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Randy Ellefson

Creating a unique, immersive setting one life form at a time. CREATING LIFE (THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, #1) is a detailed how-to guide on inventing the heart of every imaginary world - life. With chapters on creating gods, species/races, plants, animals, monsters, heroes, villains, and even undead, it draws on the author’s quarter century of world building experience. Pointed questions, and an examination of answers and their repercussions, will help readers decide on goals, how to reach them, and whether they are even worth pursuing. Always practical, Creating Life will quickly improve the skills of beginners and experts alike, making a time consuming project more fun, easier, faster, and skillfully done. Unlike other world building guides, the series discusses how to use your inventions in stories while balancing narrative flow with the need for explaining your world. Tailored examples illustrate this. Extensive, culled research on life forms is provided to classify and understand options without overwhelming world builders with extraneous details. Storytellers, game designers, gamers, and hobbyists will benefit from seven free templates that can be downloaded and reused. CREATING LIFE will help your setting stand out from the multitude of fantasy and science fiction worlds audiences see. 

THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING is the only multi-volume series of its kind and is three times the length, depth, and breadth of other guides.

Evermore Press, LLC

The Art of World Building

Creating Life

Creating a unique, immersive setting one place at a time. CREATING PLACES (THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, #2) is a detailed how-to guide on inventing the heart of every imaginary world - places. It includes chapters on inventing planets, moons, continents, mountains, forests, deserts, bodies of water, sovereign powers, settlements, and interesting locales. Extensive, culled research on each is provided to inform your world building decisions and understand the impact on craft, story, and audience.

You’ll also learn how and when to create history and maps. Experts and beginners alike will benefit from the free templates that make building worlds easier, quicker, and more fun. Learn the difference between types of monarchies, democracies, dictatorships and more for realistic variety and believable conflict. Understand how latitude, prevailing winds, and mountains affect climate, rainfall, and what types of forests and deserts will exist in each location. Consistently calculate how long it takes to travel by horse, wagon, sailing vessels, or even dragon over different terrain types and conditions. 

CREATING PLACES is the second volume in THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, the only multi-volume series of its kind. Three times the length, depth, and breadth of other guides, the series can help fantasy and science fiction creators determine how much to build and why, how to use world building in your work, and whether the effort to create places will reap rewards for you and your audience.

Creating Places

Creating a unique, immersive setting one culture at a time A guide for authors, gamers, and hobbyists Written to help fantasy and science fiction storytellers, game designers, gamers, and hobbyists, CULTURES AND BEYOND (THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, #3) is a how-to guide for filling an imaginary world with fascinating societies. It includes chapters on creating culture, organizations, armed forces, religions, the supernatural, magic systems, technological and supernatural items, languages, names, and various systems our world will have, from health, educational, legal, and commerce, to information systems. 

You’ll learn how to leverage real world cultures while making them seem original. Even those who’ve never invented a world will soon be masters as the author’s decades of experience walk readers through using pre-made templates that make world building faster, better, and easier to complete. Invent interesting laws, crimes, and punishments that involve imaginary creatures or technologies, and learn how to leverage trial by ordeal and other judicial acts from Earth’s past. Determine how much education is available and what form it takes. Create currencies for different places while keeping them easy for your audience to fathom, plus learn how to determine the value to assign labor, materials, products, time, and more. Master the art of creating naming styles for different societies. Fashion new military groups in gritty detail. Dream up sensible rules for magic, its practitioners, the supernatural and what happens when things go wrong. 

Learn what kind of files you’ll need to create, how to organize them, and get jump started with a dozen free templates you’ll use again and again. CULTURES AND BEYOND is the third volume in THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, the most in-depth, multi-volume series of its kind. Build better, faster.

Cultures and Beyond

Learning to create a unique, immersive life form one podcast episode at a time.

World building strategist Randy Ellefson turned his successful book series, THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, into a popular podcast of the same name, with episodes loosely drawn from each book in the series. The transcripts of 15 episodes are collected here, based on a theme: they’re about CREATING LIFE and inspired by chapters of that volume. Ranging from 25-35 minutes each, the episodes discuss gods, species/races, plants, animals, monsters, heroes, villains, and even undead.

More improvisational and freewheeling than volume one, CREATING LIFE – The PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS (THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, #4) goes into more detail about everything. Different subjects that are found across volumes are woven together more fluidly here. While one entire episode covers something not found in volume one, the other episodes cover familiar territory but with a new spin. This edition is designed for those who want to dive deep, and for fans of the podcast who’d like a permanent, written copy.

No other world building podcast provides transcripts you can take with you. Whether experts or beginners, storytellers, game designers, gamers, and hobbyists can take their fantasy and science fiction worlds to new levels, benefiting from the author’s quarter century of world building experience.

Build better, faster.

Creating Life - The Podcast Transcripts

World building strategist Randy Ellefson turned his successful book series, The Art of World Building, into a popular podcast of the same name, with episodes loosely drawn from each book in the series. Listeners who want a written copy, or those who want more details than what’s in volume two, can now benefit from these transcriptions. Creating Places – The Podcast Transcripts (The Art of World Building, #5) includes 16 episodes that interweave content from across the series. 

While covering much of the same material as volume two, Ellefson breaks out in new directions while expanding on how to invent planets, continents, sovereign powers, settlements, history, maps, and more. He also teaches experts and beginners alike how latitude, prevailing winds, and mountains affect climate and where vegetation grows. Learn how long it takes to travel over different terrain types and conditions by horse, wagon, sailing vessels, or even dragons.

Build better, faster.

Creating Places - The Podcast Transcripts

Learning to create a unique, immersive culture one episode at a time. A guide for authors, gamers, and hobbyists

World building strategist Randy Ellefson turned his successful book series, The Art of World Building, into a popular podcast of the same name, with episodes loosely drawn from each book in the series. The transcripts of another 15 episodes are collected here. Ranging from 25-35 minutes each, the episodes discuss everything that doesn't fit into the first two volumes about inventing life and places. Cultures and Beyond – The Podcast Transcripts (The Art of World Building, #6) discusses techniques on inventing names, organizations for good and evil, and armed forces like the army, navy, and air (or space) force.

An extensive look into creating cultures led to four detailed episodes on determining cultural vision, scope, origins, social classes, and the all-important customs that reveal culture. A similar deep dive into inventing magic systems examines the principles behind devising great ones and just what is meant by a law of magic and its applications. Other systems to create a detailed world include educational, legal, communication, health systems, and more. Creating items, how to organize our work, and whether languages are best created or delegated to others to invent for us round out the episodes. No other world building podcast provides a permanent copy of transcripts you can take with you, and few are as highly regarded and popular as The Art of World Building Podcast.

Build better, faster.