Again inspired by the Build a World events run by Ben Rosenbaum at WisCon, and encouraged by previous iterations of this activity, I did a session of this at Minicon 49. We were inspired by the con’s official theme (Pirates & Airships*) and eventually created a world populated by carnivorous bananas who are conspiring against their parrot overlords with their allies, the telepathic platypi. There were airships, monorails laid down by hamster in giant hamster balls and a Bananasiah. And, it seems, every time the group wants to have floating islands, so those worked their way in again. Yes, it got pretty silly, pretty quickly.

Someone asked me afterwards if these things ever stay serious. I still wonder a lot about this! It’d certainly be interesting to try, though I’m not sure if a group of strangers can form a functional, serious social contract that quickly and still have time left over for worldbuilding.

In any case, it was a lot of fun — a good last activity for Friday night. I hope Let’s Build a World becomes a regular thing at Minicon.

* Some assembly required — or other, similar parentheticals