This is a really good interview. tl;dw is…
- their next game was going to be D&D, but they changed course and are doing something else now
- Vincke has a vision for “the one RPG to rule them all”, and each of their past three RPGs is a step closer to it
- the next game is not going to be that master vision but one step closer toward it, with their previous 3 RPGs proving out emergent design/multiplayer, story and consequence, and personal stories/performance capture, respectively
- Vincke would like to have this next game done in 3 years compared to BG3’s 6 year development cycle, but realistically expects 4 years, as long as there isn’t something like COVID-19 or a war in Ukraine to impede their progress
One of the foundational tenets of good writing is that worldbuilding is just masturbatory unless it serves the story. You don’t create a cool world and work your way backward into a story. You create a great story and craft a world around it which supports the story you’re trying to tell. The stories are the thing that have value, not the setting or the lore.
Telling a great story is a completely orthogonal skill to worldbuilding, and it requires creativity, emotion, and authorial intent. Star Wars and Harry Potter are both dogshit at worldbuilding, but they’re both some pretty rad stories. Avatar: the Legend of Korra is set in one of the best fantasy worlds ever created and it was a very mediocre story.
Given that is the opposite of what Tolkien did i think you are overstating your case to say it’s a foundational tenet.
Not the opposite at all. Tolkien didn’t know what the One Ring was when he wrote about Bilbo finding it in the Hobbit. Good worldbuilding is iterative. Tolkien went way too obsessive for LOTR and a lot of the worldbuilding he did was purely for his own pleasure rather than serving the story.
Keep in mind he didn’t try to publish The Silmarillion while he was alive. And also that the vast majority of LOTR fans don’t give a shit about stuff in the Silmarillion if it isn’t also relevant to the story of LOTR.
Tolkien spent years creating a fictional world and languages before even deciding to write a novel.
Yeah and my point is that all his worldbuilding was just for his own fun until he actually put in the work of making a story out of it.
Strange, because that is the opposite of every D&D game ever.
The story gets written at the table, at which point the world building should have already been mostly created.
I’m a DM, and I can tell you that as fun as worldbuilding is, no information about your world is real until players learn and remember it. And if you try to loredump on them, they won’t actually remember stuff.
Worldbuilding is fun, but it’s also masturbatory; it’s only fun for the DM until the game’s story makes it matter for everyone else.
I agree with everything you said.
However, fiction world building and game world building are hugely different.
Are games not fiction?
I should have said “literature”.