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Is it possible to divide the entire concept of worldbuilding to fields? If no, why? If yes, which are the branches?

I think of fields like:

  • map making
  • constructed languages / language creation
  • magic and/or technology building
  • plot creation/lore writing

...and so on.

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    $\begingroup$ You forgot the most important one: sexy female-only humanoid species creation $\endgroup$
    – Cyrus
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 11:58
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    $\begingroup$ I'm fairly certain this belongs on Meta, rather than main, as it's a question about worldbuilding itself. $\endgroup$
    – Frostfyre
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 12:07
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    $\begingroup$ What you are looking for is basically the tags. worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/tags $\endgroup$
    – Grollo
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 12:08
  • $\begingroup$ @Frostfyre so do you think that question about worldbuilding itself belong to meta? I'm not sure if I agree, but I can see the reasoning behind it. $\endgroup$
    – Z..
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 12:30
  • $\begingroup$ @Grollo no, definitely not, as they really vary in scope. One might be the part of another. $\endgroup$
    – Z..
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 12:30
  • $\begingroup$ You should ask this question on Meta WB SE. $\endgroup$
    – AndreiROM
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 12:58
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know if it can be done but it would be interesting to try, I think you are actually more likely to end up with something like a org chart but with world building topics $\endgroup$
    – James
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 14:09
  • $\begingroup$ @james I tried. Not exactly an org chart, but it worked for me. $\endgroup$
    – AwkwardBowman
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 18:53

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I went through a bunch of questions to see if I could categorize them based on your categories. It kind of worked, but I needed to tweak it a little bit for it to seem logical (to myself at least).

I ended up with the following categories. I took questions as I read them and categorized them, making each one a link in the appropriate topic.

Almost every topic I encountered fits fairly easily into one of these 5 topics, although some were a little tricky, either because they could fit multiple, or because they don't seem to fit any too well.

Overall, it doesn't seem too difficult to divide questions into categories, but I don't know if there is a need. In most categories, you already see a lot of common tags. Although it MIGHT help to have the over-arching category that have implied sub-tags to clean things up and standardize them a bit.

Common Tags

  • World Creation: planets, astronomy, stars
  • Language Development: language, world-building-process
  • Plot Development: (this one has a TON of different tags)
  • Magic/Technology Development: alternate-history, alternate-worlds, physics
  • Creature Design: Evolution, creature-design, biology
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  • $\begingroup$ Nice Analysis, I may give it a go as well when I have time $\endgroup$
    – James
    Commented May 31, 2016 at 20:19

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