World Building General. /WBG/

Ah fuck. Sorry! Listen to this guy everyone.

>On designing cultures:
>frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir's_Ethnographical_Questionnaire
I love this one. I've been busy writing about one of my 11 countries for almost 2 hours now, and I'm just halfway through the first category.

Thanks. I thought of it as more of a different way to fluff and explain how magic works, than as a way to set up classes of magic users and make a system of it.

I haven't written any more yet, but I'll post it in case anyone has any suggestions.

Do any of these sound like interesting settings?

Sorta space opera where Earth is the space equivalent of a third world shithole, outside of the mega cities, it's a mix of wild nature changed by invasing species, poluted wasteland and urban decay. Alien developers and corporations own large parts of the planet, especially the earth governments. Warlords and raider gangs are a big problems in many places, and a good chunk of the order is kept by a mix of human and alien mercenaries. Earth is also a popular port for pirates and smugglers looking to refuel in a less strictly controlled part of the galaxy. The moon and other colonies in the surrounding system are often better off than Earth, as most are almost entirely owned by mega corps. Humans mostly leave the planet as cheap labour on freighters and mining or salvage ships, join groups of smugglers, pirates and mercs, or as slaves, often taken by previously mentioned pirates and smugglers. A minority are either send off world for a fancy education by their rich parents on Earth, or as captains of their own either stolen or purchased outdated ramshackle ships. As such, humans are recognized as one among many species of sapient trash.

Modern Earth space opera setting, aliens come, set up a mass relay/wormhole next to earth and trade and technological proliferation does its thing. Suddenly buying your own used space ship becomes relatively easy and people go on space adventures in an alien galaxy that has only sorta heard of humans, except the first couple of usual "first stop" places near Earth that either welcoming the influx of new customers or are getting fucking tired of these stupid fucking new comers. Pretty much anything you bring home is gonna make you rich, so get to it before the influx of shit that'll make you rich starts the inevitable inflation.

Help me /wbg/, you're my only hope. I have a setting I've had bouncing about for about a year or so.

Most of it has been dedicated to a lot of research into the late 17th, full 18th, and very early 19th centuries because I'd like for it to take place in a period inspired by those; the more advanced parts of the world being the most similar with the later periods. I'm an historian by trade, so the research has been in-depth and I'm mostly just expanding on my education since most of that focused on the Napoleonic wars (and the eras of Antiquity and the World Wars, but neither of those are relevant here).

Magic is more Mythos-inspired as opposed to Vancian, closer to a Dark Heresy or Iron Heroes style of how you can really hurt yourself or do damage to those around you if you fuck with it alone. Ritual (in particular, rituals with groups) are damn near required to do magic in any kind of safety, and even then it can prove hazardous if mistakes in the ritual are made.

The danger of the magic—from both a practical and mental perspective—guarantees that cults and conspiracies try to survive in the shadows; following dark gods and wicked entities. Supernatural creatures are more akin to things that go bump in the night as opposed to elves, dwarves, and dragons flying across the sky. Human-only, if one hasn't caught on so far.

The eras it draws inspiration from mean that while there is still room in the world for adventure, the things of the darkness have been mostly driven out of operating with abandon; stealth and cunning paired with overwhelming force against the unwary is their weapon now. Humanity has become dangerous in numerous ways, and some have the potential to rise to greatness; though curiosity of the eldritch and the pathetic will of others makes them tools to the more intelligent creatures of the night.

But despite how well-thought it seems to far, I find myself stuck on a few very obvious and unfortunately large things:

I'm having a hard time finding a map that I actually like, and this bothers me; the inability to visualize the world itself makes fixing some of the following problems more difficult.

Speaking of, I'm experiencing difficulty coming up with factions; I want it to feel more like an internally consistent world/sandbox (not that I plan on running games that way unless the party specifically asks for one, as planned stories will be told but I want there to be room for them to effect the world in their own ways), and in doing so I require just enough factional vacuum to allow for things like adventurers and mercenaries to go alongside the intrigue and larger-scale Imperial warfare of the inspired periods.

