Can Dramatica be used for worldbuilding?

Hi guys. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I feel it is possible to use DRAMATICA to build an entire Fantasy world a la LOTR. A living breathing Middle earth. @chuntley, and @jhull , You both being the most seasoned users here, kindly offer some insight as to this possibility. My other fellow users here, please chip in as well. Thank you all in advance.

I suspect that the fantasy world you imagine could be based on a fabric of intertwined storyforms that describe the underlying backstory and interlocking narratives of the world. I’d recommend creating something like that in layers, beginning with the origin story, e.g. the forging of the rings and subsequent war(s), and then building on the inequities or potential inequities growing from the base narrative.

Clearly, characters in one narrative may play differing roles in other narratives, further intertwining the different story threads.

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Wow. Thank you @chuntley . I was just fiddling with DSE. And it occurred to me that it has to be linked to the underlying backstory. I’m happy you said so too. Reassures me that I have a decent basic understanding of the theory. I also imagined that the final storyforms will be based on the existing inequities and as such will provide a… Story path or plot somewhat, as one writes to get the storyform back to equilibrium. Wow… Thank you. Still hoping to delve deeper.

Fun topic! Are you talking about building various areas for conflict within your world, or actually building the world itself, ie geography, history, ecology?

I’ve never looked at Dramatica as a world building tool since it describes the problems within the story world. So if your looking for Dramatica to help you build conflict, I would imagine you could assign Fixed Attitude to one race and Psychology to various roving bands of thieves or whatever. That way, when your characters travel through this land, you know what each problem they encounter will look like.

For instance, every time your MC runs across the Orcs with a Fixed Attitude, he will see himself in a Situation. Every time he runs across a band of manipulative thieves, he will see himself in an Activity. But that will, of course, need a different storyform for every encounter(which might work if you plan on having multiple books). I suppose you could assign the Concerns to different groups/locations and then your characters would need to meet those groups or travel to those locations for the corresponding act.

For instance, Gathering Information might suggest a place with lots of information, a library, or a school, or a cult that holds secret scrolls with the REAL history of the world. And when it comes time to have your characters explore Gathering Info in the storyform, they would visit this place.

Looking at LOTR, Past might suggest a mountain full of ghost soldiers who can’t move on until they have fulfilled the oath they made in the past. Or Instinct might look like a place people are instinctually afraid of, like a forest where there’s clearly something strange going on(like trees walking around), and no one KNOWs what’s going on inside, but everyone THINKS it’s haunted.

What I’m suggesting feels a bit like just encoding your storyform. But I guess the difference is you wouldn’t be encoding your MC or OS problem, per se, but just setting up the conflict prior to your characters arriving so you can discover the more specific problems when they get there.

I’ve never approached world building this way, so that may not work at all. Just my first thoughts on the subject.

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@Gregolas. Great examples. I was looking at it as a way of possible conflict sources and a map to generate rich well fleshed out world based inequities that make sense. Think Storymind level sense. That way the muse will have a direction to come up with awesome concepts.

I think you meant @jhull. I’m fairly new to this, Jim’s the seasoned one!

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My bad. So sorry for the mixup

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Worldbuilding is primarily lore, and lore mostly falls into the “backstory” category — that is, it’s more encyclopedic facts about a world than it is narrative. In building a world, you typically are building a skin, essentially, to place a story in. Your lore could be largely comprised of actual dramatica stories in theory, but I think that sounds like overkill or largely unnecessary. LotR style worldbuilding, too, is like… inventing races and kingdoms and things that aren’t story. They’re genre, they’re aesthetics, they’re the skin you place on and around your narrative. But then you can take the kingdom or the race of goblins and give them either a simple history or backstory that lives in the backend of your world to be referenced and hinted at within your story. Take it from me, I’ve written nothing :slight_smile:

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You know Sean you’re on to something. This is in line with @chuntley 's advice. I was doing some research online and it struck me. I’m a Souls player (Dark Souls franchise) so I went online and they helped me remember why I loved the series so much. It’s the Lore! The devs aren’t heavy handed with their story. They make you piece it up for your own unique experience. Then this thread and now your insight seems to confirm my direction. Thanks.

The Souls games are my favorite games. If I ever manage to write something there will be strong Souls influences. In spirit, anyways — I wouldn’t be likely to write something so fantasy oriented.

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