/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General - Bread Edition

>Food of your setting?

Easier to say what isn't food, which are most poisonous plants and intelligent creatures, most of the time anyway. All the beastman subspecies are omnivorous. Food processing is at middle age levels so bread and different types of preservation exist. Availability/variation is dependent on region and season. I'm making perpetual stew a common thing to everyone.

My only real problem is corn. It's ridiculous how corn got to be what it is today from its ancestor. If it weren't such an important crop I'd likely not bother with it. Maybe I'll use a fantasy corn variant or that Canadian Cavena Nuda instead.

>Food of your setting?

Tallowfish.

A fatty, borderline inedible fish that is dredged from the ocean floor en masse, primarily by prison labourers, at the numerous penal colonies along the frozen northern coast.

It has two uses, the first being the production of cheap tallow in vast quantities, used to make candles and medicinal salves, but also more increasingly as a cheap and readily available lubricant for the machinery of a rapidly growing industrial sector, from textiles mills to mining operations.

Tallowfish can also be used as a food, but requires being cooked for a long period to break down the fats and make it edible, with the end result being a greasy fish stew with a stringent taste and overwhelming stench. As such, it is primarily the staple of penal colonies and the poor.

I believe the Romans were in England for quite some time.

scifiideas.com/

>Question:
>Food of your setting?

Oh, shit, sure- I actually did a drawing of this not to long ago illustrating just this very question.

-The majority of the worlds food is eaten and produced by: Orcs, Dwarves and Changelings.

-The world is a super continent, so for the most part many cultures and species despite their flagrant differences do have a lot of spill over in terms of crops and so forth with most variation coming from what they can and cannot eat.

-Dwarves although they produce a large quantity of food: most of it never comes out of the underground as they almost entirely live below the surface. "True" Dwarven produce is quite unusual and foreign.

-Orcs overall produce the largest quantity and variety of food that's readily available: When the Orcs aren't fighting or slaughtering others or themselves they have a tendency to settle into agrarian life quite willingly.

-The "other" constitutes the truly obscure and otherwise rare food stuffs that are almost exclusively grown within the interior where it is much too hot, dry and sun exposed for any decent species to live save for the Humans & Centaurs.

-The "other" also constitutes the delicacy's only grown and harvested from out on the sea and the few reclusive tropical islands out there beyond and isolated from the super continent. The Super Continents endless sea is a truly incredible place that holds equal measure of danger and delights.

Most foods are on-par with any other fantasy setting, all depends on the continent. The humans grow crops and raise meat like you'd imagine, with the bread and milk being a staple of the working man's diet. It's much different from country to country. For example, the Orks live in a mountainous jungle continent and live mostly on tropical fruit and some insects. An occasional delicacy is that of whatever they happen to hunt, trap, or find in the jungle. Be it panther, baboon, or giant roc egg.

If you have a fantasy race that only eats meat, whats keeping them from eating other sentient races?

>If you have a fantasy race that only eats meat, whats keeping them from eating other sentient races?

((Sapient, user- the word is "Sapient". Your dog is sentient, but YOU are Sapient.))

The same thing that keeps us from eating other people: Morality, Health Issues, The practicality of it.

"Why" Would they want to eat other people- people who are capable of aspirations, talking things out, waging war and being vindictive when you can literally eat any other source of meat?

I have a few obligate carnivorous -very few- sapient species in my setting and the largest source of their protein/nourishment comes from eggs, insects, milk and fish.

If you have a race that only eats meats, does their counry smell of protein farts?

>If you have a race that only eats meats, does their counry smell of protein farts?

We only get meat sweats & protein farts because we're omnivores: Jack of all trades, but masters of none.

We have these demented, drawn out guts that aren't "perfect" at digesting meat, but at the same time we evolved our plant digesting organs out of us as well- this is why fibre makes us poop; we can't digest it so it goes right through us taking everything with it.

I'm like 90% certain a true carnivorous species wouldn't suffer like we do.

>entire coastlines of prisons
>industrial stuff starting up

I like this level of grit.

It must be hell living in a world where changelings are a major peoples.

What typically serves as a border, mountain ranges or rivers?

