Creating a fantasy world from scratch.

[Droolinggimp]

This is probably the best forum to ask this as it can fall under Books and TV Movies. However I am not thinking of writing a book because I struggle to write forum posts sometimes, hey-ho.

This thread became because of the arguments and discussion in the Rings of Power thread. People crying over Lore that is changed, added, excluded etc. most if not all people who are familiar with Tolkiens work know of his vast lore for Middle Earth and beyond. Some complete, some incomplete. Not wanting to make this into a Tolkien discussion, but I would like to hear thoughts on creating a new world, complete with history, language, politics etc.

Have any of you thought about doing something like this at all. It has crossed my mid a few times, I am no writer but I do have a good creative mind in my opinion.

Would anyone be interested in giving this a go? Not to make a story, but to create a world where any story could happen. A bit like a game engine. Here are the rules, physics and files you need, now go make a game (yes a dumbed down explanation).

It is something I have tried a few times but I think I started it wrong, like, starting the world building during an age instead of from the very beginning.

Anyone fancy giving this a go? Even if just to brainstorm for a bit.

 

[Droolinggimp]

Two things you can do to help build it up - generalise then backfill and writing short stories within that world and flesh out from there.

I will assume these short stories will be fine if they dont go into great depth as long as they explain something that happened, eg, I wont need to go into detail like, say, Tolkien did.

example, not using the formatting i have here.
At the beginning of the creation age, three civilisations, who were living far away from each other in new earth.

• civ 1 were focussed on using the natural resources of the earth and were peaceful
  • go into a little detail about what they did, politics faith etc
• civ 2 were .....
  • politics etc....
• civ 3 were .....
  • etc

Civ one started to travel the world and happen upon civ three. At first it was friendly and helping each other out, however civ three notice a weakness with civ one. They wanted to exploit that weakness. 3 wars happened between them.

• war one
  • battle one
  • battel two
• war two
  • battle 1
  • etc

So each back story flows to another story explaining what happens, I guess it ends up being like appendices.