# How to Make a Worldbuilding Sheet (7 Questions to Copy) | Lunafic Source: https://lunafic.ai/blog/worldbuilding-sheet-template | Published: 2026-10-20T12:48:38.644Z | Updated: 2026-10-20T12:48:38.644Z | Author: Lunafic Team | Tags: worldbuilding, Roleplay, Guide > A worldbuilding sheet holds the facts of your world on one page. Seven questions to copy, why each works, and how to write it when an AI plays the world. A worldbuilding sheet is one page where you write down the facts of your story's world, so you remember them and don't contradict yourself three chapters later. Search for a template and you'll find lists of a hundred questions about geography, food, religion and magic. Those lists are useful when you want to know your world like an encyclopedia. When you want a story to happen inside it, seven questions do most of the work. They are below, with the reason each one works and a version you can copy. ## What is a worldbuilding sheet? It's the one place where the facts of your world live. TV writers in the US call it a series bible, and every episode follows it. Japanese anime and game studios publish 設定資料集 (settei shiryōshū), setting books with character designs, maps and rules. Korean webtoon and web novel writers keep a 세계관 설정집, and in Korea the word 세계관 (worldview) is used for games and even K-pop groups. ## Why do some worlds feel alive? A world feels alive when the people inside it want things they can't all have. Screenwriters learn this first at the size of a scene, which works when someone wants something and something stands in the way. A world is the same idea at a bigger size. The map, the gods and the history matter when they push people to want something, fight for it, or hide it. Peter Turchin, a scientist who studies why societies fall into crisis, found the same pressures coming back again and again across centuries of history. Three of them are useful for anyone building a world. - Too many people competing for too few places at the top. Turchin calls it elite overproduction. There are more nobles' sons, graduates or officers than there are seats for them, and the ones left out start looking for another way up. - Ordinary people getting squeezed. Wages fall behind prices, and people stop believing the system is fair. - A government running short of money. It can't pay its soldiers and officials well, and it starts losing control. Chinese history has a famous case of the first one. In the Qing dynasty the imperial exam was the main road into government, and far more men studied for it than could ever pass. Hong Xiuquan failed it several times, fell ill, saw visions, and later led the Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864), one of the deadliest wars in history. Pick the pressures that are rising in your world, and each one will give you characters and scenes. ## What should a worldbuilding sheet include? ### 1. What does this world run on? Every world has something people need and someone who controls it. In history it was land, rice, silver, or a pass in the imperial exam. In your world it might be mana, a hunter license, clean water, or the favor of a god. Write down what it is and who holds it. Most fights in your story will lead back to this line. ### 2. Who wants a seat they can't get? This is Turchin's first pressure. Write down which group has more people than places at the top, like the second son who inherits nothing, the disciple who will never be named heir, or the graduate with no post. These people make plots, alliances and betrayals, and they make good rivals for your main character. ### 3. Who carries the weight? Write down who pays for the world to keep running, the farmers paying taxes, the miners, the village on the road the monsters use. They don't need to be heroes. When they show up in a scene, the world feels bigger than the main characters. ### 4. Who owes what to whom? This is where many Western and East Asian stories start from different places. A lot of Western fantasy follows one person who leaves home and decides who they want to be. A lot of East Asian stories put the person inside a web of people they owe, parents, a teacher who saved their life, a senior in their martial arts school, a lord. Confucian thought even names five core relationships, ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and friend and friend. Both kinds of story are good. The second kind is very useful when you build a world, because a character who owes someone can't simply walk away from a hard choice. Write down the debts, who saved whom, who is promised to whom, and who must obey whom even when they disagree. ### 5. What are the rules nobody can break? Magic, technology, law or a curse, whatever your world has, write what it costs and what it can't do. Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson says limits are more interesting than powers. A healing spell that costs the healer a year of life turns every injury into a decision. ### 6. Who knows what? Write down each secret and, next to it, the names of the people who know it. A secret makes scenes because some characters know it and others don't, and readers enjoy knowing something a character doesn't. Storytellers call that dramatic irony. ### 7. Where is the world in its cycle? Turchin's work describes societies moving through long cycles, growth and order, then strain, then crisis, then rebuilding, often over two or three centuries. Decide where your world stands today. A young kingdom on the rise fits adventure and exploration. A rich empire at its peak fits court intrigue. An empire that is cracking fits war, rebellion and hard choices. Late Edo Japan is a clear picture of that last stage. Many samurai lived on fixed rice stipends while merchants grew rich, and the men who brought down the shogunate, the military government that ruled Japan, in 1868 were mostly lower-ranking samurai from Satsuma and Chōshū. ### A worldbuilding template to copy - What does this world run on, and who controls it? - Who wants a seat they can't get? - Who carries the weight? - Who owes what to whom? - What rules can nobody break, and what do they cost? - What are the secrets, and who knows each one? - Where is the world in its cycle? Add one line for each main character, what they want and what stands in their way. ## How long should a worldbuilding sheet be? One page is enough to start. Tolkien invented his languages first and spent decades building Middle-earth around them, which works when the world itself is your life's work. When you want to start a story this week, write what the first chapter needs, then add to the sheet when the story asks for more, the same way TV writers grow the series bible while the season goes on. ## How to write the sheet when an AI plays the world In AI roleplay you play one character and the AI plays the others, and that changes the sheet. It stops being notes for yourself. The AI reads it before it writes a reply and acts on what it reads, so a few habits help. Write what people want. "The empire is old and powerful" gives the AI nothing to do. "Three noble houses fight over one throne" gives it a conflict to bring into any scene. Write rules as short, plain sentences. A rule like "Magic always costs blood" is easy for the AI to follow on every reply. A long history of how magic was discovered is much harder to turn into a scene. Write each secret with the names of who knows it, so the AI knows which characters can talk about it. Keep it short. The AI reads the sheet on every reply, so a long sheet costs more AI work each time and can bury the line that matters. ## Where the sheet lives in Lunafic Lunafic is a roleplay app where you play one character and the AI plays everyone else. You chat with the characters like in any roleplay app, and everything is saved as chapters of a story the AI keeps remembering. Each world in Lunafic has a [Wiki](/features/world-bible/), which is this sheet in a form the AI reads before it writes. It holds character sheets, places, factions, magic systems, religions and the world's rules. You can write each entry yourself like a page in a notebook, or press Build the world with AI, describe the places, history and groups of your world in plain words, and the AI drafts the entries for you to keep or change. If you already use ChatGPT or Claude, you can [connect them to Lunafic](/docs/agent-access) and edit your world's Wiki by talking to them. [Starting your own private world](/docs/start-a-private-world) takes about two minutes, a name, one character, and who you are, and then Chapter 1 opens. The rest of the Wiki can wait until the story gives you a reason to write it. Free accounts get a monthly AI usage allowance, the Flash model and up to 50 Wiki entries, which is enough to build a world and play in it. Every reply runs on GPUs, the expensive computers AI needs, and we are a small team, so free use has a limit. When you pay, we try to give you the premium roleplay you expect, with more AI usage, deeper models and a bigger story memory. [How plans and AI usage work](/docs/plans-and-credits). --- Read this on Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/blog/worldbuilding-sheet-template More from Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/blog What is Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/ai-roleplay AI characters you build stories with over long memories. You play as your character, the AI plays everyone else, and stories stay private by default.