ASU researchers blend biology, fantasy in world-building guidebook
Could a dragon like this realistically survive? "Evolution and Ecology for World Builders" invites creators to explore how real-world biology could shape even the most fantastical apex predators. Illustration by ertacaltinoz on DeviantArt.
Evolution may be the ultimate novelist.
Through genes, generations and different environments, it spins characters, conflicts and adaptations.
For gamers, fantasy writers and other creators of imaginary worlds, evolution offers a boundless storehouse of ideas to ground invention in the logic of nature.
Now, researchers at Arizona State University have harnessed that potential in a new guidebook, "Evolution and Ecology for World Builders," which blends biology with fantasy to help creators build more believable fictional worlds.
Drawing on the principles of evolution and ecology, the guide aims not only to inspire better storytelling, but to shed light on the evolutionary forces shaping all life.
The official Dungeon Masters Guild sourcebook is designed for writers, gamers and world-builders, and invites its audience to treat the natural world as a creative partner. The basic idea is simple: Fantasy creatures and imagined ecosystems are far more compelling when they follow rules that mirror the real world.
The authors revisit creatures of the imagination — dragons, goblins, owlbears — presenting them not just as fantasy tropes, but as evolutionary thought experiments.
Want to invent a blind goblin species that thrives in the dark? Consider real-world cave dwellers that lose pigmentation and eyesight to save energy. Wondering how a 5,000-pound dragon could survive? Look to predator-prey biomass ratios to calculate how much food it would need — and what ecological infrastructure would be required to support it.
Even questions of interbreeding between elves, humans and orcs draw on the science of species boundaries and genetic divergence.
Beyond individual species, the guide encourages creators to consider ecosystems as a whole — how creatures interact through food webs, symbiosis, parasitism and competition, shaping each other’s evolution across time.
“We started using fictional creatures to teach evolution to students but then realized that inspiration might also flow back from evolution to fiction,” says Carlo Maley, co-author of the guide. “I think it’s valuable to take our imagination seriously as we imagine what worlds might be and perhaps how we might get there.”
Maley is a researcher with the Biodesign Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society, a professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences and director of the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center. He is also a longtime world-builder.
He is joined by his son, Vaughn Aktipis-Maley, a student at the Herberger Young Scholars Academy at ASU, and Beckett Sterner, an associate professor in the history and philosophy of science and part of the Center for Biology and Society in the School of Life Sciences.
Notes from the book of life
The guide introduces readers to the concept of life history strategies — how species allocate energy across growth, reproduction and survival.
Some creatures live fast and die young, producing many offspring with little investment, like mice or mayflies. Others, like elephants or whales, grow slowly and invest deeply in fewer young.
These trade-offs shape not just biology, but behavior, social structure and even politics — broadly defined as how a species manages power, cooperation and conflict. In world-building terms, they can inform the development of everything from personality to culture.
Goblins might form reckless raiding bands, while elves, with longer lifespans, build enduring, cooperative societies. Such evolutionary elements aren’t constraints on imagination — they’re catalysts that make fictional worlds feel more alive.
The blend of scientific thinking and creative application makes the lavishly illustrated guide a valuable educational tool, which can be tailored to the individual student’s interests and culture.
By embedding core concepts into imaginative frameworks, learners can absorb and apply them more intuitively. Professor Maley and Biodesign Institute researcher Sareh Seyedi also published an educational study aimed at teaching life history theory in the journal Evolution, Education and Outreach.
And for fans of fantasy and science fiction, understanding how real ecosystems work becomes part of the creative journey. It also opens doors to serious reflection — on everything from morality and cooperation to the nature of evil and the origins of empathy. Could a truly malevolent species evolve? What evolutionary forces shape altruism or cruelty? The book invites readers to explore these questions through both science and story.
Evolution gone rogue
While “Evolution and Ecology for World Builders” explores imagined ecosystems, Maley’s own research focuses on a very real and relentless threat: cancer.
A central theme of his research concerns life history theory and how cancer emerges and is resisted across the tree of life, from whales and elephants to birds and even ancient sea sponges. These species offer surprising clues: Some have evolved genetic strategies that suppress cancer in ways humans have not.
Maley’s work reframes cancer as a story of rogue evolution, a breakdown in the cellular cooperation that allows multicellular life to thrive. Understanding that story — its selective pressures and survival strategies — offers new ways to fight it. By decoding how other species defend against cancer and by using ideas from evolution to treat cancer, Maley and his colleagues hope to one day outwit a disease that seems to rewrite our biological story. In a sense, his work is about flipping the script — using evolution to fight how cancer evolves.
It's this type of work that shows that nature provides a nearly inexhaustible supply of storylines — full of drama, transformation and resilience. When world-builders draw from this living archive, they are contributing to an ancient, ongoing narrative. One that we’re still writing and living.
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