Everywhere I look I see Worldbuilding

​So I was visiting a friend during Christmas Eve and after enjoying the Christmas Eve supper and the gift exchange we ended up playing a board game called Catan. The game places the players in the role of settlers and you have to build settlements and cities, gather resources, and even trade between players.

25 Year Anniversary Edition Box of Catan Board Game.

As the title of the article implies, playing the game got my imagination overflowing, it was a simple game, gather sources to build and expand your territory, but it was just enough to get me thinking about it in a worldbuilding sense. Would would happen if you took your world map, or even just your nation map, divided it into hexes, and then placed Catan-inspired tiles onto these hexes? Could one use this to in a sense roleplay through the development of a nation's history? Could one create these types of tiles and place them in something like Tabletop Simulation and basically play a Catan-inspired game where the landmass is much bigger, but you still have to build settlements and roads, gather resources like wool, grain, lumber, clay bricks, and ore?

The Catan Game Board with Expansion.

I am basically just talking to talk, but it is something simmering in the back of my mind. One of the goals I have in 2024 is to try to master Blender, and I do already have Tabletop Simulator, so in theory if I would create nice looking small environments on hex tiles to import into Tabletop Simulation I could test out this type of gamified brainstorming as a way of worldbuilding.

The Catan Game Board with Expansion.

I didn't end up winning the game sadly, but it was a fun experience and I'm definitely going to play the game again. What do you think? Are there some strange board games or video games that you've played once, and thought to yourself that they might be interesting as a fun worldbuilding tool?