Worldbuilding General Thread

How does this system look?

The landscape is dotted with small farmsteads, these usually consist of a nuclear family, maybe some grandparents, and some slaves, average population is around 10-20 people. They are self-sufficient, own the land, craft their own tools, raise cattle, sheep, goats, and horses, grow some grain, and have a garden. Depending where they are they may do some things on the side like extracting bog iron or raising more sheep for textiles.

In the middle of these farmsteads are some larger ones owned by chiefs with populations of around 100-300 people. The smaller farmsteads pay tribute in the form of food to these. They are also surrounded by walls of wood or raised earth and can serve as a refuge for the surrounding population. Some division of labor occurs here, with specialized craftsmen, priests, and warriors who serve the chief, although most of its inhabitants are farmers. Merchants occasionally visit these.

The chief's job is to settle disputes, defend his clients, and organize military expeditions, usually for the purpose of gaining movable wealth (livestock, metals, weapons, etc). Free farmers own their own weapons and join their chief on seasonal expeditions. When male children of free farmers turn 15 they may serve their chief as a full-time warrior until they can inherit the farm.

There's no real idea of a state, every 5-15 chiefs will usually be loyal to one paramount chief, based on his charisma and ability to make war.

Pretty much the same conclusion I came to.

I'm going to repost my setting concept. this time near the start of the thread.

The world is essentialy 1990's earth with some supernatural twists. Meant for urban fantasy stories.
>The only real deity is a beyond-your-comprehtion-eldritch-yada-yada-yada thing called the hungering mother
>She lies side by side with our world, cradling the places lost, forgotten, and avoided by humanity
>Disused maintenance tunnels, ghost towns, ancient ruins, deep caves, and the untamed wilds are all her domain.
>Eventually, she swallows these places whole, leaving a empty field, or bricked up doorway in its wake.
>Every place that she consumes are mixed together with eachother in her proverbial stomach, forming an unreal landscape of glued together bits.
>Each bit is still connected to the place it comes from in our world though, and those with eyes to see can walk through where they used to be and into where it is in the body of the hungering mother herself.
>This skill is typically used for transportation. Open an otherwise bricked up doorway into the the forgotten storage closet it used to lead to, walk from the closest to the old sewer its stuck to, and walk out from the sewer tunnel into the place it originally was.She will eventually eat the whole world, the land within her becoming a better and better mimicry of reality until she has consumed everything and will give birth to a whole new world. Hence the name the Hungering Mother
>cont.

I don't know what either of those words mean but sounds like a good antagonist race. The only time I've made an avian-like race was when I invented the Cluckers, a small people who look like chickens if chickens were riddled with cancer and tumours and constantly molt their feathers and smelt like shit all the time (they were meant to be a joke race because they're so hopelessly disadvantaged in every way imaginable thanks to their genetics)
It's...not a bad system, but unless you plan on the cultures using this system being unlike anything that has existed in real world cultures in order to justify why they would develop and sustain such a society, then I'm not that fond of it.

>Some people worship certain primal aspects of her as nature gods. Either as peaceful lovers of the outdoors, or cultists seeking out places within her to preform sacrifices, or anything in between. Sometimes, in the case of the latter, a avatar of the hungering mother, essentially a sort of cell, will come to accept it. They usually take forms that correspond to the environment, be it otherworldly tree folk or a strange hooded figure, all featuring the same black and empty hole where there faces should be
>Those living in the fringes of society; the homeless, the mentally ill, the rural recluse, are all more likely to see her influence on this world, and most pay homage to her to some degree, although few know of her true nature.

The Skeksis (sorry, Skettis was a place in WoW inspired by them) were the villains of The Dark Crystal. Arakkoa was a race in the Burning Crusade expansion that was inspired for them. Both races are supposed to be corrupt, decadent birdmen.

Oh right, cool. Loved the Dark Crystal as a kid, still do. The Skeksis emperor crumbling in his bedsheets was proper unsettling, though.
Sounds nice, but I don't know, knowing exactly what's going on behind the scenes of all the supernatural stuff kinda takes away the mystery, for me at least, but don't let me discourage you user! Are you planning on writing some urban fantasy stories for the setting yourself or for stories in theory? I'd offer to write stories for it but urban fantasy doesn't tickle my creative balls, so to speak.

