Beyond Kings and Princesses: Governments for Worldbuilders

Not just scenery—use your setting’s politics to supercharge your story’s conflict!

Are you dissatisfied with your invented settings? Do you want to do better than Yet Another Standard Medieval Land? Do you want to build gripping story conflict right into the fabric of your world?

Learn how your setting can escape the usual clichés—or take the usual clichés and put a bold new twist on them, that readers or players will love! In Beyond Kings and Princesses: Governments for Worldbuilders, you will use fundamental concepts of politics to take the conflict in your story to a whole new level, delighting readers and leaving them wanting more. Inside, you will discover how the Tripod of Power, the four main Regime Actors, and key principles of social conflict can make your setting bold and original, or familiar yet compelling. Most importantly, your setting will be built from the ground up to evoke your story’s unique vision.

Most books about worldbuilding are written by authors or game designers who know a little bit about everything, including politics. This is the only worldbuilding resource written by a scholar of political science who is also a skilled fiction writer and editor. Beyond Kings and Princesses: Governments for Worldbuilders provides a crash course in the most important ideas from politics, carefully selected and presented to help worldbuilders like you solve your key problem: how can setting be used to tell a powerful story?