Chapter 4. Six Macro Sections and the Twelve-Part Form — Where the Book's Skeleton Is Set

Open the table of contents of D&D's Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (third edition). This roughly 320-page book begins with the author's preface, establishes the metaphysics and magic system of the continent of Faerûn as one body, unfolds a thousand years of history along a timeline, then presents cities, regions, factions, and people in sequence before closing with an index and map collection. Its first chapter is Faerûn at a Glance, a short summary of the IP; next comes The Multiverse and Magic, covering metaphysics and magic; and third is History, the historical chronology. Chapters four through seven—Geography, Society, Daily Life, and Adventurers—cover space, society, everyday life, and actors. Chapter eight is Cosmology, covering planes and theology. Finally, Personalities and Organizations unfold people and factions across two chapters, followed by the appendix index.

Open Eberron: Rising from the Last War (roughly 320 pages) on the same shelf and the same flow appears. So it does in Coyote & Crow (about 530 pages) and Heart (about 216 pages). The books differ in length and IP character, but the large flow of their contents is the same. Tolkien's lifelong Silmarillion likewise opens with Ainulindalë, the creation myth, moves to Valaquenta, the gods of Valinor, devotes more than half its body to Quenta Silmarillion—the history, geography, and people of the First Age—and closes with Akallabêth, the fall of Númenor, and Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age. Although The Silmarillion is a mythic text rather than a LOREBOOK, its table of contents follows the same flow as an encyclopedic one.

The movement begins with the world's atmosphere, proceeds to its laws, then from laws to time, from time to space, from space to society, and from society to classification and reference. Market LOREBOOKs pass through these six stages almost without exception because readers opening an IP encyclopedia ask nearly fixed questions: what does this world feel like, how does it work, what happened, what are its spaces and everyday life, how is its society composed, and where can this material be found again?

These are the six macro sections. They are labeled A through F. Their division, integration, names, and weights vary by IP, but none may be omitted; if one is missing, readers cannot follow the book.

The character of the six areas

The preface (A) opens the book and establishes the IP's atmosphere within the first eight to twenty pages. Cosmology and laws (B) then cover metaphysics, magic, and technological systems; in the nine classifications, mechanisms, concepts, and technical terms mainly gather here. For the fictional IP “XX,” this area contains shamanic mechanics such as possession, spirit descent, and resentment. For Forgotten Realms, it gathers the Weave, theology, and schools of magic.

History and chronology (C) follow. They unfold the timeline from creation to the present, mainly collecting event material from the nine classifications and pairing with the chronology compendium in the appendix. In Forgotten Realms, the flow from creation in −35,000 to the present of 1372 DR belongs here.

At the center stand the two largest areas: geography, culture, and everyday life (D), and races, factions, and people (E). These are the portions readers search most often, together occupying fifty to sixty percent of the volume. D is the domain of space and life—cities, regions, planes, routines, and customs—gathering places, mise-en-scène, and some objects. E is the social-composition domain containing people and personified groups, and holds the largest share of the whole LOREBOOK. In “XX,” Meryton, shaman quarters, and restaurant streets enter D; male mudang, cooks, and shaman families enter E.

Catalog and appendices (F) close the book. This is the domain of final classification, reference, and indexes. A glossary, index, map collection, and chronology compendium are mandatory, while NPC mini-cards, faction catalogs, and family trees may be added according to the IP.

In one sentence, the recommended distribution starts lightly with A at 5–7 percent, B at 5–10 percent, and C at 8–12 percent; makes D at 18–25 percent and E at 25–35 percent the largest; and closes with F at 15–20 percent.

Why D and E are so large

It is interesting that this distribution is not accidental.

The first reason is that the most common motive for opening a LOREBOOK is to search for a person, place, or event: readers want to learn more about a character while reading a work, picture the stage of a season, or touch the background of an event more deeply. These three account for roughly seventy percent of LOREBOOK searches, and two of them belong to D and E—the event belongs to C. A book works as a reference tool only when the areas readers search most contain more material.

The second reason is that D and E are the materials through which readers most directly touch an IP. Cosmology and laws (B) are its operating principles, but readers rarely touch those principles directly. Following a person's lifetime (E) or walking through a city's alleys (D) takes them deeper into the IP. When these two areas are satisfying, readers go further. When they are light, readers consult the book once or twice, return it to the shelf, and seldom take it out again.

