We should decide on our species’ history to make them more believable. If they originated in one place and have spread far, this could have implications we’d want to leverage.
Category: Volume 1
What Are Your Species’ Customs?
Inventing customs, or leveraging Earth analogues, can help bring a species to life. Greetings, farewells, dining, and spiritual habits are all good subjects that will figure in our storytelling. Differences between this species and others can cause a misunderstanding, which Read More …
What Languages Do Your Species Speak?
Knowing which languages our species can speak, read, and write can add dynamics to our stories and worlds. Don’t overlook this valuable knowledge.
What Is Your Species’ Society Like?
What kinds of government does the species typically have? Monarchies, dictatorships, or republics? These are discussed more in Creating Places (The Art of World Building, #2), but those are three of the big ones that can imply levels of sophistication Read More …
What is Your Species’ World View?
One challenge of creating humanoid species is that there’s only one here on Earth and we tend to conceptualize invented ones that aren’t much different from us. This is natural but maybe not ideal. Many aspects of humanity are taken Read More …
What Are Your Races’ Characteristics?
Anyone familiar with gaming systems has seen a list of characteristics like intelligence, wisdom, charisma, strength, constitution, agility, dexterity, and morale. Each will have a number from one to ten, for example, and a species is rated in each category. Read More …
Who Are Your Species’ Gods?
We arguably need to invent gods before deciding which ones influence our species, but we can start with a general sense of a species disposition and then decide later which deities are likely on their minds. We can be predictable Read More …
What Kind of Clothes Does Your Species Wear?
The clothes and accessories our species wear can be used to characterize them in memorable ways. This section talked about this and is available in the book!
How Similar Should Your Species Be?
The pros and cons of having similar species/races are discussed so you can have more options, rather than restricting yourself by accident.
What Does Your Species/Race Body Look Like?
Humanoids If our species is humanoid, our body design work is largely done. Areas needing description are mostly those of overall size, height, mass, and fitness standards. The prevalence of facial hair on males and average cleanliness of all genders Read More …