What are your favorite things in worldbuilding, Veeky Forums?

What do you absolutely love to include in your settings, and see in others? What is it that scratches your worldbuilding itch, and makes your settings feel complete? What would make your settings feel dull to you, if it were gone? What are your favorite things in worldbuilding, Veeky Forums? Post here, I'd like to know what appeals to other people in settings, and I'm sure we could all use the inspiration.

It could be anything, a specific race, a trope or theme, a geographical location, a specific historical event, a species of animal, plant, or monster, a type of artifact, or even a recurring character, anything at all. If you want, you can talk about your favorite implementation of it, too.

> For me, it's Steppe Nomads. There's just something about an entire culture on horseback, moving from place to place each day, herding goats and raiding settlements as they travel. That each man, woman, and child is a master rider and skilled with the bow, forever wandering, with nothing but what they can carry, the clear skies above them, and the sweeping endless plains below them, pitching hide tents under a star-filled night sky, that really speaks to me.
> I also enjoy unstoppable, civilization-ending barbarian hordes, and the two really do go hand in hand, which pleases me tremendously, and really spices up my settings.

I enjoy it when a GM takes something old and spices it up in some way, e.g. I had a campaign were Wargs were made to all have low level psychic power so they could communicate telepathically and pick stuff up with telekinesis whilst still being four legged. They were essentially a nomad race as well come to think of it, moving from place to place in small tribes.

Amazons in modern settings.

I personally think amazons are wasted but when done right they are pretty interesting and go beyond that "lel muscle women" shit

Indian mythological influence, especially in the nature of combat. I have a boner for chariot combat.

Grand empires and international conflicts. Also, scheming trading nations that are neutral to both parties of a war and end up profiting off the conflict in the end.

Crazy cycles (day/night, seasons, months/years) and of course interregnum planets.

Comfiness and economics. I want to know how the people of nation x take their tea, what trade route the leaves traveled along, and what factors affected its price.

Mountain dwellers. It's almost always done horribly unless you design them specifically to have an affinity with the earth, like dwarves.

Most of the humans in my setting survived the biblical flood mixed with Stephen King's The Mist by going up to the mountains.

When it was all over, one particular group was too afraid to come back down. They later found the entrance to some subterranean caverns filled with strange flora and fauna. Most of which were edible. From there they started to dig and carve out a home for themselves.

Unfortunately, they dug too deep. Another one of my favorite tropes.

Natural disasters, or in general disasters out of control of the population of the world, with no cause and nobody to blame.

I like including civilizations shaped in some way by natural disasters of the recent past, like a large volcanic eruption sending a kingdom on a downward spiral towards disappearance, or an earthquake and following tsunami making coastal towns disappear and sending refugees everywhere.

I also like placing cities on sites of ancient natural disasters like meteorite craters, volcanic eruption, battles between ancient behemoths, whatever, where evidence is clearly present in the geography of the place.

Extremely wealthy, greedy, decadent and disgusting merchants, like Jabba The Hutt, for example. I enjoy it when there are trade houses composed of such merchants, and actively scheme to further their own, self-centered goals, strict monopolies, and selfish price setting. It's even better when the political environment is so unstable they are able to field their own mercenary armies and outright tax the peasentry over everything, to the point that peasants essentially pay them for the right to exist.

They make such compelling villains, and there is an almost infinite variety of potential quests and quest hooks that can be setup around them, their goods, their wealth, and employees.

I've got an entire race of them in my seting. They're called Vishet, or Visheti, and are essentially obese, vaguely humanoid slugs dressed in expensive fineray. They are utterly obsessed with hoarding valuables and furthering their clan' influence, and their own standing in society. Their mannerisms are atrocious and their stench abhorrent, but they've always got such a wide selection of dirt cheap, quality goods, and are so persuasive, good with words, and polite, you canay help but trade with them. They aren't neccessarily evil, but they will do absolutely anything to make a profit.

Nonstandard currencies. They don't even have to be the universal currency of a setting.

Right now I'm experimenting with some of them myself. Debating tea-bricks as magical tea or porcelain coins as the primary currency of my gonzo culture.

