The Art of World Building: Creating Breakout Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds In Stories and Gaming

The podcast presents approaches to world building, how to organize files and folders, ideas on partnering with others, and more.

Explore how to create other systems, including legal, health, IT, education, and more.             

Explore how to create magic systems, including a brief look at types of magic (brief), the principles of creating a good systems, creating limits, how to invent spells, and more.

Explore how to create magic systems, including whether we need to create them, sources of magic, whether spells are needed, a look at the life of wizards, and more.

Explore how to create items. This includes regular ones, supernatural ones, and technological elements, like an AI, and more.

Explore how to create the supernatural. This includes supernatural energy, magic paths, alternate realities, supernatural beings, and more

Explore how to create languages, including whether we should, what’s involved, how to hire someone, and more.

Explore how to create cultures, including rituals, pastimes, daily life considerations, and more.

Explore how to create cultures, including greetings, farewells, language issues, and more.

Explore how to create cultures, including how the body is part of culture, from clothing to hairstyles, body modifications, and more.

Explore how to create cultures, including defining what culture is and is not, how to develop a cultural vision, and the types of cultural depictions we’ll likely need.

Explore how to create religions, including its all important history, beliefs, worship practices, and traits of those who belong to a religion.

Explore how to create armed forces like the army, navy, and air force. This includes how to become a member of one, their ranks, and how they’re viewed by society.

Explore how to create organizations. This includes forces for good and evil, what they have in common, and how someone joins or get expelled.

Explore how to create fantasy and science fiction names using easy techniques that make it fun and uniquely yours.

Explore how to create your species' senses, from the five basics to other real senses humans and animals have, to sixth senses (second sight).

Explore how to create maps like continents, settlements, and dungeon maps, and learn whether you should create any of this and why.

Explore how to create places of interest, including catacombs, interstellar sites, ruins, monuments, and more. Learn how easy these are to create and how they can improve interest in your setting and story.

Explore how to create time and history, including why we should usually keep timekeeping like minutes, hours, weeks, and more similar to Earth, and how to create historical events.

Learn about travel in space. This includes the different types of engines, what to include inside a ship, and why we have a lot of freedom to decide how long it really takes to get anywhere.

Learn how to determine travel times over water when using oars or the wind. This includes ship types like the frigate, galley, ship-of-the-line, and more.

Learn how to determine travel times for horses, wagons, people and more through various kinds of terrains and what can slow us down, and how.

Learn how to create a settlement. This includes the differences between an outpost, village, town, city, and even settlements in space.

Learn how to create a settlement. This includes the impact of location, population, zoning, its history, and any secrets it holds.

Learn how population, location, climate, symbols, and tensions between a sovereign power and others can all enrich your kingdom, republic, dictatorship, and more. Why have them all be the same when little details can bring out the vividness.

Explore how to create sovereign powers by understanding government types like federations, unitary states, kingdoms, dictatorships, authoritarian states, oligarchies, republics, and more, including how they rise and fall.

Explore how to create sovereign powers like kingdoms, dictatorships, republics, and more. This includes what sovereignty is, how it is gained and lost, the divine right of kings, some roles like head of state and what each means, and branches of government.

Continue exploring how to create land features, including grasslands, deserts, and various kinds of wetlands like bogs, fens, marshes, and swamps.

Explore how to create land features, including mountains, volcanoes, rivers, lakes, and various kinds of forests, from woodlands to savannahs, jungles, and run-of-the-mill forests.

Explore how to create a continent, including how hemispheres considerations, understanding plate tectonics, and when to use what term for bodies of water, like oceans, seas, bays, and more.

Continue exploring how to create a planet, focusing on climates. This includes understanding the role of the equator and oceans, climate zones, prevailing winds, rain shadows, and of course the climates themselves

Explore how and when to create a planet. This includes talking about its rotation, other planets in the solar system, asteroids, comets, constellations, and the impact of the Sun and moon on tides, hours in the days, and seasons.

Continue exploring how and when to create undead. Learn about their goals, traits, how to kill them, and what uses we can put them to.

Explore how and when to create undead. Decide whether you should create undead at all, what their minds are like and how this will affect them, their origins and how that influences their behavior, and learn to classify them.

Explore how and when to create animals. Consider the purpose your animals will serve for you as a creator or for your characters in their lives, including products, food, decoration, symbols, and medicinal uses. Learn how animals are classified to better organize your inventions, determine what to create, and have a balanced portfolio. Finally, learn how to get started.

Explore how and when to create plants. Consider the purpose your plants will serve for you as a creator or for your characters in their lives, including products, food, decoration, symbols, and medicinal uses. Learn how plants are classified to better organize your inventions, determine what to create, and have a balanced portfolio. Finally, learn how to get started.

Explore how and when to create monsters. Learn the differences between monsters and animals, and monsters and species. Use habitat to make them more compelling. Figure out how their origins can make them memorable, whether they were created by accident, on purpose, or by evolution. Finally, determine their motivation because even monsters want something, and knowing this will determine everything they do.

Explore how to create world heroes, villains, martyrs, and more. This includes determining why they're famous, what kinds of weapons, armors, ships, steeds, or other items they have, considerations for when they're dead OR alive, what made them famous, their relationships with family, and how all of this can make them more memorable if done right

Continue learning how to create species and races, including how gods can influence them, how characteristics like morale, charisma, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, agility, and more can create more depth, and their relationship with other species and world view. Conclude with where to start!

Continue learning how to create species and races, including overall attitude and disposition, what some call "alignment." Is good vs. evil a viable approach or too restrictive? How else can get this across? With their appearance, do we want them able to masquerade as each other or not? What do their physical features say about them? Learn the pros and cons of multiple races of a species and how this can improve depth and our options.

Explore how to create species and races, when to use which term, and how to structure your species and races intelligently. We also look at whether world builders need to invent them at all; the answer may be different for science fiction vs. fantasy. Finally, we look at the minimum and maximum that can be done when inventing one and how to balance the work.

Explore how to create gods, including whether they are good, evil, or neutral, and different ways to identify them, from symbols to nicknames and patronage. Do your gods interact with the world and under what restrictions? What have they created and has anything unexpected happened with? Finally, we discuss how to get started inventing deities.

Explore how to create gods, including whether they are good, evil, or neutral, and different ways to identify them, from symbols to nicknames and patronage. Do your gods interact with the world and under what restrictions? What have they created and has anything unexpected happened with? Finally, we discuss how to get started inventing deities

Explore how many worlds you should create over the course of your career. Is it better to build a world for each project or one world for all stories? You could end up building 20 worlds, which is a lot of work. When is it better to just create one world and keep reusing it? What are the pros and cons of each approach?

Learn whether you need to build a world or not, and how and when to use Earth analogues as a springboard for your imagination. The Rule of Three will help you avoid getting caught, too! Analogues are a fundamental concept that no listener should skip.

Learn the vision for The Art of World Building Podcast and what you can expect from the series and each episode. Host Randy Ellefson will also be introducing himself and briefly talking about his thirty years of world building experience. Some caveats and definitions are also covered. This is a good primer that no listener should skip.