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Authoring overview

A world is a reusable starting point, not a save game. It defines identities, initial state, setting knowledge and possible story material. Each session copies that data and evolves independently.

You do not need to design every system before play. Start with a situation: someone the player can embody, a place under pressure, and two or three people who want incompatible things. The editor and authoring assistant make it practical to expand the world after testing how it feels.

Good agentic worlds provide:

  • characters with motives, constraints and distinctive speech rather than scripted responses;
  • places with meaningful connections and features;
  • facts divided between public description, private state and character-specific knowledge;
  • plots as opportunities and pressure, not mandatory sequences;
  • triggers for deterministic world reactions;
  • enough empty space for the player's choices to matter.

Prefer stable facts in definitions. Put current placement, activity, emotion, intentions and variable values in initial state. Do not encode the expected outcome of play.

A useful authoring order​

  1. Define the world's premise, tone and rules.
  2. Create at least one playable character and the people immediately around them.
  3. Connect the opening locations and place the starting cast and important things.
  4. Give characters goals, directional relationships, and only the knowledge they should begin with.
  5. Write an opening that presents tension without deciding the player's response.
  6. Add lore, plots, routines, factions, variables and triggers where they create consequences the agents cannot infer reliably.

Run a short session before adding breadth. If characters lack direction, strengthen their intents or the situation before writing more background. If they know too much, review explicit knowledge and public descriptions. If the GM pushes one storyline too hard, make plot beats optional and increase their cooldown rather than removing all structure.

Author through the world editor, the authoring assistant that asks before changing files by default, or direct files using the world format reference. A world can also carry interface packs: a theme, a skin and small pages that change how its stories look.