Differences in Worldbuilding - Deep vs Broad

[Aldarion]

I had been thinking about how worldbuilding differs in different settings. And I decided that there are basically two primary characteristics of worldbuilding: broadness and depth.

Broadness is, most simply put, amount of information that we get about the world. Basically, a canvas that author paints: broader the worldbuilding, more details there are.

Depth however depends on how that information interacts with each other. If broad worldbuilding is like a painting, then deep worldbuilding is like an icebreg:

Harry Potter is an example of broad worldbuilding. It has an entire array of magical creatures, spells, abilities, and so on... humans, centaurs, elves... muggles and wizards... "light" and dark wizards... all of this in spite of the story being (mostly) limited to a single magical academy. Yet that worldbuilding is also incredibly shallow. Rowling just dumps stuff into the story with little thought of how that stuff will interact and what the implications are.

D.Gray Man is an example of deep worldbuilding. You have the Noahs, the Akuma, and the Black Order. That's it, that is all that matters in the story. Yet within this relatively narrow framework, there are layers upon layers of meaning, symbolism, secrets and misdirections. Even the main character himself is largely a mystery that is only slowly unraveled through the story.

Tolkien's Legendarium, of course, is both broad and deep at the same time.

 

[Husky_Khan]

So would the Soulsborne style games with their minimalist lore be seen as basically a Deep example of worldbuilding?

 

[Aldarion]

So would the Soulsborne style games with their minimalist lore be seen as basically a Deep example of worldbuilding?

I cannot say as I have never played them. But it is possible.

 

[ATP]

Witcher,at least books/i never played games/ are Broad.There is entire continent which is kind of Europe,but with magic and fantastic creatures.
Unfortunatelly,author never thought too much about implications,like in Harry Potter.

Even worst,we had at least some people who live in medieval magical settling,but still think like modern people - which is simply impossible.

 

[evilchumlee]

So would the Soulsborne style games with their minimalist lore be seen as basically a Deep example of worldbuilding?

I'm not sure they would fit either. Certainly not broad... we tend to get very little information. But I don't think they're deep either, basically because there's just so... little.

Realistically, broad is "easier" than deep. It's easy to make up a bunch of stuff and lore dump. It's much harder to truly tie everything together and truly develop things deeply.

There is a phenomena where if a work goes broad enough and lasts long enough, it can kind of just... become deep due to the sheer broadness. I'm thinking of something like Star Trek that on the micro level... episode, season, series is fairly broad. They show and tell alot, but it doesn't go far. On the macro though, 50+ years of broad world building will almost certainly create a deeper world, ESPECIALLY if you really analyze it (and account for a helping of suspension of disbelief to just kind of... excuse things.)