/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

towns/cities are commonly named after a local feature. Try common geographical features with a town/city suffix (-ton, -toun, -city, -ville)

What kind of government allows for multiple lords, has no centralized seat of government, but has a common currency, meets to vote on national matters, and unites in the face of a common threat?

Naming things like this feels a lot more organic than coming up with nonsense words for each city/town.
Towns called "East Harbor", "Hillsborough", "North Shire", "Port Land" are common for a reason.

ore-gon?

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And also after religious figures (St. Michael, AK) or important political figures (Baltimore).

General consensus on how you guys feel about monarchies in space? Kinda going for a kaiser reich version of the helghast instead of full fucking fascist.

Make them have superior genetics as a method of survival. Sure there are other races that can cross breed, but these hybrids are always sterile, not humans. While they have slower breeding cycles and gestation periods than humans, the half breeds will have a faster "baby making" than their other parent race unless the other parent race is something like a rabbit person or a mouse species, then I don't know what the fuck to tell you lets use orcs an example

>Man and she orc have a baby?
You got yourself a half-orc

>Female orc and a male half-orc get "busy"
the child will, again, be half-orc

>Half-orc gets it on with a human female?
Human with orcish characteristics. Maybe slightly pointed ears? Slightly increased muscle mass? Pronounced canines? It's almost indistinguishable. They're just humans though.

>Half-orc and half-dragon? What does that make?
Human baby with draconic and orcish characteristics

>and if a human with orcish characteristics has a child with another human again?
you just get a regular human, with "orcish" ancestry and nothing to hint that any of their ancestors were orcs and every child will also have "orcish although

There is no "1/4 dragon" or any of that nonsense. You could even add some extra fuckery to the mix. Make a new race, doesn't matter what it is, but if it mates with a human, the child is human. it could imply that the entire race is already only half of what it used to be and they might have gone extinct had it not of been for humans

if you stick your dick in a human, sooner or later your descendants will be humans

>multiple lords
I assume you intend for multiple independent-ish lords? Because, say a duke in France and in the HRE are lords (of the same rank, even) with wildly different levels of autonomy.

On first thought I'd say look at Switzerland, but really you can have any type of government you want as long as you explain the history and internal politics well-enough.

> River
> That Kingdom
kek

I know most of it translates literally as that, but did they mean something else beforehand, or did they come to mean that because they stood for it for so long?

If they were always named that way, I guess it's just the curse of hubris that humans like to name their countries like they are the only ones that matter on the planet.

Ohp, Thai* not that

>but did they mean something else beforehand, or did they come to mean that because they stood for it for so long?
Not quite sure what you meant here, user.

Etymologies can be complicated considering the business of what they call themselves vs what others call them vs what other others call them. Like Germany being Allemagne for the French, Deutschland for the Germans.

>Maori literally call France Wiwi en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wīwī

What I meant was that did the name China originally mean something other than 'middle kingdom', or did it gain the meaning 'middle kingdom' because it was the country's name for so long, and because China is literally the kingdom in the middle.

Did it receive its name because it existed, or was its name originally 'middle kingdom'? It's kind of a dumb question, looking back on it, because it's kind of one with no answer.

>Is the geography in your based on realistic, natural phenomenon or fantastic and mythological events?
It's all a world created by the gods, but you rarely have "magical" effects unless the gods did something. In the setting I'm currently working on, there's a vast desert that was created by a vengeful god burning away all trace of the Orc race about six months before the start of the campaign.

I'm trying to make non-decimal currency for my setting and I was wondering if basing at least the larger denominations on values of 12 would work, given the relative value of the metals? The primary coin is a silver coin, the filley. 12 filley equal 1 faighney, while 24 filley equal 1 smoo, which is 2 faighney. But the filley is 7/16ths silver, 6/16ths lead, 3/16ths copper while the faighney and smoo are gold alloys, the smoo being 4/12ths gold, 5/12ths copper, 3/12ths lead.

I worry that the exchange rate between silver and gold is too low, especially when I look at the modern commodities market and see silver at $15/ounce and gold at $1400/ounce. Does it matter?

China is based on Qin, the prehistoric state that conquered the early Chinese civilizations.

Base 12 is helpful because it can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6 with no remainders.

