If I were a JRR Tolkien or Herbert with a universe in my mind, it would be so much more pleasing to make an engine that generates anything from that world that to just write out a few stories from it.
One of the foundational tenets of good writing is that worldbuilding is just masturbatory unless it serves the story. You don’t create a cool world and work your way backward into a story. You create a great story and craft a world around it which supports the story you’re trying to tell. The stories are the thing that have value, not the setting or the lore.
Telling a great story is a completely orthogonal skill to worldbuilding, and it requires creativity, emotion, and authorial intent. Star Wars and Harry Potter are both dogshit at worldbuilding, but they’re both some pretty rad stories. Avatar: the Legend of Korra is set in one of the best fantasy worlds ever created and it was a very mediocre story.
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Tolkien was a linguist with a deep fondness for nature and spirituality. He loved creating languages and building beautiful, natural worlds around them. I can’t imagine a single person who would be less enamored by the idea of machinistic language devices that people use to “generate everything”. I think he would be either bored by this possibility or deeply disturbed.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Tolkien also had a deep disdain for industrialism and automation, which is what inspired Isengard in the books. When he says Saruman has “a mind of metal and wheels”, it’s implied that the reader understands why this is a way of saying that Saruman is evil. He definitely wouldn’t be a fan of MindOfMetalAndWheelsGPT.
lanolinoil@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Perhaps but I can’t see anyone who is interested in creating and communicating fake worlds eschewing the idea too much. If you make a fake world, there’s no way you could ever ‘get it all out’ since you’re just one guy. This would open up that possibility to make a world bigger than yourself and what you can get out of your brain