Editing Unwritten: System Reference Document/Starting a Game (section)

===Establish Issues===
Every setting needs to have something going on that the characters care about, often a peril they want to oppose or a mystery they want to solve. These are the setting’s issues.

You’ll come up with two issues as a group and write them down. The issues should reflect the scale of your game and what the characters will face. They’re broad ideas; they don’t just affect your characters, but many people in the world. Issues take two forms:

* Current Issues: These are problems or threats that exist in the world already, possibly for a long time.
* Impending Issues: These are things that have begun to rear their ugly heads, and threaten to make the world worse if they come to pass or achieve a goal.

The default number of issues is two: Either two current issues (for a story solely about trying to make the world a better place), two impending issues (for a story about striving to save people from threats), or one of each. The latter option is common in fiction: think about the stalwart heroes who work against some impending doom while already discontent with the world around them. Additionally, the unknowns defined in the last step can be the basis of an issue.