A Slow Circle

       I just finished the book Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil. It took me year to read it and it was the most informative book I've ever read. It comprehensively traces the history of energy usage throughout human history. The book also made me a much better GM. Mosts GMs are familiar with worldbuilding as the stockpiling of lore and backstory, as an exercise of mapping and building a fictional world and populating it with non-player characters and monsters and treasures with which to surprise and challenge and hopefully entertain the players. I'm not saying it isn't those things but I do think worldbuilding is something more. The RPG world is the shared fictional enviroment the GM and players inhabit together during play. In traditional play the GM makes up the facts of the world and communicates those to the players through play. Some GMs are better at communicating those details than others, some have more complex worlds some simpler, some re...