Discussion World Building And Chaos

[Annasari]

What tactics work for your planetary development? I’m talking to you, folks who pick a world and make it your own, or custom enjoyers who keep the ball rolling after submission.

Anna here has been senator of Jakku a long while. The planet has a pretty cool “in” to GA, which gave me the fuel and the stage to establish its loose government and a few societal tidbits. TLDR, stuff if still poor and crime ridden, but at least it’s organized (despite our Jedi neighbors)! In my writing, I try to drop odes where I can; decorating offices with native fauna, bodyguards comprised of rough and tough criminals, a new mine which brought an influx of cash! The threads I’ve set planetside obviously have a much better time of establishing world lore, though it’s always just a backdrop.

It never, however, feels like enough.

It’s fluff - pretty fluff - but nothing substantial. I’d like to figure out how to do more, while I’m away from writing and have the time to brainstorm.

So how did you world build your favorite planet? What are some of the big role plays you’ve done to develop it? Do you feel the need to document in codex, or do you keep it in the think tank? When you are subbing to codex, what kind of stuff to do submit? How do you make it yours and keep canon identity, if it has one?

 

[Junko Ike]

me and Bounce built up atrisia though combination lore, npc, location and others subs that went into it with a 1000+ dev thread expanding and testing things we put into it. It has taken years but it has been fun and incorporates the things that we enjoy.

Best advice is to for your world go with yourr inspiration and theme and build from there.

 

[Annasari]

me and Bounce built up atrisia though combination lore, npc, location and others subs that went into it with a 1000+ dev thread expanding and testing things we put into it. It has taken years but it has been fun and incorporates the things that we enjoy.

Best advice is to for your world go with yourr inspiration and theme and build from there.

Atrisia is one of the best. Your guy’s passion shows!

 

[Ellie Mors]

A long time ago I was super invested (and maybe obsessed) with running Empress Teta. I based an entire character around it, wrote a government for it (and did a lot more wiki reading on political theory than I ever would have expected to before that point), and did random one-off stories that were from the perspective of various NPCs that I created for various walks of life on the planet (sort of did a vertical slice and had one-to-three npcs for everything from lower-class/economically unfortunate up to the royalty and everything in-between).

I never really submitted a lot to the codex, a couple of npcs super early on I think was it, but I also built a company that was tied to the planet (Koros Spaceworks, same name as the canon starship company) and built on it as well (as well as how it impacted the day-to-day lives of the people on the planet). The submission aspect (codex, factory) had a really shallow feeling to me, trying to create an experience that (at least for me) felt like a planet/society where there were decisions that had "real" consequences was what gave things weight (again, at least for me).

Actions my main face (Lily, the empress of Teta) and others made had rippling consequences for the lives of the fictional people of the planet, granted it was a planet that people loved invading so I had the benefit of that pre-existing tension, but the more I treated the nameless, faceless, people on the planet as if they were PCs that just didn't have the sort of main-character syndrome that actual PCs have the more it felt like there was an actual planet there and not just a sort of green-screen with a name floating somewhere off-screen for people to use as a vaguely pictured setting for threads.

I think a lot of planets on the map that see a lot of action that you'd consider "developed" in terms of world-building probably have the same kind of thing going for them, if a bit more disjointed and incidental as a result of so many different people writing threads that use them as a setting. It also helps if people actually are aware of events that go on at a given planet, which requires a more constant presence than I think a lot of people are willing to dedicate to a single planet - once I shelved my last teta-related character I decided it was also time to leave the planet be, too, and a lot of past events are probably forgotten as a result of nobody being there to constantly provide that context to people (and people don't typically check the codex for canon planets so I don't think this is something that'd be a good substitute for).

Annasari

 

[Junko Ike]

Atrisia is one of the best. Your guy’s passion shows!

THank you, we tried to make something fun and have more planned as we have continued to flesh things out. Just got a planetary maintenance system (think fizz from dark nest) that will basically regen the soil for crops, clean the air and water. As well as the hollow center of the world with its internal moon.

 

[Jonyna Si]

For me, it's Cathar.

A lot of what I've been doing has just been trying to make it a consistent place my character likes to meet people on, and slowly building up it's importance to other people through my character.

