Narrative Design &

World Building For Games

From an indie developers perspective

Who am I?

Artist / Designer / Writer

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Worldbuilding Example

How did I start?

Story first, the world comes naturally.

Go broad:

• Religions
• Politics
• Technology
• Food
• Universal references to our world

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Storytelling

Types of narrative styles:

• Fully narrated
• Script form
• Node based

Different ways of working:

• Linear
• Tree structure
• Freeform network

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Storytelling

Narrative restrictions within the mediums.

• Comics - sequential art needs a different way to write description (panel to panel - page to page)

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• Movies - Linear storytelling (Shot to shot - sequence to sequence)

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• Games - A vast sea of variety of possible narration

Storytelling

Become a better storyteller and world builder. It’s a muscle just like any other skill.

• DM in a Tabletop RPG
• Improv class
• Read more!
• Create small projects for yourself
• Retell stories to friends and family
• Be bored

World Building

Players experience is a form of meta narrative that lies as an extra layer.

Experiencing the story in player agency, instead of the game feeding a story with exposision.

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Everything has a cause and effect.

Inherited behaviours for a world.

• Family
• Religious
• Societal
• Medical / Disability
• Gender Identity
• Sexuality
• Age
• Ethnicity

World Building

Experiment; Where do these fit within the character personality schematic?

• Family
• Religious
• Societal
• Medical / Disability
• Gender Identity
• Sexuality
• Age
• Ethnicity

The Limitations of Games

As a narrative designer there are things to look out for when world building:

• Technical and budgetary restrictions
• Time is never on your side
• Dialogue is less valuable in games (in the traditional sense)
• Show don’t tell
• Games are interactive and not inherently passive.
• Worlds have limits

Dangers and Risks

• World building growing pains
• Time is against you
• Kill your darlings
• A game of Jenga (be flexible but keep the tower stable)

Creative Tools

List of tools I use and think help out.

• Spreadsheets (excel or Google Sheets)
• Presentations (Google Slides)
• https://Obsidian.md (My favorite for world building)
• https://notion.com (Planning/Structure)
• Miro (Planning/Structure)
• https://fadeinpro.com (scriptwriting)
• https://Novelpad.co (Novel writing format)
• https://donjon.bin.sh/ (Generator for anything; words, maps, places, names, etc.)
• https://www.worldanvil.com/ (visual way to organize documentation of the world)
• https://inkarnate.com/ (map creation tool)

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Questions?

Get in touch:

Kupski @ https://kupski.substack.com

Kupski @ https://bsky.app/profile/kupski.bsky.social

https://Kupski.net