Confessions of a Recovering Kitchen Sink Worldbuilder
Hi, my name is Zack, and I used to have 76 races.
I have a confession to make. It’s honestly a little embarrassing. But hey, I think many of us start there. So here it goes.
I am a recovering fantasy kitchen sink worldbuilder.
There. The cat’s out of the bag. I said it.
Now before I launch into defining it for those of you new to the concept (trope) of the fantasy kitchen sink, I’d like to paint you a little picture of the fantasy genre reader kingdom.
Imagine, if you will, a nice ink-on-parchment style map, upon which are drawn three concentric circles. In the Outer Ring of the kingdom you have the visitors. A large number of people for whom fantasy is just one ingredient in their general literary interest soup. They occasionally pick up a book, or a series, stay for a while, before moving along to other lands. There are a lot of these.
Then there is the Middle Ring. Here lie your true fantasy nerds. 70-90% of their library consists of fantasy and maybe sci-fi reading. Possibly with some crystals, plants, decorative candles, or statuary mixed in. There is a good possibility they play Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering, one of the big fantasy video game franchises, or some combination there of. These are your citizens, for whom fantasy is nigh on a lifestyle. Their numbers used to be fewer, however the Millennials and Gen Zs have swelled the ranks significantly, often due to escapist pursuits in an attempt to find momentary relief from the late-stage capitalist hellscape.
And sometimes, from among them, the denizens of the Inner Circle will ascend. For those with the fortitude, the tenacity, the oddly specific hyper focus, and the absolute passion for it, you have the worldbuilders. Whether for a game, a novel, a piece of art; it matters not. There will always be those that go above merely consuming fantasy media, but long to create it (with no shortage of creative god complexes in this lot.)
All that fervor for elves, and spells, and swords, and robots, and vampires comes with a certain…enthusiasm. A zeal which, when one finally sets pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and begins building that first world…leads you to wanting everything and its mother to be there.
It’s almost like a right of passage for new, fledgling worldbuilders to get swept up in the excitement and start popping out worlds where fae intrigue, vampire Neanderthals, sapient AI, mushroom magic, and pan-dimensional anthropologists all exist simultaneously.
This is the fantasy kitchen sink. TV Trope describes it as everything being true at once. It doesn’t matter if their origins don’t make sense or are contradictory. It’s all there.
If it sounds like I am speaking about kitchen sink worldbuilding negatively, I do apologize, but I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it. As do many authors, worldbuilders, and game designers. It isn’t that it’s “bad.” It’s more that you must be very intentional in its use to pull off well.
You’re probably already quite familiar with some very successful examples of this phenomenon. Dungeons & Dragons, Discworld, the Marvel cinematic universe, and Star Trek are prime examples of the kitchen sink working (mostly) well across a spectrum from hardcore fantasy to sci-fi (I do often lump the two together as both require similar neural pathways to enjoy and produce.) Each one pulls it off in a slightly different way, but the central thread between them is purposeful containment.
As of the writing of this article, Dungeons & Dragons has 39 official planes of existence, not including the many Demi planes, or counting that different campaign settings exist within or adjacent to this core all at the same time, while having different rules, play styles, base lore, etc. The purpose here is to accommodate a wide range of aesthetics and subgenres so that players can role-play across a variety of vibes and stories with it all somehow fitting together. Containing these options within different planes keeps things tidy, while also accessible.
Discworld takes a similar approach. While the purpose is not interactive in a game-playing sense, for readers the various tones are managed by having regions of the world be distinct from one another. Same disc, different file; Terry Pratchett had a palette of locations for telling stories with different points.
At first glance, the Marvel cinematic universe seems quite different from the first two examples. But it’s basically doing the same thing but with an approach that seems to say “time and space are huge; there is plenty of room for all these different stories to be happening simultaneously.” The containment becomes the logic that there is simply so much existence in which things can occur. And thus you get Thor: Darkworld happening in the same reality as Guardians of the Galaxy. Iron Man tech + Dr. Strange magic + X-men mutants. As long as you don’t look too closely, it works.
Star Trek uses a similar containment logic, in that the universe is vast and all you need to do to tell a different story is go to a new planet and throw some technobabble at it. In addition, the writers use the monster of the week approach, highlighting a new species, race, or technology within the confines of each episode.
You may look at these examples and think “these are all really successful. How can kitchen sink worldbuilding be bad?”
The key critique leveled at the kitchen sink is that it risks going wide instead of deep. For every unique element you add, you take weight away from the others. The number of races present in a world highlights this point beautifully. It’s already implausible to expect a world to have multiple intelligent races, and without careful management of their origins and coexistence it breaks the immersion. If you have only 2 races, you can put 50% of your energy into developing each one. At 10 races, each one gets only 10%. At 100…you can do math; I won’t insult your intelligence. This is a very simplistic model of this issue, but valid nonetheless. The more going on, the less any of it seems to matter, and a world winds up feeling superficial.
This creates a structural issue for narrative. Actions stop having consequences. If you can be resurrected by making a deal with a demon, having your consciousness put into a computer, being absorbed into a shiny tree, and clones, suddenly death is kind of pointless and killing off significant characters for effect elicits no emotion. Setting rules for a world and sticking to that internal logic drives consequences, allowing stories to unfold rather than be episodically installed.
So how did I escape the kitchen sink trap? I accidentally applied purposeful containment. “Accidentally” because when I decided to split Zeer into 6 unique, interconnected planes I didn’t know that this was an actual strategy. My obsession with speculative evolutionary backgrounds for mythic races had me answering questions like “how would a race like ogres and a race like fairies evolve in the same space” with “they wouldn’t, they’d come from different environmental pressures.” At least for my version of ogres and fairies. Maybe yours are different. But for me, I’m always looking at the crucible giving rise to a creature or race and figuring out how it could be tweaked to produce different results.
It wasn’t containment alone in which I found the satisfaction of Zeer’s hexaverse. But also limitation. Giving yourself limits and constraints forces you to be innovative and think of inventive solutions to reach desired outcomes. I wanted a visitor to Zeer to walk into a marketplace and stare in wonder at a multitude of different cultures with different aesthetics hawking goods deeply intwined with their identity without feeling contrived
Originally I thought including 76 races was a great idea! That was until I actually started searching for that plausibility and lore depth that would make the marketplace vibe stick. So chop, chop, chop, and 13 races emerged as the champions that would find deep belonging across the Zeeran landscape. Per plane, only 1-4 intelligent races needed to evolve, and then over time they could migrate to other planes, adapt, and form subraces, further creating the illusion of immense diversity, but without breaking any of the internal rules that make Zeer tick.
Recovery, it turns out, doesn’t mean you stop wanting everything. It means you learn to trust that depth creates the feeling of everything. That marketplace full of wonder I was chasing? It was never going to come from 76 races I could only describe in a sentence each. It came from 13 races I could describe in my sleep. From knowing what an ogre smells like after rain, what a fae considers an insult, what a merchant from the water plane puts in their tea.
Limitation wasn’t a loss. It was the whole game.
So I’ll leave you with a question to sit with, fellow travelers of the inner circle: what’s still living in your kitchen sink? What wild, beloved element have you been holding onto that might actually thrive more if it had a plane, a rule, or an origin all its own?
I’d genuinely love to know. Drop it in the comments.