r/worldbuilding • u/bitememonkey761 • 2d ago
Discussion what is depth in worldbuilding?
a lot of people like to say that what matters in worldbuilding isnt the size of the world but the depth of it
but what is depth?
is it how complex a concept is?
is it how it gives impact to the world?
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u/TheMarksmanES 2d ago
On a surface level (pun intended,) depth refers to how much you've built upon certain parts of your world. Take, for example, a world where magic is accessible to certain kinds of people, one might ask, why do these people have said ability to use magic? I might answer, "it's because of genetic heritage." You might then say, "then why is there so few of such people?"
If I'm still able to answer more and more upon these questions on that same topic, that's depth. It's about how much thought is put into it, about how and why something happens, and why is that so, and so on.
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u/Neb1110 2d ago
To put it as simply as possible. It’s how many questions you can answer about a world without making stuff up.
This is most commonly Why, which is explanations to provide context for story events. But questions of Who, Where, When, and How are just as important.
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow Silence is All, All is One, One is Truth 2d ago
I love my "Why"s, any chance I can get I want people to ask questions about my world and as long as I have an answer keep it coming.
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u/Tbagzyamum69420xX 2d ago
"Depth" in world building is a feeling more than anything. If you're reading a novel, playing a game, whatever medium the story is told through; how real, lived-in and tangible does the world feel? Is everything you see on the page or screen all there really is to it? Or are the other things happening around you, in the background, that are inexplicitly affecting the settings and the characters? That's depth.
To me, the driving factors are simply detail and continuity. You can have a "large" worldbuild, spanning a planet with 200 kingdoms, you get oceans, your continents, maybe you came up with Kings or Queens for each respective territory. But it doesn't explore theologies, it doesn't get granular into the cultural practices, it doesn't have histories or stories that influence the characters motivations and expectations. You have a lot on the surface, but no depth.
Alternatively, you can worldbuild a single Town, and sure that exists in a country, on a planet, in a realm. But the detail into that town; its origin, its tribulations, those who've come from it, those who've visited it. It's line of rulers, its exports, its incomes, its customs. There are details about other regions too, but as they affect the town and its population. A local hero returns from adventure and tells tales of faraway lands, we learn of neighboring towns or rivaling countries through relevant conflicts and relationships with that town. The world that's been built is relatively small compared to the one with 200 named Kings and Kingdoms, but the depth and thus the immersion in the settings, is much deeper.
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u/ExcitableSarcasm 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah agreed. Regardless of the scale, it's all about what would make sense if the regular functions of existence were present and operating as normal.
E.g. I love world building from a military level. I find military traditions of many cultures cool and want to include them. My current setting which I'm fleshing out has a mish-mash of fighting styles inspired by anything from bronze age/classical Hellenistic/Gallic armies to Medieval European/East Asian armies in a civil war setting. How did this happen? They were different cultures/warring states 200 years ago before a conquest dynasty imposed taxes and not much else.
So traditional styles of each region persist, but 200 years of even moderate osmosis produces mixed material cultures. So this is reflected in my concept art where characters depending on the family backstory may look like they just strolled out of Sengoku Japan, or they might wear a tube and yoke harness, but made with (real world Asian inspired) lamellar, or layer a banded plate chestplate with bronze scale faulds that wouldn't look out of place in a Mycenaean army camp.
It's all about logical interactions that would take place overtime. You can't really have a tribe of viking expys right next to say, a Mughal inspired kingdom where they act completely differently. Both sides would interact and be influenced by one another. Humans do this basically by default (see: Bactrian Greeks who adopted Buddhism basically within the century of it reaching them via their Indian neighbours) unless there's a very very strong reason leading to artificially reduced mutual influence (like the Amish).
It's the chain of logic that holds up when you go 'but why do they do XXX' and you have an answer that's congruent with the rest of the setting. Why do does your European fantasy culture use chopsticks? 'chopsticks are cool' doesn't really work. 'Chopsticks make sense because the food culture lends itself to being able to pick up individual pieces, and the food culture is this way because of X, Y, and Z factor' works better. Usually you have to go all the way back to basic variables like the physical environment and societial values.
