Does original world building even exist?

>>50422712
Well as my original saying (do not steal) goes, "there is nothing new under the heavens, except this saying which I just came up with by my self".

>>50422712
For me original just means you didn't copy it entirely from somewhere else. Taking ideas and bits from other stuff is fine, even taking an entire setting but setting in in another time period or society is fine (as long as you make the changes needed).

The whole point is to have fun. You and your players. I enjoy a lot of different settings personally, both as player and as GM.

Usually I play in universes that already are set by a book (L5R, D&D, WH40K, WoD) but I enjoy the twists and turns the GM takes with them (and I enjoy creating them as well). Some of the ideas are taken from other medias or even some other RPGs but it's okay as long as it's coherent (within its own logic) and fun.

>I don't see how my players can connect with the world unless I give them something they're already familiar with

The thing is, actually, anything you can do will always have an element that they are familiar with. you sahre interests, you live in the same society, you're often in the same social group as them, so you share a lot and even if you can imagine something different from anything you know, it will work in a way that you understand, and there is a great chance they will share this understanding.

And you can always talk about the setting with them before the actual game : do they like sci-fi, fantasy, fantastic ? Do they want to be challenged or not ?

You can always adapt. the question is, will you have fun with it (cause that's important too)

>>50422712
There's really no such thing as total originality, humans basically just take things around them, deconstruct them into constituent ideas, then reconstitute them. Being original then is just recombining the constituent parts in ways not yet expressed by people. That doesn't however mean every idea that can be called original is good however, instead ideas that people like tend to build little by little out from the foundations of formulations that people liked. So creating original ideas people like really turns into bringing nonoriginal ideas into your creative process and modifying them to your liking.

So as for your second question, "original" world building typically begins by you identifying concepts that you personally enjoy, then by taking those concepts and layering them onto other concepts you either enjoy, or know to "work" in the context of the story. For most people this is generally by doing something like creating not![culture] that they like, and then creating various mashups they find interesting. You don't have to do this however, and many good campaigns are based on something as simple as trying to design the world around other first principles.

All that being said, you have to make a distinction between what you like, and what your players like, no matter how much you like your worldbuilding it's moot if the people you want to play it with hate it, so you have to also take into consideration the concepts you know they like most while world building. If you have those concepts in mind, it is then easy to explain to the players how the world generally works by giving them the principles you worked off while dreaming the world up.

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>>50422712
>How do you fat/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls feel about taking bits from other media and working them into your campaign settings?
I do that constantly. It's called inspiration.

>Like if you discovered your DM sourced a villain from her favourite JRPG, or your GM inserted a blatant rip of of Rohan into his campaign world? How would you react and why?
I tweak and change things, enough that they fit better and aren't instantly recognisable.

>>50422712
Also for your first question
> if you discovered your DM sourced a villain from her favorite JRPG, or your GM inserted a blatant rip of of Rohan into his campaign world? How would you react and why?

My problem with this, wouldn't be so much originality, but novelty. I like novel things and I prefer not to just do something I could already do. If I encounter blatant ripoffs in the game, it to me is a problem because they make the story that much less of an experience unique to the game. I play these sorts of games because I want something that I couldn't get from playing a JRPG vidya game, or reading a book. With something the GM creates independently, and then lets the player's interact with to write their own story, that's when it really becomes interesting. At least that's how I see it, I know a lot of people don't agree.

>>50422810
>"There is nothing new under the heavens, except this saying which I just came up with by myself".
-Abraham Lincoln

>>50422712
>Original
Good is better than original. However, when you make something good, it rings a bit differently than anything it might have taken inspiration from. Even if you hear a song a thousand times, you can enjoy hearing it again. The issue is making sure you don't over-saturate your games with a single concept or character idea. Grimdark can be useful as a way to reflect on how people react to despair and terrible trials (as well as providing an excuse for the gratuitous violence everyone loves), but if you put it in everything, it starts dragging.

>>50423555
God damn it, now I'll never come up with an original saying.

>>50422712
Original creative endeavors is one of those things that makes one have to reevaluate the definitions of certain words in certain contexts. Like atoms touching.

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Why everyone wants to be "original"?

>>50422712
"How does original world building begin?"
I think with a reasonably abstract high concept.
>Writing pages and pages of new lore they wont even read sounds bad, too.
Exactly my problem. I can hardly stop the world-building for actually making a game.

>Writing pages and pages of new lore they wont even read sounds bad, too.

You shouldn't make them read it. You should introduce the elements you write into the game world and then have the extra stuff just in case you end up needing to use it.


One other thing. Morrowind is the classic example of "good original worldbuilding" because it uses a theme that isn't all that common (especially in vidya)--spirituality, religion, how it affects people, and how it should or shouldn't affect people. The mushroom towers are cool too, and the generic dark elves have some twists, but it's the core themes that create the depth in the atmosphere.