If you've ever played D&D (or any other role-playing game), you've likely run into the dungeoncrawl. For those of you who've never experienced the delight, the typical dungeoncrawl goes something like this:

The adventurers head to a mountain or abandoned castle.

They enter a door and go down a set of stairs (suitably worn by time and the elements)

They enter a corridor of dressed stone with doors every so often. Sometimes there are torches, sometimes not.

Behind each door is a room. Each room is a rectangle with dimensions in multiples of 5 or 10 feet.

In each room is a group of monsters that the adventurers fight.

When killed, the monsters have a pile of treasure just sitting there in the corner.

The monsters in the various rooms have absolutely no relationship to one another.

In other words, it's completely and utterly unbelievable and no amount of suspension of disbelief can transport the reader (or player) into the world.

While role-playing games are notorious for this kind of "world-building" (and I use the term generously), books are supposed to be different. They're supposed to be better than that. Settings are supposed to be researched and built with loving care. If it's a sci-fi setting, the technologies should be believable with minor leaps of disbelief. If it's a fantasy setting, the societies are supposed to work within the confines of the technology restrictions. And most author don't bother.

This wiki is an attempt to provide worlds that actually make sense. Sci-fi settings that has believable technologies, believable polities (where a polity isn't a species just because), and believable interactions between them. Fantasy settings where actual economics and weather are taken into account. Above all, the settings should be writable - good stories should be able to flourish within it.

We hope that authors will take these settings and write wonderful stories within them.