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.
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).