WorldCraft Club 64 - A Powerful Worldbuilding Tool with Steel Stash - Part One
Jul 19, 2023
Steel Stash, co-founder of the Black Dragon Dungeon Company and host of the Lonely TTRPG podcast, shares his military-guided insights on the ASCOPE/PMESII framework. This powerful tool helps worldbuilders succinctly outline key details of their settings. Stash discusses how to prioritize components, the importance of starting with 'areas,' and how to adapt existing modules for deeper personalization. He also introduces useful strategies for organizing notes and expanding narrative depth, ensuring your worldbuilding is both structured and creative.
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ASCOPE + PMESII: A Systematic Worldbuilding Rubric
- ASCOPE pairs with PMESII to give a systematic, top-down map of a region's functions and constraints.
- Use it as a focused rubric to reveal how a place actually operates rather than free-form extrapolation.
Nightside City-State Example
- Steel Stash uses his city-state 'Nightside' to demonstrate starting with military when a place is militaristic.
- Nightside projects power ~60–90 miles and uses forts and supply logic to define its operational area.
Begin With The Location's Primary Focus
- Start PMESII with whichever domain defines the location's primary function instead of following a fixed order.
- Then apply ASCOPE for that domain, beginning with Area to define geographic limits before other details.