Kind of a weird question I know, but let me explain. I’m not talking about your themes or messages, but the general feeling someone looking into your world or imagining themselves in it might get about the situation, when the world is not in conflict. Basically, you know how when you watch a franchise like Star Trek, it has certain recurrent moods and feelings, like the tranquility of flying through space, the bittersweet isolation of being on a ship in deep space, where you are close to your crewmates but far from everything else you know, and the general professional but still sufficiently jovial atmosphere that they seem to go for? Or with Pokemon when it’s very adventure driven and based around meeting everyone you come across and making friends both with other humans and also with these magical creatures! I’m sure you can think of descriptions like these for your favourite franchises. We’ve all imagined ourselves in these worlds or imagined ourselves as characters in these worlds right? What were some of the vibes or feelings you imagined when you imagined your world? Or I guess another way of putting it is what would a slice of life exploration of your world be like?
For my worlds, I think what I’m shooting for, not even really intentionally, is that feeling of arriving somewhere new for the first time with the intention of living there, and/or the feeling of a child in a big city exploring where they live. Both feelings may or may not have been present in my childhood. Everything is still a bit of a haze, you don’t typically remember everything about a place the first time you go there because there’s so many new things and it kind of overloads your senses, and totally mundane things can seem to have a sense of mystery and allure because you still don’t fully understand them or how they work yet. Fairly common technology also feel way more advanced and high-tech when you’re a kid because you don’t know how they work, and that what makes them so good to explore (I used to be super fascinated by public urban infrastructure as a kid, still am). It’s not exactly like that because I generally like to frame my worlds through the perspectives of adult characters, I just find it easier to write and advance the plot when my characters are all mature enough to know what they’re doing and have a general idea of what they should be doing, but it’s not like adults can’t experience those exact same feelings.
The other side I want to capture is the nostalgia and bittersweet familiarity of returning to your old home, somewhere you used to be really familiar with. But even though most things are still as you remember it, enough has changed to once against warrant exploration and experiencing the place again. Again, that enjoyable haze of exploring somewhere like a city comes to mind.
All this combined with the feeling that things will continue looking up and it’ll stay cozy and nice forever, which is definitely also a childhood thing but what if the world actually worked well enough for adults to feel that way too?
Not sure how well I described this but I hope you get the idea!
I have a science-fantasy world with intelligent animals trying to live in harmony with each other. Though none of my main characters are kids in this story, I definitely frame my main character to experience a “vibe” similar to what I described.
I like the thinking behind this idea. Would definitely play/read. Is it an RPG or a written story? I ask a question I could not answer, as I’m not entirely decided yet myself.
It will be a written story, most likely a web series of chaptered novels/novellas on somewhere like Wattpad. I envision it to have a coherent overarching story for the whole thing, but split into episodic arcs like a TV show or book series (think Redwall or Warrior Cats). I already have a plot outline for the big picture of what I want to happen and things to progress. If I can manage to get people to donate to me writing this on a Patreon or something that would be my dream, but it’s too early for that.
I currently mostly do literary roleplays with it, basically a Dungeons and Dragons type roleplay but completely in text, and you’re essentially taking turns writing a novel bit by bit. Haven’t started the actual canonical story yet. TBH I’m a little afraid to because I feel that once I write the canonical stories, I’m kind of committed to the state of the world it’s currently in, and I want to finalize the background details before I start, not sure if that’s the right way of thinking about that though. Roleplays are fun and I usually also include suggestions and inserts from whoever I’m doing it with, just to not make it feel like I’m dictating what it should be in a collaborative work. I also just really like exploring this world with other people and seeing what they make of it! Which is also why I post here!
My pipe dream is for this to become a proper cartoon or anime series because it was very much inspired by cartoons with animals in them, and I definitely think it would work best in a visual medium where things can be shown instead of me worrying about explaining it while keeping the right pacing and avoiding info-dumping. But I can’t draw so it would either have to be picked up by a studio (which would be difficult because this isn’t intended for kids, more like a Futurama or Rick and Morty type show) or I’d need to make a ton of money from the written versions that I can use to commission my own animated series. Not really realistic but I can dream.
If you want more inspiration for written roleplay, check out the game Ironsworn. It’s definitely a grimdark fantasy crawl, but the ruleset is simple and can be leveraged or reskinned to suit your needs with a bit of creative back-bending. The game plays as a great solo or co-op TTRPG, and is free online!
I’ve been using it to tell stories in my setting, and it’s a pretty darn good time! Really makes me explore smaller aspects of the world while telling a story through a tight POV.
Sounds interesting! Thank you!
Committing to changes in the world can be stressful when you’ve worked so hard to get the details to a point where you like the state of things. I think it’s less a writing challenge and more of an emotional challenge though, don’t you? Our worlds aren’t fragile, we’re just attached to the way things are meant to be. It’s normal to feel that way, and I’m sure some of your characters would, too. If something goes out of whack, how would they try to fix it?
The alternative is to commit to an episodic format of storytelling, which can be fun for shorter formats and just as rewarding. I think more TV media should try harder to resist serialization, as it tends to diminish the enjoyment of individual episodes and devalue the time you spend with the show (looking at you, modern Star Wars shows - no I do not want to sit there for two hours while you say “trust me, it gets good”. It probably will, but my time has value!).
Lots of words to say, trust your gut. Some stories just feel right being episodic. If your setting has a firm baseline that everything returns to, you can work with that.