s01e02: Worldbuilding

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When we met with our first cadre session, we didn't get a lot of time for the world building, but we did do a world building exercise that was based on some questions that we went through. Before we get into talking about that, what is world building? I think it's like setting the stage, creating all of the mechanics and the history and culture of either the story or the game that you're going to play.

I kept thinking about listening to our oldest and her BFF when they were like six in the basement and they would spend hours just saying, okay, let's say that I'm a detective. And they'd be like, yeah, yes. And, and, and I'm running away. Yes. And, and they would do that for like hours. And I don't know that they ever actually acted out any of it, but they spent just a really long time with sentences that started with, let's say that, and then whatever their world was going to be.

Obviously with like D&D and other role-playing games because that is what sort of the purpose is trying to build a space where somebody is building a space that you can have your character interact so I like to think of it as what you did sometimes with our kids of just strewing things around we are collectively in world building deciding where we can strew things and what we're going to strew and maybe the meaning of those things or

what what happens if you go and select this particular thing to play with.

And there's a lot of depth in the ideas in the structure that you have to think about, whether it's a book, a game, or whether it's just imagining a better world. I really enjoyed thinking about world building more deliberately because, particularly in terms of relational cultural theory, because how much our culture and our world, like the world we live in, how much it impacts our ability to have growth fostering relationships.

And so when we play around with world building, we could either create a world that really supports growth fostering relationships, or we could create a world with deliberate barriers to it and see how our play can overcome these barriers. Yeah, I've got a game right now that I'm about to run for my friends in a gaming group.

And it's D&D to a point, but one of the things that I'm looking to do is really play with sense of identity and power and choices and repercussions and do this in a way that doesn't rely on books that exist or things that anybody can tap into other than being in this world with me and playing it. It's not that you have something to compare it to or some external Bible or canon that you can say, well, it has to be this way because that's the way it was already done once.

Just like real life, we are seeped in a culture. And what we learn through that, through our interactions there, are the pains that we have, the joys that we have, The limitations or constraints and things that we're completely unaware of impact who we are. And it's the same is true in imaginary worlds. So you have a world that is shaped this one way, then the characters that come out of that are going to be shaped that way as well.

If you're asking and answering different questions, you're going to get different kinds of worlds and therefore different kinds of characters and interactions between it.

So one of the things I liked about your approach to this was using RCT's five good things as a framework for that, just to get everybody on the same page. What is RCT and what are the five good things? RCT is relational cultural theory or therapy. And the five good things are these qualities that you would find in a mutually growth fostering relationship.

Relationship it's important to note that we don't grow and heal from every single relationship we have sometimes that gets overlooked in rct but but in a mutually growth fostering relationship you you do both people do or all people do and the five good things that are in that are zest and i like i love that word because it's like a it's not just energy but it's like delicious Delicious. Playful. Increased clarity or understanding both about self and the world and the relationship.

An increased ability to take action or to create. That one has sort of changed over the years, but I just think of it as movement. Like, does this relationship create movement? A sense of worth and a desire for more.

More relationships, more of this relationship, relationship more of the mutually growth fostering stuff in terms of world building you took these five things these benefits coming out of those kinds of mutually growth fostering relationships and you posed a bunch of questions that i'm assuming were informed by your list of 100 but yes i think well i started with like trying to get all these questions from all these different And I was like both reading and listening to podcasts simultaneously.

And then my head almost exploded. And what happened was as I was writing down the questions, I started thinking about how our world building exercises would directly tie to relational cultural theory. And then I was thinking that in the past, we've had a lot of really juicy discussions by framing things in the five good things, whether that's like, is therapy working? Or how is our team doing as a way to measure? How are we on the five good things? Give us an example of a zest question.

What do celebrations look like in this world? I could picture that like immediately. If it's different, if it's not the same world that we live in right now, how does its past, its shape, its culture change it? What would be considered a celebration? And it just was a really nice rabbit hole that you could have gone down.