Yea, I am mostly writing in the setting for myself, and urban fantasy tickles the hell out of my creative balls, I've been thinking of tracking down some local urban exploration groups for inspiration. I don't really plan on ever revealing how the whole thing works, of If i do I would put it on a very slow burn and have people put it together piecemeal. Its mostly justification in my head for all the supernatural stuff I want to include. I agree, the mystery is very important.

I've been working on a few wacko races;
>Castle Men- Upper body and head is a stone castle or fort. Looks like the castle which spawned the castle man; castle men reproduce by claiming a fortress and keeping it free from other occupations for up to 20+ years. Have tiny weapons that fire out from it at will. Can also safely hold and supply someone within up to a number of days equal to Castle Man level.

>Anthropis- Bug like people with human heads. Cam create icky nests to spawn minions and or metamorphize themselves into new insect forms, such as a spider to climb on walls, roach for survival and combat, etc.

Do you believe these races are any good? Make for interesting gameplay?

Finally I need one more good name and design for a few more races with good gameplay capabilities.

Castle-men sound indecipherably cute for some reason, cool concept either way.
Urban exploration is one of those things that would be undoubtedly really fun to do but I'll never get round to doing because I'm lazy. I don't think there's much urban stuff to explore around here anyway, just bushland.

That's a weird middle formation. Is it artificial?

So far the only thing I can think of adding is that hierarchy is strictly followed and positions are prized, a focus for the society on pecking order.

>>Were there any prehistorical societies/races/civilizations in your world
Yes. At one time the world was filled with a number of incredibly advanced nations. It was only humanity.

>>If so, what were they like?
Some areas were as close to a utopia as you can realistically expect while others were effectively Cyberpunk warrens. It varied from one area to another. The more advanced countries were locked in a cold war with proxy conflicts (increasingly economic rather than military) while a few of the less-involved nations were experimenting with rudimentary means of long-term space colonization.

>>Why'd they disappear?
They discovered an aspect of reality that they shouldn't have and it grew increasingly out of control from there. Another way of putting it is that the equivalent of magic was introduced to the world and eventually had a hand in an apocalypse that reset the planet.

>>Will they be back?
Shelters and bunkers were made before the world came to its end but only a few managed to reach them in time and survive. When they finally woke up they found the world had been repopulated by much less advanced human civilization who had no idea of the past and had regressed to a pre-medieval level. The only reason the bunkers survived was because they were protected at a certain depth while everything above that depth was basically erased from existence.

The players are getting to experience the two forms of magic as well as the advanced technology that survived while viewing it from an outside perspective. I've been careful about describing the technology in order to make it more confusing to them so they think it's just more magic. One of the player characters is very religious, for example, so they've been interpreting things like radios and projectors as divine visits from angels.

Is there a limit to Worldbuilding? I'm just asking because I've been building for quite some time (with a few pauses in between) on something just because I'm bored and had too much ideas in my head. And frankly, I quite enjoy building a world with all the details and customs to it.

Is it bad to just build a world based on some of your favorite things? I'm brand new, but I basically had ideas floating in my head about mixing Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls, and Final Fantasy II (Namely Pandaemonium, the tower of hell rather than it being an underworld)

I think it could be mildly interesting, and more original if I fleshed it out, but I'm not sure if I have the tenacity to keep at it and get my favorite things to mesh well.

>Giant golems coming out of the ground to bring doom to the world
The thing is, in their base form, they're basically just a mass of glowing white filaments. These are the Threads which make all this shit possible. The Threads adhere to the surroundings and start tearing chunks of off to use in building themselves into a workable form. Think of them as muscle fibers, expanding and contracting to achieve motive force. This also means that the golems can basically take on whatever crazed form they want, depending on the area they are encountered in--you could have one monster made out of several buildings, or another crafted from the bulk of a huge steam locomotive.

>Also how does a fantasy WWI work?
Much the same as with the real-life WWI--weapons technology reaches the point where it becomes possible to kill large numbers of people very rapidly, leading to the dominance of defensive tactics and requiring a complete re-thinking of the average soldier's role on the battlefield. Other themes to include are the death of old styles of chivalry and governance by princes, the total commitment of a society to the war effort, and the emergence of the first real machines of war, especially in the air.

>Is there a limit to Worldbuilding?
Id say only those inherent to your setting.

>Were there any prehistorical societies/races/civilizations in your world

I haven't made one in my fantasy setting yet. The world is supposed to be rather young and serve as a foundation for making custom cultures.