Finally, I am having a hard time coming up with a consistent and believable way of maintaining how the technology can stagnate for a little while longer than it did in our own world (I'd prefer to do it without hand-waving, but am not afraid to do so), as I rather like the time periods in question and appreciate the flavor and tone that they offer; I would like for the world to be explored and even changed by the characters in a few different campaigns without having to resort to the “all these adventures take place in the same generation or so,” kind of story; on the same note, I'd rather avoid the world feeling like a Points of Light-styled place, as well. It runs counter to the narrative of how the things in the darkness have had to retreat from the public eye in their fashion.

Obviously I have a lot of work to do. Any suggestions (especially map-wise) would certainly be appreciated.

>I am having a hard time coming up with a consistent and believable way of maintaining how the technology can stagnate for a little while longer than it did in our own world
That part is easy; just remove easy access to coal and/or oil.
My setting's stuck in a pre-Victorian slump due to a complete lack of fossil fuels.

>I am having a hard time coming up with a consistent and believable way of maintaining how the technology can stagnate for a little while longer than it did in our own world
It's worth keeping in mind that much of what caused the rapid advancement of technology from the late 1700s onward had more to do with economic and social factors than with actual scientific knowledge.

The decline in feudalism and absolutist monarchy in favor of rule of law and the replacement of mercantilism with free enterprise were both necessary preconditions for the Industrial Revolution. Without this, society never quite makes the jump to modernity.

How do you justify the lack of fossil fuels?

Young Earth creationism with no dead dinos? Ancient precursor civilization already burned all the oil?

The first one, "Young Earth creationism with no dead dinos". It's a young world, geocentric world without any tectonic activity.
Tthe fundamental chemistry and atomic structures are different, so you can't make gunpowder or a battery either.

Fucked up the grammar, it's "young, geocentric world".

Guys I need help choosing a bad guy.

My player is apart of a Elven Noble house in a rotational monarchy which moves about with the seasons and each house assigned a season with their powers in mind (it's romanticised in lore, but reality it was a bitter power struggle, stories came later)

So it comes down to seeds I've planted
>A Young Human Prince who's civil war with his father spilled into the Elven forest and ended with the intervention of the PC, the King hadn't seemed himself and had gone mad, initially rumour was magic/enchantress who turned out to be a physician and the King had developed a brain tumor which made him see the Human Emperors of old, which led to him inviting all people who used to be apart of the empire to come into the City state and him ignoring the people of the City, the Prince had been corrupted by the Pope of the Humanity worshipping Cult of St Cuthbert into starting a Crimson Crusade meets Third Reich Faction, the Prince being young was way over his head and listened to the Elf PC who although 200 years old, looked his age(ish) although the King proud the PC arranged a meeting after discovering his condition and reconciled the pair, Pissing of the Nazi-Pope who attempted to kill the King by snatching a musket and shooting, the Pope was killed but many crusaders and the Grand Master Militant (General) of the Crusade escaped, the Prince is also a kind of blank slate, young and idealistic the player will be at the Kings funeral soon and already wants to influence the Prince into being a Puppet.

>Within the Elvish nobility is a shadow chamber that controls the underworld of the City state forest, the Houses are split between types of crime and specialisation of them, although lesser nobility in a sense there is still considerable power, the Assassin House is suprime but the House of Secrets knows too much and has a "Dead man switch" so if killed, everyone knows everyone's Secrets which the house of Secrets may not actually know ----

----- >In the Elvish underground lies a Noble house that's based on Dark Magic and otherworldly knowledge, my player hates the Patriarch of the house because it is very mad magician Esq with the Patriarch holding crazy magic strength connected to Elder Gods beyond explanation.

>R'yleck is the Elder God of the ocean, basically Drowned God meets C'thulhu and the player has developed an irational fear off because of a complex love arc between the PC and two NPC's that R'yleck who is actually a massive romantic watched eagerly from a Bar called Deus Decorum that the Gods all meet up and drink at outside the realm of time and watch reality, I played all the Gods as sacred imposing creatures like those of Myth until the player accidentally summoned Chaos - the oldest of the Gods through a Relic and Ritual and the Gods had to posses friendly NPC's to kill the possessed Chaos Relic, afterwards the PC had to argue their case for staying alive after seeing to much in the smokey 1920's pub with jazz music jukebox which she did being supported by R'yleck, Death, Elven Zeus and all the other Gods not caring enough (Except Continuity who wanted the process done properly) but R'yleck is creepy looking and speeks in a salad finger voice with a (Nervous) giggle instead of full stops.

