The obvious advise of "show; don't tell" still applies. If you have a complicated world and try to show that off to the reader/viewer/player with lots of exposition most people will hate that. But many beloved works of fiction manage to have complex worlds that you naturally experience through the story.

On the other hand, if the author doesn't do world-building, that often leads to illogical situations and issues with internal consistency. For example if you have people living on floating islands they obviously will prefer bows over swords; or sniper rifles over pistols. If they don't, there better be a good reason (that makes sense in the world).

Yeah exactly. I wrote a rough draft of a several centuries post collapse great lakes area, after a writing prompt on Reddit. It was something like "tribal people find mount Rushmore", and I ran with it mentally for a few months. I adored removing as much "tell" as I could without making things incomprehensible.

Ann Arbor became Anaba, Michigan became Meshaga. Russymons are Rust Demons, automated hunter killer drones that sometimes come to life if disturbed.

Sorry, offtopic rambling. Cool to remember how much work I put in!

the article is critiquing Tolkien's world-building as too simple. I'm struggling to see how his vision of complexity would in any way not require exposition dumps constantly so as not to gloss over something and be too "simple" for him.

> Overly complicated world-building requires mountains of expository prose to expose the complexity.

No it doesn't. The presence of the complex world can surface in subtle ways, without the need for extensive expository prose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_of_depth_in_The_Lor...

> Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day.

The lack of detail and explanation here does work that no amount of exposition could do.

Mountains of expository prose are a crutch for an unskilled author. There are a number of storytelling techniques to build out a world as it becomes relevant that allow for hinting at greater depths. These allow for exposition, characterization, and drama while still hinting at greater depths without dedicating entire chapters to the socio-economics of grain production.

I think you need enough expository over time to build a good world. Just that it can be done badly or in a good way. Discworld is good example in my mind of mostly consistent world build by enough exposition done in various ways...

>No one wants that. They want characters and drama and entertainment.

As a child that bought and read dozens of RPG manuals, which I never played, there is obviously a market for both.

I read a lot of fiction, but the setting is usually my top interested, and the plot and characters are mainly a tool to explore it.

There is obviously a spectrum, and markets for different styles.

>requires mountains of expository prose to expose the complexity

Only if the world-building is done for a book or a movie.

Exploration-based videogames, RPG settings and fictional world Wikis are just as valid use cases. I suspect such formats are going to grow more popular.

And then marvel at how many people it took, to work on the RPG manual. I've been the DM for a Forgotten Realms campaign and wow, is that a lot of material.