Building Your Science Fiction Setting | The Way of Worldbuilding

So you've decided to start building your own original science fiction setting. The only question left, is how to begin. The Templin Institute has investigated this in depth, and is happy to help.

00:00 | Introduction
03:34 | Table of Contents
05:37 | Setting Subgenre
06:47 | Setting Tone
09:08 | Tangent #1 - The Tone of Battlefield 2042
11:17 | Setting Focus
13:09 | Tangent #2 - The Focus of Alien
15:57 | Geography - Earth & Humanity
19:12 | Tangent #3 - Words That Shouldn't Exist Without Earth
21:15 | Geography - Setting Extent
30:13 | Timeframe
38:56 | Technology
48:40 | Aliens
53:12 | Geopolitics
57:23 | Conflict
58:51 | Conclusion

🔸 This episode of the Way of Worldbuilding covers all the theories and ideas, to see them put into practice, as well as the next lore video from our science fiction universe, check out our secondary channel. @DawnofVictory2289

🔹 The Standard Sci Fi Setting

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[CascadianCatholic]

Commenting in advance; today‘s my college move out day for the year, so I know what I’m listening to on the drive back home. Thanks to you!

[samwill]

From a DC fan. You are correct.
"Superhero" is not a genre in itself, it is a modifier you add to other genres and the DCU is the best example of it.
From noir detective tale to star spanning space opera and not only are those stories happening at the same time, the participants know each other. Its what makes them so unique and why I love them so

[Jedi_Spartan]

46:23 I think the biggest example of that (at least aesthetically) is SWTOR given how heavily it leans into the idea of being recognisably Star Wars... which retroactively makes it seem like Palpatine was just trying to make his entire faction cosplay Vitiate's Sith Empire. To make issues like the technological stagnation make sense in Legends, my head canon is that parts of the New Sith Wars were so devastating that they caused technology to severely regress... by the time the battles of Ruusan had ended, the Old Republic had largely abandoned every major region of space beyond the Core with Jedi being the only defenders in many areas, and given how there were Sith capable of creating Supernovas and using planet wide Force Drain at earlier points in the timeline, it's possible entire systems or sectors worth of planets were destroyed over the 1000 years the Wars lasted for.

[faquitta]

Babe wake up, new Templin worldbuilding video

[TheSealDribble]

"Grim Dark being used to refer to settings like real life". 🤯

[brucculi]

I could watch hours of Marc talking about science fiction and worldbuilding

[Randomusername-titn]

Remember, always make air combat and space battles look like a weird mix between the 1800s and the pacific front in WW2 despite technology already in the 21st century looking radically different then that.

[occultatumquaestio]

Another long one. Overall, a fascinating overview of sci-fi & more specifically space opera. I do think there are certain aspects & loopholes in the latter half that weren't given their full due, but they might be explored in future videos, so I'll hold off on that for now.
Sci-fi is an immense field of ideas, and it will be interesting to see how future developments play out.
I look forward to further elucidation of DoV astropolitics in the following video parts.

[geologyjohnson]

A danger with coming up with new names for things, is that the audience doesn't understand what you're trying to say. Using existing words means you can get your point across quicker and in a way that is less ambiguous, and without having to reinvent the wheel.

[ElusiveMysteryMan]

Great video as always. On the subject of sci-fi technology, I think a lot of worlds would benefit from making a distinction when technology makes something "technically possible" vs "easily achievable "

For example, you can say teleportation technology exists but it's expensive and often inaccurate, or maybe universal translators exists, but it takes a variable amount of time for the software to analyze and learn a new language. In-universe, that sort of thing can add a sense of realism and plausiblity to miraculous technology. In a meta sense, doing that lets writers introduce and utilize elements while still being able to restrict its presence when needed. A good way of having your cake and eating too.

[Exaldear]

Looking forward to the geopolitics because it's just really fascinating and you can tell so many great stories because of it. From what the public is told, to how it's told, support for or against actions taken, pretext for or against conflict. And that's not even getting into the undersided espionage of geopolitics.

[ProjSHiNKiROU]

On "social media": It seems most SF think the interstellar equivalent of Internet is like sending snail mail, having a video chat, visiting the library or watching the news.

Even non-SF fiction sometimes try to ignore the existence of social media or even cell phones.

[anon]

50:25

The HFY stuff isn't actually AI slop, it is people taking other individuals' copyrighted works (posted freely on Reddit), feeding them through a drawing AI and a reading AI to pretend like they're releasing "original content", and trying to make a quick buck by uploading them to YouTube for Adsense, often without any attribution to the original author. The actual "story" part of the HFY stuff is various authors' original creations.

(Which, yes, are highly derivative, but are actually works of human authorship.)

[helmuthelmlos]

i love the pause at 24:00. what a stylistic choice. your videos are already entertaining and this series very informative. but getting this. i dont even know what i felt, but it just made such a big impact on the sentance and the ideas you presented. biggest respect to whoever made the decision to make a pause there, crazy creative

[auspiciouscloud]

Been loving this series so far, keep it up

[braveheartaussie]

As someone deep into my own YT based scifi world building project this is an incredible resource and has a number of amazing insights I hope the bring to my world building. Thanks you

[josephyoung]

I enjoyed this video a lot but I think it neglected a key concern that a lot of these sorts of discussions omit - focalisation, the method by which the details of the world are communicated to the reader/viewer/player. There's a surprisingly short list of different ways this can be done and the different characteristic effects they can have can be crucial to the direction and ambience of the world they created. This factor is, for example, the fundamental reason the Star Wars prequels are so contentious, how Alien works, why a generation of kids grew up waiting for their Hogwarts letter and what gets people so excited about 40K. I wrote a whole book once on how George R.R. Martin's varying approaches to different parts of his world (and how he braids them together) accounts for the fluidity and impact of his story. How the observer finds out about the world is possibly the most important decision a world-builder can make, and while I think there's a lot of good points made in this video - as in most Templin vids - I think it behoves a guide to world-building to give the matter due consideration.

[yea-gikl]

Hearing that your working on a Geopolitics video has me hyped, I like to make factions in my worldbuilding projects and see how relationships form or how different cultures or groups react to each others way of life. Love the videos, they always help me on worldbuilding and give me ideas on how to view my own stories.

[owenbutton]

This series is a testament to the best of this channel; keep it up Marc!

[A_Random_Trainer]

I started on my own woldbyilding during NaNoWriMo last year, it has been really interesting to listen to these videos and watch your livestreams as I am world on my own things. Because as you say everyone does this differently. I started with a character and came up with a backstory, then started explaining the characters, factions, planets, governments, ext. Then once I am satisfied with that, I create another character that may or may not have some cross over.

I am hadn't really thought about looking at subgenres, so I appreciate that. I have a few trops large imperial-esce faction, but I also have non-standard sci-fi stuff like demons and magic. There is a whole group of engineers that are dedicated to building non-magical items to compete with magic items, the reasoning is because most people don't have magic so they can't repair or recharge magical items. This these non-magical items might be more expensive, but the up-keep is a lot cheaper or easier for your average pilot or engineer. I am trying to seriously look at the whys of things.

But I don't have a map, I don't know where the planets or factions or animals actually reside in the galaxy. I also don't have a lot of planets or history, so much as explainers on factions and how they interact. If that makes sense. Really looking forward to the next episode tomorrow!