>What typically serves as a border, mountain ranges or rivers?

Any and all of these things can serve as a border, but the 'quality' of a border is usually registered by how effectively it seperates a land.

A river can act as a border just fine, but nothing obviously replaces the effect of a fucking mountain range.

Problem with mountain ranges is they're not very defined, at least not as borders. Rivers are clearly defined

Well, borders weren't all that well defined until the modern era. Until the 1700s, cartographers were often fairly uncertain about even the shape of landmasses.

In a pre-modern society, it was enough to know that this side of the mountains is your land and on the other side of the mountains is the enemy's land.

What's a good near-human race for fantasy China-Mongolia-Japan?

I have humans and giants in the fantasy europe, but I want another near-human race for fantasy asia.

I was thinking Oni, but they're pretty much giants too. Any prominent mythical races that come from asia?

Halfling rice farmers? Give them raccoon tails.

I'm having trouble with rivers, /wbg/. How do I make them luk gud?

Make them zigzagging, bends etc. No straight lines.

Then add towns, villages, bridges depending on scale of the map.

How am I doing tg?

I did a thing, I'm not a fan of the way it turned out though. Any suggestions on what I could do to make it better?

Posting my map for feedback
It ain't done

It's not bad but the way the coasts look it implies that the ocean level has risen in the recent past and hasn't had time to smooth out due to the presence of a large numbers of rias.

How recent are we talking?

eh
fix the colours
rivers look nice
love the forests

will look nice

Some of those mountains look kinda why are they there, but otherwise pretty good work. Are you going apply colors?

He has a good pointCan't really say much as there is no info on inland stuff.

Pretty good stuff, I like it. But as it was said, please fix the colors.

Plenty have done it, from Carthage to Athens to the Danes and England to Spain and Portugal, and all the colonial empires after.

Food!

A common food during celebration in north is robbers roast (rosvopaisti basically, google it). After villages men have returned from hunting trip with their game, usually deer, elk or even bear. As womenfolk start preparing the meat in herbs and oils, men dig shallow hole that is big enough for the meat.
After the hole is dug, it is filled with stones and big fire is lit over it to heat the stones. Usually if the local priest is there he blesses the flames (flames are seen as pure as they strip everything away). After the fire has subdued half of the coals are dug away and meat and vegetables are placed in the pit. They are protected with damb parchments and cloth. Rest of the hot coal is placed on top of them and small fire is continued to be burned on them.
Meat requires 6 hours in the pit while vegetables only few hours. After time has passed, they dig the meat out and start eating and partying.

Well fuck, dropped my name. Fucking choose more captcha.

For those who wonder I have done rosvopaisti IRL, but in small scale. It was good.

I love drawing maps and I could draw a map for you, anons. I'd need a sketch of what you want, liberty to tweak stuff and a long time.

That is one beautiful map. I applaud your dedication to handraw it. Just gorgeous.

Thank you. Slow days at work are hell of a drug.
I'd like to draw something bigger, though, and on a better paper.

Probably about 10,000 to 5,000 years when an ice age ended.

Humans eat a mostly Mediterranean diet.

Naga raise small, domesticated, burrowing rodents as their staple food, and they're traditionally eaten at every bi-weekly meal. The peasants eat them plain, but the nobles will stuff them with spices or other, small animals. All are eaten still alive, so the nobility's method requires it to be eaten quickly. Except for hatchlings, who have their parents do it for them, they use their venom to paralyze their prey before consumption. Northern Naga lack venom and consider the taste and lack of a fight unpalatable. Eggs are consumed in lean times, and preserved eggs are the traditional road food.

The Sharks are traditionally nomadic, and raise a combination of fish and cetaceans for meat, milk, and bone. They sell the oil. The more Northernly sharks of the warmer, shallower tropic waters form more static societies in around reefs where they can raise food without the need for constant travel. Food preparation is very basic. Sharks rarely leave the water for extended periods of time. They can eat most of what they find on land, but prefer a ceviche like dish with strong spices resulting in surprisngly long period of preservation.

I made this sketch recently. If you'd like, may you make something out of it?

