A world is a frame for characters and places. A scenario takes you inside it, into a story.
Narratica has six things you will see everywhere: worlds, characters, places, scenarios, personas and stories. This page says what each one is for and how they connect. The pages after it take them one at a time.
This is the team's own Western world, with some names left out so it fits:
World
The Redvale Valley
setting · description · definition
Characters6
Places4
Scenario2
The Doctor's Son
prologue · opening message · protagonists: Elijah Dawson
Story
Entering The Redvale Valley as Elijah Dawson in The Doctor's Son
a copy of the world, then one turn at a time
A world is the setting, and it holds everything else. Its definition is the set of rules the AI follows in every story set there: the tone, the technology, the magic, what is normal and what is not.
Characters are the people in a world. Each one has a definition: who they are, what they want, how they speak. In a story, only the characters you defined can speak.
Places are locations in a world. They are optional. When a scene happens in a place, the AI reads the place's definition to describe it.
A scenario is where a story starts. It says how the story begins (the prologue), who can play it (the protagonists) and, if you want, who speaks first (the opening message). A world with no scenario cannot be played.
Your persona is who you are in a story: one of the protagonists the scenario offers, picked before the story starts. Playing as a persona you wrote yourself is planned too Coming soon. See more on the page What's live now.
A story is one playthrough. It takes a copy of the world when it starts, then grows one message at a time.
When the AI writes a turn, it gets these fields.
| It reads | From |
|---|---|
| Name and definition | the world |
| Name, title and definition | every finished character in the world, except the one you play |
| Name and definition | every finished place in the world |
| Name, title and definition | your persona: the protagonist you picked, or a persona of your own Coming soon |
| The last 20 turns, and once the story is longer than that, up to 40 older turns it finds relevant | the story so far |
It does not read subtitles, descriptions, settings, scenario titles or images. Those are for players, on the cards and detail screens in the app. The setting also picks the colors the app uses for the world, for example on the placeholder shown when there is no picture.
So a description is for the player who is deciding whether to play. A definition is for the AI that runs the story. See more on the page Building a world.
A scenario needs characters, and characters need a world, so you build in this order:
Then you can play the scenario as one of its protagonists, and a story begins. Your worlds are private to you for now. Publishing a world so other people can play it is planned Coming soon. See more on the page Worldbuilding overview.
How is this guide?
Last updated on September 27, 2026