>The PC's Father and Mother left them to be raised by their Grandfather and Grandmother (Maternal) the PC has never asked why, I've not developed the characters of Mother and Father beyond them taking a role in another city states Nobility through the Father's ties.

I can make someone up if you can't advise me who to pick/what I'm stuck for an antagonist,

Use a more readable font

All pressurized carbon turns into diamond instead of oil

But then you're going to find out how shit my prose is.

What are some good ideas for written/runic magic? Right now, I have it that magic flows freely, and to harness and use it, you need to imbue an item with runes and channel magic to flow through the item.

Have you read Banished Quest? Ignoring the not-QM shitposting, the QM has done an amazing job of worldbuilding. Part of that includes a style of runic magic.

It's been a while since I've updated myself on the series, so my memory is foggy. But it, like the magic system, is very intricate and involved.

Pre-defined languages required to channel magic runs into the issue of "How did spellcraft develop in the first place?" and "Is it even possible to innovate?".
My system just uses mental imagery and the soul of words, not the words themselves. Allows for a dystopian future where Wizards aren't able to manifest effects they have no words to describe, too

Never heard of it.

The metaphysics of the setting is reality is a story in a book, so the written word has power. Technically, anything written can be empowered, but it takes a lot of magic the more is written, these are simplest words the people know. Most also don't know this, they just think these are the words for spells to work.

For innovation, I do have a few ways that show how runes can be used in clever ways, like alchemy uses etched runes on glass and tubes to change chemical properties of the ingredients, and Elves have to use a combination of marks scarred to their skin and their blood to power items, do to their magical nature and how they affect the flow of magic.

I was planning on having a few factions try to stick to a de jure or de facto absolute monarchy, with their own cultural reasons for keeping their mercantile and caste systems; being perfectly fine with their monarchy. In the vein of Turtledove's "Gunpowder Empire." That's certainly one way of helping it along, thanks.

I like the idea of a world with a distinct lack of proper fossil fuels to get them past a limited amount of steam technology.

In regards to your comment on gunpowder and the battery, that's not a poor start of the thought process. I'm thinking of fucking with the chemistry of firearms a little so that smokeless powder is far more difficult to make than black powder; maybe find a way to not make it possible at all.

The constant presence of barrel fouling through black powder would do more to prevent the mass adoption of cartridge-based weapons than would forcing a stagnation of the evolution of firearm-loading technology via handwave; if people knew about cartridges--and maybe even the richest people or royal-guard units used breech-loaders--the fact that those cartridges used black powder would mean that the weapons would need an extensive amount of cleaning during extended combat. Automatic weapons would never likely come about, as the fouling of the weapon through the use of black powder would make them little more than novelties that eventually blew themselves up.

Assuming technological determinism, this would eventually see the richer civilizations forcing their way up to about the mid-19th Century in terms of military technology; approximately Franco-Prussian war. But it could arguably take them far longer to get there. The potential for global politics and adventurers/mercenaries making their marks over the course of generations in Napoleonic era-inspired fantasy land would last much longer than it did historically, achieving the tone I wanted for the setting's militaristic aspects.

Bump

I'm creating an urban fantasy/sci-fi game.

Basically I'm already set on having psychics in my game. These are people with 1 (one) (single) psychic ability, there is no way to get more then one. But they can be decently powerful, up to throwing people around or stopping a few bullets, but not as powerful as say a Wizard in a fantasy setting.

However as I've been reading and getting into unknown Armies a lot recently I've been seriously considering adding some kind of magick in the setting in that vein. However I am very skeptical of adding in magic, even though my setting has a lot of 'mysterious' shit that just 'happens' that is basically magic, I am skeptical to put in actual magic.

