Why worldbuilding? I happened upon a book by Angeline Trevena, called 30 Days of Worldbuilding - An Author’s Step-by-Step Guide to Building Fictional Worlds, and figured I might give it a try. Not that I plan to become an author or game designer or anything, but having an extra world to escape to when the regular one is less than ideal sounds like a good idea.
This guidebook is broken into 30 easy, manageable prompts for you to complete. If you work your way through, simply completing one prompt per day, by the end of the month, you will have a strong, solid basis to your world. From there, you can grow it more.
You can get your own copy here: stepbystepworldbuilding.com
To avoid copy-pasting and plagiarism, I'll only share the chapter title for each day, not any of the hints and clues and helpful information from the book.
Day 1: Genre and Setting
Genre? Oh my, there are so many, and I don't know what half of them means! Maybe Utopian or Futuristic or Fantastical Realism? Or Urban Fantasy perhaps? Something close to the world we know but with very little magic, if any. No flashy spells, no powerful magical artifacts, and no monsters. Cats are telepathic though. Not so you can talk to them by thinking some words, and they'll think a nice reply back, more like some cats, and some humans, can learn to understand each others' feelings and intentions telepathically.
Tech level would be as ours, or maybe a little bit better. Less pollution, more efficient energy generation, faster and cheaper internet, but no holograms or food replicators and such.
Cultural and social levels - much higher than ours! Women are people, skin colour doesn't matter, who you sleep with or what gender you identify as is your own business, your religion - or lack of - doesn't stop you from getting a job. Education and public transport are free. Basic income has been implemented. Crypto is widely used to buy and sell anything from NFTs and online subscriptions or paying for a meal at a restaurant or the groceries at the corner store.
The setting would be a small town of perhaps 15000 people. Not a place where tourists triple the population during the summer, but not too out of the way for travellers to decide to stop for lunch or stay the night on their way to someplace more exciting. Most of the houses are old. Some have stood for centuries!
My place in this? I'd be running an inn, or perhaps just a food stall/hole-in-the-wall eatery. The kind where there's a dish-of-the-day or maybe three and if you don't want to annoy the cook, that is what you order. Because the cook prefers making a big batch of something early in the day, and sitting down with a good book for the afternoon.
Prevoius ← First post → 2: Draw a map
