Hi everyone!
We’ve been doing this podcast and blog thing for a bit now and I feel like it is high time that I introduced myself properly. Most of what you’ve read on the blog so far (at least 90%) has been from James’ delectable mind but giving you a sense of who I am seems appropriate as I hope to soon start contributing more to the conversation.
Growing up traveling between the USA and Ghana, West Africa, books were Seth’s constant companions. As he grew, so did his imagination. To vent his thoughts and ideas, Seth would spend hours telling his fantastical tales of heroes and villains, of magic, technology, and skill. This eventually morphed into a love of games and story-telling that has continued to this day. Eventually, Seth thought it would be a good idea to write some of his stories down since he was running out of room in his head. With two books published and the third on its way, Seth is excited to continue exploring the world of Nova Terra. Seth Ring currently lives with his wife and kids in the United States of America.
That is the bio you’ll find on my website, but for our purposes it is slightly lacking. As a science fiction and fantasy writer, a good half of my job is building worlds where readers can lose themselves. The other half, of course, is building an interesting narrative. These two pieces are, without question, intricately linked. But our topic of concern is worldbuilding.
My early years were spent in Ghana, a country in West Africa, where I found my love for stories. From the stories of Anansi the spider and the crafty forest dwarves to the Just So Stories as told by Rudyard Kipling, my teeth were cut on lore and legend. Layered on top of that were the magical and often intricately developed worlds of Tolkien, Burroughs, Pratchett, and Asimov.
As I grew my greatest enjoyment came from burying myself in other worlds, hardly coming up for air, let alone eating or sleeping. This intense drive to consume other worlds soon bled into creating worlds of my own that I shared with everyone I could find that would listen. Eventually, after I ran out of people in my personal life that would listen to my ramblings, I discovered table top role playing games and spent entirely too much time building and deploying worlds as both a gamemaster and a player. This passion is how I met James, and is a large part of the reason this podcast came to be. Over the last year and half I have also been writing a GameLit series about a young man playing a full immersion virtual reality MMO called Nova Terra.
As a general rule, I like knowing what I am getting into and I assume that everyone else shares that feeling. Most of what I write in future blogs will be about worldbuilding (it is a worldbuilding blog after all) and how it relates to writing. If you have any questions or topics that you’re interested in hearing us cover, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Stay tuned for more writing from the WorldCraft Club as we explore worldbuilding and the crafting of fictional settings to inspire your creativity.
Seth is a host of the Worldcraft Club Podcast and he wrote this blog. He writes a Gamelit series called Nova Terra that you can find here on Amazon. He currently lives somewhere in Pennsylvania with his wife, kids and neurotically cuddly labradoodle.
We’re happy to host guest blogs on here whenever we can, it gives James a break and let’s other people contribute their ideas. Let us know if you have a worldbuilding concept or strategy to get off your chest, we’d love to hear it.