/wbg/ Worldbuilding General

hes talking about places where a certain trade is fuelled by the abundance of a certain resource or 2 in the area, thus causing it to be a valuable export

Oh wow, someone else who uses sentient and sapient differently. I feel like most people treat them as synonyms and use the former more often.

If their tech has advanced that far then yes. So typically more common in areas that are less magic rich and or had a lot of time for their tech to play catch up.

If there is food then there is cuisine. Cuisine is based upon the rarity and views of the different foods. Some food for instance is seen as 'people' food and some foods are very rare in the associated culture but possibly common in a different one(mostly due to geography). Like sea food being common and cheap in a coastal kingdom but seen as very rare and valuable in a deeply inland one.

The dwarves are the most well known given their love of stonework and forging. However they aren't the only ones but it depends upon geography and cultural values. The peoples of the great sands for instance are very fond of glasswork while the peoples of the forests of Elizar are very fond of woodworking. So yeah and its downright common. It usually doesn't come up all that much though unless its trade related.

bestiary.ca/

^archive of various beasts recorded by medieval people

gonna dump these 2 pdfs

we really need a MEGA archive

...

>does your world have any mechanical steampunk-esque cultures?
No, I think I've already fucked with tech enough just by introducing muzzle-loaded rifles.
>do your cultures have cuisine? if so, how do they reflect the common attributes/attitudes of the culture?
Well, I guess I'll have to start making cuisine... Nah, probably not. Not very important at all. When I get all the actual important stuff done, maybe then.
>are there any artisan cultures in areas where it is geographically possible to pursue making a certain sort of product?
Not something I've considered.

>Is there an in-setting technology gap? Do you have one group of savages facing off against a group of holier-than-thou highborn folk? An alien species with at odds with ?
Goddamn I need to flesh out my world more. Most of the gap is elves vs. everyone else. My wood (high?) elves are probably the most advanced because they can work metal. Though the deep elves might be higher than them, I want their society to have regressed a little due to being underground, but maybe I'll change it, who knows. The wild elves are basically Native Americans, so yeah.
>What's the scale of your highest tech-level? What's the biggest *bang* (IE: planet-busters, greek fire grenades, C4)
Cannons. Which for some reason I hadn't even considered in the setting until today. I must be a complete idiot.
>How do you do your tech? Have you researched scientific principles to apply to your setting, or do you fluff it with technobabble?
Oh, tech will all be realistic until magic gets involved, because magic.
>Does your setting leave room for tech development? If a character was working on R&D, could they invent something new?
Yeah, it's going to advance. As insane as it is, I have an unfinished setting that is just this unfinished setting but probably a hundred or so years in the future that takes place in the fantasy Wild West.

Fuck. Just looking at the table of contents is making me rethink going through with this.

Big time. It comes down to age and opportunity. Whether or not your lucky enough to not massively get screwed over early on and how abundant things like magic or certain materials are. Usually this come to a head more often in my space travel.

Ascendance. Nobody around knows what the hell happens to some species after they 'ascend'. One of the weirdest things about it being the oddly wide variety of tech level before 'ascendance' is achieved which only makes things even more confusing.

The most powerful known tech is star busters but supposedly there is something out there that can wipe out galaxies or even universes their existence however has never been officially confirmed.

I thought about it but I planned to include magic and with the constant advances in sciences as well as technological breakthroughs. With many fields you would have to study up on(constantly) to avoid it from being too jarring or god forbid 'unrealistic' so I gave up on doing hard sci fi. Seriously though fuck that I tried but I realized it just wasn't doable for me personally. That doesn't mean however I don't do my homework(more for inspiration and ideas admittedly then to keep things 'grounded in reality') as i simply gave up on puling off hard sci fi. I mean its a neat idea but fucking hell is it a nightmare to pull off. Tech wise its generally ripped from reality or influenced heavily by magic or sci fi bullshit. Tech is generally much more advanced at places with scarcer magic and its development is directly slowed depending on the concentration of magic(never outright stopped however).

There is potentially a lot of tech development assuming your not from a magical world or if you are then tech has managed to catch up. If your too lazy to develop tech on your own you got aliens to trade or steal from. If your broke and want supposedly lesser risks there are always dead or ascended(sometimes it can be quite hard to tell which exactly) possibly alien civs.

So a question for all of you.
>How do people fight in your setting? Is it more fantasy with heroes and villains battling with fantastical powers? Is it more realistic with people making full use of martial arts or high speed low drag operating? Is it anime esque with crazy powerful warriors slinging around attacks that destroy everything around them? Is it brutal and gritty with people being torn to bits on the regular?