Imagine how Forgotten Realms answers a reader opening the Waterdeep entry. One page presents a city plan; the facing page contains material on the five Masked Lords. The next page lists five guilds and the locations of their headquarters, followed by small details of individual streets: a tavern on Guild Street where dart-playing gamblers often gather, or the heavy fog over the Dock Ward at dawn. After leaving the entry open for thirty minutes, a reader closes the book feeling as if they have visited the city. That feeling—the experience of directly touching space—is the core reason D is large.

One reason the twelve-part standard is recommended across the market is that its skeleton provides enough room for D and E.

Three part structures — ten, twelve, and fourteen

There are three standard ways to divide the six macro sections into parts, naturally chosen according to the scale of the IP.

The ten-part form is small: 200–250 pages and 100–200 entries. It suits an IP with no more than two hundred Vault entries or no more than five worldbuilding axes. It divides the six macro sections in the most compressed way, placing D and E in one part each and combining the catalogs. It is natural for a first, quickly published LOREBOOK for an indie game or new IP, and it can expand into twelve parts as seasons continue. One cycle takes six to nine months.

The twelve-part form is the standard. It has 400–470 pages and 300–600 entries, and all work in this text proceeds on this form.

It divides D into two parts—Part 4 Geography and Part 6 Everyday Life and Culture—and E into three—Part 5 Society, Part 9 Catalog of Beings, and Part 10 Catalog of Factions. It gives genre actors their own Part 7 and adds Part 8, Catalog of Planes and Spaces.

00. Preface
01. Part 1 World Tone
02. Part 2 Laws of the World
03. Part 3 History and Chronology
04. Part 4 Geography
05. Part 5 Society, Politics, and Economy
06. Part 6 Everyday Life and Culture
07. Part 7 Genre Actors
08. Part 8 Catalog of Planes and Spaces
09. Part 9 Catalog of Beings
10. Part 10 Catalog of Factions
12. Appendices

Here, a genre actor is an occupational group that stands onstage when readers picture the IP's genre: runners in cyberpunk, adventurers in TRPGs, hackers in a hacking IP, maritime traders in a nautical adventure, and warriors in wuxia. In a non-game IP the term can become “protagonists”: the hobbit fellowship in The Lord of the Rings, students at the school of magic in Harry Potter, and whalers in Moby-Dick are genre actors of their respective IPs. PC (Player Character) is the RPG term for an actor controlled directly by the player; in a non-game IP, an equivalent group occupies that position in Part 7.

The twelve-part form suits medium IPs with 200–600 Vault entries, six or seven worldbuilding axes, and a five-year operating history. It is the standard for TRPG and worldbuilding IPs.

The fourteen-part form is the largest, with at least 600 pages and 600–800 entries. It is attempted for very large IPs with at least six hundred Vault entries, eight or more worldbuilding axes, and ten or more years of operation. It divides the twelve-part form's Part 5 Society, Politics, and Economy into three—Politics, Economy, and Society and Everyday Life—splits Everyday Life and Culture into Society and Everyday Life and Culture and Arts, and separates the catalog of beings into race and faction catalogs. A cycle takes twelve to eighteen months and requires many illustration commissions, so it is recommended only for large IPs.

For most readers, twelve parts are the answer. This fourteen-installment text is built on it, while the other two forms can be applied as its compression or expansion.

Length guide for the twelve-part form

The recommended lengths are: eight pages of preface; twenty for Part 1 World Tone; thirty for Part 2 Laws of the World; forty for Part 3 History and Chronology; fifty for Part 4 Geography, the largest; thirty-five for Part 5 Society, Politics, and Economy; twenty-five for Part 6 Everyday Life and Culture; thirty for Part 7 Genre Actors; forty-five for Part 8 Catalog of Planes and Spaces; forty for Part 9 Catalog of Beings; forty for Part 10 Catalog of Factions; and thirty for appendices. The total is about 450 pages (±20): 415 pages of body, eight of preface, and thirty of appendices.

Visualized as proportions of a roughly 28 mm hardcover spine, Part 4 Geography takes about 3 mm (eleven percent), Parts 9 and 10 together about 5 mm (eighteen percent), and D and E together nearly half the spine, roughly 13 mm. In a light LOREBOOK, D and E may occupy only around 2 mm of the spine, with a corresponding loss in lookup satisfaction.

