World Foundation

Purpose and ownership

Establish a shared reality and bounded frame for places, peoples and conflicts.

Ontology, period/technology assumptions, spatial and temporal scale, cosmology when relevant, and ecological/social organizing forces. Specific regions and cities are Content.

Questions

What kind of reality is this? What shapes ordinary life? What lies outside the story scope? What is intentionally unknown?

Inputs and outputs

Inputs: Creative Direction, relevant research and feasibility constraints.

Outputs: World premise, organizing forces, scope and named unknowns.

Prerequisites

Creative Direction.

Stability and evolution

Keep stable: Reality assumptions and scale that downstream causality relies on.

Can evolve: Unexplored places and local details consistent with the frame.

Reusable rules

Describe forces that can generate several distinct societies. Separate objective premises from inhabitants’ myths. Detail only the regions and institutions needed by the next slice.

Acceptance test

Can two distinct regions satisfy the same world foundation?