Overview
World consistency fails when contradictions accumulate. The designer writes that dragons are solitary creatures in Entry A, that dragons mate for life in Entry B, that the dragon skeleton in the Ashen Wastes shows no signs of age-related degeneration in Entry C, and that dragons can live for thousands of years in Entry D. Entries A and B contradict each other (solitary creatures do not mate for life). Entries C and D may contradict each other (a creature that lives thousands of years should show age-related degeneration unless its biology is static — which Entry C's skeleton would support if it were a young dragon, but the Ashen Wastes event was 500 years ago, so the skeleton must be at least 500 years old if it died there, meaning it was not young). The contradictions are not obvious from any single entry — they emerge from the interaction between entries.
The World Consistency Verification prompt builds contradiction detection systems with three properties: (1) claim extraction — every lore entry is decomposed into explicit, testable claims (not themes or impressions, but specific factual statements that can be true or false), (2) cross-reference verification — every claim is checked against every other claim in the lore database, and contradictions are flagged with severity ratings (hard contradiction = two claims directly state opposite facts; soft contradiction = two claims imply different things but could be reconciled with interpretation), and (3) resolution protocol — every flagged contradiction has a resolution process (modify one claim, add context that reconciles both, or designate one claim as in-universe unreliable narration).
What you get: - Claim extraction template (decomposing lore entries into testable claims) - Cross-reference verification matrix with contradiction severity ratings - Resolution protocol with decision criteria - Consistency audit checklist - Ongoing monitoring specification (how to verify new lore against existing lore) - Contradiction severity classification system
Built for: narrative leads, lore editors, and QA teams who need worlds that survive scrutiny — not worlds that collapse when a player reads two entries back to back.