Podcast recommendation - Worldbuilding for Masochists
So, I've been spending most of the hours I'm working lately listening to a podcast I found called "Worldbuilding for Masochists".
It is hosted by a cast of authors who talk about - you guessed it - Worldbuilding! They've got a ton of good topics, and the episodes come in at about an hour per episode. The topic is more of a loose guideline than a firm point of conversation, but that's actually fine to me as even in their unfocused chatter I find it provides some cool things to think about.
Now, since they're all authors, their worldbuilding has a story-focused cast to it, but everything they talk about is super applicable to tabletop worldbuilding too, so I think It's definitely worth a recommendation from me.
You can find it on whatever your favourite podcast app is, or you can go directly to their site to listen from there. https://worldbuildingformasochists.podbean.com/
The hosts are all great and very entertaining, and they put their advice to practice: they've created a shared world over the course of their 142+ episodes, which you can also check out on the wiki for their shared world: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/wfm-world-worldbuildcast3
I haven't looked at the worldanvil content yet myself, but I see it linked on their website and they mention it a few times that I've heard so I thought I'd also include the link here incase anyone was curious about it.
I used Worldanvil, and I've got such mixed feelings about it. I think it's probably great for world designers, but can be really clunky if you use it for D&D and have any more of a world than a single province. The learning curve is ferocious !
Although I've still got a subscription, I think it's an expensive luxury I might stop next time it comes up for renewal. Word, Excel and good old fashioned pen and paper work just fine for me 😀
Yeah, back when I was a mod of r/worldbuilding, they'd approached us very early on to partner and I was just... not super impressed with it for my own needs. Its good for what it does, but it didn't fit my style of building that's for sure.
They're certainly good at getting collaborative deals which help their marketing ! I found that after signing up, there was a lot of junk on the screen trying to encourage me to join all kinds of contests and social activities they do. I guess people like that, I'm more anti-social and just want a tool that helps me run my game, not give all my setting info away for free !