ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the creative and technical sides to crafting immersive, inspiring worlds. It explains helping developers to world-build for their players. World-building is often framed as an iceberg, with a small visible tip. The best world-building is efficient and informs and/or provides a useful framework for developing the narrative and the entire visual design of the game, and can soak nourishingly into the player whether they realize or not. A gripping narrative is always going to be the driving force in this pursuit, but its world-building that will make it believable and keep the set-dressing interesting. Often used interchangeably with world-building, lore is probably better defined as specific events or truths within a world. Social structures and class systems are hugely important but often underexplored facets of world-building and character motivation. Economies are at the beating heart of most worlds.
