No Worlds But in Things

This is a worldbuilding game designed to be played by 2-4 players in short spurts with no preparation or materials required. The core gameplay is extremely simple and can spice up a car ride or a walk. The full game can also serve as a warmup for other creative activities or as a tool to flesh out areas of a larger worldbuilding project like a role-playing game campaign.

Often, worldbuilding efforts are hampered by a preoccupation with abstractions and ideas. French painter Edgar Degas once complained to his friend, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, that he couldn’t seem to write poems even though he had lots of ideas. Mallarmé is said to have replied “But my dear Degas, poems are made of words, not ideas!” Similarly, worlds are not built of ideas, but of things and our experience of them. This game attempts to focus worldbuilding on concrete details of experience.