Are there any European kingdoms that had horse archery, I want something to work my head around but seemingly only the Middle East and Far East ever had mounted archers. I was told before that the English had them, or the Irish but I can't seem to find any specifics like what they were called or what sort of equipment or horses they used.

It was more eastern European thing. Hungarians and Kievanrus had horse archers, while some Germans and Scandinavians employed horse crossbows.
Can't really give much info on this. One thing might be that because Knight was so big thing in west, they preferred to employ as many of them as possible. Instead of wasting men on horseback archery and crossbows.

Can someone please do a rough estimate on the daily nutrition in Calories needed per adult naga (assuming a 2.4m, 317 kg naga)?

The Byzantine Empire, if you consider them European

How do you make a multiracial society that makes sense? Such as a society with humans and lizardmen, or any other two races? It seems nearly impossible for it to work.

Tell my why you think it is impossible? Why do you think they cannot live in same place?

Using this MAYO calculator

mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/calorie-calculator/itt-20084939

with max allowable 600lbs(your spec is roughly 699lbs) set to Female and Somewhat active it comes out to 3950 calories. Don't know how that'll translate to cold blooded though.

They have the same language, same culture, follow the same laws and are ruled by the same despot.

My group is going to get together and brainstorm ideas for a post-apocalyptic NotFallout campaign and I'd like to see what you guys could come up with. Also, it'll take place in Louisiana. Also also, it'll probably be set at a time where governments haven't been formed, and the various towns and settlements are more or less disconnected aside from a few fledgling trade routes, think just before Fallout 1 I guess.

So far I've got:
>pic related (concept art from the cancelled Fallout Tactics 2)
>a secluded village of tribals who worship an offline suit of Power Armor that could possibly be rebuilt with a lot of work
>a band of raiders known for their use of war hounds in their raids. Villages and caravans hit by these savages are littered with mangled, half-eaten corpses.
>a weather station along the coast tended by a small team of robotic attendants since before the war, and they all say that a hell of a storm is on its way

Not much but I'd like to see what you guys can come up with.

What reasons might people have for helping some guy form a religion? I'm writing the past of some powerful Cult and I'm having issues thinking of reasons of why his original apostles joined him and what he might have done to convince them. Anyone have any ideas on how I could go about this?

Performing miracles

Charismatic as possible and different than main population/religion. Populism is also valid.

Another way is that he is very wise and manages to convince others, but that is more philosophical and lifestyle way.

Because it's mostly unheard of and kind of hard to imagine. Even if segregated to their own towns and villages it seems hard to imagine they'd tolerate each other without genocide for long.

What qualities about a world could prevent guns from being made?

How would floating islands collect water? Some of them (~1/5) are in a storm belt and hence have plenty of water source, but for somewhere without constant rain, how would they replenish water? Ground is effectively unreachable, but exists. Largest island is about 2/3 of the size of Australia, smallest is roughly Staten Island sized. I can figure it out with the current tech level (TL7 in GURPS terms, mix of dieselpunk and aetherpunk), and magic solves some problems, but I'm more concerned about the lead-up to the present day.

I just need some idea on how they might arm themselves, besides crossbows like would they wear the armor of a typical horseman or something lighter, or lacking arm coverage so as to not be an inconvenience when notching and firing an arrow?

Caveat against high speed projectiles. Like a world curse draining the momentum/speed of an object past a certain speed.

If high enough, passing through clouds causes surface condensation. Some mountain communities set up a net and catch basin to harvest passing clouds.

Nothing, they would be eating other sentient/sapient races constantly if they could. That's why nobody likes them.

Is there any tips of map making when it comes to the general shape of a map? Everytime I wanna get into mapmaking, they tend to just look like blobs without any purpose.

Feudal Japanese riders had this billowing cloth thing strapped to their back kinda like a drag chute. A test showed that it could help protect the riders back from arrows by disrupting its flight and slowing it down.

Depends, but rivers often connect instead of separating. Mountains are clearly better in general terms.

The problem is that the three cultures you mention are actually pretty different from each other and it's gonna be cringey if you pick one from one of the nations for the other two.

