# Hodios paste pack: Worldbuilding
Everything in Worldbuilding from Hodios, the open prompt library by Hermes IDE: 5 entries, catalog 2026.1002.2.
Every entry is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. Copy, change and share them freely, no attribution needed.
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## Contents
- Worldbuilding
- [Build a magic system](#build-magic-system) (prompt)
- [Build a series bible](#build-series-bible) (prompt)
- [Build a world timeline](#build-world-timeline) (prompt)
- [Design a fictional culture](#design-fictional-culture) (prompt)
- [Design a fictional geography](#design-fictional-geography) (prompt)
---
## Build a magic system
`build-magic-system` · prompt · Worldbuilding · https://hermes-ide.com/prompts/build-magic-system
Builds a magic or technology system with a source, rules, costs and limits, stress-tests it for exploits, and lists the story conflicts it creates. Use for fiction or tabletop settings.
````markdown
You are a worldbuilding consultant for novelists and game designers. A magic or technology system matters to a story in two ways: as wonder, and as a source of problems. Three working principles, popularised by Brandon Sanderson, guide you: an author's ability to solve conflict with magic is proportional to how well the reader understands it; limitations and costs are more interesting than powers; and deepening what exists beats adding new powers. Systems can sit anywhere from soft (mysterious, used for atmosphere and not to solve plot problems) to hard (explicit rules readers can reason with); the story decides where.
World and story: [WORLD]
1. If the world description is too thin to anchor a system (no genre or story need), ask up to three questions and stop. Otherwise list assumptions in one line each.
2. Decide where on the soft-to-hard spectrum this system sits for this story, and why.
3. Define the concept in two sentences: what the power is and the idea or theme it expresses.
4. Write the rules: source of power, how it is accessed (words, gestures, materials, devices, bargains), what it can do, and what it cannot do. Number them so a reader or a game master can cite them.
5. Define costs and limits: personal cost (physical, mental, moral, social), resource cost and scarcity, failure modes and backlash, range, duration and preparation time.
6. Who has it: who can use it, how it is learned or acquired, who controls access, and who is excluded.
7. Effects on the world: how centuries of this system would shape economy, war, law, religion, medicine, class and daily life. Look for second-order effects, not just obvious ones.
8. Exploit test: think like a clever player or a ruthless strategist. Find three ways someone could break the system (infinite resources, trivialising conflict, combining rules) and for each, close it with a limit or keep it as a deliberate plot point.
9. Story conflicts: five to eight conflicts or scene ideas the system generates, tied to the story given.
- Respect every fact already fixed in the world description; flag contradictions instead of overwriting them.
- Every rule must matter to a conflict or the texture of daily life; cut decorative rules.
- Costs must actually constrain the protagonist at a dramatically important moment.
- Avoid stock systems (four elements, mana bars, "chosen one" bloodlines) unless the user wants them; if you use one, give it a twist that serves the story.
- Keep invented terms few and pronounceable; define each once.
## Concept
Spectrum position and the two-sentence concept. Assumptions, if any.
## Rules
Numbered.
## Costs and limits
## Who has it
## Effects on the world
Bullets by area.
## Exploit test
Numbered: the exploit, then the patch or the plot use.
## Story conflicts
Numbered.
## Open questions
Decisions only the author should make.
````
---
## Build a series bible
`build-series-bible` · prompt · Worldbuilding · https://hermes-ide.com/prompts/build-series-bible
Compiles a series bible from drafts or notes (characters, places, world rules, timeline, terminology, open threads), citing sources and flagging every contradiction. Use for novel series and TV.
````markdown
A series bible is the single source of truth for a long story: who everyone is, how they look and speak, where things are, how the world works, what happened when, what things are called and which threads are still open. Writers and writers' rooms rely on it to avoid the errors readers notice: eye colours that change, a character who knows something too early, a magic rule broken, a name spelled three ways. A bible is only useful if it is accurate, so every entry must come from the text and point back to where it came from, and contradictions must be surfaced rather than silently resolved.
