Chapter 2. Five Kinds of LOREBOOK

The same name does not refer to only one kind of book in the market.

Open D&D's Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting in a bookstore's TRPG section and a page is densely filled with the names of cities, factions, and people, with small maps and family trees tucked into its margins. It is a dictionary-like book that organizes all the materials of an IP into one volume. Move to the video-game art-book section of the same store and Final Fantasy X Ultimania pairs a full-page illustration with a short piece of setting text on the facing page. It is like an art collection, with pictures occupying half of each spread. In the comics section, the official Tower of God setting guide assigns one to three pages to each character, combining full-color art, a short profile, and the creator's commentary. Popularity-poll results and fan questions and answers appear at the end, making it closer to merchandise.

The three books share a name, but they have different forms.

Two further kinds cannot be found in an ordinary bookstore: a series bible placed on the writers' room table for a new season of Netflix's Stranger Things, and a concept bible printed and circulated in a game studio's design meeting room. Both are private PDFs shared only with outside collaborators, bearing an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) stamp on the cover.

They form five kinds: standard encyclopedia (A), art book and official setting guide (B), narrative bible (C), game-design bible (D), and official comics or webtoon setting guide (E). They are not five variations of a single body but books intended for different readers, media, and modes of publication. They share one name because they perform the same work of binding the materials of one IP into a volume. Yet the fact that they are in truth very different books must not be forgotten when readers decide which kind to apply to their IP.

This text focuses all fourteen installments on the first kind, the standard encyclopedia. This chapter explains how each of the other four enlarges some portions of the standard and reduces others, then estimates which kind is closest to the reader's IP.

A. Standard encyclopedia

Open D&D's Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting again. It is roughly 320 pages in a B5 hardcover. The opening chapter begins with the metaphysics of the continent of Faerûn and a system of magic called the Weave. The next takes a thousand-year chronology as one continuous flow, followed by complete accounts of cities such as Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, and Silverymoon. Roughly thirty pages are assigned to Waterdeep alone. They contain a city plan, the names of five lords, five guilds and three hostile factions, a few alleyways, and even the kinds of schemes that frequently occur in those alleys. Next comes a line of fifty character cards. Elminster, Calia Cormaeril, and Manushandra Sa appear one per page, each with a full-color illustration and short biography. It is a form in which readers can open to almost any page and find material when they need a scene for a campaign. Because the material is separated by city, faction, and person, one entry finishes when opened and movement to the next feels natural.

The same category includes Eberron: Rising from the Last War, the World Book in the Lancer rulebook (roughly 200 pages), the setting material for the indie RPG Heart (about 216 pages), and the worldbuilding material in Coyote & Crow (about 530 pages). Volumes usually run 200–470 pages, with about 450 recommended. They hold 300–600 entries, each one to three pages long.

The skeleton has twelve parts. It is natural for the combined geography (D) and races, factions, and people (E) areas to exceed half of the whole. Characters and places are what readers search for most frequently in a LOREBOOK, and books that treat those two areas lightly provide less satisfying lookup.

The standard encyclopedia reaches a broad audience. It suits creators who want to arrange their own IP as an encyclopedia, IP owners who want to bind a game, novel, or webtoon's world into one volume, teams that need to show the entire IP to outside writers and adapters, and owners who want to offer official material to a fandom. Among the five kinds, the standard reaches general readers and creators together. Where the other four narrow their readership, the standard receives that broader audience in one volume.

B. Art book and official setting guide

This kind differs from the others because the book turns itself into an object.

Its weight in the hand, the sheen of a full-color hardcover, and an illustration spreading across both sides of an open spread create that objecthood. Final Fantasy X Ultimania is bound as a roughly 420-page full-color hardcover not only to transmit information, but to become an object readers keep on a shelf and open from time to time. On one spread, the left may hold a full-color illustration of Tidus, while the right contains about 800 Korean characters on his birth, the meaning of Zanarkand—the dream in which he grew up—the concealed truth, and his relationship with his father Jecht. Gold foil runs along the page edge. Closed on a shelf, the black leather spine bears FFX Ultimania in gold, letting the book take its place as an object of the IP. The same category includes CD Projekt's The Witcher 3 World Compendium, FromSoftware's Elden Ring Lore Book, and HoYoverse's official Genshin Impact setting guide.

