Process
Worldbuilding
You might say: setting design, world model
Worldbuilding defines the social, historical, economic and physical context that makes the game's actions make sense.
- What it does
- Gives mechanics consequences in the fiction and supplies motivations, constraints, conflicts and places for play.
- Ask
- What kind of world would make this player action common, costly or meaningful?
- Typical
- Mechanic-first or premise-first; local setting to whole culture; explicit lore to environmental implication.
- Trouble
- The setting is a database of facts unrelated to play, or the rules let players act in ways the fiction cannot explain.
What to look for
- Social or historical context in play
- Economic or physical context around actions
- Places that make actions meaningful
Sources
- Emily Short, Not Exactly Mailbag: Worldbuilding from a Mechanic, Worldbuilding from a Mechanic
If you've got mechanics, that typically means you've got an action/set of actions for the player to perform
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Worldbuilding" (narrative-worldbuilding) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal