[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

We’ve all heard the saying that goes “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” made by the incomparable Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

I would ad a corollary, especially in the worlds of world building (and perhaps in an age of mind hacking and psychological techniques, our own).  “Any sufficiently organized magic is indistinguishable from technology.”

Because when you world build, you’re getting things organized in your head to explain how they work.  In the case of Magic and Technology, they’re really the same thing most of the time. Not entirely, but mostly.

Now you may wish to argue with this, but for the sake of building a setting, magic and technology are no different.  I would state that magic and technology are the ways characters manipulate themselves and the elements of their settings to achieve results fitting a specific goal – and thus really no different.

Vaccum tubes and potions, ethereal forces and electrical energy, it’s all about Making Stuff Happen.  So for the rest of this essay, I’ll just call it MaT since I can’t figure any other word to encompass the two of them, and I won’t call it MT as it invites innumerable jokes.

As a world builder, you just have to figure out what it all means.  That’s when it gets complicated. (more…)

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack.  It focuses on worldbuilding as a writer or setting designer and is included here to help our readers who craft fictional settings]

We’ve talked origins, ecologies, and sentient life in your settings  We’ve discussed the culture that your intelligent life will have (again, if your story has intelligent life).  Now it’s time to get to economics which, much like real life has a lot of impact, but isn’t something we often think of (or think of fondly).

My guess is that upon hearing that “it’s economics time”, you’re probably not filled with enthusiasm.  If you are, great, but in general I find that, when he subject of world building and economics comes up, most people’s reactions are less than positive.  Sometimes they’re pretty negative.

Most people’s reactions to anything involving economics is usually not positive, often a mix of regret, ignorance, and understandable rage.  I could go on about the why of that for awhile, but that’s best for another time.  Let’s go forward with the assumption that, in general, you need a bit of a boost and guidance on writing economics in your world.

If you do enjoy this (like me), then read on anyway just in case, and welcome to the club.

Now let me say off the bat that if you don’t get into the economics of world building that with the right perspective it’s interesting, informative, and even fun.  I also would note that it can’t be avoided at all because, like real life, economics is everywhere.  But I’ll focus on the fun part. (more…)

So what’s currently in the works generator-wise?  Well one of the requests was for a Magic Guild generator, specifically a request for guilds like the anime Fairy Tail (which is a show best summed up as “World Wrestling Federation writes Harry Potter”).  The guilds have some pretty colorful names like Grimoire Heart and Blue Pegasus, so a little tweaking of the core patterns let me great a good Magic Guild generator with plenty of detail.  here’s a beta run:

• Ape Rune Sect
• Ascended Satyr Crew
• Conjuring Blade Unit
• Cyclops Tooth Two-hundred
• Dog Codex Guild
• Dragon Light Guild
• Elemental Vault Guild
• Forgotten Ghost Guild
• Medic Harpy Guild
• Necromantic Hand Gang
• Nymph Staff Guild
• Platinum Djinn Family
• Purple Grave Cult
• Rune Mouth Guild
• Scholar Totem Band
• Smith Ogre Assembly
• Sorcerous Eye Eight
• Staff Hand Guild
• The Banshee League
• The Potion Cult

So, in the future we could see the Purple Grave Cult take on the Dragon Light Guild in a smackdown of epic proportions!

– Steven Savage

OK, the roundup continues of the members of Crossroads Alpha, the Site Alliance.  In this case, let’s meet IndieHaven!

IndieHaven is a site managed by my friend Jose, who I met as part of a geek networking group that spawned out of a con meetup (I should revive that).  This guy is a professional journalist – paid to do this in an age where journalism is tight – and he does it as his hobby on games.  Guy is seriously hardcore.

IndieHaven is a great place as its an independent site on, of course, Indie Games.  For many members it’s even a kind of training ground, and Jose really knows what he’s doing.  I figure it’s a good pairing here as Sanctumites into games can access a unique site that also includes professional advice (and is always looking for writers), and IndieHaven’s creative types can come here.

Besides, procedural content is big these days, and I am ALL about procedural content.

So, go over, say hello, and enjoy!

– Steven Savage

OK gang, I went through the recent poll and got an idea of what people want. Thanks for participating!

Now where do we stand:

What do people want in the codex:

The first thing people wanted was crazy, funny, and weird stuff to inspire them. That I didn’t expect (I expected more practical column requests), but then I realized hey, generator site. Maybe someone out there wants to regularly collect and share crazy links since I’m busy.

Yes, that’s a hint.

Columns on writing came in next, which makes sense.  A lot of you are writers.