I have a big weakness for including some kind of poorly understood background element. Something so enormously insurmountable that if it is even visible the only thing to see is the very tip of the iceberg.

Kinda like an Atlantean Civilization beneath the waves that never actually comes up, except in that the frequent and deadly storms above their territory are the reason shipping lanes are the way they are.

Or a massive, uncharted nebula at the edge of colonized space, either in of itself an entity or itself colonial territory of a hyper-tech civilization from another galaxy altogether, which considers current life in this galaxy to be an anthropological study, not much more.

I have a weakness for settings without currency, but shit it's a hassle to actually go about it in play.

In my current game I just gave up and now let my players buy shit in copper weight.

Unless you're playing in a setting where very little trade occurs, there's no reason for there not to be currency. The same hassle you have trying to roleplay barter systems is the exact same hassle that real, early humans faced with those same systems.

They fixed the problem by inventing currency.

Late Bronze Age Levant and surrounding regions, before the collapse, had a shitload of trade, but they didn't really have formal currency as such, certainly not among private citizens.

I have a soft spot for the fear of balance.

Balance is immobility, it's the eternal stagnation and boredom. So in my settings there are always characters or gods which goal is exclusively or mostly to break balance and create change through destruction.

I liked the rings in Tyranny for some reason, just made sense.

I think I've had a few of those before.

>the world outside was poisonous in places due to chaos magic spills
>lots of the monsters had human-like parts on them
>seasons are strange and stars aren't reliable
>party scholar could read the runes of old civilization but didn't understand their meaning
>massive underground dungeons with weird magical items and walls that smelt like blood
>turned out to be an old nuclear vault with rusted walls
>logs that the scholar read indicated a nuclear war had knocked the planet out of its usual tilt and messed up seasons
>radiation was mistaken for magic
>three of the group left because "muh fantasy"

I was into it until >radiation was mistaken for magic

That's just dumb. I probably would've left too.

Also these two contradict each other.
>party scholar could read the runes of old civilization but didn't understand their meaning
>logs that the scholar read indicated a nuclear war had knocked the planet out of its usual tilt and messed up seasons

>What do you absolutely love to include in your settings, and see in others?

Steppes, salt flats, high altitude plains, Himalaya-esque mountains, nomadic tribes, tectonicaly active regions full of hot-springs, strange geothermal formations, alcaine or acidic lakes, karst regions: basically anything that isn't forest or temperate greenlands.

Ruins of advanced civilizations that did not end in a fiery nuclear inferno or some kind of immediate, massive disaster, but rather just... gradually withered away - perhaps as a consequence of on-going gradual ecological changes, their descendants returning to more primitive lifestyle and eventually forgetting their past.

Ruins of great cities and structures that don't serve as dungeons or nests for monsters, but rather form a natural part of the landscapes and serve merely as a reminder of the fleeting nature of human civilization.

Anachronisms (at least anachronisms from our historical perspective): early medieval or even older societies, but gunpowder and rifles existing, that kind of stuff.

Immortal people that went insane, gradually lost their touch with reality, generally developed in a different direction than most people anticipate or imagine themselves doing if immortal. Basically the idea of immortality as presented by Borges in the story "The Immortals".

Complex religions but no "real" gods existing.

Cultural diffusion and diversity: I don't make one religion, I make one broad religious idea and then come up with about twenty different variants, interpretations and fusions with other religious ideas.

Paradoxical or opposing interpretations of the same religious or philosophical ideas.

Masks and cultures that incorporate masks in strange ways.

Sense of melancholy and age about the world, the kind of "dawn of human kind" atmosphere.

Those are my personal obsessions.

Sorry, didn't explain it well enough. What the scholar had been seeing was fragments of things like adverts and the like. Nothing that made sense to him. But the logs were complete, so he got more out of it.

As for the magic is radiation, it worked because magic was a force of change, and radiation caused change. Fire was the control of radiation to cause heat. Killing spells were radioactive blasts. Healing was stimulating wounds to start repairing, while killing infection.