Most of my fighting is realistic. It's mostly people stabbing or beating the hell out of each other. Magic exists, but it's mostly used for making weapons better, so you're still stabbing/bashing people with it.

what does it make you rethink going through with, user?

Everything. OK, not everything per se, but a lot of stuff. I mean, it doesn't really impact the story so much, but it will as soon as I hit civilization, and the destination is a castle.

Cool map by the way.

thanks. unfortunately, i didnt draw these ;( just keeping them as pic unrelateds

Still cool, thanks for sharing.

Actually, that does make me ask a question: How do you guys justify dungeons in your setting? And if you don't have dungeons, do you have something similar to fill the role?

~

what the fuck

What the fuck indeed. Found this on a wikia for Veeky Forums so... yeah. Also, not the same guy that posted

>He doesn't know about the Ancient Finnish Empire

>notable commanders and leaders
>Girls' Generation
>Jackie Chan
>Obi-Wan Kenobi

>Strength
>>Jackie Chan[1][2][3]
>Casualties and losses
>>Jackie Chan[disputed]

If a kingdom was thrust into civil war a century ago because of a succession conflict between two branches of the ruling family, but there has been relative peace and the return of trade since then, what would the general attitude between the people of the two nations be?

Oh shoot, I guess I should put up my question now and try to get the thread rolling again.

How do you guys feel about half-human hybrids? Are hybrids exclusive to just humans? How far can the hybrids go (ie, do you have characters descended from three or more different races)? Can monsters breed hybrids? And if they do, is the resulting offspring a combination of its parents, or something completely different?

Depends on how history was taught, whether the teaching of history is enforced, and whether the respective governing parties have any reason to foster ill will towards the other population. Also depends on economic situation and political atmosphere. You can have common populace reactions ranging anywhere from ambivalent tolerance to fanatical hatred.

I think if the two houses were generally friendly with each other and the populace, whoever claimed the right to rule over the chosen successor would probably just be laughed at. If there's no reason to fight, who's going to back him up?

Thread raises an interesting question. What military technology are your cultures using?

That is beautiful.

They're just another race if the mechanics behind breeding is explained. It doesn't have to make sense as far as biology goes, but if they explain that interspecies breeding works for some reason and they're consistent about how it works and what it works for, I don't really care if they want to put it in or not.

>map goes back to 59,745 BC
>the coastline isn't like pic related

Damnit, sloppy typing of me. I forgot to explain that the kingdom was actually split in two when the fighting threatened to ruin all of it and set the land up for invasion by their neighbors.

The premise is that the king, being childless, appointed a man not of his blood as his successor. He had plenty of cousins, though, and the law was quite vague on whether the king or tradition had the final say. The cousins rallied their allies, but the appointed successor was well respected (and also regarded by certain elements of the nobility as their chance to rise).

War raged for a few years before an accord was made. The appointed successor would take the western half (thereby also getting the rather grand capital as well as the river-bound trade route) while the late king's relatives took the eastern half (where most of the verdant, fertile land is).

A hundred years later, few who took part in that war still live, but I figure there might still be a certain "us and them" mentality going around. The one thing I do know is that the western people might be seen as snobs as they are the one with the huge, rich city and grand library, etc.

>few who took part in that war still live, but I figure there might still be a certain "us and them" mentality going around

In reality this rarely happens unless the consequences of the war were significant enough to affect common folks. Cultural and historic influences have an effect, but as long as the populace is not given a reason to harbor animosity, the majority of people will be more concerned with getting on with their lives.

The generation immediately after the ones that fought tends to receive the greatest exposure, but by the time you're at the generation after that, unless there is a reason for the bad blood to linger, the "active" generation so to speak generally won't have any reason to harbor animosity towards one another. If the generation that fought is almost all dead anyways, most of it just becomes history.

A geographic/economical/social split can cause a bit of tension between two groups of people, but it generally doesn't escalate to a war unless the situation steadily gets worse.

Not the guy you were replying to, but-

When wars are won they almost never revert to status quo ante bellum. The Germans took Alsace and Lorraine, the Union sat on the former Confederacy for thirty years, etc. Land will be taken, indemnities or reparations made to be paid, or sometimes the vanquished will be occupied. Bad blood always lingers.

This sounds very reasonable, thank you. So perhaps the two ruling houses still consider one another upstarts and usurpers, but the most you'll get from your local baker or farmer is the occasional casual joke about those people in the other kingdom?

Hm, this is also a good point. If it helps, the war was relatively easy on the common man. They were drafted as levies, but it never got to the point where their farms were plundered or their property confiscated, basically no rape and pillage and wanton destruction.

