Organic Worldbuilding: A Wanderer’s Way

‘If this, then that:’ A Method

When thinking about worldbuilding, we usually take the approach of creating a vehicle for our narrative. Emphasis is on creating; we’re taking virgin clay and carefully sculpting it into any shape we desire. 

But there is another way. Organic Worldbuilding is the approach I have been using for many, many years now. Small, inconsequential, unfinished and forgotten worlds litter my hard drive; not carefully sculpted, but grown. Or should I say: Discovered.

The idea of this method is not to craft, in the traditional sense. It is to discover. To walk through its aspects and discover what comes next. Not because I want something specific to be there, but because it is. Because that’s where my feet took me. Because that’s what makes sense in the world. With Organic Worldbuilding, the ‘builder’ is not an omniscient, omnipotent creator. They are a traveller through unknown lands, a chronicler penning down yet-to-be-met civilizations, laying eyes on solutions nobody has encountered before, taste food and drink nobody has tasted before.

The method is simple: You start out by drawing a some rough shapes; outside the shapes is sea, inside is land. Then you answer a few simple questions: What ways will the wind blow? What places receive most sunlight? Where do continents meet, where do they depart? From this information, you can deduce what comes next. You can deduce where the land is rocky and craggy or where there is sand, what weather happens where, what types of vegetation one might expect. Then come animals; what creatures would thrive in such environments? The farther you travel down this road paved with questions, the more you discover about this world, this world which started as just a few squiggly lines on a piece of paper. Eventually, people arise. People use technologies, and you have discovered the challenges they must meet, and the resources they have at their disposal to do so. Culture forms around those challenges and their solutions. Common values, such as hospitality in the arid north, or the gift of water in the sandy desert. Whether they settle or travel, or do a bit of both. Their outlooks on life, their philosophies, their environmental and social needs, their religions, their attitudes to others. 

And as you travel down this road, things may change. Things are always changing. Successful strategies can cause population booms, and, in turn, lead to war and migration. Even simple things, like a change in the winds, can set the wheels in motion. History is growing like a sapling tree, and as it collects rings, so do the cultures and their technologies evolve. By following the lines of causality, carefully jotting down the major events unfolding before your feet, the world becomes more defined, more evolved. You will witness its splendours rather than craft them.

But you will not only witness its splendours. This world you’re travelling obeys causality. Like water, events follow the path of least resistance. It will have flowers, catching the rays of its closest stars and transforming them in beauty… And it will have ravenous and uncaring predators who, mindless of that beauty, brutally tear it from the ground and pound it to mulch in their hungry jaws. 

Removed from the flower, this creature may also be beautiful, elegant, and kind to others… But for this creature, too, waits another hungry being, hidden from sight, ready to pounce.

And in this dynamic, people exist. The cultures you come across may be different from what you’re used to. I wrote a Woodlander culture who, with little access to metal tools, have devised ingenious solutions. In their waste-not context, their funerary rites include stripping the body of skin, bone, tendon and ligament, and craft these into venerated items like composite bows, hunting spears, bonemeal pottery and more; venerated items to be gifted to the grieving family. A gruelling tradition to many, I’m sure, but a holy celebration of a loved one to them. When travelling along their road, I discovered their relationship with the Arrenites, whose goat herding and wagon production do damage to the Woodlanders’ attempts at expanding the bountiful forests they revere religiously. 

And here we have discovered a clash of lifestyle, of needs, of ideologies and spirituality. 

As an Organic Worldbuilder, we do not choose sides. We observe. We recognize the differences these people have. Our power is limited; we cannot simply magic such problems away and create a wonderful utopia. In doing so, we have taken the life from this world. We have taken its autonomy. We are no longer organically worldbuilding, but imposing our desires on it. We are no longer travelling.

The beauty of Organic Worldbuilding, however, is that you can call a world ‘done’ by simply stopping the clock. And from that moment onward, you can become a Writer. Or a Game Master. You can create characters (or better: have roleplayers create characters), and let those characters interact with the world. Who knows; maybe those characters can do what you are powerless to do? Maybe they can bring mutual understanding and even cooperation to the Woodlanders and Arrenites. Maybe they will be the breeze that sets the wheels in motion yet again, sending those peoples on different paths yet again.

So Why Organic Worldbuilding?

Simply said: Because I’m a traveller at heart. I love going new places and not knowing what I find there. I love the journey more than I do the destination. I don’t plan my holidays; I want to go where the road takes me. If I see a sign for a sight-seeing site, I might go there. If I’ve walked down a road for as long as I like, I take a turn to find what’s elsewhere. I love discovery, and love what it teaches me about people and their experiences.

But there are other benefits. By not choosing sides, I do not decide who is evil or who is good. Sure, the Arrenites may think of the Woodlanders as evil because they keep attacking them and pushing back the grazing lands the Arrenites need. The Woodlanders, in turn, think of the Arrenites as evil because they damage that which nurtures them; the forests they consider holy. But I do not condemn either. I understand both. I know them both. I am not setting an entire people up to be villainous. Organic Worldbuilding allows the denizens of this world to write their own stories. Usually hidden from sight, but always with their own perspectives, their own ideas, their own experiences. 

And sometimes, things may emerge that can be confronting. Usually, that’s something benign, like the Woodlanders crafting tools from the bodies of the dead. Sometimes, it’s more difficult, like a ruler taking an opportunity for expansion to the point of imperialism. 

When that happens, however, we can learn about the how and why. We’re not faced with a fictional strawman of the problem, but a simulation of it. And at any time, we can decide to stop that clock, prepare a roleplaying campaign, and dump a couple of players right into the imperialist’s plans!

If you are interested in starting off with Organic Worldbuilding, please consider taking a look at https://talespinner.eu/narrator/world-building#top for a simple step-by-step introduction guide.