Compile a series bible from this material:
[DRAFTS_OR_NOTES]
1. **Scope:** list the sources you received and their labels. If sources are unlabelled, label them yourself in order (Source 1, Source 2) and say so. If the material looks truncated or too long to cover fully, say which parts you covered.
2. **Overview:** the premise in two or three sentences, genre and tone, point of view and tense conventions, and the format (books, episodes) as the material shows them.
3. **Characters:** a table for main characters (name and aliases or nicknames; role; age or birth date; physical description; relationships; voice and verbal habits; what they want; what they know and when they learned it, if it matters; status at the latest point in the material; first appearance). Minor characters in a shorter list with one line each.
4. **Places:** each location with description, its geography relative to others, who lives or works there, and notable features, with sources.
5. **World rules:** how magic, technology, institutions, laws, religion or the economy work, as stated in the text, with limits and costs; include rules implied by events and mark them "inferred".
6. **Timeline:** events in chronological story order (not reading order) with dates or relative timing, and source for each; note flashbacks and time skips.
7. **Terminology:** a glossary of invented words, titles, ranks, slang and proper nouns, with the canonical spelling and capitalisation; list variant spellings found.
8. **Objects and recurring elements:** important objects (who has them where), running jokes, motifs and rituals.
9. **Open threads:** setups not yet paid off, unanswered questions, promises made to the reader, and characters left in suspense, each with where it was set up.
10. **Contradictions:** every inconsistency found, each with both (or all) versions quoted with their sources, the type (physical description, timeline, name or spelling, world rule, knowledge, location), and a note on which version appears more often or later. Do not pick the canonical version for the author unless one is clearly a typo.
11. **Unknowns:** important facts the material never establishes that the author may want to decide (a character's age, a city's distance from the capital).
- Use only what is in the material. Never invent details to fill an entry; leave the field blank or write "not stated". Mark anything inferred as "inferred" with the reasoning.
- Cite a source label for every fact in Characters, Places, World rules, Timeline and Contradictions.
- Quote exactly when listing contradictions and variant spellings.
- Keep entries short and scannable; this is a reference document, not a summary.
- Do not change the author's text or suggest plot changes; at most, note in Open threads where a payoff seems to be missing.
Use the sections in order as level-two headings. Characters, Terminology and Contradictions are tables. Put sources in square brackets, e.g. [Book 1, ch. 3].
````
---
## Build a world timeline
`build-world-timeline` · prompt · Worldbuilding · https://hermes-ide.com/prompts/build-world-timeline
Builds a fictional world's history as eras and pivotal events with causes, lasting consequences and contested memories that feed the present-day story's conflict. Use for novels, games and campaigns.
````markdown
Fictional history often reads like a list of dates: a golden age, a great war, a dark age, ten thousand years in which nothing changes and every language and technology stays frozen. Histories that make a world feel real work like real history: events have structural causes (scarcity, demographic pressure, a new technology or belief, a climate shift) and triggers (an assassination, a failed harvest, a marriage); consequences last for generations in borders, laws, grudges, holidays, place names and ruins; and different peoples remember the same events differently. For a story, the purpose of history is the present: every era should leave something the characters still live with, fight over or misunderstand.
Build a history for this world:
[WORLD_SUMMARY]
Present-day conflict: [PRESENT_DAY_CONFLICT]
1. **Assumptions:** the time depth you are covering (prefer a few thousand years at most unless the premise demands more, with detail concentrated in the last few centuries), the calendar or dating system you will use and who invented it, and what you treat as fixed from the summary. If the summary lacks peoples, places or anything to anchor history, ask up to three questions and stop. If no present-day conflict is given, propose three that a history could set up, pick one, and say so.
2. **Timeline at a glance:** a table of eras with dates, a name (as historians in the world call it, and what rivals call it if different), and the defining change.
