This episode was recorded during LACon V / WorldCon 2026 in Anaheim! At the time of recording, we had about 32 hours left of being Schrodinger's Hugo Finalists. Well, we once again did not win -- but we had a fantastic time at WorldCon nonetheless! And one of the best things about being there, besides getting to hang out with each other, is getting to see some of our listeners and take questions live.

We talk about the history of the podcast, what got us into loving and writing fantasy, how research can affect worldbuilding mid-stream, how to create worlds that don't just feel like rat mazes for the protagonist, exploring the sliding scale of magic systems, and more!

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For a writer, a "better" government doesn't necessarily mean well-functioning or benevolent; it means “more complex and better for your story” -- which may well mean a government that is worse-functioning in interesting ways! But fantasy governments tend to look like one of two things: an absolutist monarchy or a US/UK-style representative government, flattened out in ways that ignore potentially juicy layers of bureaucracy, negotiation, and power struggles. So how can we make choices for our fictional worlds that reflect the wide variety of ways people agree to live in a society together and provide compelling plot hooks and character motivations?

To figure that out, we can start by asking: What role does the government play in your story? Where does it intersect with your characters’ lives and with the plot? A political game-of-thrones type plot will need a lot of building out, but even a cozy romcom or an intimate noir will have aspects touched by that society’s government. What are the in-world conditions that led to your world's government having the shape that it does? Economic stressors, rebellions, coups, invasions, ideological shifts -- many factors in your world could contribute to a government's development, maintenance, and fall, and your characters might have their hands on some of those levers.

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Resources:

• Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer (now a Hugo Winner for Best Related Work!)
• Council of Foreign Relations: Forms of Government Introduction

That's right! It's infrastructure week at Worldbuilding for Masochists! So we're talking about the systemic underpinnings of a nation and its economy, the fixed installations that it needs in order to function -- which, admittedly, might sound like the exact sort of overly-detailed, tedious, weighty worldbuilding that people sometimes complain about.

Okay, except, so much in your plot probably depends on things like how people, goods, and information move around! This makes infrastructure perhaps the most iceberg-y of the iceberg things that your reader should only see the tip of, but that you might need to think a lot more deeply about.

So -- Who builds the roads, bridges, dams, and canals in your world? Who maintains transportation hubs and communication networks? Who controls all those points of access to both utilities and information? Who benefits from these systems? Who gets screwed over by them? And, critically, what does this mean for your plot and your characters? Whether you're riding horses over vast plateaus or zipping around at lightspeed, the logistics of time and space are likely to have some kind of an impact. How easily a message can get passed along -- or delayed -- can have serious implications. (Just ask Romeo). Points of change like revolutions or technological advances can seriously upset people's daily lives and the direction of whole nations. In this episode, we explore the ways that infrastructure can give you plot hooks, character motivations, and complicating factors.

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Resources:

• Educational Video from Dr. Esmé Louise James: Was it possible to get finger-blasted inside a Regency carriage?
• ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Ancient Road
• UNRV: How Did the Ancient Romans Send Messages?
• Bret Devereaux's Resources for Worldbuilders (many articles about logistics)
• History of the Gander International Airport
• Overly Sarcastic Productions: Trope Talk: Space Westerns