What are some challenges or tests you do to try and make sure you've fleshed out your a part of your world enough for whatever you're working on?
For me with any specific place it's "What does the average guy here do and why."
Depending on the scale of the question will change the scale of the answer of course lol.
Throw a couple my way I wanna steal any good ideas people have.
I was thinking of writing a scenario of the life of one specific person from a random town from each country from my world to try and consider all aspects of life! It's been great so far just considering the options 👀
Well, that's a very good idea 🤔
I often do this when prepping a home-base village, etc., for a TTRPG. I list out all the "average people" types in the settlement, and then write short but fleshed-out descriptions of what their "average day" looks like. I tend to script them like I'm writing an NPC schedule for an Elder Scrolls game or something. It helps me see if they have everything they need, and where the inputs / outputs are likely to be really cleanly.
Going to r/writingprompts , writing a maximum of 2000 words of any prompt that interest me and fit in my world
The various Worldbuilding prompts I find in this Subreddit and Pinterest
Where are the lawyers? Which functionally translates to, "How do people settle serious disputes?"
There can't always be flashy duels or blatant injustice or the dismissal of complaints from the people in the world. For a society to be coherent and functional enough to be classed as a society, there has to be some form of redress for the wronged.
That said, I haven't 100% worked out how this works for my main project. Yet. It is on my to-do list. It will be very 12th century Europe, I just have to do the research to see what that looks like.
Constraint satisfaction graph.
What? Can someone explain please. I don't really want to read the whole paper... Can't tell from an Abstract how is this even related to the post.
If your world has a polar ice cap, then it's a fact. If then at some point you introduce a religion of fiery serpent, it may have its main temple in the water kingdom Uruz, and invent a moat around it, with crocodiles. Later you think to yourself how nice it would be if Uruz had half a year night - and place it in the polar region - you need now to do something about those crocodiles, as your planet clearly has sub-zero average temperature in that polar region.
Or your Eastern Express story needs to be correct, then the waiter can't be the murderer, he has an alibi - being a victim an hour earlier.
Every time you write down a fact, it limits what facts you can add later.