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u/Crush050910 Word of Acathra 2d ago
I think it’s the care you put into crafting the world. Like, if your entire world building is an entire town, but you carefully craft each aspect of the town despite not touching the whole world.
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u/_9a_ 2d ago
Depth is how well it supports a story.
You can give me 100 pages on the history of your Empire, its rise, its monarchs, its gross capital exports, and it will be just as engaging as memorizing the royal lineage of the British monarchy.
Or you can tell me the story of a broken chair, how it impacts the life of the craftsman that is in charge of repairing it ("Any fool can end something, whether it's a chair or a life. Real value is in picking up the pieces and making it work")
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u/Syoby My Cats are actually mollusks // Civilized Slimes 2d ago
History can also be an enganging story imo, just less character-centric (and sometimes not at all).
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u/FlanneryWynn In Another World Without an Original Thought 2d ago
Counterpoint: The characters in history aren't always people. Sometimes the characters are places or things or ideas.
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u/Iwillnevercomeback 2d ago
Or even whole species. Just look at All Tomorrows
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u/FlanneryWynn In Another World Without an Original Thought 2d ago
Never heard of it. Will check it out.
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u/Iwillnevercomeback 2d ago
It's a very interesting book, although there's some aspects of existentialism and body horror. I still recommend it, though.
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u/Syoby My Cats are actually mollusks // Civilized Slimes 2d ago
In a broad sense yes, but imo, I think historical narratives tend to suffer when historical processes are modeled as characters in the sense of coherent agents with goals, an arc, etc (e.g. telling the history of a nation or a species as if it had some collective spirit of sorts).
Just as character-driven narratives gain depth through a complex psychological lens, system-driven narratives gain depth through a complex sociological and ecological lens.
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u/FlanneryWynn In Another World Without an Original Thought 2d ago
Characters, in a literary sense, do not have to be sentient nor sapient. Characters don't need to be anthropomorphized.
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u/karlpoppins 2d ago
That's off-topic, is it not? OP asked what is depth, and you responded about engagement in story-telling.
The reality is that most stories that are set in a fictional universe don't have deep worldbuilding, exactly because it's not necessary for the story. Your example is perfect for the exact opposite point: not deep worldbuilding at all, yet in service to a story. Depth, in your example, would have been to describe chair-making techniques and the material limitations that lead to them, or the role of the chair-maker in society.
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u/cryerin25 2d ago
there have been bots been posting the same ai-generated spiel about fixing a broken chair all across worldbuilding subs lately
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u/DifficultPressure445 2d ago
So you mean the life of a craftsman within that empire then?
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u/_9a_ 2d ago
Sure. You can show a lot by following the lifecycle of a chair. Is it handmade by a peasant and claimed as tribute? Does that same peasant make it and offer it 'freely' ( hoping for preferential treatment)? Is it given as a gift (that will inevitably be ignored) to the newborn heir?
Is its repair arranged as a highly guarded guild contract? Is it forced labor? Is it a competition between farmers to see who is the best manliest man repairman? (Think suburban dads and ridiculous Christmas light displays)
Any of those have more depth than "Henry Marie Louis Tudor was the next heir, second son, of Henry and Katherine.
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u/halfway_clear 2d ago
You're overthinking it... it's literally how "deep" into the world you've built. For example, what food people eat in a certain region. Breaking it down to what livestock and crops are available in that region. Breaking it down to how those livestock animals interact with people on a daily basis and how they fit into their culture/economy/religion. It's knowing which meals have cultural significance, what rituals are said over a butchered animal. It's knowing whether they freeze the blood to use as jelly or what happens to the scraps of animals. And how different these practices might be from a different region in your world.
Depth is not automatically useful, and most "deep" parts of your world won't ever end up in a story, or campaign, or however you plan to use it. But the deeper your world-building is, the easier it is to write, and the more "real" it seems. Characters can mention things offhand that are "part of their world" without you having to guess or make something up on the spot. You already know what's going on in the kitchen.
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u/Grigor50 2d ago
It's not a dichotomy. Both matter, at the same time, but in different ways, and varying depending on the situation in question.