So would it instead be so bad to put in a sort of subtle reality warping style luck manipulation stuff? Things like doing small rituals to symbolically sway events in your favor, or tattooing symbols on your skin that give some sort of subtle power or bonus? Would that take away so much from the otherwise 'realistic' porton of the setting?

page 10 bumperino

I am writing a book; So my nation is the United Terran Commonwealth. We are Humanities final product. We believe that xenos should be treated equally. All citizens have to do 4 years of service for the right to become leaders/vote. It can be military, or for more pacifistic species, govt. service. Their space combat doctrine is capital ships, which large amounts of starfighters or drones to support. Their FTL travel is a version of the alcubierre drive.

Our govt. Is a military republic, where military service (or govt. serivce) is the only way to gain the right to vote or become a leader. Humanity is largely Atheistic, and the government is very secularGay rights are widely accepted and xenos are given the same rights. So far, we are at war with the holy gaa covenant. A fascist theocracy hell-bent on purging all life from the galaxy. We are allied with the Serene Monarchy of Praetor, and the Maskin confederationThese posts are all mine. We have conquered two species, the Chinorik, Molluscoid specie whom are massive shipyards. their planet surface only consists of 15% land and 85% water. The other is a humanoid species which can interbreed with humans called the Noma. Humanity uses Gauss, Railguns/Mass drivers, Particle Beam technologyu, and Sometimes plasma.Humanity is a sprawling empire consisting of 75 worlds, with ongoing colonization efforts in the second sphere of expansion.
The mode of FTL travel is the Alcubieere drive, Inertial dampeners are used to make sure the crew doesn't die, unlike poor captain neimeier. Heat dissipation are used to stop hawkings radiation from affectign the crew radiation. Warp travel takes a while, and also, after leaving warp, tehre is a warp wind down, which may last from a couple of hours, to a week. There are also wormholes which people can cross ( but there are only tow stable wormholes in the galaxy.). The tachyon sail was used by some precursor civilizations. Moss-Jurgat drives are in use by the old prithin confederation.

I hope you've got some bitch ass story happening there because this is the dullest sci fi setting I would never read a book about.

How good is my world? Do you like it Veeky Forums

oh

But humanity is not all sunshine and rainbows. There is amss genocide happening here. Humanity and the coalition commits war crimes that make the ones the japanese committed in ww2 look far more nicer. The quadrant is normally at war. The gaa turn prosoners of war into cyborgs and send them out on massive banzai style rushes to exterminate the enemy. The prithin federation is a rotting husk of what a great interspecies federation is like. They are fighting a millennia long civil war, withweapons that could make the death star look like a toy. Three of species have already gone extinct due to war.

Life is hell if you are on the fringes. Gaa border raids, Mass extermination, genocide. There are gaa slave soldiers, which are slaves to the gaa covenant. Guess what, they are given electro-shock collars, and forced to go on massive suicide charges, most wont survive their first deployment, hell, they probably wont make it to planetside. If they retreat, they will be electrocuted to death. Conscription rate is akin to birth rate, Gaa soldiers like to purposely bomb them and call orbital bombardments for fun. IF you survive more than one deployment, then you are considered a veteran.

Gailian military before Antal Reforms was quite common for the time period and was identical with their neighbours. Massed levies and men at arms gathered and scrounged together by local nobles who banded together to fight at local field was the standard for quite long and still is for multiple nations and groups. Poor showing of Gailian men at field, especially after failed campaign to relief city of Kecel and further losses upstream of Kecel river lead into coup by group of nobles lead by charismatic Antal Kovacs, a young noble of family of not much worth.

In the year after the failure at Kecel Antal Kovacs and the nobles gathered their forces and decided that the current situation with the army is not viable. North Gailia where they were based became the test ground for Antals Reformed Army. While the reform was still underway the latest defeat at Kecel happened to Kings army and hasty truce was settled between Gailia and Kecelians. The beaten Kings army marched back home, still five thousand strong with three thousand auxiliaries supporting them, they were stopped by Antals new troops seven kilometres from the capital Gailia. King demanded Antal to step aside and join his forces to plan new expedition to beat the Kecelians once and for all. Antal didn't move, while Reformed Army only had three thousand men and 400 cavalrymen. Kings army while superior in numbers was ragged and weary, while Reformed Army was fresh, but without first battle.

