/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

I'm working on a golem-based magic system and I could use some advice on whether or not something sounds fun or just stupid.

Golem crafting is all about imbuing objects with forced animation resembling life. The more refined and complicated the medium, the more "intelligent" a golem can be.
Humans tend to only be able to make clay/dirt golems capable of following pre-determined commands, though a few talented individuals can make ones that can follow orders.
Other races use ones out of carved stone and the like, while the best golems are made by a race who basically design them as magi-tech robots (think Hellboy and the Golden Army or Artifact Creatures from Magic: The Gathering).

I'm currently toying with a villain faction using flesh golems, my world's equivalent to undead. Living bodies are incredibly complex, and the bodies of humans and other such intelligent creatures are already capable of, well, intelligence. Therefore, some enterprising assholes have started making various golems out of living (and recently deceased) beings.
I'm throwing some alchemy in there to make it easier for them to tinker, but I'm trying to stop before I go full FMA (because I want to avoid just copying).

What I'd really like to know is what people would think of magicians/mages turning parts of their own bodies into "golems" in order to increase their strength/durability/become immortal.
Would that be an interesting and believable escalation of the golem magic, or just a silly excuse for giving characters super powers?

Keep in mind my setting doesn't have stuff like fireballs, healing, or illusion.

bump

So I had a VERY rough idea for a fantasy setting, that I would describe as "Lovecraft meets H.G. Wells" set across "the outer realms" a collection of realms set in the void of the prime material plane the terraformed moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, as well as Pluto and it's moons the realms are populated by a number of strange races and is under constant assault by beings from beyond, Cosmic horrors and eldritch beings hoping to make a outer realms their own.

so far I have for ideas for PC races to populate these realms:

Humans
Selenites
Martians
Eloi
Yaddithians
Moreauvians (ratfolk, catfolk, lizardfolk, Gnolls)

what do you think /wbg/?

How would this work with fantasy instead of science fiction?
How do the different worlds/realms/planets ever interact?

I'm guessing you have portals or teleportation or something along those lines.
I'm also kinda getting an Yggdrasil/Norse Mythology vibe, for some reason.

A rough map is where I always begin since geography helps gives a guideline for ideas. If I find it lacks a certain thing I can always add in new geography later. As for the last, see

Is there anything that just generates a chunk of fucking land? I've been wrestling with all the generators and planners I can find for a while now, and I've realised all I really want is just a nice and somewhat authentic looking CHUNK of land, which I can fill in myself.
Please respond, I'm going absolutely insane.

I kinda wish people would remove humans as a baseline when it comes to making and comparing new races that are meant to be weird and exotic. Does it really make sense for an animal based rare to had evolved to be walking on two legs for example? Four legged beasts are often faster and more agile which would had help in their long term survival. Like simple stuff like that. If your new race is based on an animal then why would you use a human as a baseline?

has there ever been a 'Fantasy Fallout' setting?
by that I mean a post-apocalyptic fantasy, sort of in vein of pre-bethesda fallout.

youtube.com/watch?v=dl1JE9yWgrs

I'd imagine a world torn apart by magical superweapons, with mutants roaming around created by long-dead mages as their servants

Humans are used as baseline because the audience are humans and find it far easier to empathise, understand and generally be able to play as something vaguely similar to themselves in some manner or another. If you want to blame something blame Star Treks lame 'guy with funny head parts' school of alien races.

While a new race being completely alien is fun, its real hard to write without having any comparative sources and going down a rabbit hole of fluff to justify further alien features. Looking like an animal is one thing but thinking like one is entirely different. To mind, the Hivers from Traveller would be a good example of a truly alien race but even they have some basis on a relatable characteristic.

Try the don jon fractal world generator, and erase all the features.

Or, better yet, write your own version.

I mean, it REALLY isn't that difficult.
pastebin.com/Sq81q8Es

How many cities should a conan-esq late bronze age setting have. Right now Im going to end up with about 5ish with three smaller ones. Is that too many, or not enough.

VPPlanetGenerator

r8 my map.
>inb4 >inkarnate

>inkarnate

Gonna bump with a map.

Beavercreek seems like a place full of old American prospectors

I'm having trouble naming this political system, help me out. The basic premise is that everyone in this country is genetically engineered according to their parents' desire for their future cross-referenced against how likely it is that that job will need to be filled. Future politicians serve as secretaries to politicians and are promoted to low level representatives if they do well after the lowest level politician near them dies or retires or whatever. Then it's like a pyramid chain of command deal, where you advance in rank and have, say, three people beneath you, who have ten people beneath them, who represent the normal citizens. There's no voting involved at all except by the second highest level of power to determine who the equivalent to president will be, and positions are for life unless you're incompetent or corrupt.

Aristocratic Kratocracy.