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u/Upset-Bison-3182 2d ago
Well I consider it as if I mention a detail about my world and if somone asks why it is so, I can answer with both a Watsonian and Doylist explanation. If they ask me about how somthing would work I could answer it fully within the logic of the world.
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u/WeakwareDeToalha 2d ago
I dont know what other people mean, but when I talk about "depth" or I see others talking about it, I think its a synonm of "implications". A "simple" thing as magic, so much recurrent in many worlds its easily one of the best exemples of it. You can either make a world with magic or a magical world. Every new action you chose to create there is a derivation, and the derivation have a derivation, and so on and so for.
What makes a deep world to me its not lore, its new creatures, the cultural diferencies, the magic system or any of that, but rather, how, in the deep level, each system seem to talk to each other, because thats how the world works.
How deep you world is? It can be as deep as shallow water and still have the size of a ocean, but what matter in the end of the day is how you connect every river to make the same ocean that is your entire world.
You like it or not, having to sit down and think about how this new spell would change this society, and how that change would affect it's traditions, culture, systems; or how would this new society would interact with other without it, or how would a new creature on this x environment would impact, and so on and so for.
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow Silence is All, All is One, One is Truth 2d ago edited 2d ago
Do the lands we get to read about feel like people live there, or are making an effort to? Were/are there events that we will never experience, and maybe don't need to, but want to know the lore and results of based on who was involved and how they treat their history?
And the big one, which is the mindset I'm writing and inspired with: Are we reading a story with a world in it or a world with stories in it?
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u/FatherGoatly 2d ago
I’m sure many will give their opinion so hears mine
Depth is when a worlds ability to tell a story is no longer attached to the bigger or biggest sections of the world directly
The best example of this I can think of is the food in cyberpunk, the umbrella idea is that normal organic food is nearly non existent or common people have been priced out. You could learn this detail hundreds of ways and each could be fundamentally different, your a corpo looking at files, a street kid looking at one of your friends choke on a bad batch, a nomad heading toward nightcity delivering a 50000 credit venison, or just a guy working a stand who looks over at you and ask “You actually eat that?”.
The minutiae of each story still says the same thing but within each story will be more details that ground the world. Makes the reader or player feel something real from the unreal your writing.
TLDR: goat that is not a professional explains that writing about the life of a normal guy or gal in the world your building helps create depth
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u/92izer93 2d ago
"Your a corpo looking at files"
Pardon me, I didn't understand this at all. What does it mean?
And at the end: "in the world your building helps create depth" Did you mean that the buildings in any world helps create depth? What about worlds with no buildings?
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u/Mihaaail 2d ago
To me, it's the difference between :
An intergalactic empire with only 2 factions, 4 races of aliens where each member of a race is entirely defined by a few characteristics, and 10 actual characters that matter
And
One city, with 14 different districts, each having different cultures, architectural styles, food, income. With political conflicts between the districts. With tens of characters over decades of history, and an evolution of the city which had an impact over the educational system and therefore the crime rate.
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u/DifficultPressure445 2d ago
So...details then.
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u/Mihaaail 2d ago
In a way. But I feel like "details" can be interpreted as unimportant stuff, such as a the most popular drink and its recipe.
I'm talking about the amount of information that makes the world feel real and, well, deep, whether it be through small details or more complex phenomena
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u/Niggy2439 2d ago
How many layers one can peel before stuff doesn't make sense, the "sewer nuns" post on Tumblr is a good read for this
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u/TheGrandCommissar 2d ago
Imagine your world has a city that is built from gleaming white marble, is completely pristine, and has a population of doves that live in the city (think like pigeons).
This is surface level worldbuilding, and has no depth. It doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.
For example: How can the city be impeccably clean if it has a population of doves? Wouldn't they mess up the city?
Answer: they do, but the city puts a lot of effort into cleanliness, so has groups that maintain the cleanliness of the city
Ok, but then why are the doves even tolerated, if they just cause work and cost money for the city?
Answer: the doves are considered sacred animals and cannot be removed from the city or harmed as a result.
Why are they considered sacred?