Things got a little less focused after that, though folks did like Worldbuilding and useful resources. I was surprised there was less interest in artistic advice, but I think our response demographic was writing heavy (see below)

So now when I go to those people who volunteered to write, I have some idea of what to look for. Speaking of . . .

What can people write in the codex?

We had plenty of people wanting to give advice on writing – but then it kind of split up among various categories, from games to art to resource gathering. I’ll be contacting these brave volunteers to see what they’d like to do.

By the way, we had EIGHTEEN of you respond that they might be interested in contributing! I’ll be in touch with you this week!

One warning – TWO of you gave me the wrong emails.  So if you didn’t hear from me yet . . . write me.

What do people want in generators.

Well the short answer, is “most everything” but it seems that settings, names, and characters stand out, along with beings and writing advice. In short people, where they are, and how to write about them.

Now among the specifics people had:

• Alcoholic Beverages
• Alien Worlds
• Animals
• Biomes
• Cities
• Civilizations
• Clothing/Fashions (which came more than once)
• Combo generators to tie my other generators together (something I can do but I’m not up for it yet)
• Detailed magic artifacts
• Disease Cures
• Gangster groups
• Lots of name generators
• Magic Guilds
• More descriptors
• Planets
• Plot Twists
• Prophecies and/or quests.
• Secret projects
• Specific plot generators
• Story Arcs (that’s intriguing)
• Themed names
• Trope mixers
• Writing prompts

So yeah, plenty of ideas. I addition I have one generator in the works (from that list, actually) and one possible on that’s related. More to come – and no I’m not telling you!

However one thing I took away is that when it comes to writers, more is better and there’s more I can do. I always figured it was best to do setting stuff and some basic plots, but maybe I can do more.

The only issue is that I have to get “inspired” to do a generator, so I’ll need to see what mojo gets fired up by the list. But now I have a list to get fired up with . . .

Closing

OK gang, thanks for the feedback. Now that the site is rewritten, has a content section, is part of an alliance, and is on the new host maybe I can do more generators. They’re fun so I can really build them as a way to relax as well . . .

– Steven Savage

So I promised I’d introduce everyone to the members of Crossroads Alpha, the site alliance the Sanctum is part of.  Let’s check out Comics Bulletin!

Comics Bulletin and I go back a ways – I used to do a column for them a few years ago on professional issues and comics.  I’ve known the founder, Jason, for even longer.  CB has maintained quality over the years, and has expanded into a lot of promising areas.  It’s a good site with a big base of people backing it.

In the case of Seventh Sanctum, I like it because it gives people here a reliable place to go for comics news, a place for hopeful writers here to write about the subject (I’ll introduce you), and articles that may be useful to hopeful comics professionals (I know you’re out there).

So enjoy, and get to know a member of the Alliance!

– Steven Savage

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

Thanks to heavy worldbuilding you’ve got your setting, and in that setting you’ve got intelligent life (probably). Now that you’ve got sentient species in your universe,it’s time to work on their Culture and probably Civilization.  I’m capitalizing deliberately, by the way for when I’m getting abstract.

Culture and Civilization are something we talk for granted because we’re used to living in them all the time. But they’re also huge elements of world building because of what they are – and taking them seriously is important because they are massive definers of intelligent life.

Culture And Civilization – What Are We Talking About here

So once again we get into just what’s under discussion. I’ll go and give some quick summaries, but of course we’re talking about concepts people have debated for ages. So these are viewpoints towards applying these concepts to worldbuiilding, not to answering age-old questions.

Culture – Culture are those things sentient life learns and passes on amongst its members so they function, work, relate, interpret, and so on together. Simply, it’s the acquired knowledge, language, communications, and so forth that let intelligent life function and function with each other.

Civilization – Civilization is when you really kick things into high gear Culture-wise. You start building things, establishing centers, and writing your culture deep into your physical environment – and usually writing in general. I’d say that you need a culture to have a civilization, but then again there’s some pretty interesting world building to be had by violating that rule . . .

Metaphor-wise I think of Culture is the operating system and programs that run in a sentient being’s mind. When we start seriously connecting cultured people together and modifying the environment, establishing things that last over time, then you’ve got a giant interlinked system like a manufacturing system, computer network – that’s Civlilization. Yes computer metaphors are a bit cold for discussing such things, but i find they’re effective – and distant enough that I’m not using metaphors for culture and civilization that are too close to those actual things.