>Question: Is the geography in your based on realistic, natural phenomenon or fantastic and mythological events?
mostly natural geology, as I started by stealing North America and flipping it. Flipping in the sense of how they draw their maps, the equator is still where it is, but the capital is the Southernmost city, so they put that on top.

But I changed bits an pieces for flat magical/fantasitical reasons.

Like in the Atlantic there is a thing called the Sire of Storms, which spits out hurricanes. Hurricanes still form and move mostly like they do in our world, but this place seems to seed them a lot more often.

But the outer Caribbean has this old big magical constructs that direct most storms to slip up toe of Florida, losing their steam there. So Florida is the basically uninhabited Storm Lands, the rest of the continent actually gets slightly less hurricanes hitting it than in our world.

A few other things like this twist the land to being a little different.

nice map but it looks somewhat familiar somehow......

fuck me, was trying to make a joke but you pointed it out in your post.

while true, it misses 5, which is really important, especially as we have 5 fingers on each hand and that anatomy show ups a lot in how number systems develope.

The most common number systems were base 5, 10, and 20, the only known base 8 we know came from using the spaces between fingers.

The civilization that really wanted to have 3's divide evenly used base 60, with a bit of base 10. That was the Babylonians, we still use there shit for time and measuring degrees of circles.
Also the first people to have a place based number system, thought hey had neither a zero symbol nor a marker for switching to 1/X.

Monarchy is basically the only acceptable form of space government.

Watch LotGH and bask in the glory of the space Reich.

But what did the British base their currency system off of?

Why would it not be America? Was Amerigo Vespucci never born?

Fingers? Have you never met a British person?

Confusion.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling#Pre-decimal

At first I thought you were bullshitting, but Texas' translation is correct. This is a pretty interesting map.

How large do you like your countries, /wbg/?

Do you prefer the American model, where a continent is mostly dominated by only two or three large countries, or do you prefer the European or African model, where there are tons of similarly sized countries?

>The One From the Land
I'm pretty sure that's Kalamazoo based on the location.
And I'm also pretty sure that we are not sure about the translation there.

...

Wish I had a bigger version of this next one

Under this system, there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound. The penny was subdivided into 4 farthings until 31 December 1960, when they ceased to be legal tender in the UK, and until 31 July 1969 there were also halfpennies ("ha'pennies") in circulation. The advantage of such a system was its use in mental arithmetic, as it afforded many factors and hence fractions of a pound such as tenths, eighths, sixths and even sevenths and ninths if the guinea (worth 21 shillings) was used.

>Hubris
Yes. For thousands of years, Chinese civilization has thought of itself as the center of the world. Every other culture was judged according to how "far" they are from the Middle Kingdom. The only way a culture could become civilized is if they became Chinese themselves. The more a culture adopted Chinese characteristics, the more civilized it was.

The biggest foreign policy mistake was when a Ming emperor decided that oceanic exploration wasn't worth China's time. This was after Zheng He's voyages. China was way ahead of their time. But because of this emperor, building up their navy hasn't become a priority.

In more recent history, Empress Dowager Cixi spent money, earmarked for a modern navy, on a marble boat. Yes. A marble a boat. And the Qing government at the time wondered why they were getting buttfucked by foreign powers. Well gee. Instead of spending on an ACTUAL navy, they built a fucking marble boat.

And then came Mao's economic brilliance with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution: full employment, free healthcare, free stuff for everyone. Worked out really well.

Don't post often, really don't even play much table top anymore, but here is a map I just made and without any context I want an honest opinion on geography and if you're up to it, what do you think is going on in the world based on just what is there.

Those are either some small mountains or a huge-ass bridge.

Well, I was trying to go for a huge bridge constructed to connect two continents.

>continents
Inkscape was a bad meme

you fucked up, it's historically incorrect and the pressures of stone would render the tectonics illegitamite and if you dont have tectonics do you ven have a setting what did you say to me you little bitch I'll have you know i graduated middle of my class in the cartographers guild and this isn't even a shitpost but the thing about tectonics is you can't just have a bridge that does that and oh my god work is so boring pls send help and pick up the pace wbg.

seriously though, great concept

I'm not familiar

Thanks though, maybe I should have given some context. The land to the west is technologically superior to the the eastern lands. They do have early 19th century understanding of tectonics as well as some other scientific fields, yet industrially have just begun to enter the industrial revolution. They would have large steam powered suspension from one side to the other preventing tremors in the structure.