It all worked in the context. The 3 guys just got annoyed because they hadn't worked it out before the reveal (it had been much more subtle for us for most of it).

In a sci-fi setting I'm working on currency is mostly in the form of "fine china," a pearl-like nanotech substance that if left on its own will compound its own interest, but is crazy difficult to mass-produce.

I love it when normally exotic weapons are commonplace and the norm, but typical weapons are rare and exotic in the setting. I just love the idea of a group of khopesh wielding guardsmen being mystified that the foreign mercenaries the sultan has hired wield straight swords, because it turns a usual trope on its head. It's essentially just a trope reversal, but I still think its neat.

I feel that katanas are overrated and khopesh are far more badass. I'm also partial to the flamberge and the arquebus.

It's always seemed weird to me that races other than humans always seemed to have just one monolithic culture, so I like seeing elves/dwarves/ect with as much cultural differences between nations/clans/ethnicities that humans have.

Khopesh are the shit.

>I feel that katanas are overrated and khopesh are far more badass.

Medieval kingdoms with chivalry and they actually adhere to the code

I'm just sick of all the cynical game of thrones shit where oaths are just words that nobody follows. Shit like that is just too overused.

Balkanization. This applies both to scifi and fantasy. I dislike blobs and love to make my maps look like the HRE. (inb4 someone whines about Habsburgs and Luxemburgs)

I like it when a setting's resident Evil Empire uses a nonracial, Romanesque slave labor system. It's rarely ever used, and when it is, it either isn't realistic or implemented poorly.

I just love to build. I have many different worlds, from the Heart Engine of the Universe about mechanics that tend to a giant engine that generates space and time (inspired solely by lag on a kindle replacing long strings of letters with just one of such, obviously time is a little messed up), to a world consisting of multiple planes including one that's on the inside of an infinite cylinder (gravity going outwards from the center and it hosts the most prestigous and best schools of magic). I even make a few races every so often.

>that Shigurui arc with the rapier
Great stuff.

You're welcome.
Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. There's a nation of honorable knights that's fallen to bickering and throne games but one of the main characters is desperately trying to restore honor to his people. It turns out the magic system depends on keeping your pledges.

Truly, you have patrician taste, friend.

>uncommon world shapes
>fungus forests
>gnarly baroque primordial swamps
>underground realms
>at least a dozen playable species, and I'm not talking human or elf
>the holy trinity of obsidian, bone and chitin

>the holy trinity of obsidian, bone and chitin

I like and agree with most of what you said, but I don't understand this bit. Are you saying that obsidian, bone and chitin should be the primary or holy materials of crafting and weaponry, or like actual holy materials?

I just like them and was speaking informal.

>trade empires
>grimdark slav villages under siege by horrid monsters

> All-knowing, blind, tortured, and shackled Gods that are powerless to interfere with anything they see really rustle my jimmies. Especially when their name has been forgotten, and they are forced to forever hold up an enormous burden of some kind that's necessary for reality to continue existing, like the world, the heavens, or the weight of reality itself. Bonus points if they exist in their own prison dimension, guard some kind of artifact, and were the original benevolent Creator of the world itself.

> Scientifically accurate river formations.

My homie. Can you share some resources you've read that helped you understand economics in the context of world building?

Besides, you know, textbooks and econ lit, I'd recommend Mark Kurlansky's books Salt and Cod. They're engaging histories of vital resources.

Depraved myths and origin stories and stuff.

Oh, and fey always have to be extra weird. Like, alien as all fuck. Alien values and morals, alien appearance, alien cultures. I try to reign it in a little, but in my campaign, the fey on earth are sort of understandable but the feywold is a terrifically weird place full of very strange creatures. Elves in my setting are descended from various fey creatures, including giant worms, piles of trash, rocks, other weird shit.

Sanderson a shit

>actively scheme to further their own, self-centered goals
>able to field their own mercenary armies
>outright tax the peasentry over everything, to the point that peasants essentially pay them for the right to exist.
>They make such compelling villains
You've basically just described a government, user. Those are the local rulers.