Its defining feature is that one two-page spread is a unit. The left and right pages make one entry: half full-color illustration and half text. Across the book, visual material accounts for 40–50 percent, twice the standard's share. A roughly 400-page book contains 100–250 entries, about half as many as the standard, while each entry uses 800–1,500 Korean characters, also about half the standard length. It reduces the material on a page by half and fills that space with illustration.

The reason this kind is expensive is clear. Illustration accounts for thirty percent of the work time, and full-color hardcover printing raises the unit cost. It naturally suits video-game, animation, and comics IPs rich in game and character illustration assets. If an IP without those assets attempts an art book, all illustration must be commissioned from the beginning and the cost rises to more than three times that of a standard encyclopedia. This is why IPs with a strong visual identity and a large collector fandom attempt art books.

C. Narrative bible

Imagine the first writers' room meeting for a new season. A printed PDF lies on a table surrounded by eight to ten writers, with an NDA stamp on its cover. This is the book called a series bible or show bible. Nearly every season-based IP—Netflix's Stranger Things, HBO's Game of Thrones, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Disney IPs—constructs such material, yet few viewers of the series even know the book exists. One writer mentioned in an interview about ten years after Lost ended that its series bible had been “a roughly 200-page PDF, with seven or eight pages assigned to each character's backstory.” The Game of Thrones series bible circulated only within HBO and not one page was released publicly. These cases show the hidden nature of such books.

That obscurity shapes the identity of a narrative bible. Its reader is not the general public but the colleagues who make the series together: outside writers, directors, and adapters. This determines every dimension of the book. Its tone conveys core information quickly rather than guiding kindly; prose is short and information density high. The first line of a character card may compress “birth, trauma at age twelve, turning point at the end of Season 3” into one row, followed by a two-line voice guide such as “this character's lines naturally end with commas rather than full stops.” This is also why the book is seldom released even many years after a series ends. A book with a limited audience has little reason to enter the general market.

At 100–250 pages, it is lighter than other kinds and contains 80–150 entries. Characters take the largest share, more than forty percent of the main volume, and seven to ten pages are commonly assigned to one person. A dialogue-tone guide for every character becomes mandatory material for maintaining a season's tonal consistency, while season- and episode-level composition is added to event structure. It suits video series—television, OTT, and film franchises—IPs shared by many writers and directors, IPs centered on licensing, and IPs with long-running seasons.

D. Game-design bible

What makes this kind interesting is that its identity changes with time.

Before a game's release, a concept bible is a private PDF circulated only inside the studio. Concept art, skill-tree diagrams, city plans, and mechanic explanations are mixed into a PDF of the same thickness. It may be called a GDD (Game Design Document) appendix, a mobile-game IP bible, or a console and PC game concept bible. The names are scattered, and the boundary between LOREBOOK and game-system manual is indistinct.

An interesting transformation occurs five to ten years after release. Portions of the PDF are released to ordinary bookstores as something like The Making of XX. It may become an appendix to a collector's edition or be published separately as behind-the-scenes material on the IP's design. It began as private documentation but, as the game's life extends, it becomes a marketing asset. Immediately after release the D variation's reader is the game-development team; five years later, it is the game's fans.

That possibility of transformation affects the D variation's construction. From the beginning it separates material that may be released later from material that will remain permanently private. Character-design stories and city concepts may enter the releasable area; core game-system algorithms and unreleased characters remain private. The branch point between C and D is that the narrative bible stays private to the end, while the game-design bible carries the possibility of partial release.

It runs 150–350 pages with 120–250 entries. Part 9's character classification divides into PCs (Player Characters) and NPCs; Part 2's laws of the world connect directly to game mechanics; and a game-system manual is added to the appendices. If the rulebook is separate, the LOREBOOK excludes rule values because the rulebook is the SSOT. If rulebook and LOREBOOK are integrated, some values enter. It fits PC and console games—RPGs, adventures, and simulations—mobile games where IP has a large role, pre-release design material for indie games, and media-mix expansion of game IPs.