The coming battle was sound defeat to Kings army that lead into King and several of his nobles getting captured along with good number of soldiers in the army. With King in chains Antal Kovacs marched to capital and put himself to the throne with his noble supporters placed in important positions across the Gailian lands. In coming years after strengthening Reformed Army and beating few more rebellions the Antal wrote book called "Reformed Warfare and Organisations" that became the new guideline for Reformed Army.

cont

>progressive atheist utopia vs. evil theocracy
Pretty generic, desu senpai.

Those are some well-worn late 20th century tropes you're working with, and while that's fine for a setting, I really can't see how this is going to be any good as a book. I feel like at least a dozen guys have already written this book.

Gailian regiment is formed from 14 companies of 120 men each. Ten of these companies are formed from infantrymen and four formed from archers. In total that is 1680 fighting soldiers which are supported by several hundred assistants and other personnel of baggage train. As the regiment gets new soldiers as older soldiers retire or die due to fighting, remaining soldiers are shuffled to create full companies with equal number of veteran soldiers. The idea behind this is to make sure that the regiment doesn't have weak spots that might fail in the battle. Reformed Warfare and Organisations state that multiple regiments should fight in close cooperation with other regiments and force the victory through their own skill and superior operational mobility achieved by regimental structure.

Cavalrymen, engineers and other soldiers are picked during the training period to form their own corresponding units listed in Reformed Warfare and Organisations. These soldiers are not organized in regiments, but directly in companies due to their smaller numbers.

cont

pic partially related. 54 and 55 could represent the normal soldier in the regiment.

The strength of Gailian regiments is not only their training or way they operate is their standardized equipment. This ensures that every soldier is equal in equipment and can trust that the guy next to him is similarly armed and trained. Normal Infantryman having both spear and shorter close combat weapon along with their always useful knives and their kite shield. They are armoured with long aketon, leather greaves, gloves and kettle helmet. More experienced and longer serving soldiers have mailles given to them. This has lead to that some more experienced and older regiments have higher percentage of mailles on their soldiers with regiments like 1st or 7th having mailles distributed to every single soldier in regiment. Over their armour they wear a colourful tabard that makes it easier for soldiers to spot the men of their own regiment and company during the fighting.

For fuck sake I tried to keep this short, but my rambling skills took over. I tried to have the regiments to have bit of a Roman legion feeling, but not the size or how they function. Give me your opinions and if you think this is shit say it and shoot it down.

Pic related, Goliath here could easily be veteran soldier of some regiment. But instead of getting beaten like scrub by puny David, it would be other way around due to Goliath having hundred of his mates with him.

bump

I asked this several times but I want multiple opinions.
Are those mountains ok?

Well think how the tectonic plates move against each others and push the mountains up.

I made few paint edits. Red shows where the plates are moving and orange shows where the plates collide.

Am I supposed to make the middle part of the continent higher?

I do not know, it is your world. I suggest you to look on real world locations, for example Himalayas how they were formed and why Tibet is so bloody high. Then think how could I put similar geological feature in my world?

Would Space Dwarves and Space Dinomen be too ridiculous to kill the mood of a sci-fi horror dungeon crawler?

How could you be scared if you have a sci-fi velociraptorman and a midget space viking giving you backup?
Should change it from a "horror" dungeon crawler to a campy "horror" dungeon crawler.

Looks fine to me. As long as your mountains form ranges that at least vaguely correspond to tectonic plates, you're good to go.

Don't let the geography autists get to you; the real world is full of places where mountains do weird stuff.

>Implying all Space Dinomen are raptors
Racist.

Seriously though, "horror" is probably not the best way to describe it. But I do want a sense of dark foreboding and danger as they explore dead alien ruins.

There are races of godlike beings existing somewhere in the setting far beyond human reach, in another plane of reality or on the other side of the universe or something. These beings are capable of 'speaking' directly with reality itself (or God or whatever), telling it what to do so that they can alter the world or bend physical rules. They devised a language and system of writing and told the universe that this writing symbolized their words and commands, so that they can tell the universe what to do more efficiently.

