EPISODE 14: CATALOGING PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS

What this episode covers

Episode 14: Cataloging People, Places, and Things | 24 February 2026 Stephen and Trent hop, skip, and jump through the creation of wiki entries for complex, coherent, and convincing worlds as described in The Worldbuilding Workshop’s twelfth chapter, “Cataloging People, Places, and Things,” including: Ensuring all aspects of a world add up to one hundred percent; Cataloging as a way to transition back and forth between group and individual inquiry/authorship; Entry-creation as a vehicle for studying niche interests; Categories as opportunities for self-insertion into a given storyworld; Understanding relationships between majorities and minorities; Tinkering with entries until they provide a richly authentic sense of scale and scope; Using historically-accurate characters (rather than real people) to get the gist of a world's substructural influence without committing to specific lived histories; People, Places, Things, Groups, and Events as interconnected, cross-sectional indicators of a world's structures and substructures; Focusing on people who exist in cross-sections between dominant poles; Character + Setting = Plot; Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and the character-shaping power of a rich environmental context; Helping learners understand the world as experienced through someone else's eyes (or shoes); How the tabletop role-playing game The End of the World helps players deconstruct their own identities and project them onto an alternate reality; Character identity and how it interfaces with being in the right place at the right time; Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, and simulation-based games as emergent narrative generators; Policing the line between historical accuracy and historical fan fiction; The personal nature of worldbuilding research and the criticality of learner agency for dissuading GenAI/LLM use; A Song of Ice and Fire, The War of Roses, and George R. R. Martin as a story gardener; Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and reinforcement of "main character syndrome"; How and why Symbaroum highlights the (in)ability of individual characters to influence global events; Reconciling grand heroic adventures with more mundane hopes and dreams; Using spreadsheets to track bias toward or against certain character archetypes; Writing minorities back into history through research-driven social constructivism; Dismantling the just-world fallacy; How catalog entries help us evaluate intersectional privilege and oppression; Deconstructing oppression and engaging in empathy through the study of the Tuskegee Experiment, Henrietta Lacks, and the Tulsa Race Massacre; and Practicing the Golden Rule and attempting to make your corner of the world a little bit more pleasant for everyone. Episode References: Larian Studios. (2023). Baldur's Gate 3 [Video game]. Larian Studios. Gilligan, V. (Creator). (2008–2013). Breaking bad [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television. Gaines, A., & Trani, M. (2014). The end of the world [Tabletop role-playing game]. Fantasy Flight Games. Bay 12 Games. (2022). Dwarf Fortress [Video game]. Kitfox Games. Ludeon Studios. (2018). RimWorld [Video game]. https://rimworldgame.com/ Gibson, M. (Director). (1995). Braveheart [Film]. Paramount Pictures. Martin, G. R. R. (1996–2011). A Song of Ice and Fire (Vols. 1–5). HarperVoyager. Free League Publishing. (2015). Symbaroum [Tabletop role-playing game]. Free League Publishing. Pavlovitz, J. (2019, February 21). Everyone around you is grieving. Go easy. https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/02/21/everyone-around-you-is-grieving-go-easy/ Lindelof, D. (Executive Producer). (2019). Watchmen [TV series]. HBO; White Rabbit; Warner Bros. Television. Wolper, D. L. (Executive Producer). (1977). Roots [TV series]. ABC. Brown, D. (1970). Bury my heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian history of the American West. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. Secker & Warburg.

Distinct summary based on available episode metadata or transcript content.