Yes, but the difference is that Trade Houses coexist and effectively control the government through bribes, blackmail, and intimidation. The government technically rules, but the Trade Houses are the real authority, and operate as a corporation as well as an unofficial government.

Define 'depraved'

Amoral. The kinds of things thought up by pre-civilization, or even pre-societal minds. Sexually perverted, ultra-violent, lacking in sense.

I too am interested in these stories

> Wizards. Not just any Wizards, but Wizards with a pimping sense of style, a flair for the dramatic, and an absolutely smug, supremely self-assured, and boisterous personality, and an intense curiosity for unique things and experiences, along with giving no fucks. The kind of Wizards that go about using obscenely powerful spells nonchalantly, not noticing peasants half the time, talking to the mightiest Kings as if they were the lowliest pauper, building enormous magically fortified monuments and bigass towers because they can, and twisting the laws of physics, nature, and morality for the hell of it. Those, are my favorite kinds of Wizards.

OP here, bumping because this is a good thread.

I did something like this with my setting. The moons of the planet are the four 'lovers' a real man should have.
>The Wife, under heel and obedient but loved
>The Shrew or Wild Women, fiery in spirit and a constant fighter though fucked
>The Cuck, not sexual but part of a relationship. Men are only rightfully castrated under this moon
The Catamite, male but acts like a submissive and feminine being. Beloved above all.

I know this sounds really fucking fetishy but it's really supposed to give insight to the badass Conan warrior society in the setting

Regular calendars are boring. Regular planets are boring. Cubic planets and square orbits FTW.

Ever read The Broken Sword?

>Did you see those warriors from not!Hammerfell? They've got straight swords.
>STRAIGHT. SWORDS.

Your world has four moons? Interesting. What's the culture that designated them like?

Kek.

Yep.

>Four Moons
Man, your tides must be something else.

Not if they're Phobos-style decorative moons or three distant co-moons and a gas giant primary.

depends on the mass

Nope. Is it avout weird fey? I actually don't read fantasy. I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, and I read American Gods, and that's pretty much it. I actually read hard sci-fi almost exclusively, which is where a lot of my concepts come from.

Love
>Huge worlds with plentiful faraway lands, even if those lands haven't been worldbuilt in detail
>Quasi-medieval worlds that are more scifi than fantasy
>Altered weather, season, sun, etc cycles
>Altered celestial body mechanics (like planets really close to eachother)
>When people really don't understand the monsters and artifacts and abilities but they make up their own detailed incorrect explanations for them, like an enchanted sword being akin to an M16 being dropped into the stone age
>Historical records being incorrect or vague
>The further from the player's location, the more magical and obscure things are said to be, but they aren't actually magical or obscure, explorers are just drama queens who exaggerate what they see and hear
>Long distance trade
>Mundane fantasy, like taking the time to create vegetables and gems that don't exist in real life but have no magical properties
>Real animals, substances, etc being viewed and treated completely different than they are in our world because of their interactions with fantastic things, like the importance of silver in a world with vampires
>Divided religions who disagree on how something should be practiced
>Locations, people, and events having multiple names

Turn off
>Taking the standard dwarves, elves, orcs, and throwing them each into a human culture and calling it unique (well MY dwarves are greeks and my orcs are slavs and my elves are aztecs!)
>Creating direct clones of human cultures without adjustments
>Low amount of cultures/nations
>Magic for the sake of magic (the magic missile kind) that doesn't have a profound effect on culture and warfare
>A wizard did it / A god did it (unless its done tastefully on a grand scale like LOTR)
>Living gods still intervening and creating
>The Moonshire Glade / Darkhollow / Goldenpeak naming structure

I can agree with almost all of that, especially the "living gods still intervening and creating". To me, it actually really removes most of mystery and interest from religion.

Not sure what you mean by the "naming convention" bit. "Goldenpeak" seems like a pretty logical and natural name to come up with.

I'm not that user, but do you have the source for that pic? Lately, I've been searching for inspirational temple art.

Culture variations in other races than humans.

And when monster races consider themselves just as much at the center of their universe as humans do. It's a small touch, but I love when monsters call each other different things than humans.

