Worldbuilding for Masochists

So once you've got a government, what can that government do? What does it regulate, and how is it, itself, regulated? Laws can be created for a lot of reasons, some good and some bad. Sometimes they protect a citizen's opportunity to do certain things, sometimes they present a block to those opportunities, and very of

Government is a set of rules agreed upon, and politics is how a society determines those rules. So how do you create the systems by which civilizations negotiate those levers of power in your fantasy or sci-fi world? On the sliding scale of representation to authoritarianism, where do the civilizations in your world fa

As with the last two “back to basics” episodes, we thought we’d spend some time looking the thing that (usually, though there are exceptions) makes fantasy fantastical – the magic! How do we build magical systems, and what questions do we ask ourselves while doing so? Guest and former WFM co-host Rowenna Miller joins u

We’re spending a couple of episodes going back to the basics of worldbuilding, talking about the questions that it’s often fruitful to ask oneself when you’re doing this wild thing. Last time we did the physical world, so now it’s time for the world of people! What are the building blocks of a human life? (Or an alien

Every once in a while, it's good to go back to the basics. And for us, that means the basics of worldbuilding! When you're getting started out with a new project, building a world from the ground up, there are a lot of things you can take into consideration! This episode is not so much about finding the answers as figu

A villain may not have excuses for their behavior -- but they probably have reasons. How can worldbuilding feed those reasons? Antagonists are often those characters who are both the most willing and the most able to seize control of power structures and take advantage of their privileges. So what pressures in your wor