The Story Bible

            So when starting out your RPG, you usually create the world it is going to exist in, establish a bit of the narrative leading up to the events that are going to take place. This in many ways is used to hook a player into joining your story much in the same way that the back cover of the book is used to hook a reader into buying the story. However a few paragraphs comprising a lead in usually cannot give your story justice, or truly flesh out the world you are going to create. Thus is the creation of the story bible.


            Story bibles have been used before in many famous and not so famous television shows[1]. They are a collection of the creator's thoughts on the world for the writer's to use when writing the scripts of the show. In here the story bible will be used mainly to keep a record of your own thoughts, to lay out the world in many ways in front of you to create consistency through out the RPG.


            So what are some examples of a story bible? 


            Well take a fantasy story for example, the story bible would cover the history of the world, the past and important traits of important characters both heroic and villainous that the characters will encounter. It will cover the technology of that age, the description of the cities your characters will visit, even how the magic works. The same could be applied to a science fiction story in which you describe how the space ships work and the designs of the weapons. Even a story taking place in modern day a story bible can be helpful to flesh out some of the places the characters will visit, and the people they meet.


            Now why is all of this important? The main thing is consistency, RPGs can go on for months, if not years, and be epic tales that span hundreds of pages. As such it is good if not necessary to have a document that you can refer to that keeps the RPG grounded in your original vision. It is also helpful to have something to look back upon in case you forget certain elements of a villain or a town that you want the characters to eventually visit.


            Now there will be problems cropping up if you get too detailed, and expect the other players to follow it rigidly to every single detail. However that is something to discuss in a later post when diving into the pros and cons of preplanned RPGs vs free flowing RPGs.

[1] Espenson, Jane; (04/08/2009); How to Give Maris Hives; Retrieved From http://www.janeespenson.com/archives/00000550.php