See the Fifth World together.
We can easily imagine civilizations because they try to swallow everything around them, colonizing and conquering and making the entire world just like them. But when they break down, that process runs in reverse, and each unique place once colonized and subdued by that “geography of nowhere” comes back to life. Hegemonic history unravels into local histories, mass extinction opens up niches for an explosion of new life forms, and from new biological diversity comes new cultural diversity. We can imagine civilizations because their simplicity doesn’t challenge us too much, but we can’t imagine life beyond civilization — not alone, anyway. To imagine that kind of heterogeneity, diversity, dynamism, and kinship, we’ll all have to imagine together.
The Fifth World asks you to embrace this agenda on many levels. It sets the agenda for the wiki that provides the setting’s canon, where diverse people everywhere try to imagine this new world together, but it also sets our first agenda for the tabletop roleplaying game. Why do you and your friends gather around the table to play this game? So that you can imagine the Fifth World together, because you know that you cannot fully imagine it on your own. Each of you will catch some glimpses of it, and each of you will miss others. Picture the Fifth World in your mind, and tell us what you see. If you don’t know, ask questions. When the answer seems obvious to you, say it. What seems obvious to you might not seem so obvious to everyone else, after all, and even if it does, you’ll still confirm to everyone else that you see it, too. Seeing the Fifth World together doesn’t mean coming up with the most shocking twist or the most original imagery. If you pursue those agendas, they will lead you away from this one, maybe toward something shocking and zany, but not toward something grounded and real that everyone else can see, too.