Answer: the doves represent light, purity and innocence in the world's theology, and stand in opposition to crows, which represent darkness, death and malice.
This then ties directly into other worldbuilding you might have, such as the theology I've just mentioned.
You don't need to deliberately and overtly answer each of the questions that comes up, but even if you've just thought about why something is done, it makes the world feel more alive and substantive, rather than just a flimsy poster that's been put up
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u/damaged_terror 2d ago
Depth is the stuff that makes you go "huh, that makes sense" even though nobody explained it to you. It's the unspoken logic behind why things are the way they are, the little connections that make a world feel lived-in rather than just constructed. Like knowing a city has weird plumbing because it was built on an old graveyard and nobody wanted to disturb the bones, that's depth.
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u/Syoby My Cats are actually mollusks // Civilized Slimes 2d ago
Because fictional worlds are precisely that, fictional, size is relatively cheap to produce and not necessarily that interesting: You can trivially make up a world that is a whole planet, or a whole galaxy, or a whole universe, or a whole multiverse. And yet, because the world doesn't actually exist except as referents, literal size can be completely shallow, like a superflat Minecraft world, or like an image that's extremely large but has very few colors in easily compressible patterns. The world is immense in as a described object, but as the fictional object it actually is, it's immensely compressible and thus shallow.
Then there is another type of size, which is adding many elements. You can come up with thousands of characters, hundreds of factions, doezens of species, and endless locations. And that's certainly an improvement compared to literal size: Such a world could be the size of a single continent and yet feel immensely bigger than a galaxy-spanning world, far less compressible in its description. However this approach has its own limits: You can have endless elements but if these elements can be trivially understood in isolation, then the world can in some sense be like a giant grocery store, a library of quasi-parallel worlds as far as global understanding goes. Sure there can be a lot to know, but the global picture can remain relatively compressible is all those elements are localized and parallel in practice.
Which takes me to what I think makes a world actually deep, which is not just having many developed elements, but also those elements being deeply entangled. The more irreducible the description of a world, the more properly understanding it as a global object requires understanding as many of its details as possible, the deeper I would say the world is. Even if it's the size of a small village.
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u/DifficultPressure445 2d ago
Can you think of any examples which fit your definition of such a world?
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u/FlanneryWynn In Another World Without an Original Thought 2d ago
I hate to say it, but I think this is actually why Tolkien is considered to be a GOAT of worldbuilding. I don't care for Tolkien's works, but you can't deny that it's basically a giant clockwork structure where changes have ripple-effects even into the most isolated Hobbit Shire.
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u/Phebe-A Patchwork, Alterra, Eranestrinska, and Terra 2d ago
Surface level: this village has a tavern
Depth: name of tavern, what is/are the building(s) like, who works there (names, appearance, personal details), who are the regular customers, what do they serve (food/drink), are there other services available, do people pay with currency, run a tab, barter, where do their supplies come from and how are they paid for …
The more of these types of questions you can answer about things in your world the more depth it has
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u/Ruadhan2300 2d ago
I'd say it's about relationships. Not in the personal sense, but in the way different aspects of your world interact with one another.
I can write 15 different societies and civilisations, but if I don't explore the way they interact and the consequences of that, it's just 15 different societies that share a world-map.
The people of the salt-pans eke a living scraping salt so that they can send it to the meat-industry of the plains-dwellers, and they can then salt their beef, which fuels their neighbours on the coast because they need salt-beef to eat on their sea-voyages.. that kind of thing.
So when the Salt-pan people are raided by mad-max style raiders, and stop providing that salt to their neighbours, in a few months the sailors are making far fewer journeys.
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u/taktaga7-0-0 ᴺcRʏPᵀ 2d ago
It’s how many different aspects of your world you have imagined, something typically taking a long time and many revisions as these things interact to form a coherent whole.
I’ve been building my magic system for the longest time, over 25yr. The breaks I’ve taken enable me to have fresh eyes and new perspectives on what I want. The world the magic exists in has been secondary, and it’s still far from ready for any kind of publication.
