What's inside

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Story-World Continuity Bible

The situation it fits

A studio closes, but its world does not. After BioWare closed in October 2026, the next Mass Effect game was cancelled — yet Amazon MGM Studios' live-action Mass Effect series stayed in development, with its showrunner and writers still attached. The question stopped being "what happens next in the game" and became "who decides what is true about this world now?" A continuity bible answers that question in writing, before the arguments start.

Workflow

1. Canon tiers (input: all released + announced material -> output: 3 tiers).
   Tier 1 — settled canon: released works, on the record, not negotiable
   without a formal change. Tier 2 — working canon: announced or in
   development, true until contradicted by Tier 1. Tier 3 — apocrypha:
   cut content, early drafts, fan theories, and anything a departed team
   member said in an interview. Every fact in the bible carries its tier.
   A fact without a tier is a future argument.
2. Timeline spine (input: dated events -> output: one timeline).
   Build a single timeline of the world's history with dates (or date
   ranges where the work is vague) and a source per event. Mark gaps
   explicitly: "no established date" is a fact, and it is better than a
   guessed date that a later writer treats as gospel.
3. Character rules (input: main cast -> output: one card per character).
   Each card: what the character would never do, what they want most, what
   they do not know, and what changed them last. "Would never do" is the
   most valuable line — it is what keeps a new writer from writing a
   stranger with a familiar name.
4. Open questions register (input: unresolved threads -> output: a list with owners).
   Every dangling thread (an ending choice, a missing character, a
   promised return) gets: the question, who may answer it, and whether it
   is open by design or by accident. Open by design is a feature; open by
   accident is a debt, and the register says which is which.
5. Change process (input: a proposed contradiction -> output: a decision record).
   Any change to Tier 1 canon requires: a written proposal, the reason,
   what breaks if it changes, and a named decider. Changes are logged
   with dates. A bible that cannot say "we changed this on purpose, here
   is why" is a museum, not a tool.

A note on respect

A continuity bible is not a leash. Its job is to let new creators move fast inside the world without accidentally breaking what fans carry in their heads — and to make the deliberate breaks visible, so audiences can tell a choice from a mistake.

Template preview

Continuity Bible Worksheet

1. Canon tiers

2. Timeline spine

3. Character cards

• Character:
• Would never:
• Wants most:
• Does not know:
• Last changed by:

4. Open questions register

5. Change log

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