E. Official comics or webtoon setting guide

This kind is constructed on the assumption that the reader has already read the main work.

Almost no one buys the official Tower of God setting guide without having read the main series. The same is true of the Naruto official character books, Death Note 13: How to Read, and the A Certain Magical Index character dictionary. These are materials kept beside the comics on a shelf, opened when readers who already hold the main story in their heads want to touch what lies beyond it. Open a page of Death Note 13: How to Read and it may contain a full-color illustration of Light Yagami, a photograph of a page of the Death Note he used, his favorite food (“potato chips”) in one line, height (179 cm) and weight (62 kg) in the next, and below them a brief comment by writer Tsugumi Ohba (“when drawing him for the first time, the eyes behind the glasses were the hardest”). For someone who has read the main work, this page is a moment of meeting a character from the entire series again. For someone who has not, the information has no graspable meaning.

That reader determines every dimension of the book. Characters occupy more than sixty percent of the main volume because what readers most want is a more detailed identity for people they met in the story. Each person receives one to three pages containing a full-color character illustration, short profile, creator commentary, and a short panel quoted from the main work. Short-story quotation is replaced by quotation of panels for the same reason: for a reader of the original, one panel immediately summons the memory of a scene.

Its appendices also differ. Popularity-poll results, fan questions and answers, and creator interviews appear at the end almost as requirements, revealing stories behind designs and character settings. Readers buy the book because they want to enjoy more of the main work, and the appendices answer that desire directly.

It is light at 100–200 pages and contains 50–150 entries. It suits long-running live-service IPs, IPs with an active fandom, and light-novel IPs. If an IP without enough main-story volume and time attempts this kind of setting guide, readers see it as a book that merely doubles a small amount of original material, and satisfaction falls.

Which kind suits the reader's IP?

Although all five have been laid out, choosing the one closest to a reader's IP is almost entirely decided by two questions.

Who is the reader, and is the book public or private?

If it should reach general readers and creators together, choose the standard encyclopedia. If fans and collectors are the primary audience, choose an art book or an official comics or webtoon setting guide; the branch between them depends on the scale of the IP's visual assets and its dependence on the main work. For private collaboration with outside writers or adapters, choose a narrative bible. For private collaboration with a game-development team, choose a game-design bible. The two kinds that do not assume ordinary bookstore display diverge within the private domain.

A third question sometimes affects the decision: what is the IP's primary medium? TRPG, novel, and worldbuilding IPs tend toward the standard; video games toward an art book or game-design bible depending on the weight of visual assets; television and OTT series toward a narrative bible; and comics, webtoons, and light novels toward an official setting guide. Whether rules and values are included and the visual-material budget are closer to variables that follow the choice.

An IP may fall between two kinds, particularly when it is both a game and a comic or webtoon. In that case, the recommendation is to build the standard encyclopedia first and let the two variations branch from it, rather than constructing both at once. Moving from the standard to a variation reclassifies material that is already organized; moving backward from a variation to the standard is closer to making the material again.

The same skeleton across different kinds

Although the five kinds differ, every LOREBOOK has the same six macro sections: preface and world tone; cosmology and laws; history and chronology; geography, culture, and everyday life; races, factions, and people; catalog and appendices. All six appear in every LOREBOOK. Their division, combination, names, and weights differ by IP, but none may be omitted; without them, the reader cannot follow the book.

The standard encyclopedia divides the six sections into twelve parts. The variations distribute division and weight differently. The art-book form enlarges D and E into two-page spreads; the narrative bible makes E more than forty percent of the main volume; the game-design bible elevates B into game mechanics; and the official comics or webtoon guide elevates E to more than sixty percent. The skeleton is the same, but each kind enlarges a different part in a different way.

There are five books grouped under the same name but built differently, and all five arrange different weight distributions on the same skeleton. Those two facts are the starting point when readers apply LOREBOOK to their own IP. The five books look different, but the nature of their work is one; the installments that follow begin to unfold that nature in earnest.

Copyright in this work belongs to Kim Dong-eun WhtDrgon and MEJE Works Corp. Without the copyright holders' prior written consent, no part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, performed, broadcast, translated, adapted, or otherwise used.