3. **Eras:** for each era, a short paragraph: how it began, what defined daily life and power, what technology, magic or belief changed, and how it ended.
4. **Pivotal events:** six to ten events, each with: date; what happened; structural causes and the trigger; who won and lost; consequences that still matter today; and what physical traces remain (ruins, monuments, scars on the land, artefacts).
5. **Roads to the present:** two or three causal chains, written as "because A, B; therefore C", that connect early events to the present-day conflict, so the conflict looks inevitable in hindsight.
6. **History in the present:** concrete ways the past shows up in daily life: place names, festivals and holidays, laws and taxes, insults and sayings, borders, religious practices, inherited feuds, forbidden places, and how many people still have family memory of the most recent upheaval.
7. **Contested history:** three events that different factions remember differently, with each side's version and what the truth (or the author's options for it) is, plus any lost history that only a few know and that could be revealed in the story.
8. **Open questions:** three or four gaps deliberately left open for the author to fill or to discover in play.
- Keep every fact from the world summary; add, do not override. If something in the summary is inconsistent, flag it rather than silently fixing it.
- Make change happen: technology, language, borders and beliefs evolve across eras; avoid long periods of stasis unless the premise explains them.
- Avoid simple good versus evil histories: give every faction understandable reasons.
- Avoid copying real-world history wholesale or recognisable histories from well-known fiction; drawing on real patterns is fine.
- Keep it usable at the table or the desk: concrete names, dates and consequences over long prose.
Use the sections in order as level-two headings. Timeline at a glance is a table: Era | Dates | Name | Defining change. Pivotal events are numbered with labelled parts.
````
---
## Design a fictional culture
`design-fictional-culture` · prompt · Worldbuilding · https://hermes-ide.com/prompts/design-fictional-culture
Designs a fictional culture from its environment up through economy, values, customs, beliefs and internal conflicts, with the details that show it on the page. Use for novels, games and campaigns.
````markdown
You are a worldbuilding consultant with a background in anthropology and history. Fictional cultures fail in two ways: as a single trait stretched over a whole people (the warrior race, the merchant guild planet), or as an encyclopedia that never reaches the page. Real cultures grow from their material conditions, disagree with themselves, change over time, and show up in small details a character would notice: what people eat, how they greet, what they swear by, what is too rude to say.
World: [WORLD]
1. If the world is too thin to build from, ask up to three questions and stop. Otherwise list your assumptions in one line each.
2. Foundations: how geography, climate and resources shape where and how people live, and their history in three to five formative events.
3. Economy and power: what people do for a living, what counts as wealth, who holds power and how it passes on, how disputes are settled.
4. Values: three to five core values, each with the custom or law that expresses it and the situation where two values collide.
5. Customs and daily life: food, dress, greetings, hospitality, family and household, coming of age, marriage or partnership, death, festivals, naming conventions with a few example names.
6. Beliefs: religion or worldview, what is sacred, taboos, and what people disagree about.
7. Internal tensions: at least three factions, generations, classes or regions that want different things, and the change happening right now.
8. Outsiders: how this culture sees its neighbours, how they see it, and what each gets wrong.
9. On the page: ten concrete details, phrases or rituals that a point-of-view character would notice in a scene, and two scene ideas that put the culture's values under pressure.
- Avoid a monoculture: show variety by region, class, generation and individual.
- Ground customs in the culture's conditions and values; avoid customs that exist only to be exotic.
- When drawing on real cultures, transform and combine rather than copy; do not borrow sacred practices wholesale or reproduce stereotypes. If the story leans heavily on one real culture, suggest consulting people from it or a sensitivity reader.
- Respect everything already established in the world description and flag contradictions.
- Invented words: few, consistent in sound, each defined once.
## Foundations
Assumptions first, if any.
## Economy and power
## Values
Table: Value | Expressed as | Collides with.
## Customs and daily life
## Beliefs
## Internal tensions
## Outsiders
## On the page
Ten numbered details, then two scene ideas.
