Something weird I do lately is running Dwarf Fortress in the background while having the computer play it for me. In this mode I'm neither the player, the worldbuilder nor the influence of events; I'm like an owner of a very large aquarium.

Which got me thinking about the connections literature, worldbuilding and tabletop RPGs. These not fully formed, loosely connected examinations on them, but not tainted by established thoughts on the art of worldbuilding.

There is inhabiting a world with grace, and there is building a brand new world. Being good in one doesn't automatically make you good in the other.

Role-playing games require you to inhabit a built world. They are only begrudgingly called 'games' when the point isn't to win but to not lose.

Genre fictions thrive on building worlds; literary fictions don't have to or don't get to.

Literary fictions are basically one-person RPGs placed in the established contemporary world. What RPGs lack in comparison are inner dialogues. It's as if RPGs are not interested in character-growth beyond tangible metrics. Perhaps the idea of being a 'game' traps RPGs into being a mechanical device for fun, when the potential for produndity of a stage-play remains untapped.

Literary fictions are about character studies, they zoom in.

World-building is about civilizational studies, they zoom out. Zoomed-out views are more popularly done as non-fictions. That is sometimes a problem.

Zoomed-in stories and zoomed-out story structures are hard to mix. Works that attempt both usually suck when zoomed into characters (Asimov). Perhaps Tolkien is widely admired for being able to do both well at the same time.

Literature has existed for a far longer time, therefore the act of worldbuilding is treated as subset of work to serve the telling of stories. But it's conceivable that the other way round is true: worldbuilding is an art for its own end, stories take place in the worlds like people inhabiting a land. Like a piece of land exists on its own with or without people, a made up world can legitimately exist with or without stories.

It feels like worldbuilding got dialed to eleven with the invention of science fiction. Classic ancient literatures that were fantasical tend to build worlds heavily influenced by religions of the time.

Games take it a step further, they build worlds more than literatures do. That's obvious in AAA titles, but it's also true to the smallest of games. Tetris confines its world to a limited set of blocks and varying rate of gravity. Chess imagines a battlefield free from fogs of war and equal-sized armies from both sides.

Interestingly, no RPG takes place in the contemporary world. As much as something people enjoy doing corporate raids, I don't think there exist RPGs featuring board meetings.

Social media takes the role of RPG in the real world. In this game you play a character who looks and talks like you, perhaps even a more intense version of you. But the world is (post|meta)modern, the rules are hard to figure out, the consequences are real.

The act of storytelling comes in multi media. You get to write them, draw them, tell or show.

Worldbuilding is special, it has no dominant medium in which to do it in. That makes it real interesting. When building tools are vague and fluid, it means the outcome varies in their depth and quality.

Herbert built Dune entirely in text first; Star Wars were first built on screen; Dungeons & Dragons as a tabletop game. All three worlds now take forms in movies, games and books but it's clear where each of their strengths lie.

If stories tell lies make truths more profound, what does building worlds achieve? It remains to be seen what playing-god does to people. Perhaps it'll make them more conscientious about their relationship to the real world, or it's no more than escapism for not being able to influence the real world in any tangible way.

In the same way authors create characters that are parts of him; imaginary worlds are caricatures of the real one. Perhaps some macro messages are more easily conveyed via a made up world than character studies.