For your not!Japan you could have Tengu (the pic related version, not birdfolk version), maybe without wings. I don't know how prominent they are but they're pretty near-human. But they would look totally out of place in not!china and specially not!mongolia in my opinion. Like spanish valkyries or something like that.

First time in Inkarnate. How does this look?

Use the eraser to "carve" cuter coastlines. Can be a little hard first if, like me, you're not precisely an artist but you will learn fast.

When you mean, cuter do you mean smoother? I was a bit indecisive between rough shorelines or smooth shorelines.

I mean better looking. In this case, I think your coast is too smooth which makes it look like a blob instead of an island/continent. Add some rough shorelines and it will look better and more realistic.

You don't have to make it everything rough though. Look for example at Australia, it has both smooth and rough shorelands.

Alright. I'll have to think about it when I recreate it though. Accidentally closed out without saving.

>food
Since the land is sapped of nutrients any form of farming is done below ground with the use of magic. Rivers contain mutated fish but it's probably safe to eat.

Query for you guys to see if I'm getting to close to magical realm:
>genderless god wandering the void ends up making first of dragon+related kin
>therefore the creations don't have gender
>reincarnated into new bodies according to deeds in previous form
It always bugged me that dragonborn have boobs. Solution: nobody has anything and no sense of gendered third person pronouns.
I'm trying to be cool and hip and subvert classic fantasy things while trying to dig myself out of the hole that is "my friends only want to play DnD" ; -;

How do they reproduce if they have no gender?

If it's fantasy, try magic. If it's science fiction just make them obsolete with something like Dune's shields

In the current era they don't, since humans showed up and introduced things like disease that their physical bodies could not handle so their astral/ethereal forms have nowhere to go but the fuck elsewhere.

In the Olden Dayes certain members would prepare mounds of earth sprinkled by the "blood of their god" (aka from themselves since they're all divine by design) for the dead to wander to and be reborn in. Occasionally new spirits would appear, until humans showed up and made everything terrible for everyone.

Owning a horse or mounting one is sign of persons wealth and status. This means that riders have at least gambesons, but more likely brigandines or maille. Pic related

Look for real maps and just copy some bits. Look how they match each other and continue drawing.
More advanced is to take in account tectonics and plate movement. Look for earths tectonics and where mountains are and why in seven hells south America and Africa fit so perfectly at each other.

Border can be anything permanent and known. Maps of ye olde times were inaccurate as fuck so borders were "close enough". Nothing of course stops you from having Royal Cartographers that painstakingly measure correct distances with a ruler.

I just decided that no guns, that's it.I feel that they make great beasts into paper monsters.

It depends a lot on their function in battle to be honest. What's the purpose of your horse archers in the army of your realm?

Alright. I tried remaking it. It's pretty fucking bad, but I'm new to this whole map-making thing in general.

Read these two and combine them according to your style, senpai.

imgur.com/gallery/fIm72?lr=1440377814
imgur.com/a/MfDWA#12

I personally prefer the first in almost everything, though.

>food

In the Deicolorii (a large archipelago) a traditional meal eaten is known as 'new years supper', a slow cooked and shredded cut of móg (a very small bovine, bred as it doesn't take up much space). The meat is marinated for 2 days before the celebration, before being slowly cooked in the spicy marinade, then shredded. The resulting concoction is consumed with vegetables, often the only time common folk will eat móg all year, due to its expense.

I have a bit more on regular food, if anyone would like?

Please continue. I have found out that my setting gets more fleshier even if I write multiple times about it. Fine tuning and trimming.

Righty-o! I have a couple of google docs, one for language building, and the other for general world stuff. This is the first major culture I'm working on:

The two staple crops found throughout the Deicolorii are corn and wheat, and many meals have these as their base.

The Deicolorii favour hot spices in their food, many islands producing wide ranges of chilies. Common folk eat a porridge of cornmeal that can be dried into a loaf and then grilled or fried. Spices and meat can be added, or sugar or honey for something sweet.

Normally, 2 large meals are had, in the morning and late evening, with small snacks of little plates during the day. These are eaten standing with fingers, or small skewers, like tapas or cicchetti.