You can also see why they’re vitally important in writing:

• First of all, they are things that we’d expect intelligent life to have. Admittedly as of this writing the only intelligent life we humans have to compare any world building to is us, but still you go with what you know.
• Culture, obviously, affects how your characters see the world and how they’ll interact with it.  It gives perspective.
• Because Culture is how intelligent life (well, again, humans) gets perspective, its part of how each character is a Lens on your world. Knowing your setting’s culture or cultures is not just good world building, it’s indispensable for storytelling. If a culture is hard to comprehend that may require some delicate writing, game design, etc. – and may produce an epic tale of a truly unique world that sucks people in.
• Culture and Civilization are huge parts of the stories you’ll tell in your world, and in some ways are the stories. They are the reasons people do what they do, the reason things happen, the reasons for certain implications. A simple look over any story, book, novel, etc. will show how much motivation and happenings are because of the structure of a culture and/or the civilization it built.
• We expect them. Because they are something we’re so used to their very lack will sit ill with an audience – unless that lack is, again, part of the setting and you engage in drawing people into that setting.

So with this said, let’s get to building.

Crafting Culture

Creating the culture or cultures in your worlds is probably something you’re doing automatically. But I find it helps to have an idea of what we’re doing to keep us inspired, focused, and not loosing track of what we’re doing.

Culture is that which intelligent life creates, relates with, and passes on. It is language, rules, ideas, symbols, relations, and so forth, those things that let us function and function together. Think of it as a kind of “improved genetics” where intelligent life has the power to change and grow itself, and pass those changes on.  These changes alter and improve not by generations, but by interactions between individuals and the environment.

(I’d even go so far to say truly intelligent life has to have Culture for it to do much. Having seen how we humans create culture almost instinctively, I think our limited sample set here makes an impressive example).

So this gives us a starting point for designing Culture – it’s how people (be they human or not) work together in the present and the future and communicate and store information. Yes, it’s a cold metaphor, but effective.

When building a culture you’ll want to focus on:

1. What are the values of the traditions, languages, etc. In short, why did they develop or were they developed?
2. How is culture passed on and why is it passed on – how are its elements seen as valuable?
3. How does the culture deal with disruptions – or with parts of it wearing out?  Does it have the ability to adapt?
4. What keeps the culture functioning – if it doesn’t have it’s own safeguards, it could malfunction, which of course would be an interesting tale.
5. How does it reflect the beings that have the culture – how is it “part” of them. How did their traits affect it?
6. How is it “prosthetic” – how does it make up for any limits the sentient beings who are part of the culture have?

You can also drill down into the specifics of culture, like religion, language, and so forth. We’ll see about doing that later, but for now this should get you thinking.

Next, let’s think of what happens when you extend culture into something more permanent, civilization.

Civilization – Going Big

Civilization is when Culture settles down and really gets going. In a lot of cases literally – Cvilization is when people put down roots, build things, and make a more solidified place to “be.” It’s what happens when Culture gets physical in the forms of cities, temples, written language, and more.

It’s hard to extract Civilization from Culture, but in general Civilization seems to be associated with intense physical infrastructure. So for the purposes of this essay, I’ll consider Civilization to be when Culture becomes more established both physically and intellectually.

Not all your intelligent life in your setting will have Civilization. Culture exists before Civilization, and one doesn’t need organization, centralization, or much of a physical infrastructure to have Culture. In fact, the first question you have to ask about any intelligent life you design is how far are they into Civilization from just having Culture. A population of nomads or wanderers may have Culture but not what we’d recognize as Civlization.

So you might be able to stop here. But just in case . . .

When Culture gets solid, then you have Civilization. Civilization in your settings brings in so many other issues that, like culture, one could write hundreds of thousands of words on the subject. But as a handy guide to save you from that, here’s a quick checklist for designing your civilization.

• Civilization is culture solidified. You’ll want to know at what point (if any) a culture started putting down the roots, policies, buildings, and so forth that turned it into a civilization.
• * Civilizations are about stability.  They may fail at it, but in general they seem to involve having stability.
• * Civilization changes the environment. Farms require irrigation, buildings require quarried stone, industries pollute the air, and so forth. Civilization has impact – and impacts not often expected. Kinda messes with that whole stability thing, but there you go.
• * Civilization extends Culture. A Civilization can wield more cultural influence, and indeed is usually larger than any independent Culture.
• * Civilizations are much more complex than Culture. It’s safe to say few people in aCcivilization know how it works. So you’re going to need a gods’ eye view as well as understanding individual perspectives. You also need to make sure a civilization is believably complex in your world building.
• * Civilizations are linked to technology – they require technology to be established, and of course help evolve it.

Big Job, Big Perspective

So when it comes to designing Culture and Civilization you’ve got quite a job cut out for you. So beyond all the other advice, here’s what I recommend.

