So yesterday I had a meeting with my project supervisor, Darshana, just to give him a brief overview of what the project’s gonna be and what the dissertation will be about.

While he did say that the dissertation question was a good basis to go with (here), I did mention the recent feedback from the presentation as well as my own thoughts that it needed to be changed and refined a little bit more; namely the move away from the mechanics aspect to more about limitations and worldbuilding processes themselves.

Other than that the modwork is going along well, I personally think the real issue for this (at least for now) will be defining the dissertation questions and having more varied blog posts here that isn’t all about modding but more about worldbuilding research.

Actionables

• -Comparison between different types of fantasy fiction, eg what makes the world of the Witcher different from D&D? (Low Fantasy vs High Fantasy research)
• -How do we define what a limitation is?
  • -maybe making a design document that isn’t EU4-specific will highlight technical limitations?
  • -other technical limitations include getting new 3D models (eg to represent orcs), how do we represent different races living in the same province? Magic?
• -In general more posts about worldbuilding and its related research processes and inspirations
  • -for example, a post about halflings in my world and comparisons with different depictions of halflings in other settings + real world inspirations
• -Not from the meeting but I just realised that what i’m aiming for here is to create a world that supports an emergent narrative (its a sandbox game after all!) so research and posts about that