Too Much Worldbuilding?

[Aleema]

In a fictional setting, when can worldbuilding become overwhelming or unnecessary?
I used to think the answer was "never", but now I think that there can be a point when it's too much, or at least distracting. I've seen comments on some games where the response was that the creator spent too much time focusing on the background elements (location, politics, etc). When should I stop and remind myself it's about the characters?

I suppose the execution is what matters. Infodumping would be boring if too much, but perhaps actually beneficial to some readers who can't read between the lines. I prefer just immersing the reader into the world, and showing-rather-than-telling. I actually want to include a sort of encyclopedia into my final game, where people can just look up the information on the world if they truly cared, so I don't have to make it required ... But I don't want it to be like, "Oh god, she said that word again. Now I have to look it up."

I'm asking because in one of my games, the characters traverse their fantasy land and go through various cities. Each city has a name, each city has an inn with a name, etc. Will people just start to blot out names altogether after a while? Would it be a turn off? I guess what I'm asking is, should I severely limit how many fake names I should drop into the dialogue? Meaning, turn most every sentence like: "I'm going to CITYNAME." into: "I'm going to town."

That said, I am not skimping on the story or characters for the setting in any way. I just want to know what would be considered too much detail in the "background".

[dreamer]

IMHO, Songs of Araiah ahem... some games receive comments about the world being too detailed not because the world is really too detailed, but because there were some elements introduced about the world in the story, which could have logically led to some potentially bigger plot twists later in the story. The way the world was introduced hinted at the possibility that the characters would be able to interact with these world elements at some point, but since they never did, it gives the impression that the world too detailed in comparison to the characters.

So, my opinion is that the world should be as complex or as simple as you want it to be as long as you are certain that you don't mislead the reader by introducing possible unexplored plot points in your exposition.

I think having unique names for each city, inn or person in your story is fine. It helps to immerse the reader into the fictional world and makes it seem that much more realistic as opposed to a generic "this village, that inn, a shopkeeper" etc.

Background details are good, just don't give the reader the impression that there's another epic adventure related to your main characters underneath those details. when there really isn't.

[sake-bento]

Well, in my extensive meager experience, this is the theory I've come up with.

Pick a few names and make them count. It's okay if every town and inn and shop has a name (It's like that in Star Ocean), but don't expect the players to make an effort to remember them. Pick out a few important names of cities, people, events, etc. and make those the ones that matter.
The anime series Darker than Black uses code names for all the super powered characters, which quickly gets annoying as each of the three secret organizations uses different code names. He's Hei! He's Li! He's the Black Reaper! He's BK-201! Wait, they're all the same person? Good thing he's got a friend like Amber/February/UB-001 to help him remember all his names.
In contrast, Avatar: The Last Airbender created an entire world with different nations and cultures, but it's rare for me to be confused about which town they're talking about. The Avatar wiki assures me that the Earth Kingdom has many cities with names, but I only remember Omashu and Ba Sing Se. Both were important cities referenced many times in the series. All other city names were quickly discarded as soon as the gang passed through.

[Koveras]

I plead guilty of spending too much time on world-building rather than actually writing stories.

IMO how much world building is required depends largely on the genre. If you are doing an RPG, you'll need a whole lot of it, if it's a linear adventure, you only need what your character directly sees or hears about in the story...

On another note, it is probably a bad idea to do extensive world building before actually writing the story, because you tend to get carried away. AFAIK great fictional worlds are created when an author first writes a great story set in a world that serves entirely the purpose of the plot (often at the expense of consistency), and then returns for a sequel where the setting is significantly standardized, revamped, and ordered.

One example I can name is Tolkien. Let's be fair: for all it's quality world-building, his Silmarillion is plain boring. Nobody but the die hard fans read it (I did, by the way ^^). Then in comes The Hobbit, essentially, a children fairy tale where decorations are pulled together for the sake of colorfulness and plot variety. It was slightly popular but then came the Lord of the Rings... Which was basically a darker and edgier sequel to The Hobbit but which included to expansive background of the Silmarillion. And that's how one of the greatest fantasy worlds also became the most famous. ^^

[Voight-Kampff]

In a fictional setting, when can worldbuilding become overwhelming or unnecessary?

