The Gazetteer Writer's Manual: Creating Travel Guides to Fictional Worlds

Here's an outstanding guide to documenting your fictional world. If you've ever wanted to share your world with readers, gamers, fellow writers, or collaborators on creative projects, this book is for you. While old-fashioned gazetteers just described physical places, the best ones covered culture, economies, and more. We take that approach here, to help you flesh out your setting and present it in a way that entices your audience into it. The Gazetteer Writer's Manual answers questions like these:

• I still need to develop parts of my world so I can present the right info to my readers. What should I be working on?
• How do I organize all my world building stuff so it makes sense to readers (and myself)?
• How do I present my material in a way that’s easy for people to get into?
• Players never read the background info I give them about my game world. How can I get them to absorb the bigger picture or even important details for immediate objectives?
• How can I share the world beyond my short story or novel with interested readers?

Need a blueprint to follow for developing your world? We have it here. Need a methodology to keep you on track with what’s important? It’s built into the outline, and the points in the text. If you want to distill the highlights and present the most interesting bits of your world in a ready-reference booklet, we have suggestions and a walk-through example for how to do that, too.

The advice in The Gazetteer Writer’s Manual is offered by two experienced world builders and professional game designers, one of whom is also a science fiction and fantasy novelist. Bruce Heard is known to many as the creative mastermind behind TSR’s well-regarded Mystara setting, which was famous, among other things, for being presented in a unique series of Gazetteers that introduced gamers to each fascinating region of Mystara. Deborah Teramis Christian wrote similar commercial products (such as the combination adventure and gazetteer-style modules for Mayfair Games’ The City-State of the Invincible Overlord), authored one of the Mystara gazetteers, and has produced similar books in support of her own science fiction and fantasy novels from Tor Books.

This writer’s manual distills decades of game design and professional writing experience from the authors to give you a one-stop “how to” guide for creating gazetteers of your own. This book walks you through the process of creating gazetteers for your world: both a master reference document, and more targeted variations on that theme that serve whatever purpose you need them to.

If you want to make better sense out of the material generated when you create a fictional world, and especially if you want to craft specialized views of that world including handouts for readers, fans, gamers, convention-goers, buyers, and others, The Gazetteer Writer’s Manual: Creating Travel Guides to Fictional Worlds is a must-have addition to your world building library.