And I think you actually, your group probably did. yeah that's a good one and you think of celebration you think of high energy you think of something that makes you feel happy or that has some memory that's sticky when i think of zest that's another thing that i think of is how long can i retain that that feeling afterwards can i recall it as a a moment in time and then feel that again so how about some of the other five good things the

ability to take action or to create like the movement was interesting for me and thinking about like, how do things get done in this world? And how is labor divided? How do they care for each other? How do you know that there's enough to eat? And the sense of worth was a place where we could explore some of the power stuff that RCT is really good at naming, you know, like how are decisions made that impact groups of beings? Are there hierarchies that place one group above or below another?

What do we value as a culture? Do all the cultures on this world value the same things? So I enjoyed mucking around in that one quite a bit, too. I don't feel like I don't think our group answered that one a whole lot because we were cats.

Although we did have the idea that part of the culture of movement and action was that they were mostly cooperative. But at any given time, someone could walk away from the work and no one would think anything of it because it was just a part of how it went. So and that was interesting to think about. And I think of how much we sort of take for granted in these hierarchies. There was nobody that necessarily said this is how it's going to be.

It's things that evolved through many, many choices and distributions of power and environment and all of that. But we just sort of live in this space where we take things for granted that that's the way it's always been or that or it was by some design. And so it's really hard to consider changing that. So the world building, asking those questions, you get the same types of explorations.

But I think because it's play, you're more willing to explore negative things or build things up and seeing where it leads if you make these sort of fundamental decisions. So what's the next one? So increased clarity, knowledge, or understanding. In that one, we were asking like what kind of knowledge and understanding exists in this world? How is it passed on? Are there any spiritual practices that this world embraces?

Are these practices performed in isolation or is there a leadership or is it cooperative, collaborative? And that's a really fundamental part of RCT is acknowledging the power differential and working towards a power with as opposed to a power over. I automatically went to like a top down, you have to do this kind of thing. And as you're world building, you know, what if that was shaped differently or what if it's a benevolent leader versus, you know, somebody who's not.

Or there's a council or there's, you know, that you can imagine a lot of different shapes and that might change the way that you experience that knowledge or that ritual. And power could have like a completely different flavor when you're world building. It could be that power has to do with caring for people. And you could still have some problematic ways that that looks too. I mean, I think we'd argue that there's places in our world where power is caring

for people. So that's four of them. So what was the fifth one? Let's see. What are the most important ideals to this culture? And how might a nearby culture oversimplify it? So I was trying to think of like, what are some of the stereotypes of this culture if you don't really understand what's happening in it? I like that question too, because it expanded the world by asking about another group and how they're going to view it.

It isn't just that you're starting from scratch and building up this culture and it is the one culture. It's that in your world, you've got this happening all over the place.

So what happens when what you value or what you know are radically different from your neighbors and how they view each other? Desire for more is the fifth one. I really liked this question. Are there virtuous or vicious cycles of behavior? It could go both ways. Does this world have people who are in condemned isolation, which is an RCT idea from very early on.

And it is the idea that someone is just in such isolation and not able to connect because of just repeated disconnections marked by sort of abuse of power or not being seen or being stifled, being separated to the point that the being doesn't believe they could be connected and then they're in condemned isolation what does this world do with that like what would lead someone in this culture to believe that they weren't worthy of connection the vicious cycle

has just run its course where you're out of that cycle entirely and you don't feel like you could enter it again we have this list of i don't know a few dozen questions that we gave to people in small groups and it was difficult to get started because there were so many questions. And even though this is not your list of a hundred, we had to spend some time like looking through them and it was hard to pick where to start.

Probably half our time was just getting to that point where we could answer just one thing. But once we did, then that gave us some anchoring that the next question we answered was now no longer in this vacuum. It was relative to the answer that we gave. And so in our world, we ended up in creatures that are in this luscious jungle region, very aware of how plants move.

There's canopies on the top, there's root systems underneath, and the things that they build, the way that they go about the world are reflective of that connection. They They also get energized when they see good art. So there's an aesthetic that they recognize that really lifts them up. When we imagine worlds, we don't always have to imagine perfect worlds, or we don't have to always imagine the ideal world or the best thing and stuff.

It could be that the answers you have are something that's upsetting, and you have to live and work in that world. I mean, we're living in such a world. I think sometimes we get self-conscious when we're world building and we want to make it all good.