At the end of the day, planets really only exist to be settings for the story you wanna tell, and the story I want to tell is that Jonyna is a very proud member of her species. A woman who honors her traditions and acts as a representative for her species within the Jedi order. One thing I've learned on Chaos is that no one cares about individual planets, they care about individual characters. Making a planet important to a character that people care about is at least in my limited experience, how one gets planets noticed. Make your character important, and make your planet important to your character!

 

[Inanna Harth]

1.) Pick a planet that has very little established lore. I don't go for stubs as I feel like those are too vague. Lao-mon and Dahrtag were both pretty sparse, but each had a clear enough identity that I wasn't working with basically nothing.

2.) Don't try to sub your version of the planet until you've amassed enough lore to warrant it. This gives you room to experiment and make mistakes that you may want to retcon later without having an already approved sub hanging over your head. I spent a solid 4 years roleplaying a Shi'ido before I subbed my version of her homeworld.

3.) A lot of people (mainly NERDS) will write their story around their lore. I prefer to write the lore around the story. There is no lore that doesn't serve a purpose to some story I wrote at some point. That way it's not fluff, and feels more lived in.

4.) I've seen people try to make a planet that features their personal idea of a "perfect" society. It always sucks, so don't do that. Every society has flaws. These problems can be exploited for drama to make your RP more fun.

5.) In college I minored in Religious Studies. One of the first things they taught was that, for any civilization to come into being, the civilization must have a religion. In broad terms, the culture must have a core set of values/beliefs that everyone interacts with in some way, whether they agree with them or not. These values and beliefs shape how the people view their world and those outside it.

6.) Think outside the box. Lao-mon is a jungle planet full of predator species and sentient shapeshifters. Presumably they do not live like us humans do. Do they live in houses, or is their environment too dangerous for permanent settlements? A random book from 1997 mentions that they have clean streets. So they do have houses, but are they on the ground, underground, or in the trees above it? The Wookiee page says they value family very highly, with even distant relatives related by marriage being considered family. Maybe they settle in clans rather than cities. Wookiee also says they are democratic, so they have no nobility. That means no Shi'ido princesses, sorry. You get the picture.

7.) Try not to be too self-indulgent... but not to the point where you're not having any fun with it. Don't go all out with cliches and contrivances, but don't be afraid to go with the most obvious option if you're struggling to be original.

That's all I've got for now.

 

[Auteme]

W post from Annasari PER USUAL.

Ellie Mors really like your bit about making sure NPCs feel like people. I find a strange amount of enjoyment in adding a bit of flesh to the bones of 'side' characters; when everyone feels like they have their own thing going on, the galaxy feels more real. Planet-wise, I feel like internal politics are very important, reactions to major changes, etc.

Great advice from Inanna Harth PER USUAL as well. You always make me think.

Sort of building off of Jonyna Si 's point, I want to add a couple more questions to the pile -- how do you guys make your planets 'important' to other writers? How do you attract them into those stories and environments? Is having your character be ingrained with that planet and pulling other characters aside the only way? Have you tried anything else that's worked in getting people interested?

Looking at my roster now, I'm finding my characters to be almost entirely rootless wanderers. I have a couple who I haven't written as much who are probably a bit better connected to particular places/peoples, but Auteme and Xeykard could be from anywhere and you wouldn't know it (though, might be working to rectify the latter, we'll see). However, I really enjoy adding bits of flavour to cultural interactions, environment, etc.; I like describing places, giving things names, adding a moment of interaction with a stranger to open a thread or something. I'd pull examples but I'm lazy. Regardless, almost all of my worldbuilding ends up spur of the moment just to make the galaxy feel a little more real, but I've never really gotten the chance to "develop" any particular place, or build up one planet's lore much. I bow in the face of your mastery.

 

[Junko Ike]

how do you guys make your planets 'important' to other writers? How do you attract them into those stories and environments?

Well I can't speak for others but I just write on the world. If others want to join they are more then welcome and they can do things with me or bounce or even Alli when she is around for as long as they want and then move on. That could be a week, a day, a year.... longer. Supisy Blen and Latyuo Shuy rp with me and on the worrld and have become interested in it to tell stories just from the world building we have been doing.

 

[Jonyna Si]

how do you guys make your planets 'important' to other writers?