The problem is in this case the picture that user has painted is largely different from the cases in the real world that you're drawing to. As I already stated in the first reply, without knowing the chronological sequence of historic events and the consequences of the war, no approximation of two populations' reactions can hold accurately. Factors such as cultural evolution, social evolution, and political evolution play a substantial part. All we can do without knowing the full picture with clarified variables is to tune the possible conclusion appropriately with the known parameters.

user's clarification post suggests that one of the two halves holds an economical advantage over the other. However, it also suggests that the two halves are held together by necessity (threat of foreign invasion) and depending on their current technological level and population demands, opportunity (through land development).

The nature of the war being one related to monarchy presents two possibilities, either the monarchy is still in place, or it has evolved into a different form of government which we don't know. All we know is that the majority of those who have fought in the war have died off. We are also told that there is a "relative peace" and reestablishment of trade, which in turn suggests that the two countries have reached a point of agreement, whether out of necessity of opportunity.

The notion that "bad blood always lingers" is a notion that cannot be proven false, given that as long as a single person harbors animosity towards the other party, it is thereby true. However, if we're to take this as the general attitude between the people of the two nations, then it would be a rather far stretch. We would have to first assume that a majority of both populations still holds animosity towards one another, after 100 years.

The issue then turns into a matter of lifespan, demographics, as well as the influence of the monarchy.

If we take for example an average lifespan of 30 - 40 years, in a century you can expect two new generations to take hold. Depending on how history is taught, as well as the general attitude of those who actually fought, by the time you hit the current generation, attitudes will have changed dramatically. If we scale up the lifespan to perhaps 70 - 80 years, the situation changes again, considering a larger amount of soldiers will have survived up until "recent times". So the way that the history is told might be largely different.

This is an ongoing issue with places like China for example, where in some provinces history is taught slightly differently than in others. Certain events are dismissed or exempted, whereas others are exemplified and made compulsory. In this, we can see the influence of education, both by the government, as well as within the family itself. There are still pockets of individuals who actively hate the Japanese for what they did, and will find reasons to hate them for whatever they do next, but due to the size of China and the attitudes of the current generation, they're no longer representative of the nation as a whole. In this, we can see how population demographics can in turn effect this issue.

If the war wasn't horrible as user clarifies (), then it isn't an unreasonable assumption to say that the majority of the populace on both sides don't have particular reason to harbor animosity for an entire century. Depending on the importance of the monarchy and the presence of external factors (neighboring countries), the attitudes of the ruling houses would be questionable. Since the houses, unlike the populace, are relatively small groups of people, their individual responses are up in the air. A "prince" who was taught a different version of history and is relatively detached from the outside world would have a vastly different response to someone who has a broad view of the two nations and the people.

Thank you for taking the time to type this up, simply reading your arguments helps a lot. I'd just like to retract the "relative" bit. There is peace, plain and simple. The border is watched from both sides, but people travel freely across it. There may be radical elements within the ruling bodies who covet the lost lands, but there is no threat of war.

As for history perspective, neither side has whitewashed or prettied up the war, but they both make sure that their people grow up knowing that THEIR claim to the throne was the just and legal one, and they were wise and gracious in accepting the accord and the peace that followed.

If there's peace and the population has freedom to generally do what they want, then even if the history paints things differently generally the two populations wouldn't be clashing over the historical event that happened a century ago. It might lead to bar brawls and such between heated individuals, it might motivate some radical dissidents among the populace for some reason, but given that most people have families and livelihoods they're not going to start something to destroy it over history.

It's settled, then. I have a pretty good idea of how to present the setting now, and how to roleplay the people. Thanks, guys.

work in progress map

>does your world have any mechanical steampunk-esque cultures?
Nothing steampowered so no, but one of the civilisations does use their gods magic to create inventions that might be similar, gunpowder is created through a kind of alchemy, for example.

>do your cultures have cuisine? if so, how do they reflect the common attributes/attitudes of the culture?
I have given literally no thought into that, there are a people who eat other people to gain powers but its not really cuisine.

>are there any artisan cultures in areas where it is geographically possible to pursue making a certain sort of product?
Kinda, not much trade going on between peoples due to zealous hatred towards eachothers gods.

>Is there an in-setting technology gap? Do you have one group of savages facing off against a group of holier-than-thou highborn folk? An alien species with at odds with ?
Yes, but nothing that matters since most wars are done through the gods chosen champions being given a piece of said gods power. Creating demigods.

>What's the scale of your highest tech-level? What's the biggest *bang* (IE: planet-busters, greek fire grenades, C4)
Magic powerful enough to destroy large towns, chunks of cities, though its extremely rare.