Entry counts follow at roughly one-half to one-third of the page counts, totaling about 150–250 before expanding to 300–600 according to IP scale.

When applying the form, keep each part within ±20 percent of the guide. Part 4 Geography and Part 8 Planes and Spaces are largest because maps carry significant weight and spatial identity is visible there. In “XX,” Part 4 covers cities and regions, while Part 8 covers dimensional spaces such as shrines and roads to the underworld.

It is also worth noting that E is split between Parts 9 and 10. Part 9 holds people and races; Part 10 holds factions and companies. A person may belong to several factions and a faction contain many people, so separating them keeps cross-references clean. Combining them would force every character card to contain all faction material, making cards bloated and comparisons difficult. This is why Forgotten Realms, and nearly every twelve-part LOREBOOK, separates character and faction catalogs.

Which form suits the reader's IP?

The choice passes through five checks, but in most IPs the first—Vault entry count—nearly decides it: up to 200 suggests ten parts, 200–600 suggests twelve, and 600 or more suggests fourteen. Character count adds a variable: up to thirty characters fit a single Part 9; thirty to one hundred suggest separating Parts 9 and 10; more than one hundred suggest a further division across Parts 9, 11, and 12.

Worldbuilding-axis distribution is the second check. Five axes naturally suggest ten parts; six or seven suit twelve; eight or more require fourteen. Usually it agrees with the entry count, but sometimes an IP has two hundred entries and seven axes, or six hundred entries and five axes. In that case, follow the number of axes. The book's skeleton is decided by the number of domains, not the number of entries.

The remaining three are modifying variables. Is there a distinct genre-actor profession? If so, give it Part 7; if not, absorb it into Parts 5 and 9. Does the world have layered planes or spaces? If so, keep Part 8; if not, absorb it into Part 4. How many short-story or novel assets exist? One hundred or more suggest a separate companion volume and an empty Part 11; thirty or fewer allow a choice between Part 11 and a companion; five or fewer call for quotation in the body only.

Applied to “XX,” the five checks yield: 1,200 entries, pointing to twelve parts under its working scale; six worldbuilding axes, also twelve; a distinct male-mudang profession, making Part 7 separate; spirit and underworld planes, making Part 8 separate; and thirty short stories, leaving a choice between Part 11 and a companion. The result consistently indicates twelve parts.

It is common for an IP to fall between ten and twelve or between twelve and fourteen. Begin with the smaller form and expand as seasons continue. Starting large and reducing means cutting material; moving from small to large means reclassifying it and is lighter.

Where worldbuilding axes automate part composition

Here lies the automated portion of part design. A worldbuilding axis naturally corresponds to an area of the LOREBOOK, so the six or seven axes determined in Librarying divide the D and E sections of the twelve-part form.

For “XX,” shamanism spans Part 2 §3 Shamanic System, Part 9 §1 Shamanic Characters, and Part 10 §1 Shaman Families. Cuisine spans Parts 6 and 9 and the appendix object cards. Spirits enters Parts 8 and 9. The living world spreads across Parts 4, 5, and 6. Relationships enters the relationship-chart appendix and the character cards of Part 9. General is distributed most widely.

The important point is that one axis does not gather into one part. Because nine classifications and worldbuilding axes are orthogonal, material on the same shamanism axis goes to Part 9 if it is a person, Part 2 if it is a mechanism, and Part 4 or 8 if it is a place. Each entry occupies the intersection of its two coordinates.

The axes determined during Librarying automatically compose sixty to seventy percent of the LOREBOOK part structure. Human decisions make up the remaining thirty to forty percent: length balance, part priority, integration, and division. They decide whether six style districts become one entry or six, and whether a mega-hub is split across locations. The next installment, on two-coordinate mapping, examines this in detail.

The starting point of full production

At the starting point, the reader's desk should hold: a Librarying Vault of 1,500 .md files; a decided ten-, twelve-, or fourteen-part structure; a part-by-part material matrix showing where each entry belongs; definitions of the IP's five to seven worldbuilding axes; and a chosen LOREBOOK variation.

With those five in place, a single page can show the large picture of where 1,500 entries fit in the twelve-part matrix. That picture begins the next work: constructing the body one entry at a time. Just as the 320 pages of Forgotten Realms on a reader's shelf are the accumulated result of many decisions, the reader's own volume begins from this one matrix.

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.