Constructing fictional worlds while leaving room for other people's imagination and creativity

When it comes to creative writing details are important. Specific character traits of a novel's protagonist or a detailed description of a landscape are what paint a picture in the mind of the reader.

Every world builder knows that the more details you add to your fictional world the more real it seems to become. And for many much of the fun comes from fleshing out their creation with characters, cultures and histories. If the premise of the world is interesting enough then other people will dive in to that world and enjoy learning about all those details. So why not just give people what they want?

For me there can be too much of a good thing and just because people want something does not necessarily mean you should give it to them. If you leave a blank space on a map it will spark people's imagination and they'll ask you questions about it. But you have to resist giving them definite answers. It's much better to gift them that empty space and allow them to come up with their own answers.

Every blank space (geographically, historically, culturally) that the world builder fills in restricts the area that people feel comfortable applying their own creativity to. In my opinion if a world builder wants other people to feel comfortable playing in and contributing to that world they need to strike a balance between providing outlines and hooks that will spark the imagination and blank spaces where that can actually happen.

This is one of the reasons why I think detailed worlds like Tékumel and Glorantha haven't become as popular for gaming as they could be. The core ideas are intriguing for a lot of people but as they start learning more about them they realise there exist tomes worth of official history, culture and religion.

Now it's well known that the creators of these worlds, M.A.R. Barker and Greg Stafford, encouraged people to get involved and come up with their own variations of these settings. To not feel bogged down or restricted by a perceived canon. And yet people still feel an unease, as if they can't get involved unless they "do it the right way". There's also the perception that those settings are too alien or are based on history that people don't know enough about compared to what they think they know about Medieval Europe. But I think that's given undue importance.

With this project I'm trying to strike a balance. Providing enough outlines and ideas to point people in a direction that is different enough from the standard fantasy-medieval-world for things to be novel while giving them the confidence and permission to play around in it.

This applies to myself as well. I'm not interested in creating a timeline that spans thousands of years, detailing the exact history of city states, kingdoms and empires. Nor do I want to write up the entire cosmology, mythology and religions of each tribe that exists. I don't want to box myself in with a canon.

For me enough detail is something like: "The societies in this world are similar those of the Mediterranean Bronze Age. The people follow religions that are polytheistic and animistic communicate these through an oral tradition as well as in writing (but remember only a small percentage of the population is literate). They have an interest in the stars and the motions of the planets. A small percentage of the population are priests and shamans and they have a high status in society. Some religions employ consciousness altering practices such as fasting, chanting, meditating and taking hallucinogenic substances". For me that's enough to make clear this is not a world of monotheistic religions or a setting with clear good and evil. If that's what you want, be my guest. But if you want me to help you outline a different kind of sandbox, well there it is.

That's why I've created what I call the Middle Period in this setting. It's a sandbox time within a sandbox setting that allows for a variety of cultures, technology levels and geo-political situations to exist next to each other. This period of time stretches tens of thousands of years which is more than enough for such a patchwork to develop. In reality whole empires were created and destroyed within the span of one to two hundred years.

Contrast this with many fantasy worlds in which every other kingdom seems to have a detailed unbroken history going back millennia with little room to manoeuvre. Again, we all know that we can do whatever we want using our imagination when we're being creative and playing games. But there's something about knowing that somewhere the details have already been worked out and written down and for whatever reason that knowledge seems to inhibit people.