Hmm. That is an interesting question. I suppose if you hold up Tolkien as a benchmark, there's pretty much no limit to the amount of world building that you can do, as evidenced by the Silmarillion. Basically, years after the Lord of the Rings was done and published and he was long since dead, someone found piles of background documents he used to create the LotR universe.

That being said - he was a well-to-do British professor with a LOT of time on his hands. And honestly? I really don't remember most of the names of the characters and locations and creatures from LotR. I remember the events and the emotional impact those characters made, however.

EDIT - And I see Koveras beat me to it...

Pulling from the world of VNs, I'm reminded of the "Nasu-verse". I think one of the biggest failings in Fate Stay Night was Nasu's insistance on explaining the rules of the Grail War, Masters, Maguses, Servants, classes, etc. over and over. Some of that detail was necessary. But I found the implementation to be painful at points.

[Koveras]

That being said - he was a well-to-do British professor with a LOT of time on his hands.

Don't forget that he was also a WW1 veteran, and his sons fought in the WW2, so when he wrote about war, he knew just what exactly he was writing about. And it shows.

Pulling from the world of VNs, I'm reminded of the "Nasu-verse". I think one of the biggest failings in Fate Stay Night was Nasu's insistance on explaining the rules of the Grail War, Masters, Maguses, Servants, classes, etc. over and over. Some of that detail was necessary. But I found the implementation to be painful at points.

I agree with you on that. Devising all those intricate rules and stats and then not making a full-blown RPG system out of them is just disappointing.

[Jake]

IMHO, Songs of Araiah ahem... some games receive comments about the world being too detailed not because the world is really too detailed, but because there were some elements introduced about the world in the story, which could have logically led to some potentially bigger plot twists later in the story.
...
So, my opinion is that the world should be as complex or as simple as you want it to be as long as you are certain that you don't mislead the reader by introducing possible unexplored plot points in your exposition.

I'd agree with this, really.

If you're writing a story, then worldbuilding absolutely, positively has to play second fiddle to the actual plot. One well-subscribed theory of writing says that when you go through editing, you should cut out anything that doesn't further your story - it's not the worst idea in the world, and that includes detailing the history of the unseen wife of the tavern cook that your protagonist glimpses briefly through the kitchen door one time before leaving that town to never return. If you introduce a character, a town, a place or a bit of history, do it because that element is necessary to support part of your actual plot.

This doesn't mean that you can't decide what colour the cook's wife's hair is, and where she shops for meat, where she went to school and what kind of people her parents were. And coming up with place names, tavern names and so on is useful in case you find that you need them, just be prepared to carefully prune what you really need for your story.

If you're making a gigantic, well-detailed functioning world first and foremost, then you're not writing a story, you're writing a setting. If that's all you want to do, you should write for an RPG company, not a novel.

[Wintermoon]

Nothing wrong with world building. Just don't put it in the story.

It's vitally important that you know more about the world than the audience. More than that: it's vitally important that you can keep most of the world secret from the audience.

The audience will be bored to tears if you provide a detailed blow-by-blow account of (say) the demon wars in your story. However, by putting a throw-away reference to the demon wars into the story without explaining anything, you can pique the audiences interest. You can give the impression that the demon wars were much more interesting than they actually were, which in turn gives the impression that your world is much more interesting than it actually is. You need to know the details of the demon war so that your throw-away reference seems believable. Your audience doesn't.

Your world should contain your story, not the other way around.

[Aleema]

I'm very pleased with the responses in this thread. They were very enlightening and reassuring. Most of you basically supported my preference of the "show, don't tell" narrative. Now I can see that I haven't crossed the line of excessiveness yet, and that I'm putting the worldbuilding to good use. Thanks, everyone!

