World Building
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
Infinity. That's how Mind works. Created to be Creators.
Looking up at starlit spaces we connect those far off lights into an endless series of pulsing patterns, a tapestry of night. We strain to perceive the weave that holds heaven together.
So, this is how, for me, inspiration works. It begins with a seed of thought, a moment of speculation.
It can begin with a simple walking tune humming in the air. An unusual pebble, a misheard word, a storm cloud howling at the dawn.
Over the Summer I've had, and continue to develop, many ideas.
What if Merlin was reborn today? How would a First Person Healer game play out? What would an Angel Warzone look like from a human perspective? How could music make a forest grow?
These ideas do not usually begin as well phrased intelligible questions. Like a half remembered melody tickling at your mental piano the Muse invites a response, a counterpoint. No matter whether it's vividly beautiful or dead fish ugly, prosaic or perverse, the world suddenly presents us something startlingly different and we react and respond to this new experience with a mind trained from birth to adapt and survive, playfully improvise and communicate the experience to our fellows.
So the seed grows and sprouts, pushing out tendrils and roots, stretching out branches of enquiry, more questions that find and feed more detailed responses...
What would the world be like in twenty years hence when Merlin grew into a young man? What if Mordred was also reborn and became a fascist dictator, crushing dissent with a future-tech iron fist?
Would a FPH game be as gory and distressing as a real war, would death be final? Would Triage even be enjoyable or 'entertaining' to play? How would a player choose who lives and dies?
If you sang out of tune would your world make an unhappy tree?
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