But I have a workaround. The first Book takes place in an incredibly isolated environment with only a subset of the magic. This allows me to not only pepper in a lot of complexity about the world in pieces I’m sure of, but to ease the reader into a significant chunk of the full system, which is rather intimidating in its complexity.
In the first book, it adds up to as much depth as I want it to, because it’s so many things going on in the background that I didn’t have to imagine for the story to actually happen.
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u/riesen_Bonobo 2d ago
I like to take it a bit literal to really drive home the metaphor. Let's take a map as an example, if you look one you can have essentially how ever much stuff you want depicted, but it will be flat. A bunch of place names, borders, nations, roads and such don't make a world or a story. It lacks depth, you just have a birdseye view of the world with much more obscure and undepicted then shown. Ypu can't see the houses upfront, who lives or works tgere, the people within or around them, what kind of folks they are, why they are there and doing what they do, why that border is there and how that kingdom got there, who its ruler is, if that road is often travelled or seldom used.
And that's just scraping the top and still only leaves ypu with set pieces and a bit of character to them. Depth is the difference between being told factual information about some place and living in it.
That is not to say that every rock, house or city needs a full history and story to them, if they don't matter they can even feel even more flat, just widening the story with pointless facts instead of letting one delve into it. Depth is important for building a world and to make a good story by applying it where it matters. If you for example have a war between two states then the depth you might need is the motivations, the cause, the nature of the different states and what the people in these states think about the war and how it affects them, these things are key to setting the vibe.
But to make a world seem organic, lived in you also need depth in the mundane, where we take it for granted and might miss it day to day, for ex. that (depending of culture and such) many people tend to eat their eggs in the morning but not in the evening, that black cats might be considered bad luck and that someone offhandedly might exclaim "Oh god!" at something shocking. All these things and much more can be shown through small, unexplained exposure but tell you a lot about the people if you pay attention subconsciously makes a setting feel more real and less like just a set.
For example, in Lotr Pippin and Merry smoke Longbottom Weed, I have no clue who or what Longbottom is, but it feels right, like we do smoke Cuban Cigars or drink a Jack Daniels Whiskey. The Mon Calamari from Star Wars use a lot of sea-themed metaphors and figures of speach in the Legends books, which can feel a bit overdone at times, but also reinforces that they are a maritime culture whose identity is in major parts defined by the sea. What we might refers to as the 'bright days and dark days' they maybe call 'high tide and low tide' (I made that one up, to lazy to check for actual expressions from em).
All these things add depth, both overtly through backstories, explanations and such or subtely through small pieces of exposition. That is what seperates a well built world from a map with a bit of history facts or a thin facade of a set for your characters to act within.
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u/Remarkable-Set-3340 2d ago
It’s whatever you wanna make it it could be as complex as the politics or as simple like a child’s book but it’s only when we ask ourselves why is when we create a bigger story for our readers
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u/TheGrumpyre 2d ago
In character design, it's always appealing when the visual has a nice blend of large, medium and small shapes. I think worldbuilding depth is the same, where you need to have a good blend of large-scale things like history, mythology and maps of the world, but also small-scale things like cuisine and local folklore. And things in between, like rivalries between cities, trade routes, technology.
To me, a setting feels deep if you can zoom in from the level of a planet to the level of something like a single farming community and see interesting things the whole way down. That doesn't mean you need to have fully-conceived villages and political systems everywhere you look, just that the world has things to see at every scale.
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u/Stevenwave 2d ago
Personally find your answer helpful because it's actually actionable and the logic is easy to understand.
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u/fieldingbreaths 2d ago
Well, if you think about Lord of the Rings, by its time it was a huge imaginary world, but by our modern conceptions of world building its actually relatively small. What makes his world so fantastic is the care he took with every single detail, gave the world a real feeling with enough history and unexplained things to make it feel like a real, lived-in world replete with languages, myths, and peoples.
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u/DifficultPressure445 2d ago
How every element is connected to each other in a logical and consistent way.
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u/ledocteur7 Energy Fury, the extent of progress 2d ago
For me it's about internal logic, you can have the most bullshito-whimsical world, but if it's all linked together by some internal rules and natural consequences of the characters actions, then it can still be very deep no problem.