>How do the different worlds/realms/planets ever interact?
portals yes, but also ships that use cavorite to "fall" to other realms.

and frankly H.G. Well's works might as well be fantasy at this point, given how far off his stories were from how IRL technology progressed.

haha time to write bullshit about satyrs

Mood, atmosphere the sort of ideas you want to explore. That's most important thing, I think.
It never really ends, it just usually goes from big details to smaller details, and at some point you just have to know when to cut it.

Kinda needs bit more explanation. What sort theme it is. Since it is Lovecraft, is it more toeing with horror, or is it operaish?

has gist of it. Bloodline-based powers, stands, etc.
Also, other elements are good, like organizations with set number of members / ranked by power.

So are the skink guys a sub species of the lizard guys?

Nah, separate. Basically they have their empire on eastern side of world, lay eggs anonymously. have strict caste-system with reincarnation and are governed by a secret living god etc.

The bigger fellows were creation of some human chucklefuck thaumaturge, and kinda ended up becoming a rather significant race after human empire got dunked by the same thaumaturge. With new freedom, they kinda established small clans, tribes and even kingdoms that really gave headaches to neighboring regions. While in modern times there are lot living amongs other races, the infamy kinda lingers.

>everyone making this fancy shit with Inkarnate

Is there some newer version I'm not seeing? All I can use is the in-browser one and that doesn't even have snow-capped mountains, to name one.

>crackclaw
Does the noble house have webbed hands?

Hey guys! Could use some help with this setting I'm working on

Basically, I have 4 playable races but for some autistic reason, my brain is telling me that there should be 5. Pls, help me figure out the 5th race

Basically we got:

>Humans, only ones who can use magic

>Giants, stronk and thicc, but also can be pretty agile and smart too

>Cave bois, size of a human child, pale skin, big ears. Excellent hearing and dark vision, but can't see in bright sunlight.

>Animorphs, born almost featureless they absorb DNA of vertebrates that they interact with and then manifest them on their body. They can't reverse the process so by the time they hit maturity they can look anywhere between horned raptor centaurs to humanoid bird-elephants

Unironically Dwarf Fortress. Even generates cultures if you're lazy.

jellyfish people that swim in air instead of water. They have a body consistency of a plastic bag and see through skin so always try and cover themselves up out of embarrassment

The spread of names like Pridefall, Gullhaven, and Glimmergulch across the main continent give the impression that it is at a small scale and do not hint at notable cultural transitions, but then it jumps straight into not-china after a narrow sea. I don't perceive an area bordering China to be called "Glimmergulch", I would expect exotic transitionary cultures to be there. China was an extremely far off and exotic location to Europeans, this map places it at the same exotic-distance as North Africa.

Crackclaw was used in A Song of Ice and Fire (and happens to border the Bay of Crabs) and I would steer far away from names like Ganymede, Enoch, and Viridian.

The "Sea of Madness" is awfully close to civilization.

I do like the shape and biomes of the main continent but most of the names are weak and the sense of scale is poor. Aim for cultural transitions in names, they might exist within lore but we can only see names and geography here.

Those chimera animorph niggas should have a super voracious appetite. This doesn't have to mean they're awful terrible cannibalistic assholes, but it might mean they're few and far between, or it's hard for them to support families or large gatherings. As a result, you only rarely see more than two in one place.

I remember when these threads were lively

Thanks.

He may be using old inkarnate, unless there's some buy-in program Im not aware of. Old Inkarnate used to be really great. Not sure what happened.

Hey I have a question about female soldiers. The world I am building has renaissance level tech and one of factions army has female soldiers. The premise being that this is a faction that lacked desperately manpower and so the women picked up the muskets to fight as well.

The problem I am having is finding examples of other female soldiers to flesh this out. Most records of females in military tend to focus on a few heroic women, there seems to have never been an army that had regular female soldiers.

I think the 4 you have are fine, they are different enough from each other.

I think you want to make 5 because it's pretty common in fantasy settings to have 5 races. Less is sometimes more.

how do I use old inkarnate?

I try to think of a central theme/conflict. I find my worlds are more interesting if there is something to focus on. I work on the map last, I love drawing maps, but I try to make the maps work for the world and not the other way around.

I like the English names for some of your towns. I don't like the made-up names.

Oops, somehow forgot to link the post.

Just Google "female kurd fighters"
I think you'll get what you want, numerous female soldiers fighting out of desperation and some out of revenge for their husbands and sons who died in battle

That's a pretty good idea
So far what I figured is that they are nomads and wonder the world from the moment they are born until they develop a concrete personality and goals.

After collecting enough DNA samples they go into a cocoon like state and reform their bodies, adding the newfound "parts". I'm thinking they need the giant amounts of food specifically for the re birthing process.

I did some shitty illustrations of 4 mature "animorphs" and one young one.