Humans (or whatever races you have) can utilize these same symbols, tricking the universe into thinking these are commands given by those godlike beings, so they can indirectly tell it what to do. How much they know of this writing and how they learned it, how effectively they can use it, how widespread or secretive it is, etc, depend on the setting. Innovation could come from experimentation to discover new characters, words, sentences, etc. You could also have multiple different writing systems or languages created by different godlike races (maybe angelic and demonic beings, or some other dualistic thing) which affect reality in different ways.

This only really works if you have a blind idiot God who can't tell or just doesn't care where the commands are actually coming from.

Alternative: the Gods, angels, demons, spirits, or some other entity or entities capable to influencing the world are really big fans of art and calligraphy. Write a request for them to do something for you in an artistic or interesting way and they might just help you out. The greater the request, the more impressive you have to be; nice calligraphy might heal a cold, assassinating somebody or enchanting an object would require something special like pic related (depends on how difficult you want magic to be). If you don't have time for that, buy a ready made request made by a professional and offer it to the being(s) whenever you need to use it.

Hey /WBG/, I have a predicament. I'm trying to brainstorm appropriate cultures and civilizations the like, but I don't exactly know what sort of climate or geography of the world. Could you give me some rough estimates based on the locations of the landmasses?

When did taxonomy come about and how might I go about naming species scientifically without latin roots?

>trying to perform centuries of scientific discovery and genealogical classification in your personal fantasy universe
Stop, user. You don't want to go that far unless you're actually living there.

>tfw trying to work out a fantasy universe's metaphysics

More stuff to continue Gailian stuff, but in another part of the world. Still very wip as whole, but gives a skeleton to flesh out.

Three millennia ago when Dwarven colonists and adventures first crossed the sea and ventured far south in search of mountains and riches that were promised. But alas they found nothing expect sandy dunes and rocky plains. Dwarven caravan already in trouble and men ready to mutiny against their leader, they managed to stumble upon Great Sand River. River that crosses these plains and brings life upon the shores. Here they camped and decided to rest their weary souls for awhile over the winter months.

In their camp next to the river they actually enjoyed their lives. Building small houses from white granite gathered from the outcroppings and bricks made from the clay found from the river, the camp turned into a town. Dwarven caravan leaders, supported by their now content brethren decided to stay there naming their town White Haven, their new home in desert. Here five hundred dwarven laboured in coming years, building their town and actually thriving. During the first winter inhabitants of White Haven had visitors in form of sailors and traders moving downstream to unload their trade goods and buy foreign wares to be sold upstream. This was their first contact with outsiders.

Word of strange short folk settling next to the river and building a town made from white granite spread and so did rumours of riches and other plunder. White Haven grew into small trade stop and the population grew from five hundred to one thousand inhabitants, with dwarven section of town distinct from rest. This separation made the rumours spread even more and it was fourth year of White Havens existence that first proper band of bandits and raiders decided to attack. What is know is that these raiders were beaten terrifically one sided way. This meant that White Haven stayed bandit free for quite long time.

cont

...

The biggest reason why White Haven grew into metropolis it is now was fifty years after its founding was when twenty thousand people of Kalisti tribe sought safety inside the walls of the city. Kalistians had fled the on going onslaught far west and fled across the land in search for new place to live. Dwarven rulers of White Haven were reluctant to let them in, but in the end decided that they can handle the new influx of kalistian folk. In coming years the city grew heavily, kalistian and other humans outnumbering the original dwarven citizens multiple times. This lead into problems as kalistians wanted new power, they did outnumber the citys original inhabitants quite well and some were disgruntled to being relegated into status of manual labour for dwarven. Riots and strikes happened and dwarven rulership debated to throw kalistians away from the city. It nearly happened, but it was decided to provide kalistians and other humans a parliament of 30 men. This parliament pleased kalistians and others enough so that peace could come to the city. Afterward more members were added to parliament to represent new people and interests in the city.

White Haven or City of Towers as known by others grew bigger and bigger during its three thousand year history with 400 000 inhabitants currently. A capital of Kalistian Empire, still ruled by dwarven from the original expedition and governed by the parliament. Ruling large parts of the rocky plains and the Great Sand River.
If questions about these fellas or Gailians please ask.

>Not going full Toady and writing a program that can simulate the history of any universe you want to make
Its like you haven't even uploaded your consciousness in to a quantum computer yet.

