Roundtable: Leonard Boyarsky Answers
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The three times I've been involved in creating and/or realizing world settings have been three very different experiences, each with a different process. Regardless of the process, however, my goal is always to make the most compelling and intriguing world I can in order to entice the player to delve deeper into it.
My first experience in world creation, Fallout, started from an art standpoint. I was heavily immersed in retro 40's and 50's art with a twisted edge at the time (including but not limited to things like the original Batman movie, the City of Lost Children, Brazil, the Hard Boiled comic book) and I became intrigued with the thought of basing our look on the aesthetics of the world of the future as envisioned by the culture of the 1940's and 50's. Once that initial vision was agreed upon, we knew it needed to bleed through the entire feel of the world.
On Arcanum, it definitely started from a more intellectual level. We became enthralled with the idea of an industrial revolution upending a Tolkien style world. That initial inspiration immediately started us thinking about how the politics of a world like that would play out, and how that would inform our quests, NPCs, storylines, etc. While the early heavy industrial machinery look was very inspirational to us from an artistic standpoint, it also became a fitting thematic element as it was literally crushing the magic out of the world.
The challenge on Vampire:Bloodlines was different we were working with an already established world, so our approach was to drill down to what we felt was the essence of that world, what intrigued people about it, and those elements were the ones we then focused on building the world around.
I agree with the other designers that your setting needs to reinforce the gameplay and the themes of your story, but I always come to those issues after I have the elements of a setting that feel intriguing from a visceral standpoint. If I don't feel excited about a setting from a gut level, neither will the people playing it.