True, I guess I just can't shake of a feeling that I'm missing someone

maybe then for a fifth race, something based around intelligence? All your races seem physically endowed (even the cave bois, they sound like they are very agile), maybe having another race that is more mentally focused?

I know your humans already use magic, they seem to be the intelligent race, but humans are usually used as a middle, so a race that is on the opposite side of the scale might fit?

In my idea, all races are equally mentally capable.
In theory all of them can grow to fulfill any role but in a different ways, affected by the practical capabilities and limits of their race (size, sensory organs, ways of movement etc)
That's why I'm more focused on the physical side of things.

I'm and one of my races is actually pretty similar to yours, only, my race is a hodgepodge of animal traits slapped on a human frame. They're used as mindless drones by demon-kings that fell from the sky before written history. When the demon-kings fell, they took the most practical pieces of the animal life around them and began hacking together all-terrain all-purpose bipeds. The product of this meddling was the satyr race.

Cloven hoofs, animal heads, and an unnatural resiliency towards the harsh arid environment made the Satyrs a practical choice for the demon-kings. They received orders through their horns and antlers, which act more-or-less as a receiver for orders. "Free" satyrs are a thing, but that's an even longer story.

Dawn of Worlds

Hey guys, give me three keywords and I'll try to use them as basis for some kingdoms I'm making in my game.

If the moon was teleported to a different location in its normal orbit, how long would it take the tides to catch up?
What other effects would there be?

Kill, Maim, Burn!

My group is starting a new campaign this week, and the DM asked me to whip up some heraldry for our House (meta-story).

How does this look? Acceptable? How could I improve the overall look?

Here you go

>What is the very first step whenever you make a new setting?

I sit down and realize I'm railroading and say fuck it and trash the whole idea.

>google empty map
>first page

or just get a map of any non-US part of the world in kids coloring mode and flip it over. boom whole new world.

lesbian party castle

the tides would catch up as fast as water moves
the devastation of that on the other hand would be monumental. I'd say at the least you'd have a backlash tsunami a week later, opposite high tide.

Second thought is unless you're ignoring conservation of momentum, direction and orbit I'm pretty sure the moon isn't going to be around long- it's not just hung in the sky you know, you can't just put it somewhere new and expect millions of years of normalization of orbit to be just fine.

it would fuck up lycanthropes and moon druids for sure, totally different cycle, and again if you changed the orbit maybe no more full moon.

pretty sure the animals would get all fucked up weird like in an eclipse too. that and you'd have some unexpected drow moonburn.

Alternative. Still looking for advice/critique.

Wrong pic lol.

When it comes to deities, what are some must-haves in terms of certain archetypes they should have?

repeat after me: jpgs are for photos, jpgs are for photos, jpgs are for photos.

the radial or box gradient or whatever has no place in heraldry design.

each one you've posted seems totally expected. I mean isn't awful but it's kind of dull. compare to pic attached. I'm not a scholar of heraldry or anything but triple walking lions en gules? That's not expected.

you could have a little fun with the animal too, not go all bad ass and claws, but use a bunny or mouse or something, especially if it relates to an inside joke. use an animal unique to your setting maybe.

>clean it up
>use png
>do something less right down the middle with the design

Overpowering encounters?

1st level party sees 50-60 kobolds walking in a canyon, moving their village. the kobolds are preoccupied and the party is geographically separate (party on ledge, kobolds in canyon or vice versa). Possibly with scouting party of ~8 kobolds encounter.

Or something like a Frost Giant going for a stroll across the party's route. The party is less than gnats to the giant but he absolutely devastates a swath through their path not only causing physical navigation problems (redwood size trees like a box of spilled toothpicks across the road) but upsets the local fauna, e.g. encounter with fleeing angry creatures.

Anybody try something like this? Can it work?

I want my players to have a sense of place in the world- to wit, if you're in a town that shutters itself at night because of werewolves, you're not bad ass enough to go strolling around outside the walls yet. Ditto the city guard, you don't just punch a cop in New York because you're the hero of your own story, I don't think it should be that way when you're starting in a new world either.

Thoughts? Ideas?

>clean it up
Alright.
>use png
I was using jpg because I've had bad experiences with png's being too massive for Veeky Forums to upload. It's a habit more than anything now.
>do something less right down the middle with the design
Hm. Not so sure about this. The animal is meant to be a tiger (hard to find heraldry of tigers to copy-paste-edit. Our house made its name and power by being traders and bankers, and there was talk about switching to griffins or dragons. The house is also vaguely eastern Russian, so more Asian archetypes were encouraged.

As for design... What would a Knightly family use if said family were considered the king's Black Ops nobility? Like, the...Black Knights......hmmm. I'll be back in a bit.