Read about real cultures and real civilizations.

Reading about other cultures than your own, about civilizations that have come and gone, that are and on their way up or out, gives you an intuitive grasp of how people and their social structures work. At some point you’ll probably get a good enough grasp to build your world or get out of a case of world builder’s block. But read.

Besides, it’ll broaden you as a writer and a person.

Closing

Culture and Civilizations are inevitable in your world when you’re building your setting’s intelligent life. They’re part of being an intelligent species, and you not only can’t avoid them in most cases, you really don’t want to as they drive the plot.

It’s challenging, but with work and good study, you’ll be up for it. My guess is if you’re doing any world building you already started it.

– Steven Savage

Hey gang, it’s another update.  Two actually

Crossroads Alpha

The short form is that a group of friends and I decided to work together as an alliance of sites, Crossroads Alpha.  The idea is to pool talent and knowledge, network sites, and work together in a way that compliments each other.  Seventh Sanctum is part of it because it provides creative tools and encourages creativity.

The long form?

Two friends and I had been discussing how we could work together to support each other.  Each of us had our own sphere (comics, games, creativity and careers), and so on.  Also we’d each known the challenges of working on a website and realized having people to work with is a great idea – the rewrite of Seventh Sanctum really only originated from bouncing ideas off of friends and getting their advice.  Our sites are independent, but cooperating.

So the idea is that we’d ally together, build a name for the alliance, and cooperate.  The Affiliate Bar at the top is how we link together beyond sharing talent, advice, and support.  It also gives us room to introduce others we know that have their own unique sites and visions into the alliance.

In the case of Seventh Sanctum, it provides a site that focuses on utility and tools, assisting creativity.   That’s a great compliment to sites based on media like comics and games.

On the flipside, I’m interested in sites for Sanctumites that will help them with using their creativity.  Yeah I have MuseHack, but working with a comics and a game site gives people here access to  sites that may help them use their skills – so as you can guess one of my big hopes is we find people who have writing and art sites . . .

So that’s it.  Me and my crew are working together and helping each other out and hopefully find other ways to do do some neat stuff.

The Poll

The poll is closed – and it was very helpful!  I’ve still got to analyze all the results, but I’ve got some general ideas, have already started a new generator, and have people interested in writing for the codex!

There’s actually a lot I didn’t expect about what people wanted or needed, so it’s going to be very helpful – and there’s a few things I never thought of or had considered ages ago and then forgot, such as a planet generator (yeah, I know, duh) or a fashion generator.  It gives me some good things to go on in the future.

There is also a new generator in the works, mostly based on one person’s suggestion that just got me going “hey . . .” so we’ll see.  Making these things is always easier when something fires off my imagination.

– Steven Savage

 

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

I’m going to start by assuming the setting of your story has intelligent life in it. If not, well that sounds like a challenging write, and feel free to skip this part until you need it.  Or don’t because hey, you never know.

Now first, allow me to define intelligent life, so we’re on the same sheet of virtual paper here. Intelligent life is that form of life that can process information, adapt and retain this information, pass this information on to others, and possesses a level of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Intelligent life is essentially a kind of conscious computing, even if I personally dislike that simplistic terminology.

I would especially argue that intelligence contains a level of self-awareness as intelligence life as we think of itis self-modifying and self-directing. You can’t separate intelligence from consciousness, because someone has to “be in there” to be intelligent. “I think therefore I am” is also “I know I am as I think.”

With that all-to brief (and doubtlessly incomplete) journey into the philosophy of intelligence, let’s continue a to why it’s important. I’ll also try not to overdo the words “intelligent life,” but no promises here. (more…)

And I’m back!  Crazy holiday, plenty of fun, busy returning to work, you know the story.  So where are we now?

Well first, the poll thing is definitely working out for the site, so I have a poll up asking people what they’d like to see in 2014 and how they’d like to participate.

Yep, participate.  The Codex isn’t just going to be me posting, I’d like to get other folks involved to share advice, ideas, reviews, and more.  It’s not only fun, it can be a great creativity, career, and community boost as well.  So let me know if you’d like to jump on board the crazy train of Seventh Sanctum!

I got a little exhausted with the last generator (which was really informative), so I’m picking my next one carefully.  That’s ALSO in the poll, and I think I want to add some regularity to generator development and updating, but I’m still getting a framework around it because it’s a pretty creative endeavor that doesn’t sit well on a schedule (yet).  This quarter also promises to be a bit busy as my next book is coming out, so I’m pacing myself.

We’ll also have some other interesting event in the next week or two (no, it’s NOT new contests) so stay tuned . . .

– Steven Savage