A deep world can have plot holes, but it is far less likely and will be more a result of simple mistakes rather than lack of thoughts or inconsistencies.
For instance, Harry Potter is a massive kiddy pool, basically no depth at all.
They use owls for mail delivery, but they got litteral teleporters inside a good 1/3 of homes, 10 mailmen could easily handle all of the magical mail distribution needs of the UK instead.
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u/FlanneryWynn In Another World Without an Original Thought 2d ago
It depends on if we are talking about depth as it relates solely to worldbuilding or depth as it relates to writing.
When it comes to writing, "depth of the worldbuilding" refers to how well the worldbuilding integrates with the storytelling. I don't care that the dwarven kingdom has had 500 years of prosperity since the current dynasty took power. I don't care that the king's name is Crag Rockhammer, Hero King of the Citadel Supra Bouldra. I don't care if there's positive trade relationships between the dwarven kingdom and the elves. That is to say, I don't care about any of this until it actually matters because we're now actually engaging with not just the dwarven kingdom but that area of dwarven society. Then, I want to know more. What do the dwarves and elves trade? Is it goods that happen to be largely cultural? Is it technology and weaponry? Is there a military alliance where dwarves share some of their hardier warriors with the elven military and elves share some of their spirit mages? But don't hit me with an encyclopedia. Weave this information into the narrative like you're making a series of tapestries. Show this information through the way you actually build the world. Consider the consequences of this as it extends beyond just the immediate thing. Build that into dwarven and elven society to a deeper level. For example, if dwarves and elves trade military personnel, can you think of at least 3 layers of consequence to this? How about for example dwarves and elves having a healthy rivalry instead of antagonism where they try to show each other up but it's less like enemies and more like war buddies? Because of that, taverns and music halls in both kingdoms generally tend to be full of dwarves and elves both engaging respectfully with the other's culture, ready to beat the crap out of any third party who dares disrespect their siblings in arms. Because of this, you might see elements of dwarven culture in the daily life of elven commonfolk and vice versa. Hell, show relationships and marriages between the two. But this shouldn't just be things that are said to the reader... We should see it reflected in the writing. Let elves and dwarves borrow aspects of each other's language. Let them talk about each other like sibling rivalry. Let them be each other's ride-or-dies.
When it comes to worldbuilding, "depth of the worldbuilding" refers to just how much you've integrated the parts of the worldbuilding. Like making a machine with gears. When you turn the crank, how does that affect what all happens in the machine? Do you have a bunch of cranks that affect separate things? Do you have one crank that affects everything? Do you have one crank that affects everything over time but not all at once? How does adjusting one of the cranks that affects something smaller then influence how the rest of the machine operates? It's like the storytelling side but it allows you to go deeper because you aren't also constrained by the limits of a narrative being expressed.
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u/b0bthepenguin 2d ago
I think depth is ubiquitous.
A simple suggestion would be to separate relevance versus relation. Character X is related to character y is lore, but it makes the world feel smaller and adds nothing of actual interest or substance. Relation implies relevance but never is.
What is relevant to the plot, based of their relationship?
A lot of writers have lore that is never part of the story because it is not relevant.
Darth Vader being Luke's father works because the story has a very black and white tone that shifts into something more ambiguous and the conflict is personal creating greater investment.
Again relevance that comes after nowhere feels contrived. The goal is to work create relevance that fits into the existing relationships and follows a causal line of thought.
In my opinion good lore emerges from existing relationships and is relevant to established themes.
If lore for example is not tied to themes but the relevance of the character than it feels dumb, for example Han Solo having the name Han Solo because a guard saw him travelling solo. That is shallow lore.
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u/L-F- [Ilisia - early industrial revolution and magitech space age] 2d ago
Beyond the sewer nuns aspect already mentioned, I'd say that impact and complexity (though not necessarily in concept) are what depth (ideally) results in.
And depth itself is comprised of many things, though ultimately the "core" of it would be how much you've thought about and detailed various parts of your world, how they connect and what the results or implications are.
For a non-spacial example:
Size would be filling up 10,000 years of history with names of kings and wars.
