While working on the world of my story, I came across an article on the art of world-building in fantasy literature that changed the way I think. World-building is the creation of a vivid, internally consistent fictional framework, so that the reader feels they could step inside and wander around in it. Tolkien in "The Lord of the Rings" and Frank Herbert in "Dune" are the gold standard.
The most important idea I learned is the "iceberg principle": I need to know far more about my world than I put on the page. The details that never appear give the story depth without drowning the reader in an encyclopedia. I start with geography and climate because they shape everything else — what people eat, how they travel, and where they settle. Drawing a map helps me think about distances, borders, and trade routes.
Then I think about the social dimension: who holds power and how they got it, and what the values and beliefs are. The most dangerous mistake is creating a monoculture; real societies are diverse and full of dialects, traditions, and internal tensions.
Finally, if the world has magic or advanced technology, I set clear rules for what it can and cannot do. The key is gradual revelation through the characters' eyes rather than flooding the reader with information. In the end, every detail must serve the story; otherwise, it has no place there.
Source: Letturia
Another entry from the same developer, IdleCultivation, covers how the world map of the game Myriad Immortal Sect was generated, and I found it a handy checklist for anyone drawing a fantasy map by hand, too.
The main lesson is that features should follow processes rather than random points. Placing mountains one by one gave peaks "distributed like static", so the author rebuilt the relief around ridges: each summit now belongs to a range and shares its neighbours' geology. Before the fix, one ridge mixed granite, sandstone, snowcap and volcanic rock across four adjacent tiles.
Other fixes follow the same logic. Forests looked like parkland because the trees had a narrow size range; adding a few very large trees and plenty of undergrowth fixed that. Biomes should blend through transition zones instead of meeting at hard lines, which otherwise make regions feel like administrative districts. Herbs should match the climate, so the ground hints at what grows there.
Settlements need reasons to exist as well. The largest city was ringed by untouched forest, which no real city has, and the map had only 27 named places and two short paths near the starting sect. Roads matter because players follow them. And places should look like their names: about a quarter of the wilderness was empty, with hidden realms and mineral sites drawn as ordinary forest under a floating label.
The funniest detail is that the author's validator sampled terrain only every four tiles; tightening it revealed 250 placement errors. It is a good reminder that our checks share our blind spots.
Source: DEV Community
Almost every fantasy or science fiction setting has lost ancient knowledge, and it often feels unconvincing. Chris Winkle's June article on Mythcreants offers seven causes, and suggests combining several.
First, the knowledge may predate accessible records: societies that wrote little leave less behind, and even electronic storage can become unreadable. Second, the language may have died, making records hard to read, or been deliberately destroyed through linguicide. Third, the knowledge may be big and complex, so pieces get separated; Aristotle's Poetics survived through an Arabic version, but only the half on tragedy.
Fourth, few people may have had it in the first place. Greek fire, the Byzantine incendiary weapon, was so closely guarded that the recipe was eventually lost. Fifth, a widespread collapse can damage institutions and literacy, as with the Bronze Age collapse or the fall of Rome, though both were slower than the popular image.
Sixth, the knowledge may have been temporarily useless. The BBC wiped many early Doctor Who episodes because it needed the space, and a fantasy magic system could fade for centuries and leave spellbooks pointless. Seventh, misinformation can give people false confidence that they already have the answers, as the 1912 Piltdown Man hoax did for decades.
What I take from it is that knowledge survives when it stays relevant to many people. If you want a believable lost technology or lost spell, pick causes that match your world's history rather than simply saying it was forgotten.
Source: Mythcreants
A devlog on DEV Community by IdleCultivation, who is making the free browser game Myriad Immortal Sect, has some ideas that translate well to worldbuilding in general. The author felt the overworld worked but still looked like a character sliding over a backdrop, and describes four changes that made it feel like a place.
First, interaction range became a stat. The distance for gathering herbs or talking to people used to be a fixed constant; now it derives from a cultivation attribute, so stronger characters can reach farther. Second, beasts now roam within their territories instead of sitting at spawn points, so the land between sects feels occupied. Third, navigation points rather than guides: an in-world lamp indicates direction, and players still read the terrain themselves.
The fourth idea is the one I liked most. Flight unlocks partway through the game, but the first version had everyone fly on a sword, so all six sects looked the same. Now each sect has its own method. A disciple of the Medicine King Valley flies on a glowing cauldron, for instance. Flight has rules too: a sect's great shield blocks walking but can be flown over, and staying airborne drains energy.
The takeaway is that a sense of place comes from behavior, from what responds to you and what moves when you are not watching, rather than from visual tricks. For anyone inventing a world for fiction or a tabletop game, that is a useful reminder to ask how each culture and region acts differently, not only how it looks.
Source: DEV Community
Oren Ashkenazi's August piece on Mythcreants makes a point I keep coming back to: worldbuilding should support the core experience of a story, and some of the most famous elements quietly work against it.