My soft sci-fi setting is a rehash of the "Dark Age of Technology", the Interregnum sans Foundation and pre Thinking Machine era Duneverse themes. Humans had built an impressive interstellar empire and developed fantastic technology for 15k years. It's an excuse to have 22nd century humans romp around a galaxy with ridiculous "ancient imperial human" tech and be treated similar to Tieflings or Vaadwaur, a workaround against extraterrestrial human precursors.

>If so, what were they like?

Imperial humans were generally militant and actively pursued conquest and subjugation of numerous races. Not evil per se but had a clear Terrans, First and Foremost agenda. Terran is an umbrella term for any species/race that originated from Earth. The humans living now are from an era before the empire, from humanities first attempts to sail among the stars at sublight speeds. The ones the empire failed to find and bring home.

>Why'd they disappear?

I don't know and have no plans on making a "True" reason. It allows for a lot more myths and conflicting theories. The only things known are they were at the height of their power and their seemingly instantaneous disappearance sowed chaos in their part of the galaxy.

>Will they be back?

No. It will catastrophically undermine all the myths and legends about them. There are always imposters though, which I think are more interesting to investigate.

>Is it bad to just build a world based on some of your favorite things?

Hell no. Just don't be surprised if some people think it's shit and are vocal about it. It's your world, enjoy yourself.

My fantasy setting is degenerate as fuck.

>Were there any prehistorical societies/races/civilizations in your world.
Yes loads of them as I want my world to be quite authentic.

>If so, what were they like?
Depends on which society we are talking about as there, just like in real life, was all manner of different ones, with varied civilisational advancement.
However the primary precursor civilsations I've come up with yet weren't prehistorical as they had an alphabet.
These two are the fittingly named Proto-Tyran and the Unam civilisation. The oldest of the two, Unam evolved from a loose association of city states located around the fertile rivers of Unam into an, for the time period, obscenely rich mini-empire. The Unamians fall from grace started with the territorial expansion of the Proto-Tyrans (think classic ancient era greeks with a military primarily consisting of bronze armoured hoplites with magnicifent helmets decorations) who came exploding out from the what came to be know as the Dragon Peninsula. The clash of these two civilisations lasted for a couple of centuries untill the proto-tyrans finally managed to conquer the last great capital of Unam.

>Why'd they disappear?
Unam got taken over by conquering proto-tyrans allthough much of their culture remained and was adopted into the new occupants style of life. The fall of the Empire of the proto-tyrans came as a result of a huge natural disaster of apocalyptic proportions (fittingly soon after the fall of the last capital of Unam) which resulted in large parts of the the land of the empire sunk beneath the sea, creating the Dragon Peninsula. This catastophy shock the foundation of the empire to such an extant that it soon divided itself into smaller and smaller fragments as a result of the famines, and isolation that resulted from the natural calamity untill they for the most part had degraded into countless small city states. This Dark Age eventually transformed the proto-tyran civilisation into the tyran one.

Cont.

Cont.

>Will they be back?
After some centuries the "new" tyran civilsation became to regain much of the former prosperity of the ancient empire with the myriad tyran states competing primarily amongst themselves but also against the growing power of the City State of Gastram, and colonising the lands outside of the Dragon Peninsula and eastern Unam which provided more wealth through trade to the ever growing powers on the peninsula who steadily centralised into different leagues lead by one hegemonic city state or small kingdom. The fall of tyran sovereignity was ended centuries later still during the many annexations of tyran land by the Holy Empire of the Tetrarchy.

I should really proofread before I post. Sorry about the mess.

Forgot to add the most vital part. The tyran culture and perhaps most important of all, it's language, not only survived these annexations but thrived from it as the new empire embraced much of it as it was seen as the culture of the sophisticated. Tyran became one of the official languages of the empire and eventually even became the primary one as it already was firmly established as the language of trade. As the tetrarchical empire eventually, as all things do, started to fall, the rump state that survived was centered around the old tyran lands of the Dragon Peninsula and eastern Unam. As such the remains of the empire become more tyran in culture and civilisation than tetrarchical which by many were seen as a return of the tyrans and even proto-tyrans of old as the state was now for most parts ethnically tyran.

Our GM wants to start a new campaign in his homebrew setting. He passed me the shit-scribble world map he'd made and asked me to re-create it with Inkarnate.

Took me fucking ages to get this piece of shit finished, but I've captured all the tedious details like the archipelago in the northeast and the forest in the southwest. .