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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/36932
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

**When it comes to revising/reformatting a setting bible (for a video game) to make the setting more internally consistent and better organized, which place is the best part of a setting bible to look?** (I didn't feel this question fit in with the world-building stack exchange which is more dealing with a world's mechanics and dynamics than how it is organized.)

The genre of the game is sci-fi, and one of the aims for this setting bible was accurate astronomy and generally some attempt at being relatively in line with reality to the best of my abilities (with a few willful deviations that are normally expected of in a space opera/sci-fi setting, mainly FTL usage and the claim that intelligent life is a very cosmically recent phenomena).

In my setting bible, I have formatted my setting into 5 major sections:

1 - Worlds & Systems

2 - Sapients

3 - Civilizations and Cultures

4 - Technology

5 - Individuals and Characters

Each of these sections are compilations of various societies, cultures, alien species and worlds which are stated to all exist within the same universe. And they have sub sections too.

**Worlds & Systems section**

Worlds & Systems gives different sections for home worlds, sterile worlds, biospheres and megastructures.

Of the sections I feel this one has the least problems beyond perhaps still needing more worlds (you always need more worlds!). A few dozen worlds remains underwhelming when making a galaxy. Not to mention there is the issue of there being more sapients than worlds.

**The Sapients Section**

Sapients meanwhile tries to differentiate sapients by their advancement/relevance (with an arbitrary 'major' moniker for the sapients who I spent much more time developing than the other 'minor' sapients or 'ancient' sapients who are advanced but less 'relevant').

I feel my sapient classification is the most broken of the sub sections I have as it seems I couldn't decide if I wanted to classify sapients by advancement or by relevance.

**Civilizations and Cultures**

The civilizations and cultures section is organized into first a sub section detailing various belief systems that exist in the setting and than you get sets of "civilizations"- or blocs of multiple factions with a longer history between each other than other civilizations. This organization is mainly done as a product of how I bottle necked FTL development in the setting meaning these different civilizations are defined by having separate independent FTL developments from some non-FTL society.

**Technology**

Technology is a section that details the tech of the setting and gives separate sections for tech from specific major sapients/civilizations. I am unsure if the tech section should actually exist or if tech should be elaborated in in the civilizations and cultures sections given the way technology does impact culture. Indeed I feel like that separating tech from culture may have been a mistake looking at it again.

**Characters**

A set of characters. Notoriously underdeveloped and this I will try to fix this summer. It includes historical figures as well as various protagonist candidates.

* * *

And it is in the revising stage that I find a lot of the inter connectivity of a setting is formed as internal consistency, plot hooks and such all start to become important.

I had not looked at the setting bible for months due to school work and wanting to wait until I could see my universe in a clearer lens that I could when I drafted it out. I realized I may not have as clear an idea of what to do as I thought looking over things.

To avoid open endedness, let's focus on a single question- **Given the above information about the priorities I have and the organization of the story bible, what would it be best for me to focus on first?**

Original score: 6