>How do you do your tech? Have you researched scientific principles to apply to your setting, or do you fluff it with technobabble?
Divine magic. Being too powerful for mortals to comprehend use humanity as proxies in their war, so the devoted get blessed with no explanation.

>Does your setting leave room for tech development? If a character was working on R&D, could they invent something new?
Yes, though its an incredibly slow process as most of the actual technology hasn't changed in decades, though a few civilisations do use invention as a form of worship.

>being this bluepilled

I love how it sticks on that shitty graph bitching about the dark ages at the end.

that's how you know it's definitely legit. The Proto-Finnish Holy Roman Kangaskhan lives on in all settings.

>does your world have any mechanical steampunk-esque cultures?
Yes and no. There's the Machine State, but they've got more of a baroque Phyrexia/Giger style than steampunk. Think sleek black lacquer and porcelain instead of brass and gears. The other developed nations have roughly 19th century technology, but none of them really embrace the steampunk aesthetic.

>do your cultures have cuisine? if so, how do they reflect the common attributes/attitudes of the culture?
For the most part, food is just based on what is produced locally (bread/pasta and beef in the grassy countryside, poultry and pork in more rugged terrain, more fruits in equatorial regions, etc.), though there are some exceptions. The people of the Meridial League find themselves with an abundance of fishes close at hand, but despise mildly flavored foods. Their great hunger for foreign spices to make the fish suit their tastes drives much of their trade with the eastern continents. Speaking of which, the chefs in Saddath-Leng don't really distinguish between herbs/spices and mild drugs; one flavorful leaf's is much like another, right? Enjoy your psychoactive curry.

>are there any artisan cultures in areas where it is geographically possible to pursue making a certain sort of product?
Depends on what you mean by “artisan cultures,” to be honest. You've got tons of high end weapons smiths in the city-states along the western coast of the Meridial Sea, where mountains rich in very pure iron come down to the coast and you can make tons of guns and swords for export and sell them directly to overseas buyers without an intermediary trading partner. Also, the Cyrelian heartland is a big wine and brandy making region thanks to a climate that's very friendly to grapes.

discord.gg/2Kp99

new wbg discord link

I am trying to world-build a fantastical nation based on the themes of "sea," "sky," "storms," and "order." Could Veeky Forums please lend ideas?

There is an enormous, landlocked sea with pale waters like sparkling, white wine. They say the liquid is the tears of a long-gone goddess of rain and order, who mourned over the death of her only child.
All across the seabed, the tears have calcified into varicolored, coral-like formations. Some pierce the water's surface and form islands upon which grow uniform rows of grass and trees. The islands themselves create a perfect grid.

Above the sea dance the everlasting storm systems, miles thick. If one was to gain a bird's eye view, one would see flawless arrangements of green flora jutting from their cloudstuff. One would also notice the storms' movements tracing out well-ordered, sacred geometries. Every so often, two or more storms brush against one another and kick up a symphony of thunder and lightning.
The typhoons complete their circuits once every seventeen years. All the while, they send down rain and levin upon the pale-gold sea and its colorful islands.

The selkies, merfolk, and other aquatic races who live within and upon the "coral" embrace the storms. Through tempestuous sorceries, they attempt to bottle up lightning before it lands. If they fail and the electricity hits the divine sea, they gather up the levin-kissed water instead. Such harvests are potent magical reagents, some of which they export by ship.

Atop the storms live races landbound and aerial. They build great cities upon the impossible grass, ordering them as concentric circles around the eye of the storm. Their agricultural mages make the "land" more fertile through spells of air, water, and sun that refine the mystical energies within the storm-clouds' component vapors. Miners dig deep to gather hailstone nucleii, which carry far more power as magical reagents before they fall. The cloud-people build magnificent airships for travel and trade.

That is all I have for now.

Culture is not something I am worried about explaining and fleshing out before I use this in a game, because this is merely one of the many nations of Arcadia in the D&D Great Wheel, the LG/LN plane that represents the ideals of community, utilitarianism, the group over the individual, the greater good, and beautiful order. Thus, the majority of cultures in Arcadia have those themes anyway.

Still, I am open to ideas. I am not exactly a meteorologist, so what interesting concepts could be taken based on such a nation of divine waters and storms?

Sounds dream-like and fanciful. I try to make everything grounded in the mundane, so I have no clue what ideas to give.

Maybe you should look at it from an inhabitant's point of view. Go full-on deadpan and down-to-earth to contrast the whimsical surroundings.

The inhabitants have been to other lands, so they would be able to give a reasoned viewpoint of precisely what makes their own nation rather distinct (and what they, from their perspective, consider "exotic," like the concept of soil).