>letting in a massive influx of refugees that overbreed and out-populate the native population

>it's called White Haven

Oh for fuck sake. I didn't expect this while I really should have. Well memed lads.

Dorfs do have built a Wall to separate their living quarters from humans. That is where the original part of White Haven was founded. As true to dwarven roots, walls were built. Currently the dorfs number around 150k in whole Empire with 30k living in the city. While humans do outnumber them, without dorfs the Empire would have fallen long time ago.

Instead of being useless yokels, kalistians were super useful for dwarven. Cheap numerous workforce to work the fields and quarries. No wonder they got bit upset.

Parliament has power to govern the Kalistian Empire, but the dwarwen rules descending from original founders have the ultimate power. So when their interest are at risk, they can influence the Parliament or even veto their decision.

Why does your Empire have a parliament? Is there actually an "Emperor"?

"An empire is defined as "an aggregate of nations or people ruled over by an emperor or other powerful sovereign or government, usually a territory of greater extent than a kingdom"

They just rule a lot of land and people. Calling it a kingdom would be an insult.

If you read the previous messages proper. The Parliament is to give some vestiges of power to the people and to move workload of doing menial governing to humans. It is most probably the reason why there hasn't been a successful coup to throw dorfs out.

It sounds more like a Republic with tinges of an Oligarchy to me.

>want to discuss setting for a game i'm developing
>if i discuss it and people praise me for it my brain thinks i'm receiving the accolades for a finished product beforehand and i lose the willpower to work or write it any further

i want to die

>drawing characters in my world
>accidentally click "Don't Save"

FUCK

Alright /wbg/. How did you decide to design your races?

How did you determine how many, and what notable features they would have? Are they Human-only, fantasy, alien? What helped you draw inspiration?

I decided what I wanted to include, then made logical reasons for them to be there.
Having a single Beastman race with a variety of subspecies to branch off of helped.

Probably too late a response, but how about having the water go sub-zero (but due to the magic it doesn't turn into ice), storing in clouds and then falling to earth in a single, massive drop (i.e. 10 kgs of water in a single raindrop).
Since it's heavier than usual, it would have a much higher terminal velocity and such rain would be like being hit by a cannon.

Ohh, I dig that. I'm going to use that for a zone! Cheers.

I try to look for different less known civilizations or groups of people. Instead of going with basic blood thirsty barbarians I would search for ancient German tribes and see if I can get something out from these.

For example for coastal tribe I looked into ancient frisians of frisii tribe. Then I thought about their technological skills and went through using grain into golds economy creation.

bump. Anyone have some good guides to post?

Most of good guides are in the OP post that is in early part of this thread.

>my race ideas start with a visual
>then brainstorm about their world/habitat
>simulate evolution
>the original design wasn't fit for the environment and they would have evolved differently
>the realistic end result looks all fucked up
he wasn't supposed to look like this

>fantasy setting
>evolution

And so that we get some easy and lighthearted discussion to this thread so that we don't have to bump this back from page 10 always, thread questions!

Pick one of your nations and explain followings:
>Bread, what kind of bread do they eat?
>Food, what kind of food they eat other than previous bread?
>Land, how much is there land and who owns it? How does the quality of land or terrain/environment effect the people there?
>Overhead, how are the common folk taxed and how do they live their lifes? What does basic farm have?
>Cutting corners, how do the common folk save money in lean times?
>Middlemen, how does the trade move in the nation? Directly from farmers to merchants or is the someone in the middle doing the transportation?
>Craftsmen, how are they organized and how do they charge their crafts?
>Textiles, what kind of clothes and clothing do the citizens wear
>Preservation, how do they preserve their foodstuffs
>Containers, what kind of buckets or bins are used?
>Mining, is there mines in the area and what do they mine there?
>Magic, does it affect the things above?

A lot of questions, but they will help in worldbuilding a lot.

Also take Grain into Gold where I took these guidelines. Read the thing, it really helps.

Draw mappe

Mappe

>start mapping for a mock MMO i brainstormed with a friend
>make it more realistic, keep increasing the scale, work on location/resource/size realism
>go too far
>and even further
>hundreds of hours of work and passion
>the map is utterly useless and irrelevant when it comes to its original purpose
>time to start over
has anyone had a similar experience?

