7 Critical Worldbuilding Principles for Transmedia-Ready IP

Introduction

In the entertainment industry, transmedia isn’t a buzzword, it’s a strategy for longevity. A successful IP must thrive beyond a single platform. If we want our worlds to stretch across media, across years, and across communities of fans, we need to design them with expansion in mind from day one. 

Here are seven worldbuilding principles that ensure your IP invites curiosity, welcomes collaboration, and remains future-ready. These elements–unlike so many other factors–lie squarely within the purview of narrative designers, producers, writers, art directors, and other creatives in the worldbuilding process.

1. Central Question or Purpose

Every IP, whether transmedia or not, should always be anchored by a clear narrative question. This might be simple, like “How might people survive in a world overrun by zombies?” or more complex, exploring deeper, often philosophical themes such as “What does it truly mean to be human?” Sometimes, your question might be a combination of the two. Crucially, no matter what your IP’s narrative question is, it needs to resonate with your target audience. Narrative questions contribute to the cohesion, meaning, and IP direction as your project develops, as well as after it’s shipped. 

For transmedia storytelling in particular, a central narrative question provides a shared purpose for audiences to graft themselves onto. Whether you’re designing social paratexts or full cinematic arcs, it is the narrative question that ultimately becomes the rallying point for community identity and moral exploration.

2. Mystery and the Sense of a Larger World

Mystery is incredibly important in transmediated content. In fact, we might argue that it is one of the most important factors to be considered during development. Why? Because asking fans to engage with your story across not just one, but multiple platforms is a hard ask. Not only does your story need to feel cohesive and intentional across different mediums, it also needs to continuously keep audience members “on the hook.” We have found that mystery is the best way to do this. Your audience should be asking way more questions about your world than you are answering. Your IP should hint at a rich, complex world beyond what is shown, and leave narrative gaps that invite speculation and theorizing in fan communities. Rather than offering simple explanations, a transmedia  story curates ambiguity in order to encourage imagination and exploration over the long term.

Mystery creates long-lasting engagement. Fans return not only for the plot and characters, but also for the thrill of discovering hidden layers. It only takes a quick search on platforms like YouTube or Reddit to see how powerful mystery can be in encouraging communities to participate in both interpretation and co-creation of your story world. 

3. Sticky Characters

Iconic characters are the heart of any IP’s community. They drive identification, storytelling, and merchandise. Characters should linger in your audience’s mind, and motivate engagement. Some key design facets to consider:

• Characters should be visually distinct. Easily recognizable silhouettes, color palettes, iconic props and costumes. The best characters can be easily cosplayed, memed, or turned into fan-art. While the actual designs may be handled by specialized artists, it is incumbent on creators to provide the narrative underpinnings for their key traits.

• Characters should be well-defined, with a clear psychological and/or moral hook; they should contain some unresolvable trait that makes them fascinating and relatable, in order to invite speculation and curiosity. Internal tension, paradox, and contradiction are strong story drivers as well.

• Your characters need narrative agency. They need to do stuff that affects the outcome of their journey, rather than having stuff done to them. A character who is defined by the latter is a passive victim of circumstance. Such characters don’t often play well with audiences as they are frustrating to engage with. A well-designed character takes actions that drive or complicate the story in ways that matter.

• Your characters need to make us feel something! Laughter, awe, disgust - whatever works! They don’t have to be “likeable,” but they do need to emotionally resonate with your audience..

• Lastly, and particularly important in interactive mediums - repetition and iconography will go a long way towards making your characters “inhabitable.” Catchphrases, signature moves, iconic props, all make them easier to recall and reproduce.
  

4. A Society-Sized Problem

 Because of their size and scope, transmedia IPs naturally lend themselves to a Collective Journey model (CJ) rather than the more conventional hero’s journey (HJ). Whereas a hero’s journey pits a lone protagonist against a lone villain, the collective journey, by design, focuses on large casts of characters working together to confront a broken system.

At the heart of most enduring transmedia worlds lies a large, morally complex issue that shapes everything around it. It doesn’t need to dominate every instalment, but its presence should be felt across the world, providing a thematic backbone that ties everything together. This is the foundation of the CJ, popularized by narrative designer Jeff Gomez. The CJ is arguably far more attuned to the current cultural moment and works powerfully to invite deeper forms of audience engagement.

To be clear, we are not against traditional story structures. The HJ absolutely has its place. But the larger, interconnected nature of transmedia story worlds means the narrative really thrives when responsibility, action, and transformation are distributed across many hands. This not only creates multiple entry points for audiences and richer thematic exploration, but also makes the IP more resilient, flexible, and expandable than a single-protagonist arc can sustain on its own.

5. Obvious User Agency

Your IP should naturally suggest  fun, impactful things to do in its world. Characters must model these actions so vividly that when fans dream about the world, they already know their role within it. Think: wielding a lightsaber and controlling the Force. Or exploring catacombs and cracking a whip.

At its core, user agency is about fantasy fulfillment, the emotional “what if” that drives participation. Whether it’s empowerment, comfort, exploration, or something else, your world should clearly invite the audience to step in and live that fantasy through play, roleplay, or imagination.

Besides the obvious and giant upside of creating a clear path for video game adaptations, a strong sense of user agency can also fuel things like toy tie-ins, LARPing experiences, fanfiction, and roleplay, as well as strengthening emotional investment.

6. Implicit Systems

The world should have internally consistent systems (e.g. magic, politics, technology, nature, diegetic games) that invite analysis, hacking, or play. 

Systems thinking encourages deeper immersion and user-generated content. It also helps game designers and collaborators build extensions that feel right to the audience. 

These systems may be mysterious, prompting speculation and theorycrafting. Or they may be well-defined, enabling participation and expansion of other kinds, as with Quidditch in Harry Potter or Gwent in The Witcher. Both approaches deepen engagement by giving fans something to study, master, or imagine beyond the text.

7. Multi-Perspective Narrative Potential

In a transmedia story world, the goal isn’t simply that any story could be told from any perspective; it is that the world is built to make those alternate viewpoints meaningful and rewarding. Structural gaps, moral ambiguities, and unseen events create distance between what different characters know, believe, or experience. Crossing those divides, whether as a viewer, player, or reader, becomes part of the pleasure of engagement.

This can be achieved through:

• Moral ambiguity

• Exploring overlapping agendas, factions, and mythologies

• Building tension between what is seen and what is heard

• Including incomplete details and off-screen events

• Developing characters capable of holding opposing viewpoints while understanding and empathising with each other

Delivering alternate perspectives on unclear narrative elements is not merely about satisfying a fan’s curiosity or filling in backstory, it’s about further immersion, worldbuilding, and complication of what has come before. Taken together these elements enable replayability, fan interpretation and co-creation, and transmedia expansion that goes deeper and broader at once. 

When a world is designed this way, it does not just expand narratively; it expands empathetically. Each new perspective deepens understanding and invites the audience to practice seeing through others’ eyes, creating a sense of connection that feels earned rather than prescribed.

Summary

The success of a multiplatform IP often depends on a variety of factors beyond its initial creative core: partnerships, timing, execution, or community management, and more. I hope to explore these in another post soon.

Simply having these seven characteristics is not enough to guarantee success, of course. But if you’re fortunate enough to spark early engagement in a fan community, these principles will be the fuel that keeps the fire growing, inspiring audiences and collaborators alike to keep it growing.

Special thanks to Nick Jones for his keen editorial eye and insightful contributions. Check out his substack for Tentacular Games here, and do buy his book The Player and the Pentacle: Folkloric Motifs for Narrative Design here.