Like to hear more and see if its a good concept? I mostly have only the northern are figured out. Decide to write the world top to bottom.

Inkarnate whatever, I got the first word right, art programs are art programs

Got any suggestions, again just trying to build a world for fun. I really have no other reason to make one besides than to just take up some time in between my studies.

I think every civilization has had moments when they hit a sort of national complacency and the majority of the people in charge are more concerned with maintaining a status quo rather than advancing the state of their country.

At least the marble boat is sort of pretty.

China's "moments" lasted for almost all their civilization. The "century of humiliation" was the beginning of a rude awakening that continues to do this day. The lesson to be learned from China is that it's dangerous for a civilization to lose its spirit of entrepreneurship and exploration lest it be left behind by other powers. It's ok if you can guarantee that the other civilizations which are pulling ahead are benevolent. If that can't be guaranteed (which it can't, in reality), then it's in your self-interest to continue improving your civilization so it's at least ahead of the barbaric/degenerate civilizations. No one wants to end up like the Native Americans encountering the Spanish.

In my setting, all of the lands between major landmarks function like how they would in an everyday setting. forests are forests, and rivers are like rivers. But if you sit in a field and stare at the grass you will notice that it is slowly growing and morphing into another kind of terrain. forests slowly turn into swamps or deserts, a puddle grows until its the size of lake. When the blue sun shines all this change is slow enough to cause little problems to travelers or those making camp, but when the blue sun sets, this flux becomes so rapid and cataclysmic it is as dangerous as being out in a storm.

it seems like a fitting environment for a strange plane I am working on.

What was China ever good for besides slave labor? Did it ever have a spirit of entrepreneurship/exploration at all? Even nowadays all China is known for is stealing tech and reproducing it in crappier quality.

Realistic phenomenon, but the people living in the world believe it was created that way by the gods. They lack the technology to understand plate tectonics, but the necromancer cities - oddly enough - have charts showing evidence of earthquake zones. The lines drawn are clearly the plates, but they just lack the understand of the planet itself to put their finger on it.

There is a swamp that exists just because the Goblins got desperate and tried to keep the humans out of their last refuge in the far east. Humans ended up moving in, nearly died, then ended up becoming the best swamp dwellers on the continent.

They hunt gobbos for fun, so they ended up becoming the Goblins' worst nightmare.

Can anyone help me do a balance of power sort of thing like the U.S. government only with a monarchy?

Executive: king
Legislative: Elected representatives of the people that bring issues to the king and make laws as well.
Judicial... How do I work in a non partisan group that keeps the rest in check according to constitution? Do I make them appointed by the king or possibly by the people?

Also how does the idea of royal robots sound? Kinda want this thing going with my people how robots and man worked to together to throw of the yolk of government to well... install a king. whatever though i'm working on it.

Did I mention this is in space?

its so strange

no port towns?

>Worldbuilding General

Neat.

I have some art to share as I finally got around to doodling about a monster I've been meaning to illustrate: Terrestropods.

Terrestropods are basically all those pecuilar, rubbery, tentacly monsters you find -seemingly out of nowhere- within dungeons and caverns. Despite the name they're not actually related to gastropods (slugs and snails) but are more commonly related to creatures like sea anemones and sea cucumbers.

Terrestropods are found in all sorts of humid and wet environments, but they particularly love caves and dungeons because of the damp surfaces created that allow their spores/eggs to latch onto and hatch/pupate.

Here are some other fun facts:
-Their mouth and anus are the same hole!
-Terrestropods eject non-food-times via pro-lapsing themselves inside out!
-The name “roper” can refer to over a dozen different species of Terrestropod!

To be fair, during that period of the Ming dynasty there was internal unrest and chaos on the Western border, and the navy budget was taken for the army build-up. Plus, Zheng He's voyage showed there was nothing that China needed beyond its borders.

What kidn of scale am I looking at here?

>Continents
What the fuck? This looks morelike two small islands, especially with the volcano at the top of the map. And you have two cold regions at the top and bottom of the map; are they both the size of North + South America?

USAUSAUSA

Not really. The main issue for China's rulers, past and present, has always been
>Keep the peasants from revolting
The Chinese people have always had a spirit of entrepreneurship and experimentation, as seen by the Chinese Diaspora, but the nation as a whole is simply so vast, with so many people and cultures, that pre-modern rulers spent their time focusing on how to manage all the different power groups and make sure enough people were fed and wealthy that the whole didn't feel like it was time ot revolt.