I lost all my maps when my external harddrive died a year ago.

>not keeping a backup copy of your worldbuilding that you carry with you at all times

What word would use to describe fey from another dimension teraforming earth? This is high fantasy. The fey don't have a name for their planet, because there are no other planets or even stars in their dimension, so they don't think of it as anything but the ground. They want to make earth more like the fey world.

Pop into this and compare the latitudes to Earth, then adjust for your star's attributes, time period, etc
giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/

>giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/

Alternatively draw a grid on your map. Use photoshop's rulers as metrics for 10 variables of latitude. It doesn't have to be the usual pole to pole nor even symmetrical. You could start at 60 degrees north and end at 40 degrees south with each 10 'inches' in photoshop being 10 degrees of latitude.

Draw map, then design world/setup. Have basic and loose ideas in mind, but let the map guide you

Could call it "diagenesis".

Would it be reasonable for nomadic tribes to survive in the desert through the trade of metals, stone, and gems to local settlements?

Nevermind, apparently "diagenesis" is already a thing. Damned scientists and their predicable naming schemes.

Here's my opinion after a few drinks, so take it for what it is:

If the minerals were difficult to extract, yet highly valuable, I'd think that communities would form around them. It would be lucrative enough to have a larger scale operation working constantly. Perhaps if the resources weren't plentiful enough in one area, you'd have people
go from place to place in order to extract it. However, I don't think desert nomads would be lugging around a lot of heavy equipment.

I think the only scenario it would work is if the resources were easy to extract, but doing so would be dangerous (e.g. the desert flora or fauna is extremely lethal).

You have to take in consideration the availability of the resource, its demand, usefulness, and most importantly in this case, the difficulty of bringing it to consumer

Well, the concept is that the desert is the home to gnoll nomads you travel and hunt giant earth elementals that roam the desert. Larger ones move slow enough and are big enough that vegetation would grow on them, and the largest ones would even house an oasis on their backs. Over time, the gnolls figured they could break them apart to find valuable material and trade the excess to the local kingdoms for needed supplies, allowing the tribes to grow.

Eyyyy, just who I was looking for. Please give me some feedback on a map Just got to working on the rivers. Pls no bully riverpolice, I swear I have heightmaps. I'm basing it off a map I generated somewhere else.

What's going on there along the northern edge of the western continent where it looks like two rivers are converging at the coast with a little river bridging them together inland?

Lake carved out of the desert by a falling star. The star was taken out of there and brought back to one of the nation's capital ages ago but the settlement on the northern edge became an important city tieing the industry in the hills to the north of the lake to the ocean for trade and transport.

Oh, I see. On the zoomed out view, I mistook part of the coastline for more river.

I'm working on my very first homebrew campaign for when we're done with Lost Mines of Phandelver.

I'm going for a desert setting, focused on a city state built on the coast of a sea, over the ruins of the ancient NotEgyptian empire. The city is governed by a few wealthy troll families who keep the sea clear of pirates and tax anyone and anything that passes through their domains. This is basically Egypt so besides taxation the region also sustains itself from it's mineral resources, luxury goods such as fabrics, and agriculture. Artifacts from the old civilization are in high demand and low supply due to the ruins of their necropolises and temples being cursed and full of undead.
I'm going with Warcraft style trolls, so most trolls, especially those who live outside the city have a more tribal society. (the higher class trolls have completely let go of their roots in the name of profit and capitalism) Racially the city state is quite diverse due all the trade that comes through, with many people from around the known world settling there or just passing through.

The whole story of the campaign is that an ancient lich/pharoah from the old civilization has regained corporeal form and is raising an undead army to "retake" the old kingdom, and then the world. Typical lich king stuff I guess? The heroes end up at this city state to investigate the disappearance of a foreign noblewoman's friend, and pretty quickly shit hits the fan when the dead start coming back to life and attacking people.
I'm pretty happy with what I got so far, dunno if I'm gonna develop this into a bigger world or if it's just gonna be a one shot for this campaign.

>fallen star
I've been using that as a central theme to my setting for the past year, hearing the term is almost nostalgic.