DISCUSSION What is your favourite part of worldbuilding?

I have a tendency to focus on the entire ecosystem and the culture of whatever races live there. Quite often turns into #ManaverseScience and/or pseudoscience but I enjoy it.

Give me a blank slate race and a basic description of the planet and by the end of the week I'll likely have developed it to the point of figuring out how they choose their leaders.

 

Bumping this because we need a good forum discussion

I've already inserted my two cents on the topic and it still holds true; culture and ecology are my strong points. Sometimes it drifts into political shenanigans but I'm just as happy avoiding that sort of thing.

 

The finer mechanics.

Technically not worldbuilding strictly speaking, but I've always found that my creative calling in the sphere of the Manaverse always leaned towards the creation and refinement of its own universal mechanics. There is just something so immensely satisfying about creating a set of rules and then seeing everything just click together, creating some sort of intuitive internal consistency. Manaverse Mana and Magic are probably two of the things I've had absurd quantities of fun developing.

Less abstractly... I wouldn't know. I don't specifically have a preference for actual worldbuilding; I mostly work in broad strokes that paint progressively finer details of the bigger picture, so my mentality is mostly "anything goes" in the sense of what I'd prioritize if I had a blank slate. If it seems important, I'll pursue that line of thought. Making monsters is always fun, though.