Post or Pre Medieval settings. I especially love the era around neo-Imperialism and Age of Exploration. I think they both lend themselves nicely to adventures more, and the Bronze Age makes for nice epic adventures.

Magic being beyond comprehension. Having a neat list of spells and an orderly system turns me off heavily. It robs magic of its magic. A lot of times, I'll specifically avoid adding crunch to magic or magical things and leave it to narration. Things like Fae or Demons are not something you add stats to for victory in combat, they're something you out think or trick or compel.

I love confederations of city-states with dubious loyalty to some Emperor. From the outside it appears like a solid mass, then you look at the internal politics and find a swirling mass of constant civil wars and cloak and dagger acts as an nearly powerless figurehead tries to reign them in so they can get something done.

>I'm not that user, but do you have the source for that pic?
That picture in particular is from a place called "Hearst Castle", California (I shit you not): a highly eclectic, neoromantic mansion build in 1940's by an american millionare. The design of this particular spot (the Greek Pool) is a mixture of Greek and Middle Eastern aesthetics.
If you want something similar though, I suggest looking into Medieval Arabic baths (try googling Hammam).
I think I personally got the picture from some random thread around here and had it in my inspiration collection for ages.
Sometimes I just spend hours fucking around google from article to article about ancient cultures, then randomly google names of temples, cities etc... and save whatever pictures I find interesting.

Thanks user! I'll be sure to look into that!

I enjoy it when nonhuman races have different ethnic groups, not just cultures, but outright different subraces. It adds a lot of depth to a setting.

Explain. This idea intrigues me.

OP here, bumping again. This is good stuff, keep it coming!

I just don't like how smug his fans are desu senpai.

I was only really talking about in my own setting.

>The Catamite. Beloved above all.

stealing this o lol

I like settings where the world is hopelessly stronger than civilization and other lands filled with strange people are just rumors. Coming in from a massive globalised empire from a """""Adventurer's Guild"""""" to kill a bunch of shitty ass kobolds that dared to set up shop near people is really uninteresting to me.

Super high fantasy that's entirely focused on the cool factor also feels really shallow. Oh boy the fucking 12 year old girl thats really 200000 years old can piss explosions on the 48 different types of piss-weak unimportant elemental dragons.

Dumb magic systems also piss me off. "Super special humans are born with a rare force known as magyyyyckah derived from the [Insert shitty boring other dimension/supernatural force here]"

90% of sci-fi design fucking sucks. Random glowing lights, ugly multicolored jumpsuits, pointless lines and armor that does fucking nothing.

>Animal people

>Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and Glhpeisns
(I literally had to go back and edit the name to make it more generic.)

>Steampunk technology in a fantasy setting (Fucking motorcycles in world of warcraft)

>My humans are based off of X, my dwarves are based off of Y, my elves are based off of a mix of Z and Q

>Humans are the baseline and every other race is defined by their traits relative to them.

This kind of devolved into random bitching but whatever.

I want in on this magical realm.

For me its gotta be tech from a lost civilization.
The idea of using technology we dont know how works, or where it is from, or who made it makes me diamonds

Celestial politics. I put way too much thought into my pantheons.

Well my idea of amazons would mostly be of course a society of women but I would say their true strength would be more in knowledge and spirituality. Yeah they still have warriors but in a modern sense it would most likely be a sort of religious movement even men could join but it does put an empahsis on women (high priestess, the great godes, Earth is our mother) mostly they would use brainwashed men to do the heavy lifting while the real heroes of this amazon society fight battles of politics and religious influence.

I just love building relations between people.

Even if it's the same humans-elves-dwarves-etc, variety of who judges who in what ways is fun.

>when your society is pre-steampunk

HNNG
N
N
G

I really like seeing Tribal Elves more than regular elves.


I feel like Tribal elves are a hell of alot better in most cases.

My setting had a hand held cannon like this. The players had to figure out what it was and how to use it. Then I let a player run a game, he demanded it be in my setting, and he threw in flintlock pistols and airships. I was so mad. I'm still mad! Fuck!

any setting where an effort has been made to avoid monocultures is really what does it for me.