IMHO, Songs of Araiah ahem... some games receive comments about the world being too detailed not because the world is really too detailed, but because there were some elements introduced about the world in the story, which could have logically led to some potentially bigger plot twists later in the story. The way the world was introduced hinted at the possibility that the characters would be able to interact with these world elements at some point, but since they never did, it gives the impression that the world too detailed in comparison to the characters.

I like this post, because when I remember back, I think it was the 'Songs of Araiah' thread where I made the mental note of "uh oh, have I done the same thing?" I can't remember, and I haven't played it -- but if that's indeed what was causing those comments, then I feel better.

It's vitally important that you know more about the world than the audience. More than that: it's vitally important that you can keep most of the world secret from the audience.

That's beautiful, and very true!

[this_barb]

Pulling from the world of VNs, I'm reminded of the "Nasu-verse". I think one of the biggest failings in Fate Stay Night was Nasu's insistance on explaining the rules of the Grail War, Masters, Maguses, Servants, classes, etc. over and over. Some of that detail was necessary. But I found the implementation to be painful at points.

Then, it seems your primary gripe with FSN is is repetition and not necessarily with its lore. FSN is still my favorite visual novel but my main gripe with it was that the mechanics of the world felt too much like an school RPG to seem realistic/natural. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that I hate literal power/magic levels that have been hammered into my head from my days of watching DBZ.

[Voight-Kampff]

Then, it seems your primary gripe with FSN is is repetition and not necessarily with its lore.

Well, I suppose that is accurate. I just don't have very many VNs under my belt to use as examples.

Hmm. Okay, this is still a stretch, but I suppose I could use Kagetsu Tohya as an example. Each time you start the game, you get little blurbs of info. Most are irrelevant. But often, you'll get info about the different Dead Apostles. Honestly? I don't care. We know Arcueid hunts Dead Apostles. We know Nqrsvr (um, however it's spelled) was a Dead Apostle. That's good enough for me. I really don't need to know about any of the others.

But as I said, that's a stretch. That information is presented in a very skip-able way. So it's not a big deal.

Now I suppose if Nasu spent most of Tsukihime having Arcueid going on and on about the various different Dead Apostles, then I could point to that as an example of wasting time on too much world building and detail.

Or maybe it has to do with the fact that I hate literal power/magic levels that have been hammered into my head from my days of watching DBZ.

*facepalm* Great. As soon as I read that, you made me remember the 'it's over 9,000' meme. And I had almost forgotten about that one. Thanks a lot.

[JinzouTamashii]

The fact that FSN had profiles with "levels" of magic only confused me because I was expecting... well... a rudimentary rock-paper-scissors battle system.

[DaFool]

Songs of Araiah's problem was simple. It was dropped halfway in the script by Drake, picked up by Enerccio, then edited by me to make sure the writing styles were consistent. We just wanted to finish the damn thing at that point.

Granted, the world was indeed too massive for what the plot called for -- but this actually is beneficial in that more stories can be told in the 'Araiah-verse'.

I'm pretty sure had the story not stagnate midway before being given an injection, the full scope of the world would have been realized.

[blankd]

It's pretty subjective in my opinion, but the world and its details should flow naturally if you're going for show instead of tell in that most details can be told from context and usage. Feel free to name major locations because that is a natural aspect, just use sensible names if you want them to be remembered. XD

*History details can be tricky though, so it's best to keep them concise! You can make details of the event optional for others to view, but for the average player, less is more.

[JinzouTamashii]

When it comes to world-building, sometimes I shape the writing to match the visuals... and sometimes the visuals shape the writing.

It's vitally important that you can keep most of the world secret from the audience.

On that note, here's a snippet for a writing tip I found:

Did you talk to a crowd?

Or did you enchant a crowd?

Thunder down on the crowd?

Command the crowd?

I think that, in general, that should apply to your descriptions and world-building as well. Please don't make them bland. Make them stand up and sing beautifully, drawing the reader in that way as well... of course, all this is just theory, the hard part is putting it into practice! Extended metaphors are good, just don't make it purple.