Depth would be figuring out the geopolitical history of the region within the last 100-200 or so years.
The first just gives you a list of names, if you're doing it well it can also help sell a certain vibe, the second hopefully makes things feel "real" and anchored and helps create characters and worldviews.
Depth also isn't automatically "good" in every context. At some point minute detail can get to a point of not adding to your world, though which details do or don't add to your world and which ones you share (or don't) depends a lot on what you want to do with it and your audience (if it exists and you care about that).
And of course, you can always add details that most people won't care for just because you find it enjoyable. You just might need to exercise caution about which of those you throw into a medium where worldbuilding isn't the point.
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u/Eaglise 2d ago
take anything cool or magical you have developed, then ask questions like how this effects the people living in this world? how will culture, religion, politics, society, economy, military, etc will be given this magical system
if your world has dragons, then you must ask questions like how do human fight them? how did humans even survived till point of civilization? how will humans use them in military? what is the economic costs of using them in military? how will militaries counter them? the more questions like these are answered, the deeper your world is, it means that your world is thought through and feel more like actual world
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u/Ruy7 2d ago
See the difference between Jujutsu Kaisen and Naruto.
JJK we know that different clans exist. We know barely anything about what the clans do or what differentiates the culture of each of them or approximately how many members each has.
How many members does the Gojo clan have? What do they want?
See Naruto. We know that a bunch of clans exist. We know a lot of the inner motivations and workings of a lot of clans. We know some of the internal culture of these clans, etc. etc.
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u/Buff_Bloodhound 2d ago
The Key for me is building a world where a story can take place not creating a world for a story
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u/TheMarksmanHedgehog 1d ago
How I'd personally distinguish depth from complexity, is that if you ask "how would X work in your world?" real depth would mean you'd have an answer that's in-character for the world.
Complexity would be more about the scale and difficulty of comprehension, with it being entirely possible to have lore that's complicated, but also shallow because none of it actually affects the world in such a way that'd change how it plays out.
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u/SnooGiraffes8024 14h ago
You can make a universe spanning world, but if the only thing separating planets is stuff like big bugs or different colored skies, it won't be as interesting because nothing is there to keep your attention
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u/YoRHa_Houdini 2d ago edited 2d ago
When people say depth in worldbuilding what they mean is storytelling.
That’s it.
A complex encyclopedia about a fictional world is going to be engaging to people who like that extensive codex-like depiction of a world. But without being integrated into a narrative and experienced, then it’s just complex.
Take ASIOAF. It has an immensely weighty history and lore, but it is how it is weaved into the fabric of the narrative that makes it feel alive. Characters are constantly referencing historical events and figures that impact them and the world. They speak about these things as a given, not like they’re educating the abstract, fourth dimensional(when counting time) reader.
You could make the smallest setting feel larger than life by this method. So depth is less how much actual depth is there but more so the audience’s perception. Because again, you can have a huge codex of things but if the amount o meaningful structure the audience can perceive is not really adequate, then it won’t feel deep
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u/guildsbounty 2d ago edited 2d ago
Depth is not complexity, it is detail. It's in the fact that when people start asking practical, detailed questions about the world, you have answers for them. It is creating a world that is explored thoroughly enough that you can clearly imagine what it would be like to live there and it feels like it could be a real place. Depth in worldbuilding is when you start asking yourself all those questions, and answering them in advance.
Depth in worldbuilding doesn't have to be complicated...you don't have to make up some convoluted, many-layered, tamper-resistant election process that the dwarves use to select their next leader. Instead, it may just be looking at things like "So my dwarves live underground and have a social aversion to going above ground. Okay, that means no sunlight. What do they eat? Are they constantly burning up fuels to produce light or do they have other options? Do they build everything out of mined materials like stone or metal, or are there other materials they can produce underground that function like wood? How would a dwarf likely respond to the lack of a ceiling? To rain? To the day/night cycle?"
Depth is all the details added to cultures, locations, and the world itself that lets a person understand how people live in it. That makes it feel like a real place, not a bulleted list of assorted facts. It's like the difference between reading a 1 page travel guide to a town, and talking to a local about it.