'cool trope turned on it's head' also has to be done artfully, if it's cohesive and internally consistent it's fantastic (mtg settings usually tick this box, irrespective of the rest of the creative direction).

I also majored in Bio, so cool creature design that isn't 'lolspikes everywhere' scratches the worldbuilder itch like no other.

>lost civilization
You know, I like running settings that are the opposite.

There is no lost civilization, you're members of the first, or one of the first civilization, everything that came before you was less advanced than you. There is no ancient evil to awaken, all evil is brand new, or at the very least has been there since the start and never went to sleep.

Divisions occurring on an increasingly smaller scale, whether in culture, race, religion, ideology, politics etc.

One group which are constantly persecuted and attacked by their neighbours due to strong cultural differences/old grudges/misinformation/other reason. This same group is responsible for holding back a force which would otherwise destroy the rest of the world if left unchecked, but is not known because of how well they do so.

Tribes that live in places which are considered utterly inhospitable. The environment in which these tribes live has a considerable and noticeable impact on their culture.

Well thought out systems that affect the world in meaningful ways. These can be regarding the economy, ecology, astronomy or geography. Of these I really love when the ecosystems of different areas are seriously thought out with the proper evaluations for the populations of certain animals and monsters and where they sit in the food chain.

>impossibly huge worlds
>infinite even
There's nothing that makes me harder than a world of endless opportunities.
You don't like your life? Just pack your stuff and get going. At some point you will find what you've been looking for. The fountain of eternal youth? Sure, just cross the Silver Mountains five years of walk from here.

The jedi have lightsabers, The brotherhood of steel has power armor, the green lanterns have power rings. Im in need of some ideas for a good thing to give my [knightly order]. Also, do you have an order type thing, whats their iconic weapon, clothing etc?

Thats cool as well, yeah.

>Also, do you have an order type thing, whats their iconic weapon, clothing etc?
Not really a knightly order things, but:
Red Riders, a powerful and large slave hunter guild customary wears bright read masks made of clay distinct cloaks colored with octopy ink that gives them a rather specific black/blue-ish color.
The Moonbrigade, an elite mercenary group wears characteristic items colored in cobalt blue, threaded and/or lined by silver thread: depending on the individual wealth of the invidual member they can range from simple scarfs (usually tighted in such a way that they cover one shoulder) to entire cloaks for the richest - most show-off members. They are well known for use of the "flutes", very distinct, long and very narrow rifles renowned for extreme precision, often decorated with and nacre engravings (often depicting images of sexual nature) on their barrels and stocks.

The members of the Tagran, ethnic group in the semi-nomadic Goh-Sum empire are known for their long, light rifles with ceramic barrels, which they equip with very long bayonettes, essentially make them double as both rifle and a naginata-style pole-arms. They are also know for refusing to wear armor and usually entering battle in very light clothing, usually wearing turbans and scarfs over their faces.

Pic related is my primary source of inspiration when it comes to this kind of shit.

Patrician taste, user.

Have you considered warhammers?

explain please user I am attempting something along those lines in my setting.

I'm also a fan of good ol ancap trade houses that fuck with everyone.

>any setting where an effort has been made to avoid monocultures is really what does it for me

I know those feels user... mono cultures just don't feel 3D and have substance.
see and love this shit

basically I like it when other races and other races characters feel real and not some bullshit 1 dimensional snooze fest, that being said I do enjoy a certain amount of specialization but it has to come with proper reasoning, inter racial politics and trade also peaks my interests.

In sci fi I like a bit of hardness in ship design and weapons and having ships that cruise around close range broadsiding in space is just lame and unimaginative, the use of fighters and dogfighting in space looks awesome but I do not approve.

TL:DR basically autism

>Cataclysmic natural disasters
Some of my favorites include the Biblical flood, and the Long Night from ASoIaF, more the latter than the former. I shamelessly included something similar in one of my settings, and it was a large factor that contributed to the fall of the not-Romans.

Turns out a generation-long winter wreaks havok on even the most advanced middle ages society, even one that has magic on their side. No amount of conjured fire can save a city and the nobility from thousands of impoverished, desperate, and starving peasants.

