SGO World Building

When it comes to creating fictional worlds, some authors meticulously plan out their cultures and geography before starting on characters. Others just let it all flow extemporaneously. Because storygaming is not the same as writing your own novel or screenplay, we recommend on the balanced approach below. Doing this enables the starting troupe of players to have a Session Zero where they talk about the Core Setting documents, elaborate them a little, and then make their personal characters before the chronicle officially launches.

Experienced Gamemasters will have their own tricks and techniques to creating a setting and metaplot. How easy it is to adapting from being a GM, DM, ST, etc., to collaborative Storymaking will vary. The fundamental difference is narrative control of the setting, the metaplot and the antagonists. No one troupe member controls the NPCs. Everyone controls the NPCs. Antagonists and villains don't have to be NPCs. They could be personal characters given as much complexity and possibility to succeed in their ambitions as the heroes and their sidekicks.

Since the paradigm shift from traditional type roleplay to collaborative storymaking takes a little getting used to, we strongly urge taking the step-by-step approach to World Building your first Storymaking chronicle and then relaxing into whatever bastardized format best suits. "Whatever is best for your group is best for your group" is a fundamental Storygame philosophy.

The Seven Steps

 * Choose Your Genre
 * Build A Sandbox of Consent
 * Design Your Initial Macrocosm
 * Design Your Initial Microcosm
 * Graph Your Initial Timeline
 * Have Session Zero

For world building examples, see Sample Storygame Settings