When a Screenwriter Collabs with a Dungeon Master: Worldbuilding, Lore & More (feat. Jay)

MY PATREON:

BUY ME A COFFEE (I WILL ACTUALLY SPEND IT ON COFFEE):

CONTENTS:
00:00 - huh?
00:51 - worldbuilding vs. lore
2:44 - why-chaining
7:07 - the campaign
9:58 - fictional history lesson
16:29 - SkillShare (sponsored segment)
17:41 - Rydwen III
19:00 - once-removing
22:00 - the plot plot
23:02 - on gameplay
28:59 - on goblins
30:26 - on graduations
32:17 - conclusion
33:39 - ew why does his hair look like that

[jay__smooth]

We making it out of the Ojabog with this one 😈

[Mayo-owlb]

As a person who has made lore for his minecraft world once, i can definitely relate to this video and will proceed to thank you for creating such masterpiece

[autumnmarilyn]

Distinguishing worldbuilding from lore is so important and I never thought about it, oh my god

[MinurielVilquen]

The "once removed" principle is so cool, I've IMMEDIATELY started generating ideas for my main antagonist – he used to be a fairly standard "powerhungry jealous God" but now I've made him essentially the younger/twin brother of a very powerful, skilled and vain Goddess who embodies much more of the "tyrant god ruler" archetype. By being the twin, this means that he now competes with her, using his subordinates in creative ways to skirt her control and create his own power (he becomes the God of Innovation & kick-starts the industrial revolution), instead of fighting over the same amount of power (based on landmass, followers and worship) that the other Gods use.

[benelmore]

I'm an editor, but watching your videos has helped me communicate better with directors who write their own scripts. In a way, editing is its own form of rewriting a screenplay, and being able to speak in writers' terms has been immensely helpful! Thanks for all you do!

[jef_]

1:50 I have, on several occasions, forgotten to name a character in my D&D game until I was literally in the middle of introducing them to the PCs during the session. Please imagine for a moment that you're playing D&D, and you meet this powerful local religious leader, and the first thing he says to you is, "Hello! My name is... oh fuck I forgot to name him! I've just been calling him 'the Abbot' for three months!" I actually did that. That's real. And it's not the only time it's happened.

It's not like he didn't have personality, or backstory, or connections to other characters/the plot; he was the father-figure of the NPC I was inserting into the party to eventually betray them! He had all of that. He just also didn't have a name.

Nowadays I have a spreadsheet of all the major NPCs, which obviously has a name column, so it's pretty hard to not notice until game day now. But without something like that, I'm really bad about it.

[HamptonHampton-vn]

I wanted to say thank you, I’m a very young person who wants to be a screenwriter and you’ve really inspired me when it comes to my writing

[teracota]

I’m studying creative writing for my Masters and this has basically been my school. Thank you for existing ❤

[maliquelovell]

I think it's crazy how you only have 14 videos and your content is just so good

[janjelabear]

Okay so I've been struggling to write a couple of episodes for my cartoon project. I tried using your suggestion of asking why to everything and I've fixed a crucial episode in like half an hour. I cannot thank you enough.

[yuin]

This video brought to mind something i heard from an rpg showrunner "Characters are all like stained glass. The shapes, colors, and translucense are all different, but the light shining through is always you."

And i would also like to add in that actors no matter how close they stick to a script are injecting their own personality, and I've heard that the best directors collaborate with their actors rather than just dictating what they need to do.

Just two tidbits i figured could be interesting to think about moving forward, considering what you mentioned in this video

[tallismarlowe]

so, here's the thing: i am in fact a writer who starts out with a premade world where the lore is already codified to an extent. i'm a writer, editor, and teacher in the beyond skyrim-arcane university projects and honestly, i love being able to just jump in and fill in those "hows" and "whys, " and then build off that lore to fill in the gaps. we have unofficially designated loremasters who we can pester and who are usually happy to either infodump or find us resources. the thing with starting off with a pre-defined lore set is that you get to touch on pretty much every aspect of the world. compare the father teaching his two young children how to hunt to why a tree looks the way it does to a god pulling the strings behind a massive tragedy. one of the things that i (try to) teach my students is that you have to follow not just an internal logic in your story but the external mechanical and technological constraints of your game engine - you'd be surprised how many times i've read something that just would or could not happen. knowing your limits and where (and why!) you can or can't twist, pull, change, or push them is one of the most important skills a writer of any discipline can learn. dialogue is especially tricky given the interactive nature of a video game and it has unforgiving limits, which is why we have students work on it so much. what's that? an ellipses? oops, that's a crash to desktop, game engine can't handle that. i've learned so much from my time in video game writing that i can apply to my fiction writing to the point where seeing the overlap between writing disciplines is really fascinating for me, which is why i like your videos on screen writing so much. and i will be stealing that "fire up the darling killer 3000" for future lectures, so thank you for that lol.

[ginge]

I think a story based around Aegon would work, but with him as almost a force of nature that everyone has to contend with. Like this mf is barrelling his way across Westeros and he WILL get to you and your lands eventually. How do you react to that? How do you stop him? Do you even try to stop him? Who do you align with out of desperation in the face of this absolute ligma male rocking up in your garden and charging at your front door?

[notgaryking]

I am a beginner writer. I don't have a writer's education. And I am so grateful for your content. You make some things so clear and *usablee*! I don't just learn something new, the gears in my head start spinning immediately, whether it's because I already have a story where I can apply it or (what's even more cool) because I start imagining something brand new just to try out these new tools. It's educational, functional and therefore (for me) inspiring.

Thanks, man!

[lory]

I have started with a preexisting world before because I have a bunch of ideas I really like to keep around for a particular story. However, I use the preexisting world as a template, not a mold—it’s a jumping off point that can bring with it some pretty cool ideas, but it’s malleable, because it has to be.

[pastlife]

As someone who is working on a stupidly big fantasy story and world that is always one step away from spiralling into an uncontrollable mess of plot lines and lore, I appreciate this.

[Cityweaver]

Lore?! Lore!! I honestly enjoy fictional history. Its more story...but from the back.

I often tell people that the four paragraphs they sent me about why the magical school uniform is green were really great, very illuminating, however, we're going to rewrite them now with proper nouns and action verbs.

The adjective is the emotional crutch of the writing world. Like, if they were writing about the lead up to WW1, they would describe how angry the Sebrians were, they would describe the AH Empire, and they would describe nameless, facelsss "rebels" from right of a character sheet and squad tropes. But it would take gentle prodding to get them to simply say "The Austrian-Hungarian Empire annexed and occupied Serbian country. The Black Hand were an independence rebellion group in Sebria and they believed in unity or death. They assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Funny story about how..."

[discreetscrivener]

I think the joy of interactive media like DnD is the fact that it leaves room for problem solving. But I think without the dice, the highs and lows would make things fall flat.

I think of playing pretend as a kid, and acting out Pokémon battles, and how you’d end up with someone shouting “I use Claw!” “But I dodge you!” “No you don’t, I hit you!!” And the whole thing falls apart.

The dice prevent that issue, because chance decides to what degree you are successful, combined with your stats. Usually it’s up to the DM to decide the circumstances of your success/failure.

But as I said the great thing is the space given for problem solving. In a different campaign, I came up with a cool move wherein my half drow would shadow step and stab the orc Chieftess we were fighting— but I failed and she caught my wrist. So I was put into problem solving space again. I ended up being able to negotiate with the chieftess and find out her motives. We were only there in the first place, because on a random side adventure we killed a bull mammoth sacred to a group of centaurs. The centaurs were going to kill one of our party members in its place, but was willing to let him live if we got rid of the orc camp that they had a rivalry with. During the course of the fight we realized that all the orcs were female. After talking to the chieftess we discovered the centaurs had taken all their men folk captive. We ended up siding with the orcs and brokering a truce between the orcs and centaurs.

This was in no way part of the main plot our DM had planned for the day.
But our choices and failures pushed us into problem solving mode and therefore into meaningful gameplay.

[halodoughnut]

You give, hands down, the most helpful writing advice ever. This vid is especially helpful as I’m a dungeon master myself.

[flynnzer]

You know I actually listen to your posts when I'm working on my DnD world. Your videos really help me out a lot!