## Open questions
````
---
## Design a fictional geography
`design-fictional-geography` · prompt · Worldbuilding · https://hermes-ide.com/prompts/design-fictional-geography
Designs a world's geography from tectonics to climate, rivers, resources and settlements, how it shapes cultures and conflict, and a description to draw the map from. Use for fantasy settings.
````markdown
Readers and players sense when a map was drawn for looks: mountain ranges scattered at random, rivers that split as they flow to the sea or run between two oceans, deserts next to rainforests with no reason, and cities in places nobody would settle. Real geography is causal. Plate boundaries raise mountains and volcanic arcs; latitude and prevailing winds set climate; mountains cast rain shadows; water runs downhill, merges and reaches the sea or a closed basin; resources cluster where geology puts them; settlements grow at fords, confluences, harbours and passes; and trade routes, borders and wars follow the land. Building in that order gives a world that feels true and hands the author ready-made conflicts. Magic or invented physics can bend these rules, but only by stated rules with consequences.
Design the geography of this world.
[WORLD_PREMISE]
Scale: continent
1. **Assumptions:** the scale in rough distances, the latitudes the area spans and its hemisphere, an Earth-like planet unless the premise says otherwise, the technology level, and any magic or unusual physics that alter geography, each stated as a rule with its consequences. If the premise is too thin to anchor the design (no genre or story purpose at all), ask up to three questions and stop. Keep every feature the author named, and place it where it makes physical sense.
2. **Landforms:** plate boundaries and what they produce (fold mountains at collisions, volcanic arcs and trenches at subduction zones, rift valleys and new seas where plates pull apart, island chains over hotspots), plus old worn mountains, plains, plateaus and coastlines. Name the major features.
3. **Climate:** prevailing winds by latitude (trade winds in the tropics, westerlies in the mid-latitudes, polar easterlies), where rain falls and where rain shadows create dry land, the effect of warm and cold ocean currents on coasts, and the seasons. Describe each climate zone and where it lies.
4. **Water:** major rivers from source to mouth (they start in high, wet ground, merge as they descend, and end in the sea or an inland lake; deltas are the only place they split), lakes, marshes, closed basins with salt lakes, and navigable stretches.
5. **Biomes and resources:** biomes that follow from climate and terrain, and the resources that follow from geology and biome (metal ores near mountains and old volcanic rock, coal and salt in sedimentary basins, fertile floodplains and volcanic soils, timber, fisheries, rare materials if the premise has them), with which are scarce.
6. **Settlements and routes:** where the main cities and towns grow and why (river crossings, confluences, natural harbours, mountain passes, oases, resource sites), the main trade routes, and the chokepoints (straits, passes, bridges, river mouths) that whoever controls them grows rich from.
7. **How the land shapes people:** for each major region, how its geography shapes livelihoods, diet, architecture, outlook and power; which resources and chokepoints neighbours would fight over; natural borders and barriers; and hazards (floods, eruptions, droughts, monsoons) that drive history. Give at least five concrete story or campaign hooks rooted in the geography.
8. **Map description:** a layout an artist could draw from: the outline of the land, the position of every named feature by compass direction and approximate distance, a suggested scale bar, and a list of labels. Add a simple text sketch if helpful.
9. **Sanity check:** confirm that rivers never split except at deltas, never cross mountain ranges or connect two seas, rain shadows sit on the lee side, deserts and forests have reasons, and settlements have water and a reason to exist. List any deliberate exceptions and the rule that explains each.
- Be physically plausible unless the premise establishes a rule; when you break real-world geography, say which rule allows it.
- Keep the author's existing places, peoples and conflicts; add, do not override.
- Use invented names that fit the premise's tone and languages; avoid names that are real places or famous fictional ones.
- Keep it usable: favour the features a story or campaign will actually visit, and say what can be left vague.
Use the sections in order as level-two headings. Settlements and routes includes a table: Place | Why it is there | Resource or role | Tension.
````