>Human ethnicities that don't exist IRL
No idea why I get such a boner over this. It's a delicate act trying to create new groups without crossing the threshold and making them an entirely new race instead.

Currently, there's a group in my setting called the serbaasi. They're very much human, but they average between Sox and a half and seven feet tall, have gray to grayish-gold skin, and light colored eyes. Culturally, they're inspired by ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, namely Sumer.

They also have a tendency to be trannies because of their weird ideas regarding gender.

>chariot combat

My krishna

My (evil) knightly order has exclusive access to lightning magic due to a pact with the relevant god. Also tanks and various war machines powered by the aforementioned magic.

In one very self aware setting Veeky Forums helped me develop, the formal currency is "Handwavium," a magical purple glowing substance that is said to be able to reshape reality if the holder wields it correctly. Unfortunately, nobody has any clue how to use it because magic essentially boils down to screaming rote-memorized words in a now dead language.

So the "fire bolt" equivalent is literally "FIRE HIT HARD" in the ancient language, but nobody actually speaks it.

Oh, and the world's Handwavium reserves are stored in a bank run by goblins that is built around the entire inner rim (the world is shaped like a record or compact disc), and daily transactions are done with personal checks that are remotely monitored and updated by the goblins.

All of this to eliminate the problem that currency should weigh something.

Nothing is more attractive to me than gods being tulpae.

Essentially, it has developed from a "what if" scenario regarding the real world.

"What if ghosts are real, not as spirits of the dead, but instead as clouds or fields of something cause interference with the electrochemical processes involved in brain function." or contextually, it would be like remembering something in real time and having a faint version of it superimposed on the world you're actually seeing (think Bioshock's blue outline people memories).

You're "remembering" a memory someone else left there, implanted on the physical space usually due to its intensity as the result of a traumatic event or explosion or electrocution or whatever.

This ability of the mind to imprint on physical space essentially creates nonmagical psychic capabilities, and through restatement and reach, creates new, fully formed entities altogether.

tl;dr, the gods are "real," but made of people's thoughts, feelings, and memories. They are more powerful the more people believe they exist.

Personally, I like high fantasy that's at an early 1920's tech level.

Oh god yes. I've been working on a setting that's premise is basically high fantasy based on early 1900's America instead of being vaguely medieval Europe. Prohibition, dark elf bootleggers, the after affects of The Great War (against demons), the Elvish mob building up to a gangwar with the orc families in notChicago, kobolds living packed together in Chinatown slums. I just can't figure out how to get tommyguns to work alongside wizards and guys in armor with swords without any of them overshadowing the others.

My non-evil empire use one of these.

Bankrupt people and Prisoner of Wars become slaves. Slaves work for the state, and pay their debt doing so. Slaves can also buy their freedom by joining the army and earning citizenship and land. A slave could also be rent from the state by merchants for menial work.

It was mostly community services.

I suppose the weather.

It's such a strange thing, but I think weather is really what makes a setting finally feel complete. There tends to be a bit of sterility unless you let it rain, or get cloudy, or so on. (Though obviously if your setting is intended to be a sterile/dead sort of place, unchanging weather is one way to show that.)

That's less in Veeky Forums and more apparent in movies/games, naturally, but it's one of those little things that's overlooked sometimes.

You could say that the guns shoot tiny fireball spells instead of actual ammo. So its effectively a magic item, but they are pretty weak

Yeah, it's about a secret war between the elves of England and the trolls of Finland, both of which have their own alien kind of mindsets - the elves are studied more deeply, their main thing is they're immortal but have no souls. Oh, the Norse, Irish, and Christian mythos are all active at the same time. Elves recoil at the sign of the cross, but the broken sword of the title is delivered by the Aesir. It's not fully explained how they all coexist.

And Poul Anderson writes hard SF too, Tau Zero was about a ramship and the Big Crunch. It really shows here, especially in how visceral the big viking battles are, characters constantly replacing blunted swords and wearing out shields and armor, then occasionally turning themselves into birds to get a better view of the battle. It holds together really well, trust me.