worldbuilding | Stories. Games. Storygames.

Arium Complete Box Set on Kickstarter

I’ve been known to say, “Worldbuilding is play!” in various forums over the years. Of course, I would. I designed and published a worldbuilding game! The funny thing is, in the intervening years, creating worlds being “play” is actually catching on. No, not in the form of people greeting each other at the grocery store with a silly catchphrase, or even with people generally saying it anywhere. In a much better way than any of that.

Black tumbler with peeling paint and white text reading 'WORLDBUILDING IS PLAY' with a purple straw

Worldbuilding is being built into games. A lot of games. And I couldn’t be happier! Daggerheart, Spectaculars, Kids on Bikes, and more are bringing the fun to the whole group and tying it to their built-in settings and ethos. YES, PLEASE. MORE OF THIS.

Many well-known designers and TTRPG publishing houses are baking worldbuilding into their session zero concepts much the way Arium: Create does (although I’m a little biased toward our democratic approach).

Meanwhile, I’ve been working with my design partners, Asha and Drew, to expand on our take on collaborative tools. We’re all fans of downtime in gaming, and knew we wanted to build Arium tools for what happens between major roleplaying moments. In part, because we knew it could be so much more than it often is, and in part because a living, breathing world expands and changes over time. Some of that is represented by PC actions during play, but not all of it. Not by a mile.

We playtested some of this way back before we initially sought funding for Arium: Create and Arium: Discover. We even commissioned cover art for a third book at the same time. Ultimately, Arium: Evolve aims to do the same things for downtime that Arium: Create does for session zero, and honestly… quite a lot more.

Yes, we’re bringing worldbuilding to downtime. Emphatically.

But it’s been nearly 5 years since Arium was nominated for 3 Ennie Awards, and we haven’t seen many people solve the collaboration struggles that some tables experience. The one where the most outgoing voices at the table get the most say. The one where players are put on the spot to come up with a great idea RIGHT NOW, even when they may not be feeling inspired. Create’s method solves for this, and that’s the real magic of it. Groups always love the worlds they create and want to game and tell stories in them right away for a reason!

So, we set out with the ambitious goal of expanding and democratizing downtime while making it feel like continued narrative gameplay (to the extent we thought it made sense).

If you want in on that action, or you’ve missed the entire thing to this point, we’ve got you covered with our new crowdfunding campaign. Get Evolve if that’s all that you’re missing, or grab the Arium Complete Box Set!

Launching on Kickstarter on August 25th, 2026, and you can follow along now from this link.

Worldbuilding is essential to speculative fiction and other genres as well. If we cannot create a plausible, yet fantastical world for our story to live in, we risk losing the attention of our audience. However, there is a strong tendency out there to focus more on building up the fictional world than to write a compelling story. We look at the masters of fiction we admire and say, “I want to write something like that.”

I’m no different. Since I was a teen, I’ve admired the worldbuilding of Frank Herbert for his Dune series. What I (and probably other fledgling writers) have to remember is Herbert had been writing published fiction for almost TWO DECADES before he wrote the first Dune novel.

Developing character backstories are also essential while writing fiction. We research and write the elements of a character’s backstory for important reasons. It helps us learn what motivates people. It informs realistic choices in the character’s story. It lends additional writing experience. To a point, it even helps us get closer to finishing our stories.

But never, not even once, assume that this information is vital to the story.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

― Stephen King

The goal of writing fiction is to provide words that will hopefully enlighten and entertain our readers. If we can attain those two things, we’ve done our job as writers.

What we have to do to tell a compelling story, at least in the beginning, is narrow our scope and vision. Work in worlds that we understand more intuitively. Write characters who’s motivations we can easily comprehend. By all means, create amazing, incredible worlds and histories for characters. Just don’t do that at the expense of finishing things.

“Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.”

― Neil Gaiman

All those arguments aside, try writing backstory and worldbuilding as exercises in storytelling. Tell the story of a character’s past. Tell a story of an event that helped forge the world into what is is today. I’ve done some of this, and would never share the results with anyone. Still, I think it has aided in my quest to become a better writer.

Thanks for reading, all! There probably won’t be an installment of Rue From Ruin this week. Allergies have really bogged me down recently. I promise to have it to you as soon as possible.

Please enjoy this GIF as compensation: