Creating a World

A world is the place where characters live, plus the rules everything in it follows. This guide walks through the world editor section by section, in the order a world is easiest to build.

For a single character, see Creating a Character. For how the model reads a world, and why extra lore hurts, see How the Model Reads Your Work.

1. Order of work

A good world rests on three things. Laws say what happens when someone acts. Places say where it happens. People with wants are the ones who act. Lore is background, and it can stay short.

2. What the model reads from a world

The key consequence: lore rides along in full on every turn. A world with an 8,000-token encyclopedia pays for it on every line, even while the characters are discussing tea.

3. General

The name, genre, tagline (one line about the world) and tags are for the card and for search in Discover. The Discover note is shown only to readers on the public page, and the model does not read it.

Cover and frame: which band of the picture the banner keeps.

3.1 World mechanics — the laws

Free text about what follows when someone acts, up to 1,500 characters. Both the judge and the writer read it as law, above the lore and above the model's own habits.

The world is dark and dangerous. Magic here is rare and mysterious.

A gunshot is heard through the whole house. The doorman locks the doors at night, and only he has the key. Magic costs blood: a spell without a cut does nothing.

A law is "if X, then Y". Atmosphere belongs in the lore.

3.2 Count the things

On: characters and the player carry objects with a state, and a move that needs a thing needs that thing in hand ("no knife, no knife strike"). Off: it costs less on every turn, which is right for worlds where objects are not the point.

3.3 Lethality

• No deaths: they fight, but nobody is seriously hurt.
• Wounds only: down, but never dead.
• Deadly: anyone can die, the player too.

A two-dice roll on the server decides each blow, not the model; the model judges plausibility and advantage. Wounds heal with rest, sleep, bandages, magic or the world's own law, and the judge decides whether that is plausible.

3.4 World skills

Reference notes that are not needed on every turn: the rules of magic in detail, how a district works, what waits beyond the city wall. Each turn the prompt carries one index line per skill, and the writer gets the full text when the topic comes up. A world can have up to 12 skills.

An example from The White Curtain Falls is the skill "The white beyond the doors", with the keywords "door", "outside" and "snow". When the player asked what lay beyond the doors, the text loaded and the characters spoke in its details. On every other turn it cost 26 tokens.

4. Lore and the summary

Sources are lore documents, written in the editor or uploaded as files. A world can hold a lot of them.

The summary comes from the "Generate AI summary" button. If a summary exists, only the summary goes into the scene. If not, every document goes in, one after another, on every turn. So a world with a lot of lore needs a summary. Regenerate it after editing the documents and read it. It is the text the model sees on every turn, and you can edit it by hand.

A good summary is what any inhabitant of the world would know: how power works, the main conflict, what counts as normal, what everyone fears. Details that only a few people know belong in world skills or in characters' secrets.

5. Places and the map

Places are rooms, streets and buildings. Each has a name, a type, a description, a parent ("Dressing Room" inside "Backstage") and a backdrop for the visual novel. Moving between places is a real decision by the judge. The player says "I go down to the cellar", the judge checks whether they can, and the scene moves along with whoever follows.

Describe a place by what can be done and found there, not by how it looks. For example: "Cellar: costume trunks, shelves of centuries-old papers — among them a Sumeru investigator's report". The model will describe the look on its own, and the objects become clues.

The map is a picture with markers for the places. When you publish the world, the map is published with it.

6. Cast and relationships

The world's characters are your own and other people's published characters, added by reference. Someone else's character stays theirs: you can play it but not edit it, and its updates arrive once you accept the new version.

Relationships are directed: "Mitya → trusts → Valeriy" does not mean Valeriy trusts Mitya. A relationship has a type, a label and notes. Relationships the model suggests do not count until you accept them.

Characters' habits (a field on their cards) become a schedule: who is where in the morning and in the evening. While the player is in one room, the others live their own lives in the rest. A character does not volunteer what happened while the player was away. It comes out if the player asks and the character trusts them.

7. Extras

Background people, such as a doorman, a barista or a guard, have a name, one line about who they are and a sprite. A world can have up to twelve. They cost almost nothing and make places feel lived in. Characters can call them by name, and they come.

Extras do not replace characters: they have no sheet, no personality and no memory. If someone matters to the plot, make them a character.

8. Scene starts

A scene start is a template the player begins from. It has a title, a place, who is present, a premise and an opening: the scene's first lines, up to 6,000 characters. The opening is written in the same format as the scene itself, and when you publish it is translated into ASAI's languages.

8.1 Choices for the player

These are choices the player makes in the wizard before the first move, either a switch or a text field. A choice that is switched on reaches the model as your instruction. In the instruction, {{text}} is replaced with the player's words: "The player is {{text}}, invited by the host himself."

8.2 Hidden roles and plot rules

These are for mysteries and detective stories. Hidden roles say who is the killer and who is the spy. Each comes with a rule: who can hold this role, who knows about it, and what it must never do. Plot rules (up to 6,000 characters) set out the stages, the clues and the ending.

On the first move the model hands out the roles and writes a plan by your rules. The plan stays on the server and reaches the judge turn by turn. The player never sees it, and neither does a reader of the published world, because spoiler fields are stripped from the public preview. That is what makes a scenario replayable: the culprit is dealt anew in every scene.

How to write plot rules:

• Stages with conditions, not turn numbers: "stage 2 — when the player finds the diary", not "on turn five".
• Clues tied to places: "the duty log — at the entrance, at Kulish's post".
• The lies of those assigned: what the culprit says when asked point-blank.
• What happens on an early accusation: the accused reacts like an innocent person, and the others put it down to nerves.
• Keep it short: if you write a page of plan laid out day by day, the model will still compress it to eight stages.

9. World weight

A world's ceiling is ~12,000 tokens. That covers the lore (or summary), places, relationships and scene starts, plus the world's skill index. Character cards are counted separately, each with its own ceiling. The Weight panel in the General section shows what weighs the most.

10. Checklist

• The mechanics are written as "if — then" laws, not as atmosphere.
• A world with a lot of lore has a summary, and you have read it.
• Details that are not needed every turn are in world skills.
• Place descriptions say what can be found and done there.
• The characters have habits, so the world lives while the player is elsewhere.
• Each scene start has opening lines, so the player steps into a scene that already exists.
• Spoilers sit only in hidden roles and plot rules, not in the lore or the description.

Publishing a world is covered in the Creator Program. What a world may contain is covered in the Content Policy.

Version history

• 1.0 — 1 October 2026 — First publication.