>I was using jpg because I've had bad experiences with png's being too massive for Veeky Forums to upload. It's a habit more than anything now.

png are smaller than jpg for low color and don't have artifacts of compression. if you put a photo into png it's going to be fuckall huge. metadata (photoshop or gimp putting the whole file in there regardless) shits up size too. that and it's easy to have a 10000x10000 png and not realize it's unreasonable.

>As for design
Six Seals?

>Six Seals?
Hue hue. Next one then. This is a little cramped, and I think I'll switch to smaller wolf heads, but does the layout look better?

Players will always try to fight what you don't intend to fight them with.

What is your currency backed by?

Also how do you do currency in a Sci-Fi setting right?

Another alt.

And a second Alt. Do any of these seem okay?

One of the other players suggested this.

No currency. In F U L L Y A U T O M A T E D L U X U R Y G A Y S P A C E C O M M U N I S M, there's no need.

Threats of violence.

>What is the first?
I always make a detailed map, this decides the cultures around it, if a capital city is way off in the mountains, they will resemble Nord cultures, Lack of food, hunting is life blood for these cities, as they grew simple game wouldn't not do so they grew stronger to hunt stronger game such as monstrosities and other horrific beasts. Family trumps anything else. Isolated and untrusting of outsiders. Things like that.
>Last step?
Like early stated, its never done things shift and players will interfere so adjust is always needed for larger scale stories. However I do try to set up individual factions for each city or even guilds that are present in all the cities, this allows for players to pick sides even within a city that the players consider home. This is the last thing I do prior to play.

I was born in a town named Beavercreek

I am so sorry user. Do you need a moment?

Bumping with quick stupid thing.

I need sci-fi nomad/traveller ideas stat!

Need ideas/brainstorms for life in the future Sol system. Nations still exist, the inner planets are the most developed, so i need ideas for fantastical elements of modern life in this setting, might include magic.

Do these sound alright?
>Space 'Masquerade'
> Martian cryptids unfrozen from the ice caps
> A Jovian moon government full of GoT-esque intrigue
>Black ops astronauts
>buddisht temple carved into a cliffface on Enceladeus
>forgotten and secret ussr/ third reich deep space projects
>Private werewolf retreats on the moon that make them 'supercharged'

people born in low g that cant stand to be in large gravity wells for long periods of time so developed a culture around that.

>Black ops astronauts
sweet

Was thinking of having one of the most notable optronauts, be the triple s. The british SAS but in SPAAAAAAACE.
>SSS
>Special space serivce

don't have magic but instead an increase in mysticism based on more esoteric religions and societal practices.
>An orbital Jainist outreach satellite around Phobos.
>Surge in Rastafarianism on Ganymede after a modified strain of weed has literal healing/regeneration properties
>Awakened pets
>Ultrahuge tidal generators on Titan and after atmospheric adjustment its Waterworld there
>Mosques and Synagogues that orbit a new spaceborn Dome of the Rock
>Spacesuit fashion
>Antique collectors and rich hobbyists amassing money to try and find a KEO style time capsule sattalite
>A linear accelerator under construction on the moon. Everyone is going mental about it as its purpose hasn't been made clear yet

Would the mysticism factor be made more, charming i guess, by subtle alludes to actual magic/ mystery phenomena?

Always seemed like a cop-out in scifi settings to have handwave magic. While an entirely semantic problem, if its promoted to be magic but is actually handwave-science is a bit better e.g "This mystic can tell the future thanks to his holiness" (moreso because of the numerous probability implants plugged into his spine though)

I Don't mean handwaving things to magic but having mysterious phenomena and events that create a sense of 'magic' if you get what i mean.

Sure, it'd also fuel the mysticism if those events were attributed to particular groups or interpreted as signs.

Particular groups like what? Corporations, 'covens', cults, syndicates that sort of thing?

and signs as in prophetic or ?

Signs could be prophetic or interpreted as indication that whatever path a group has chosen to pursue is correct. It might verify by confirmation bias claims of holy text or prophets(it says here there's gonna be an alignment at this time exactly and here it is!) or kickstart doomsday notions which some corporations might jump on as a way to sell survival gear.

>night on the ceiling

is it because of the angle of the sun and the hole?

maybe this is burrowed through a long asteroid, right, and they had to first stabilize its orbit so that it would be level with the sun, and spin at a fixed speed forever

Would the spin it so that days would be exactly 24 hours, or would we artificially introduce the slight imperfection in our orbit that makes the actual length of a day vary by less than half a percent plus or minus (iirc)

does it even matter, would we just leave it at whatever momentum it ended up stabilizing to?

prancing griffons giving high fives

wolf heads are too far left

it's a little cramped but I like something about it
the heads are cheated left again

and players will die LOL
or rot in jail

I actually think this is my favorite if the walking wolves were smaller. I could take or leave the justice scales.

cannot resist