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Remenant Constructivist

Date: May 25 2023

topics: projects, worldbuilding, game_design

I have mentioned in various places around the web that I have been working on a long term worldbuilding project. I wanted to talk about it here so that I can solidify what it's like in my head, as well as see what people think about it. Feel free to email me via contact at protodrew dot website if you have any feedback of any kind!

The scope of this project is massive, but it going to become multiple things. The central character driven story is going to start its life as a mini audio drama, and then will become a video game. It revolves around a studying architect travelling to a newly developing town. The world itself is post-apocalyptic, but it has succeeded in the ashes of the empire that preceeded it. Think the distance between the roman empire and now. The society that collapsed mirrors a lot of our own, and the society that will proceed acts as a canvas for me to explore different methods of political and social organization.

A lot of the inspiration for this story comes from my readings of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. I feel like I could spend the rest of my life studying this book and the material it references, and am very excited to speculate on a lot of the alternative ways societies could exist that were less focused on "progress" and domination, and instead dedicated the incredible collective power of humanity towards its betterment.

The central civilization that the story operates on is based a lot on Graeber's writing on seasonality, it is a coalition of societies that span from a few dozen to several hundred thousand people. There are a few central cities that exchange hosting of a major festival during the winter, where the majority of the societies will converge and exchange resources, ideas, talent, and deepen their relationship with others.

Our society operates on a principle similar to trade and apprenticeship systems, but expanded towards disciplines that wouldn't be called a trade. Expert craftsmen, creatives, and environmentalists known as 'stewards' will seek housing in a city in exchange for their work. The society is heavily invested in environmental protection, so it is common to have people dedicate themselves to stewardship of a single area or even species; acting as its voice in times of crisis and abundance alike.

The protagonist in the character driven story is seeking apprenticeship under a architectural steward. There they learn both about the process and execution of creating great buildings (in the abstract) as well as the importance of praxis and engagement in a community as a steward (something that was a very academic concept until this apprenticeship began).

In a more meta sense, this is going to be a canvas to interlock my fiction works and grounds them in an ideological, political, and cultural framework that I will be able to use as a mechanism of discussing complex sociopolitical topics. The thing I'm most concerned about in this is accidentally displaying insensitivity towards cultures and histories, or missing/ignoring a large component of the comprehensive systems in a society. Once I have more things to show I am going to start posting them for feedback, and have already given an early example to the members of ctrl-c (check my public dir).