In particular, I am trying to think of a second export for the cloud-people, since the sea-people already have two (bottled lightning and lightning-kissed water). What would be appropriate to have alongside the unfallen hailstone nucleii? Perhaps particularly dense, fist-sized segments of cloudstuff charged with great mystical power?

Also, someone else had proposed the concept of "places that only exist among the lightning and thunder of a storm." How could these work? Lightning and thunder are transient, even if they are in this case perfectly orderly rather than chaotic and unpredictable. Perhaps some towns, cities, and other sites have an impermanent position which constantly (and predictably) teleports from lightning/thunder-filled cloud-section to cloud-section?

>"places that only exist among the lightning and thunder of a storm."
Could be interesting if you thought of the cloud bank as a "primal brain", where the electricity surging through it is its synapses firing. Then you can have weird dreamscapes that exist only during the storm, disappearing once the energy has dissipated.

Gives new meaning to "dream of the godhead".

Good map, but dislike the naming. Mainly the northern tribes, as "uncommon letters" such as x make something sound more advanced as opposed to tribal. The abundance of vowels also doesn't help, since the human brain associates guttural names with tribes.

Gold coast and goldbelt also bothers me for several reasons.
1. In one word gold and x are separated, while the other has them attached to eachother
2. Repeating something twice so close to eachother. Consider using "gilded coast" and "belt of gold/golden belt"

An interesting idea. Rather than cities and towns within the "places that only exist among the lightning and thunder of a storm," there exist surreal "dreamscapes" that form from the "primal brain" that is the storm-clouds and all their electrical synapses.

They're more like kingdoms than tribes. This map is made by someone from the Serenelands and is incredibly biased, as they consider them stupid barbarians and thieves, when in reality the Pale Tribes are roughly as advanced as they are.

Your other point is very valid though, I'll probably change the 'Gold Coast' to something different as that one I just kind of came up with on the spot.

Interesting ideas others have proposed so far include:

1. The cloud-people could export lighter-than-air woods and fruits for aerial spells.

2. The cloud-people could catch sunlight using enchanted tools and weave it into metals. I imagine that this would be a tradition passed down by gold dragons, the sun being of fire and of gold.

3. There could be surreal "dreamscapes" that exist only among the lightning and thunder of the storm. The thunderclouds act like a "primal brain" of cloudy synapses, and from that rudimentary mind springs imaginative, transient demesnes.

So, i've been thinking about this ninja who is communicating with demons/youkai in my setting. I have no idea about japanese folklore or their "witches". What sort of ritual or curio he could be carrying and/or using for this stuff?
Even ridicilous animestuff is okay i guess.

My sci-fi is a bit raw but I talk about it
>>Is there an in-setting technology gap? Do you have one group of savages facing off against a group of holier-than-thou highborn folk? An alien species with at odds with ?
Not contemporary. Currently only Human Commonwealth and The Ksa Republic are active players and both have vaguely equal technology. However back in older days two ancient civilizations fought with far greater technology, but it's all lost but destroyed by now. They had technology modern science doesn't even know how to approach. The most impressive thing they could pull of is to alter fundamental nature of hyperspace around their systems making it impossible to actually visit them. The whole setup is that in one of their systems the device has broken down allowing everyone to flock in
>>What's the scale of your highest tech-level? What's the biggest *bang* (IE: planet-busters, greek fire grenades, C4)
Nothing that can obliterate the planet, most some good old rail guns and nuclear warheads. The biggest weapon technology is High Energy Particle Impactor that can vaporize the most solid of solids into some kind of weird matter known as pixie dust
>>How do you do your tech? Have you researched scientific principles to apply to your setting, or do you fluff it with technobabble?
Technobabble, but I look to make it at least somewhat passable
>>Does your setting leave room for tech development? If a character was working on R&D, could they invent something new?
Yes.

I need to make actual map of nations/political factions.

>steampunk?
Nope. Some lesser developed nations still use similar tech, but it isn't steam/punk/.
>cuisine
Yeah. I haven't thought about it too much, but there's also the historical significance behind the food as well.
>certain products
Not really, no elves in arctic making toys, unfortunately.

>tech-gap
There is, actually. Most modern technology is WW1-WW2-tier, while some more distant places still don't have guns. They are mostly not colonized due being difficult to access, dangerous fauna/flora and low resources all around.
>biggest bang
Well, bombs. Nuclear weapons aren't a thing yet.
>realistic or technobabble?
Since it's mostly tech we have had, it's more described realistically.
>development
This is tricky one, since obviously a player would go "oh of course I wanna research a nuclear bomb, modern weapons, computers..."
I don't know.