Take the Avatar State in Avatar: The Last Airbender. It is a god mode that lets Aang win nearly any fight, which undercuts tension in a show built on elemental martial arts. The original series hides this by keeping fights light and nonlethal, but the climax against Ozai still feels contrived because skill becomes irrelevant.
Professor X's mind control in X-Men has the same problem. A telepath who can paralyse a whole room ends most battles before they begin, so writers keep him away from fights or give enemies helmets that block psychic contact, which feels arbitrary.
The article also looks at the novel Tears of the Wolf, where a heroine is both a valuable healer and a master of battle magic, yet her society insists she needs a husband for protection. Then there are the Star Wars prequels, whose sprawling Jedi institution clashes with the original films' mystique, and Star Trek's transporters, which began as a production shortcut and now bypass infiltration and escape scenes.
The takeaway for anyone building their own world: before adding a power or a technology, ask what it does to tension. A brand-new story can plan around these problems, while long-running franchises are stuck patching them.
Source: Mythcreants
On Habr I came across an article about Neon Myth, a tabletop roleplaying setting: an unusual cyberpunk set in Gigapolis, a city of eternal night and neon lights. Non-human beings of six races live there, while humans hide in a concealed district called the Epicenter. No children are born in the city: newcomers arrive from outside, and newborns in the Epicenter are first human and only later become one of the races.
What I liked most was the Digit, a multilayered virtual copy of the city governed by “media gods”. The digital world is monochrome, with green lines of connection visible between gadgets, and messages can be intercepted, erased or altered. There is also a lovely logical detail: there are no firearms in the city, because the link with the Digit limits the speed of real objects. And keeping books is forbidden by law.
The races are designed with distinctive quirks. Neo-vampires have blue-black skin and float above the ground, and each day they must “drink the color” of another being. Zen-chi have no hands: instead they have two stone blocks with “fingers”, which they control with the power of thought. Diodes are metal or plastic beings with a holographic animal companion, and mushroomoids are fond of linguistics and oratory. There are also beastfolk and shadows. After severe shocks, residents can even “drift” into another race.
The game's foundation is the “Pact”: different heroes are bound by a common task from an observer in the Epicenter, and receiving an invitation is considered prestigious. For the rules there is the app “Neon Myth: Catechism”, where generators replace the d6 die, and for rare complex situations a deck of Tarot major arcana is used.
It is a good example of how a world is built from interconnected constraints rather than from a set of random ideas.
Source: Habr
There's a question I use more and more to check my worlds: does the world I created affect the characters' decisions and, through them, the course of the story? If the answer is no, then I didn't do worldbuilding; I just put up a backdrop.
The core idea is simple and powerful: in a fictional world, everything has a cost. Every feature of the world should involve some effort, a burden, and that burden has to be persistent, constant and, above all, normalised for the people who live there. Not even utopias are free.
I don't just mean money. The cost is the effort it takes for a stone to become a kitchen utensil, for a plot of land to feed a family, or for a well-told story to stir collective memory. That's where lore comes in.
The example that sums it up best is a broken clay pot. Whether the character says "bring me another", "let's make another" or "there isn't another" makes a huge difference: it tells you about the character, their surroundings, their culture and the context, all in one line.
I'm also not convinced by repeating "conflict, conflict, conflict" as if it were the only law. Conflict isn't a wrong concept, but it isn't the only one, and it isn't mandatory. Thinking in costs seems a finer tool to me: the world shapes the characters, deforms them, informs them and gives them purpose.
When the world resembles ours, the characters move like we do and it doesn't take much effort. But when it doesn't, it's worth asking, scene by scene, what each character pays for what they do.
Source: Guajars
I read a worldbuilding post about the Bōyū Sakan, published on note. It was written as a stage setting for creative work, and the quiet, gentle atmosphere left a strong impression on me.
The Bōyū Sakan does not exist in the real world. It can only be reached in dreams, by people who fall asleep carrying deep sorrow, regret, or loneliness. A visit can be made only once in a lifetime. While you spend time in the teahouse, the weight in your heart gradually eases, and when you wake, the time there grows hazy. There is one exception: those whose hearts do not lighten can return again and again, every time they sleep. The post leaves the reason unexplained, and I liked that it keeps that blank space open.
The building is wrapped in the stillness of night, and each guest is led to a single detached room, a “hanare.” Cherry petals serve as the guide. The hanare is a space where a guest and a dream keeper spend time one on one. It has an area for tea or coffee, a bedroom, and a bath, and its interior changes to reflect the guest's heart, so no two rooms are alike. The post gives examples such as a round table, a bed, a bathhouse, a veranda, and a garden with night cherry blossoms.
The dream keepers are beings who are not human: foxes, oni, serpents. They do not pry for stories or try to solve problems. They simply stay close. They can come to feel something special for a guest who returns many times, and the setup allows a relationship that begins as “guest” and “keeper” to grow closer over time.
What I took from it is that the setting keeps rules few and leaves plenty of room to write in your own details. It seems like a useful reference when choosing a stage for a story.