It's only when the leaders stop caring and start spending money on luxuries like the marble ship that China starts to decline. Then you have bloody rebellions until someone comes out on top and reboots the empire.

Technological development is not just about having good leaders or a national aspiration. It's about how people think and what they do when they're faced with a problem. Look at moveable type; it worked so well for the Europeans even though the Chinese invented it thousands of years earlier because the languages worked completely differently and moveable type just didn't do much for the Chinese language. Or the compass; once you know where north is and where the stars are, you don't need the sextant for land armies or individual people traveling between cities. Gunpowder? They never had a foe worth using it against in the way the Europeans did.

Statdholder: The supreme executive, in the person of the head of the royal household.

Parliament: The elected representatives of the urban city-states.

Judiciary was never an independent power until the United States. More common was the clergy being a third pillar of government/state and enforcing its own laws while leading the masses.

Send help

>USAUSAUSA
USA has never been complacent though. It's pretty much been leading the way for humankind since its creation.

I think his point is
>right now
But I feel the whole populist meme is going to put something of an end to that

I'd say the USA is at this point right now.

Populism has only won twice in the history of the United States: Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt.

If USA is considered to be complacent right now, then the whole world and humankind is complacent in general.

Have you not noticed the massive rise in the politicization of fucking everything in the last few years

That doesn't mean anything when nothing is being done. It just means people are getting frustrated.

Not really. Look at what happened in the UK.

What's going on in the US is that the leaders are still fucking sleepwalking the country over the cliff, and the voters are split between a majority that dont' want things to change and a vocal minority that's trending towards the two extremes.

The whole world's basically held by two gigantic cosmic fish encircling it. i'll greentext this tho
>It was smaller then but whole. Until a cataclysmic even in which the world had split into several pieces the space grew.
>the now smaller pocket realms are connected by streams of energy in which any inhabitants can travel to and fro, provided they have the right equipment, the right spell or constructed a portal enough to keep it open.
>The two fish there functions to keep the world lit up, warm, supplied with life, and stable so it won't spin off to other worlds and colliding it
>after the world split, the fish alone won't be enough so, the greater spirits of the world that helped shaped it in the first place now helped to hold parts of the shattered world that are devoted to them, although there are still numerous pieces of the world still left unprotected and uncharted
>stars that appear along the space within that world are nodes for the energy streams connecting each realm
>nebulae are the dusts of the world after it split

these are all still a work in progress that i'm just exploring at the moment. how does this sound?

Is that China?

>Not really. Look at what happened in the UK.
People got frustrated and acted on frustration, now they're even more frustrated than before, and a lack of full understanding of the implications and the consequences has left many people doubting whether they did the right thing, so people are consoling themselves by saying that doing something is better than nothing.

People were pretty complacent all throughout the whole affair, just kind of accepting whatever each party spewed out. The consequences were extreme, the people making the choices weren't the most well informed. But now that the ship has sailed and both parties have put up their "job well done lads, let's retire" signs it's a done deal.

Also how is this /wbg/ related.

I'm legitimately not sure how you're seeing china

Internal politics of your setting.

This makes me wet.

Question: Is the geography in your based on realistic, natural phenomenon or fantastic and mythological events? For example, is that big volcano the result of tectonic activity or did the gods throw a mountain on top of a fire-breathing demon and it's stuck under there to this day? >Does the sun rise because of solar cycles or because the Sky Father received sufficient sacrifices today?
Natural phenomena altered by magic in some places. For example a piece of land rose and wedged a river into two. Or magical disaster created a desert-like wasteland isolated in otherwise fertile, temperate region.

I like it, looks dirty and faded. Like it's missing a cup stain but otherwise this is what you'd see on a table in the world. I'm stealing the idea of heraldic symbols on the map. And Grrm be damned I do love those mottos.

Decided to split my map up into separate files so a little bit of the godawful lag abates. So there is a continent or will be continents to the west.

Expanded territory in the north to have a larger steppe. Not sure about the mountains at the very tip of the middle continent.