One of the ways I've done this is the fact that Jonyna has a house on Cathar. One she likes using as a meeting place for personal stuff, and to show off her own culture.

I think giving your character a home base can go a long way to making a planet important. Something as small as a domicile or apartment building means that planet has something on it worth investing in. Repeated use of that place can make it so that other writers become interested in the area around it.

Jonyna also has a Company Headquarters in the same area, which she uses occasionally for business type meetings.

Describing places like this can get repetitive, but it's really nice to see the same place twice or three times that has meaning to your characters. And it can force you to get creative on how you describe that place the third or fourth time for the sake of a new writer who hasn't been there before.

 

[Ariel Yvarro]

I love world building and I think a lot of what has been said here is great. I love to incorporate different cultures into my worlds, part of why I fell in love with Anthropology. And to Inanna Harth 's point culture is definitely how you as a person view your world, it is a reflection of language, and norms/values and a set of belief systems. I often think about that when working on my cities. and for Chaos when it comes to world building. I think it's both, both in the writing and in the lore. I think Junko Ike 's Atrisia is a great example, me personally I always love to incorporate a planet's history both Wookieepedia and Chaos.

One thing I like to remind myself is that it's 900 ABY and a lot of what is on the Wookieepedia would be decayed/old/in a museum somewhere. I am okay working on stubs and working with planets that have more than that. I do love it if there are stubs or nothing there because then I can let my imagination go wild and just write to my hearts content. As far as attracting people to the worlds, I sort of believe in the build it and they will come. I try not to put pressure on the idea of people coming over to my cities for example.

Overall it's always going to depend on a character's story.

I learned a long time ago not to write for anyone else but myself. If others want to come over then that's great, but I'm not gonna beat myself up over no one being there. I know that I've written some great places, and great lore to serve as a cool playground for people if that's what they want to do. At the end of the day, whether you are world building or not, you should be writing for yourself. That being said you can't make anything important to anyone else, it has to be something that they feel would work best for their character would be important to their character. If you're lucky you get to be part of that.

 

[Danger Arceneau]

For me, it was Tatooine (Codex link)

However, as the way it goes, unless someone continues to actively show and references the events and circumstances of a planet, even if it is subbed, general writers won't know the history of it because subbed information on canon planets isn't linked on the map, only custom based ones. For the Tatooine Canon planet one, I crowdsourced all the information of various roleplays from writers across the board, but even then, as time passes, it unfortunately becomes irrelevant as folk just go to the Wookieepedia article.

At this point, I just do my thing on Tatooine and if anything crazy happens, i just reference that I made sure whatever ATC related there has been protected.

 

[Makai Dashiell]

how do you guys make your planets 'important' to other writers? How do you attract them into those stories and environments? Is having your character be ingrained with that planet and pulling other characters aside the only way?

When I made Ceto and stuck it on the map, a few people surprised me by using it, GUIDE mostly.

Never set out making a planet others would be highly interested in. I'm currently working on world building a canon planet stub and for me, it's more just to give those I RP with most a point of reference and home base for stories.

I suppose it's why many do the same?

I learned a long time ago not to write for anyone else but myself. If others want to come over then that's great, but I'm not gonna beat myself up over no one being there.

All this.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Lots of really great advice here so I won't try to be too repetitive. Small potatoes, but I spent the past two-ish years building up Ukatis – I didn't start out with the intention of doing some serious world building, I just picked a stub of a planet with very little canon and chaos history so that I could write a noble brat without having to wade through too much lore. As Cora's story with Ukatis progressed, I was able to drag loop other writers into more planetary stories. The codex sub for it was easy to write because after a few years of rp, much of the lore had developed organically – it just needed to be polished and organized.

Jakku has the advantage of being known. If what you're going for is to generate activity, then I have one piece of advice – make a Thing, and host a thread around the Thing. Festivals and other open gatherings are always fun choice because they're mainly social threads and appeal to many different types of characters.

I've also done a few small stories on Lorta, investigating an ancient (canon) cult that has a wookiepedia page. Jakku has a lot of juicy lore bits that you could draw on and center stories around, and a fairly active Jedi Enclave to work with. Lots of possibilites and I look forward to seeing what you do with Jakku!