Source: note
I found a free steampunk world-setting sheet on note, set in a decadent water city reminiscent of Venice. The author is 風嶺乃明. It is said that you may use and modify it as a basis for novels, manga, games, illustrations, TRPGs and more, for commercial or non-commercial purposes. However, redistributing the setting sheet itself as your own work, or reselling it, is prohibited.
At the root of this world is “artificial oil” (ocean oil). It is made by extracting carbon dioxide and hydrogen from the lagoon that surrounds the city, and the polymer made from it resists the rust of sea breezes, supporting the city's wealth and industry. I felt that technology tied to the environment makes the world more convincing.
Vehicles are named after celestial bodies too: the armored gunboat “Neptune” that guards the city gate, the armored train “Halley” that runs along the sea bridge linking the mainland and the city, and the aluminum amphibious steam car “Mercury” used by nobles. I think it is a good example that deciding on a single naming rule gives the whole world a sense of unity.
I also found it interesting that tools are graded by material, with the finest goods called “star tools”, so that rank shows up in the language itself.
Building a setting from scratch is hard, so it is a welcome effort that a shareable base for a world has been published.
Source: note
Magic is quick to describe in fantasy and hard to do well. In a German-language post on worldbuilding, the author Joshua Martel explains how he built the magic system of his world, Ananthara, and I found the list of questions behind it extremely useful. The core idea is that magic must not only deliver spectacular powers. It has to shape culture, religion and history.
First comes the source. Where does the power come from: faith, blood, knowledge, emotion, the soul? The answer shapes politics, conflict and identity. In his system, Thal'Ithara, it is the soul, so magic grows out of memory and emotion. Then there needs to be a recognizable pattern, such as elements, words or rituals, so readers can follow the rules.
I especially liked the section on limits, taboos and costs. Someone who can only teleport to places they already know, or who sees only possible futures that they must interpret, automatically becomes a more interesting character. Mastery does not have to mean raw strength; it can mean restraint.
Then there is the question of how cultures deal with magic. In one region it is suppressed because of a historical trauma, in another it is understood as part of a natural cycle, and in a third it is studied and used for healing. Add to that a distinct sensory visual language, a test for whether villains, states or markets abuse it, and a look at the Untouched, whose magic never awakens.
The final test is simple and hits the mark: what would change if magic did not exist? If the answer is "hardly anything", it is probably just decoration. I like to use this question as a touchstone for my own projects.
Source: World of Ananthara
Chris Winkle argues on Mythcreants that worldbuilding has to fit its medium, and that novelists who import big game worlds often end up with settings that are generic and hard to fix.
Games prioritise flexibility. Because players choose their characters, quests and order of play, designers offer many species, classes, magic types and side quests, each a self-contained story with loose ties to the rest. That variety is why game worlds often default to generic high fantasy or space opera, and it is accepted in games because add-on content is the norm.
Novels are linear. Readers cannot pick another path, so one strong storyline matters more than breadth. A novel can lean on a single protagonist and a rare, high-stakes element, such as the first magic user in a thousand years. Controlling what readers learn creates mystery, and piling on fantastical elements dilutes it. Cohesion matters most: every element should serve the story and the theme of the world.
The article points out how an angel and an orc in one setting imply clashing mythologies, and uses the Marvel universe as an example of a world without a real theme. Writers who absorb game settings through long play often do not notice how unusual the mix looks to others, and cutting favourite elements later hurts.
Exceptions exist, and commenters noted that tie-in novels and Warhammer 40K have succeeded in print. Still, the advice to ask where your inspiration comes from at the start is worth keeping.
Source: Mythcreants
I read part two of the worldbuilding series in “Genno's Desk, Peeking In” on note. It is a serialized look at how the author builds the world of a novel, step by step, and this installment focuses on naming places and enemies.
What stood out is how the author takes the Arthurian legend as a model and shifts real place names and figures into slightly altered forms. Britain becomes Garibuana, Cornwall becomes Hārvana, the Kingdom of Logres becomes Roregusās Kingdom with its capital at Rondiorisu, and the Roman Empire becomes the Irusurōmu Empire. A new stage, the continent of Eusustashia, is also added.
The enemies follow the same approach. The Saxons become the Dagadians, Cath Palug becomes Kitty Zabisutā, a ghost cat in the form of a black kitten, and Twrch Trwyth becomes Toruku Turuku, a monstrous boar. Anyone who knows the source will smile, and anyone who doesn't still gets names with their own sound.
Another point I found memorable is how the game elements are handled. Rather than showing system displays directly, the author plans to present gacha machines in the tavern, summoning stones, two currencies, stamina, and quests with treasure chests as “common sense of the in-world setting.” Those elements will be used for absurd comedy, and chapter one is planned as a “tutorial chapter.”
The piece reminded me that in worldbuilding, how you transform the source material is where the real craft lies. The next installment, number five, is said to cover character design, so I want to keep reading.
Source: note