I have to decide what I am doing with the eastern continent and region. Raoxshanids (Sanukharan/Ashragan/Asvaryan/Khasahan) are oriented more westward to interact with/feud with the Harbanu, Nakkarum, their Niravahnam rivals, and probably the usual steppe confederacy of the day in the Rruvasan steppe. The Hwagari were meant to be beastfolk (satyrs/Maenads) Raoxshanized in name and culture. I like their little peninsula business but I wonder about moving it northward so it juts out just beneath the [beastfolk tribes] tag. Open up the valley there and expand land - how far I am not sure.

Option 1) The white area expands to touch that island, it becomes a over-hang. Wind-pattern keeps it fairly verdant and wet (Think France/Britain latitude wise). It could be inhabited by arazala (Late Roman with Trojan/Etruscan West asia vibes) in the south, barbars in the north between Arazala and beastfolks. That gives a three-way competition for the core of the continent (nakka and Harbanu) between Arazala, Niravahnam, Raoxshan. I could move Makhenai into that bay area so the basin becomes rather east-mediterranean - Levantine Nakkarum, Roman/Anatolian Arazala, Mycenaeano-Greek Makhenai, Raoxshan having a limited presence.

Option 2) Same geographic concept as 1 but instead of Germanic and Roman/Greek it becomes Turkic (northern reaches of white sketch, including the corridor between the mountains) and Chinese (edge of white area and island the overhang consumes)

Technically both is how I usually roll. As in most mountains would have been created, and maintained by tectonics, which were of course planned and created by the gods.
Then you have the floating islands (which whip around in little "Tidal orbits" according to the moon), which required a little more involvement of the gods.
The cliche fantasy world climates are partially the fault of massive slumbering elementals, including the massive forested area in the east that is constantly smoldering.

Read honor Harrington. It can be cool. And I feel modern communication technologies could make being a king easier.

Need a name for a god that's the focus of a monotheistic religion of a country with lots of knights and has a divinely ordained monarchy.

Everything I think of sounds too Norse when I'm going for a more Anglican name, or makes them sound like a Pokémon/Digimon.

Heilafer, Jamlin, Thelan

God

Almighty.

Dave

I think it makes sense to treat monarchy as property rights to a nation. King own the nation and pass it to his heir.

Although modern shareholders usually hire professionals run their affair.

The moment the owners of this "corporate nation" gains a monopoly of force, they stop being a corporation and become a de facto government.

It's not exactly hard to get rich when you're the ones minting all the money.

You should probably google how boats and buoyancy works. I'm sorry you never had a middle school education.

A lot of the translations are bullshit. Either slightly (Montana just means "mountainous" and the notion that it refers to a place is implied) or totally (nobody really knows what the fuck California's name means)

I wouldn't count shifting to the implied 'land of' or 'area' bullshit.

Look at Ontario vs Lake Ontario. Clearly those can't be 100% word for word literal, but if they did you get
Lake Beautiful Lake as the lake, and the land mass as Beautiful Lake.

Slight concession should be made, without changing the point.

California, and Kalamazoo, being just guesses at words we don't actually know is bullshit.

Also, this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution

"this land is called beautiful lake"
"the lake is the lake of the land"
"therefore it is the lake of the beautiful lake land"

This is what I'm fucking doing with my setting.

>Corporation goes to the stars
>Gets property rights on multiple systems
>Time passes founders role and the board get more and more important/full of themselves
>Essentially found the nobility of the nation
>Corporate primarch is now king
>Board members autarchs now lords of the nation
>shareholders are now knights.

FUCK YES

That's kind of how my south shore city states are.
>some facet of local industry is incredibly profitable in global trade
>old (usually Elven or Dwarven) family has a monopoly on said industry, make bank
>end up controlling the city-state's politics

Basically Mafia Keebler Elves.

Hell yeah.

Only I think I just make my share holders nobles. Have the board members in houses spread across the empire who vie for control in inter wars then unite behind essentially a houses lord who become primarch among autarchs.

My first time making a world here, this is one of the continents of my world. Starting with something I'm familiar with, which is a East Asian continent.

How would I go about labeling the geographic forms and cities without creating too much clutter? Also, are my terrain transitions too sudden? Thanks.

You can't.

Transitions look fine, but god I hate those names. Also, Rivers do not work that way. And neither do climates. Look at Australia; the coasts are different from the inland climates, it's not just in bands.

What was Greece like? I'm talking sort of post-Homeric, when kingship wasnt really a thing anymore.

Greece is the birthplace of democracy, but I hear it was also a Oligarchy.

Can some one explain?