No hybrids personally. At least naturally occurring one. If thaumaturgy is involved, it's bit more complex ( technically draconians were created through blood and flesh of humans and dragons by a very powerful thaumaturge ).
Thanks, the bestiary is really nice.
>"The salamander is a cold animal. It can live unharmed in a fire, and its coldness will extinguish the hottest flames. If it enters hot water, the water will become cold."
Funny how things change over time.

Asking for a friend

What would you think if in a setting you saw an island to the east of the continent made up of people who liked wearing robes, lamellar armor, sandals, curved two-handed swords, feudalism, eating fish, and spoke a language of mostly open-syllables?

What would you think I'd think?

2 nukes wasn't enough

How do you determine how industrious a nation is, is it a relative thing, are some nations just more fortunate or fortuitous with an abundance of natural resources?

I'm thinking of drawing up a campaign world where a lich king's been on a roll and most of the continent's been swallowed up.

The obvious question though, what purpose to keeping around any living folks would there be? Zombies and skeletons make better slave labour. The two things I can think of are that you need a supply of living people to make more dead ones, and that some of the living might be candidates for necromantic study.

company

...

Diversity is necessary for development. Living beings make for better test subjects under a wide variety of conditions, they're also better for turning into sleeper agents, and a nice security blanket to use against living armies.

People don't care if your suicide bombers are undead if the undead are seen as abominations anyways. But if you turn their women and children into unwilling, or even better, unknowing, suicide bombers, it has wonderful side effects on communities.

Depending on what type of undead you're using, living beings are also better for incubating diseases. Zombies with permanently atrophied flesh don't make for good hosts due to a lack of varied conditions to allow mutation. Skeletons even less so.

Generally in fantasy a lot of these points either are handwaved with magic, or they're simply shied away from because they're "too evil", so whether you'd employ them is up to you. There are even more vicious reasons for using humans, but those involve details that fit under "0 morality shock and awe" tactics and are better left to imagination.

It doesn't really sound like your lich king is anywhere close to being moderate if he's been swallowing up the continent. But if you had to find reasons on the other side of the spectrum, they're there too. Humans are more inclined to negotiate with those of their own kind rather than undead, making them better ambassadors in a sense. Their youth can be indoctrinated and in turn used to convert others. Having a wide variety of living beings period makes innovation and development easier by having a larger pool of talent to draw from, and generally the perspective of living beings is different from the undead, so having them as consultants and scouts will yield different results to say having a band of roving skeletons.

You don't need to have living folks as citizens, per-say. Your Lich King could just have a supply of bipedal sheep.

It really comes down to how exactly it's done, but I generally wouldn't mind if there were other fantasy counterpart cultures in the setting. But if it's just the one, yeah, I'm probably going to bring out the paddle.

What's this picture from? GIS is giving me nothing, and I'm curious because the guy in the back looks a bit like Lucien from Sandman.

I have an idea for an enclosed city of sorts. I hope the idea is clear from the image, but basically there are layers of segments encircling a central tower ("the spine"), with ladders between each layer and checkpoints between each segment. As population grows, they simply build more layers and segments. Each segments has residential areas, stores, restaurants, etc., which get increasingly lavish as they get closer to the spine, checkpoints harder to pass.

Are there any logistical things I should keep in mind? For waste, I was thinking large pipes could run down layers at regular intervals, which lead to a hollow below the city, which has a door opening to the river far below that would be pushed out by waste workers every week.

It looks like a prison. Remember that it's a lot easier to build outward than upward.

It's Ainz-sama from Overlord imagining one of his lieutenants tending to the bipedal sheep.

>Overlord
Isn't that the one with nearly the same story as dotHack, but the character decides to stay in the game and become a villain?

It's one of the better LNs in this recent wave of Japanese "enter a world based on a video game" escapism.

Hey anons, kind of new to this board, but I figured this is the best place to ask. Because Veeky Forums sucks big hairy donkey balls.

I am planning on writing my own novels soon, and am trying to figure something out.

I want a planet that is physically as large as possible, but I want the gravity as close to earth like as possible, (I don't mind if it's a little heavier, but it has to be as close as possible to the comfort zones of humans) because there will be humans on it, or at least traveling to it on a regular basis. I thought I could explain this away with a combination of "super science/might as well be magic/literal magic" (in my universe magic is just ritualized psychic abilities, thus magic and science can co exist, and alchemy is when you combine magic and science to achieve mind blowing awesomeness) and the fact that the planet rotates around it's star at a much slower pace then earth. Plus, because it was artificially created/terraformed, it is partially hollow. Basically massive underground reservoirs of both freshwater and saltwater that are miles and miles deep that span across the entire globe.