This happens a lot, particularly in kids play where we'll be listening in and here's something that we're uncomfortable with, you know, and then my captain goes and blows up your ship and you're like, oh, honey, maybe you just move his ship or like something along those lines. Minds understanding how important it is for not just kids, but I really think everyone to be able to explore the darker side of our world and our experience.

Like you said, because we're in times that are hard and scary, doing that in a play setting can be a way to promote healing, to to explore or to empower, to feel like, oh, there is an opportunity to make a difference. Because I think sometimes we look around in real life and it just feels like it doesn't matter. Assuming roles or assuming choices that you wouldn't make in real life allows you to find things about yourself and about the world that you wouldn't see otherwise.

I mean, everybody I think does this in RPGs is that your own personality always seems to shine through. If you're somebody who wants to go and disrupt the world in there, then even if your character is not that person, you're going to find a way to do that, particularly for long campaigns. And so for me, I have a reputation for adopting all sorts of animals and wanting to keep them.

I intentionally try to create characters that at least value communication, partly because I want to get better at the role-playing part of RPGs. The game itself, just the history of it, has been how powerful your weapon is, how strong you are, how much armor you have to protect yourself. So, you know, we work as a team, but a lot of times, you know, you're still rolling the dice for yourself. It's battle-based. The game literally slows down to a crawl when you have conflict for that reason.

And not everybody is going to be as willing to do that type of slow conversational thing where you're not rolling dice for it. Partly because sometimes you're building a character that isn't built for that. So what are you going to do in that case? What do you do? Yeah. Yeah. I think you have to name it and be deliberate if you want to be able to slow down and have those conversations and get that enthusiastic consent as well.

Even if it's not my favorite part to slow down and have the conversation, because really what I want to do is go fight the dragon. I value our relationship and I understand that this is part of the game. And so I'm willing to continue to be present during that part of the exploration.

Well, and the game mechanics can help with that. There's a Doctor Who RPG that because the doctor in the TV show doesn't carry a gun and is just a big talker, particularly in big moments, a lot of confidence and stuff, very dangerous, but will still talk. And the mechanics of that Doctor Who RPG value that.

So instead of, you know, rolling to hit, you're doing like clips or have words that are action that you can take and they have an effect, but they're different than swinging an axe at somebody.

And we've been talking about it in terms of games, particularly RPGs, but world building is very much a part of writing books and movie making and doing storytelling. And it's part of what you do here at the BCC with Sand Table. With the sand tray, in elementary school at some point, I remember spending a whole lot of effort creating this diorama inside a shoebox. It's really hard to get all the pieces to go exactly how I wanted them to go.

I do remember being happy with it. I don't remember what it was about. But it can be a little bit like that in that there's a wide variety of miniatures that you can pick what calls to you. And then you have a tray of sand and you can create what you need to create. I started going to the training because I just thought, well, I need to get out a little bit more outside my comfort zone as a therapist and meet some therapists in town too.

Every time I've gone to a training, I've been gobsmacked by the amount of insight that I get from just playing with symbolism. I'll start off a tray thinking, I'm just going to build a tray about this thing. And then when I look at it later, I'm like, oh, oh, I really needed to do that. And I didn't even, I didn't even know. Or just regular play therapy. I mean, I think world building happens when you're playing with a dollhouse or when you're arranging all of the potato head people just so.

I think when you're taking an object and then place it in relationship to something else that you're then giving meaning, there's a different reaction that maybe you have to that. One of the things I like about world building is that you can retreat into intellect if you want to. If it gets to be a little overwhelming, you can sort of backstep into, hmm, I wonder what the map looks like, or what's the geography?

But in general, you're immersing yourself in imagination and feeling and vulnerability in doing that.

And that's growth. Our next session for Relational Cadre is going to be on February 25th at 1 o'clock Eastern. It will be a hybrid event, so we'll have people here at the BCC, but you can also join online. There's a registration to fill out as well, and our topic's going to be imagining together. Yeah, looking forward to it. And we'll give a, our next episode, we'll give a sort of a preview to the prompt that we'll have for that particular session. Yeah. Well, this is fun. I like it. Music.

And was edited for this podcast by Kevin McKeese. Theme music lovingly sampled from Positive Thinking and Serpentine by Vlad Gushenko. Follow Bloomington Center for Connection. Music.