Worldbuilding Prompts

Develop Settings, Character Backgrounds, and Adventures

Worldbuilding is essential to good fiction, regardless of the genre or medium. It creates the context for the characters and the stories that they and rsquo;re involved in. The information necessary to understand the motivations of the villains, the goals of the story, and what and rsquo;s at stake if the protagonists fail, are all tied up on the setting elements that have been established and explained. Without your particular worldbuilding elements, your setting might as well be any other generic setting. and nbsp;

Throughout the Foragers Guild Guide series I and rsquo;ve been an advocate for worldbuilding with a purpose. While creating a setting can be a fun activity in its own right, it can easily spin out of control. When working on background for a novel or game, it can turn into a distraction. You can cut down on preparation time by focusing only on the details necessary to provide a feel for the world. Give the characters a connection to the world through the elements you create for their origins, motivations, and goals. Develop only as much as is essential to generate the conflicts and contexts that support the story you intend to tell.

This book assumes that you and rsquo;ve already got the broad strokes down and are looking to fill in the details of your setting. You want to develop the things that create interest, support a sense of verisimilitude, and help establish an emotional connection between your audience and the world, its characters, and its stories. The prompts provided are meant to serve as food for thought, asking questions that you can answer your own way, at comfort level and degree of detail of your own choosing.