Basically some super science wizard made himself immortal when mankind was young, then as time progressed, saw that homo sapiens and the other self aware species were causing extinctions left and right, including genociding their fellow species of man (neanderthals AKA dwarves, for instance)

So he was like, "Fuck this noise, I'm not spending the rest of eternity with these assholes." So he used some magic/super science to astral travel through wormholes and found the right kind of solar systems, and wound up forging whole new planets. He transplanted members of all of the endangered species, and cloned the extinct ones. Each self aware species (elves/dwarves/mermaids AKA sirens etc.) has their own planet. Except for homo sapiens, they still have Earth.

Will this work? How much technical jargon do I need to learn so I can describe it to my readers?

So my group is really fucking into Shadowrun, but I (the DM until January) want to do something else, so we talked it out a bit and we made a compromise which can be summed up as "Shadowrun but with a 1920's aesthetic". Now here's the rub: how the fuck do I combine the Jazz Age with fantasy cyberpunk and not have it just be Shadowrun in a different coat of paint?

Thank you user! This is just what I needed!

Most of the time they are freshwater cisterns or root cellars for storage. Then the over all building undergoes a remodel and they wind up building something larger and better at storing whatever it is, be it fresh water or food.

So they have this somewhat largish empty room, and are all like, "Fuck it, throw some bars and chains up. We can toss the local drunkards in here for a night or two to scare them into holding their liquor the next time they think it's a good idea to cause a brawl that winds up burning down the tavern."

More or less, the individuals in leadership would hate each other, just absolutely loathe them. Because each side only has "half a nation" and it's all the fault of the other side.

But the common and middle class people are making good bank off of being nice to each other and trading, so the leaders basically ignore each other, or are polite but cold when forced to inter act with each other.

Apologies for my bad art. As you can see it's somewhat cramped, but not prison. There occupied parts on each side -- so where you see 304, across is 305, 306 across 307, etc. -- and a walkway in the middle. At my current (likely silly) measurements, it's be 8 meters for each occupied space, and 4 for the walkway. I may want to shrink those; the idea is for it to be cramped but not TOO cramped.

Basically in my universe hybrids are kind of like mules. They can happen, but the offspring are all sterile. And every now and then you wind up with an individual who wins the genetic lottery and is the liger equivalent of half human hybrids.

I don't think this is that much better. I thought you were trying to draw something from Echochrome for a second. Don't get me wrong, the idea of a non-Euclidean housing sounds interesting, but I doubt that's what you're going for.

No idea on the numbers. Still not a fan of the idea though.

You're basing your entire premise on "a wizard did it", it's already kind of flimsy. I mean, I'm doing the same thing but it's more of an allegory to a creator god.

Having a yuuuge planet with similar gravity is just a matter of density. My setting's plane is ~1/2 earth, but is made up of much heavier metals than iron and nickel.

So it can be done? When people read my writing they won't go, "WTF? How can you have that many continents of that size on a single planet, surrounded by oceans large enough to support entire herds of whales of multiple species, and any human who sets foot on that planet isn't crushed into a pancake by their own body weight?"

>does your world have any mechanical steampunk-esque cultures?
With airships flying around the sky, it would be hard to say no, but in universe they are explained with magic. Before the various magic guilds introduced their airships, there was a little bit of steampunkesque vibe, but steam was found to be too dangerous, and thus when it can be afforded to rent a magic guild to magic something over steam powering it, it is magiced.
>do your cultures have cuisine? if so, how do they reflect the common attributes/attitudes of the culture?
Much the same as in the real world... Hot arid places trade in spices, mountainous regions have sheep, goats, and cheese, etc. Flavors tend to go towards those native resources, but transportation has broken down cultural barriers, so you can get locally inspired versions of (insert meal from homeland here) wherever you go.
>are there any artisan cultures in areas where it is geographically possible to pursue making a certain sort of product?
Considering I have a whole city dedicated to magic, yes. There are regions known for their statues, and other areas known for textiles, and others known for producing specific pigments.

>Will this work? How much technical jargon do I need to learn so I can describe it to my readers?
Assuming you're attempting to adhere to science, you have several issues. First, your criteria asks for a planet as physically large as possible with the same gravity as Earth. Simply put, you want a planet with relatively the same value of g, given the known constant G, and a variable mass to determine the actual radius.