Due to the many islands making up the Deicolorii, there is a huge range in the makeup of generic dishes, with some areas preferring certain local produce over others, or something common at one edge of the group being a delicacy at the other end.
Soft shelled crabs are a seasonal meal, as they can only be harvested when crabs are molting.

Meat is preserved in a similar method to the Spanish ‘Adobo’, marinades. It is also done in traditional drying and smoking huts. The diet is heavy in seafood, with land animals seen as a delicacy, due to the high volume of land needed for them, which is normally given over to trees and to crops, as the bounty of the sea can support most people.

>examples of these light meals
>A parcel of pasta that is filled with regional meats and spices, and then fried.
>Meatballs in regional sauce.
>Small sausages, either cured and sliced, or fried and brought out hot.
>Mussels, sometimes stuffed.
>The fried tentacles or strips of cephalopods
>Small breads
>Cheeses
>Fried vegetables
>Deep fried whole baby octopi
>In poorer areas, fried or grilled cornmeal loaf with dipping sauces.
>Deep fried unleavened dough with dipping sauces.
>Fritters
>Meat skewers
>Oysters
>Deep fried balls of crab meat and batter.

Zog me, it's bootiful!

I haven't gotten much or anything at all on food, outside the small pieces here and there. It has been secondary thing mostly. While when I am thinking societies and nations I prefer to consult Grain into Gold pdf and while it's society pivots around food I haven't gotten into it that much.

Wow, this really helps! Thanks a lot.

On the edges of that map are we to assume that there is more than one Breaker Wall but the civilizations don't know what lies past the others?

Thanks! I'm flitting around a lot with world building, as I was working on the religion a bit, which brought me to festivals, and then brought me to festival food, which brought me to food in general. So far, I only have the new years festival, which is the one time the two moons are aligned, and you have a 'supertide' for a day. But it got me thinking about how crucial food is to an overt theme of a culture.

I'm not sure, yet. I'm thinking of having it be all one wall that encircles the world, but I need to do some work on plate tectonics and reeef formations to work it out. The planet is meant to be smaller than Earth, with a slightly wider orbit, but I need to do some work on the underlying geology and physics before I'm happy.

If you need a sense of scale, by the by, Alban from North to South is approximately the same as England from North to South.

Are the gods too specific? I am considering to revise the gods.

>God of royality, storm and law
>Goddess of magic, ambition and wisdom
>Goddess of water, life and fertility
>God of fire, death and rebirth
>God of revelry, hedonism and passions
>God of knowledge, craftsmen and artisans
>God of combat, loyalty and honor
>Goddess of vengeance, oaths and fate
>Goddess of war, strategy and tactics
>Goddess of hunt, nature and moon

What do you mean by too specific? They look ok for a main pantheon except for the shameful lack of agriculture, husbandry and fertility gods. You only have one fertility goddess without any other atribute except water. You should have several fertility gods and goddesses and they should be very popular, look for example at the egyptians, half of the gods are fertility gods.

Remember: most people doesn't want wisdom, laws, victory or anything. They want good crops.

>>Goddess of ambition and wisdom

pick one.

I do not know whether the Egyptians are a good example.

Yo, /wbg/. Post your flags, battle standards, official crests, etc. and tell a bit about them and their symbolism.

Any ideas how I can place mountain ranges on the map? It doesn't have to be strictly realistic, I want to have something like Tamriel, with everything from deserts to jungles.
And what do you think about the general shape?

You'd probably want two mountain ranges giving form to the valley which that huge river would carve. also, that island in the upper right would probably look better if spun 180 degrees, so the convex curve is facing the main continent. Coastlines tend to interlock when viewed on a global scale--think of how South America roughly fits into the West coast of Africa.

I wanted to have mediterranean kind of region without making another continent but wasn't sure how to do it, hence the weird island.
And I'm thinking about making the big ''river'' shorter and ending on the western coast.
It's actually something like the persian gulf, not a river.

>Food of your setting?
I've actually been contemplating this lately. Since the planet's climate is on average much, much colder than that of Earth(it's actually in the midst of an ice age) the warmest climate available is around that of Italy, and that's what the equator is like.

With no tropical climate, a lot of foods are missing, like sugar cane, bananas, and pineapples are just unknown. Rubber is pretty expensive too.