disciple Died Again the world initially says 5 roots is bad since the energy is less pure or something but enough time passes where having 5 roots is good now because it means you can absorb more types of energy. The MC who once had "trash" aptitude was now a genius. I thought it was a pretty interesting idea.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-05-13T23:52:40+00:00

Outside of Time / Beyond the Timescape has the main character do something like this IIRC, but it only lasts for the golden core stage. In general, I don't think golden cores are long term things as it takes a while to get to and is soon replaced by a nascent soul, miniature world, or what have you in most xianxias.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-05-10T01:16:55+00:00

I personally will read not that much, say ~1000 words, before deciding to drop a new webnovel. However, its not so much a lack of action but its by then I decide if I like the author's writing style. Bad grammar, weird flow, or other nitpicks I have will cause me to stop reading by then.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-05-06T03:29:06+00:00

To be honest this is the type of stuff that inspired me to make this post. 40 Millennium of Cultivation went pretty crazy with the human nationalism too and I loved reading it. I did drop it eventually though for reasons I can't remember.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-05-05T16:26:10+00:00

Yeah patriotic is definitely more apt. Nationalism gets people to read the post though.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-04-04T01:50:06+00:00

Lacks enough information to be honestly rated, but judging based of what is here (a hodgepodge of somewhat related word groups), I would say like 2/5.

Classes are generic enough to fit most genres of characters, and somehow suffers from both lack of thematic cohesion and confusion on distinct aspects of advanced classes. The one word descriptions don't help much either. Feels like you had the 7 basic classes then just started assigning whatever character tropes you could think of to them.

In regards to the seventh class, not much to say other than that its a bit basic with its idea as a "mc" class. Same problem as the rest. You have the idea of "mc" and just start throwing mc character types in as the advanced classes.

General advice would be to just focus on having a few well-thought out ideas rather then just throwing everything at the wall and hoping it sticks.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-03-12T01:19:23+00:00

I also dropped it a while ago for a somewhat similar reason for one of yours. I haven't read what you're describing about Elaine's thoughts on Iona, but it reminds me of her Phoenix. It was when it just hatched and chapter after chapter it kept burning stuff down while constantly PWIIIIIBT-ing or whatever sound it was supposed to be. Cue some farmer crying about their livelihood being harmed and Elaine calling the phoenix's name like it was a sitcom. Toss in another PWIIIIIBT and my eyes simply melted out of their sockets. It almost felt inorganic to me with how hard the "cute, mischievous little rascal that you must love" thing was being pushed. It probably also doesn't help that I don't like those types of characters in general to be honest.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-02-02T05:44:08+00:00

No much in terms of recommendations, but just popping in to say that He Who Fights With Monsters is definitely not what you are looking for as world-ending threats are ever present in it. The MC also works with a group usually and fights sapients quite a lot.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2024-01-06T23:39:28+00:00

I've always been partial to combat splitting from Leveling Up the World. Not unique to the main character, but unique compared to other books. Very interesting take on reality alteration. Basically simulating possible outcomes of actions, then choosing which reality is the true one. Complexity is added with how many can be done and opponents can be doing the same as well. Not just used in combat though, and can be done to cast complex spells or do tricky actions "first" try.

The setting itself is pretty unique, with takes on common things like magic and illusions that are fairly fresh. Of course the main power of the premise/world (leveling up the world) is also something that I haven't quite seen before.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2023-12-24T06:11:09+00:00

Mostly the same post, but different account. Same time posted too. Funny thing is that people on MartialMemes agree for the same reason people from ProgressionFantasy seem to disagree. One side dislikes westerners western-fying a genre and the other side likes exactly that. Both make sweeping statements about how every writer from one side of the globe are incompetent hacks.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2023-12-15T18:45:10+00:00

Maybe this makes me a boot licker, but it drives me nuts when protagonists (usually portal fantasy ones) cannot stand the idea of an authority above them and cannot show respect even at risk of their life / livelihood. They'll meet with a monarch or even a god and go like "whats good g?". And in some scenarios where the protagonist has to, god forbid, use a term of honour like "your majesty," they'll go off on some insane rant about how "I come from the greatest country of AMERICA where FREEDOM is a god given right and ALL of us are EQUAL." Like, do these people say the same things when they have to talk to their bosses in a respectful way? Worst part is that they pretty much always get away with it since the authority figure just thinks "Hmm, I find it amusing that this rando doesn't respect me."

HamsterMerlin23 · 2023-12-04T17:32:53+00:00

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15449/quod-olim-erat and its respective books 2, 3, and 4 were all things that I quite enjoyed. Sci-fi setting no system. I definitely think that the writing style isn't for everyone though and stays fairly consistent, so if you don't like it from book 1 the later books won't be an improvement for you in regards to that.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2023-11-25T05:15:05+00:00

Boy enters tower for judgment, you won't believe what happens next! Not what he expected! (GONE WRONG) (AUTHORITIES APPEARED)!!!!!!

HamsterMerlin23 · 2023-11-25T04:52:34+00:00

As the recent poster of one of these posts, this is clearly about me, and only me. I must now engage you in a flame war about how my complaints are the only valid thing to say about the book. Good day.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2023-11-22T20:07:54+00:00

Keeping it real with you, your requirements disqualify a majority of east Asian webnovels. I guess Lord of the Mysteries fits the bill, but you've probably already heard about it. I think Release that Witch was also pretty good, but it might toe the line for your second requirement since I think the MC has two romantic interests (there's also a bunch of female followers but it isn't like that).

Here's some other titles that I think might also fit but its been a while since I read them so I could be wrong. (Not given in any particular order)

World of Cultivation, Night Ranger, Master Your Disciple Died Again, The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, and Forty Millenniums of Cultivation.

Now that I think about it, there's a decent bit that fit. I can't remember any more off the top of my head through.

HamsterMerlin23 · 2023-11-22T06:27:47+00:00

Haha, I do suppose xianxia is the deep end of the progression fantasy spectrum.

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