The exact equation to determine your radius is R = sqrt(G*mass/g) where small g is 9.8 m/s^2 to simulate Earth gravity at surface. G is 6.673×10-11 N m2 kg-2. Your first issue is then a matter of "what mass do you actually select", because this in turn affects orbital mechanics, satellites, as well as general properties of the planet itself. Without knowing a precise objective, your statement "a planet that is physically as large as possible" becomes an open ended equation with a wide range of possible conclusions. You can set up a very simple spreadsheet which can map the equation's curve essentially and pick/choose a solution, but the consequences of that solution are extreme.

Your second issue is then the fact that the planet is partially hollow. Whether the planet is hollow or whether it actually has a core in turn affects properties like the magnetic field of the planet, the atmosphere, tectonic movements, and so forth. If you replace the molten core of the planet with water, those properties are going to change. This is likely something that absolutely must be handwaved with magic entirely.

Your third issue then is the jargon part, because if you're attempting to adhere to scientific validity for any reason at all, you at least need a basic foundation. Developing a model that is even remotely sound as far as the science goes will require a moderate amount of research, additional for each planet. Personally I'd say it's better to toss science aside, because in this case you're not working with just one planet, but multiple.

...

>Is there an in-setting technology gap? Do you have one group of savages facing off against a group of holier-than-thou highborn folk? An alien species with at odds with ?
Yes. While most of the world has a magic focused version of steampunk level technology, there are still wandering tribes.
>What's the scale of your highest tech-level? What's the biggest *bang* (IE: planet-busters, greek fire grenades, C4)
Tech wise, most things are still medieval level, but there is also magic powered machinery at a victorian steampunk level.
Bang wise, your looking at magic infused bombs. They aren't used that often though. Destruction wise, they can take out a sizeable district in one of the main cities. Typically they would be dropped from airship, but they are also capable of being launched by conventional siege weapons.
>How do you do your tech? Have you researched scientific principles to apply to your setting, or do you fluff it with technobabble?
Science, isn't anywhere where it is in this world. Most stuff is more magic focused then tech focused. What tech there is, is backed by scientific principle.
>Does your setting leave room for tech development? If a character was working on R&D, could they invent something new?
Tech isn't fleshed out to the point that nothing can be added. If a character wanted to come up with a unique way to do something, nothing beyond the physics of the world is stopping them.

Oh, sorry if I derped up the description, I had to backspace some sentences because my post kept getting too long.

The planet in question isn't completely hollow, it does have an active molten core. Basically imagine falling down a massive hole, into an underground reservoir miles and miles deep. All around you are massive pillars larger than the greatest redwood trees in the forest around your home village. The water is surprisingly warm, because it's so deep underground the cold of the snow on the surface can't reach you. You swim and swim, trying to find a way out, but there are no walls or cliffs you can climb, only the smooth massive pillars, and the occasional hole to the surface in the ceiling for light and air. You can climb up on the bases of these pillars to dry off and rest, but you can't climb up them.

Eventually you are discovered by a pair of dwarves in their metal boat who are fishing, they take you on board and give you some food and apple juice. Then they use their strange alchemy to make the boat move across the surface of the water as fast as lightning. You're so tired you fall asleep despite the strange boat making the sound of a dozen roaring dragons as it flies over the water.

They take you to a strange pillar, this one has glowing orbs attached to it, and a built in ladder. By the time you climb back up to the surface all of your muscles are aching and trembling from sheer exhaustion. When you reach the nearby village you find yourself in a completely different country than the one you were born and raised in. It will take you over a year to travel on foot back to your home. But you don't care, solid ground under your feet is better than that endless underground ocean.

It depends on whether you're taking the onmyouji approach, or a more esoteric kaidan approach, or a more traditional "divinity" approach with the various Gods and such. Like most cultures, Japanese mythology has a pretty large array of creatures that are cast under different lights depending on the nature of the story and the time period. So this in turn would affect the youkai that your ninja is communicating with.

Bakemono/Youkai found in kaidan stories generally have a greater variety than those found in onmyoudo stories, as the latter tends to portray supernatural creatures as wholly malevolent, often being lingering curses and such. On the other hand, as far as spiritualism and divinity goes, plenty of youkai are simply "spirits" that have come to inhabit an object, or materialized without any substantial "purpose". They're more just "individuals" rather than "antagonists" as onmyoudo would portray them as.

As far as rituals and trinkets go, Shinto religious tools are pretty much the standard, but should you choose to do so you should probably do a fair bit of research, since like most religions, Shinto has some rather specific rituals which might not work or would just feel out of place depending on the actual setting you're playing. For instance you're not very likely to find a torii gate in a campaign set in fantasy Europe, and carrying around a tamagushi is likely to make people think you're daft. Paper charms and such are commonplace, and shikigami are a thing, especially in onmyoudo.

There's honestly a good chunk of information on Japanese folklore and religion online, and it's pretty clean reading.