Questions about settlements in one of your cultures: >what is the center of a settlement in this culture. >what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style >what are the fortifications of the culture like >what locations are favored for settlement but this culture >what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements
>what is the center of a settlement in this culture. typically some place where the families can congregate for social institutions, mostly a pub or inn >what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style most of the cultures adopt a utilitarian style. The abundance of wood allows for multi-room houses to be constructed. carved stone used to be used for fortifying some structures, but fell into disuse after the minerals in the rocks expaned and contracted in the cold during winter >what are the fortifications of the culture like fortifications are built to provide higher ground for defenders in the event of a skirmish. mostly sturdy watch towers made of wood for ranged weapons. there are also metal contraptions that when stepped on, make a really loud twang sound. these are sometimes used in a line at a certain distance from the town/village walls, that, when heard, prompt calculated javelin throws from behind the walls >what locations are favored for settlement but this culture i dont get what you're saying >what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements not much
Owen Cox
>what is the center of a settlement in this culture. House of Dreams - a theatre where people watch constructed mass hallucinations. >what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style Gondolas hanging from hot air balloons, Venetian carnival style. >what are the fortifications of the culture like The cities are surrounded by flying spore mines that release clouds of acidic spores on impact. >what locations are favored for settlement but this culture The notion of a location is pointless for a flying city, they're constantly migrating between different plantations to collect the crops. >what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements Pulled around by flocks of domestic gargoyles, prone to being overrun by fungal zombies created by spore infestations.
Logan Wilson
>what is the center of a settlement in this culture. Depends very much on the settlement. In the sticks it's usually the sources of sustenance; a fished body of water, fields and pasture, maybe a source of ore. In minor hubs it would be things important to the community; church, market, or fortress. In proper cities it will usually be a seat of power; university, palace or estate, guild hall or administrative center. Of course each larger step came from the smaller ones, and will have remnants of whatever first drew people to the place.
>what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style Half dugout if the ground is soft/sturdy enough to permit. Wattle and daub walls unless there's an abundance of stone or timber coming out of the settlement's subsistence routine. Thatched roofs unless slate is cheap locally. Unglazed, but shutterable windows unless it's too cold (then no windows) or too urban (glazed windows). One to three rooms depending on the wealth of the settlement and individuals. Indoor hearth unless you're deep in the sticks. Occasional outbuildings for agrarian estates or wealthier peasantry.
>what are the fortifications of the culture like Wood before stone. Walls surround a central fortress first, a central (usually market) district later, whole communities almost never. Outside the center walls, hedges, and ditches are used more for marking property boundaries.
When needed, towers proliferate a little better than walls. Again, wood before stone.
Landon Morris
>what locations are favored for settlement but this culture Valley states go for water, adequate soil, and protection from threats. It's rare that you get a perfect settlement on all three fronts. These are your typical agrarian medieval setting. However I might play up the proportion of landless laborers, "rich" peasants, and lesser nobility vs the baseline others use for convenience.
Broad plains leave a high degree of exposure, so I prefer to allow those to be dominated by nomadic herders. Usually there are seasonal cycles that develop (or eschew) community centers on a seasonal basis. So you can have a community coalesce around elk driving in one season and disperse or drive herds from one pasture to another in winter and summer. Depends a little on the climate.
Early into the mountains, pasturage for herders and some wilds for hunting become more important for a subset of landless pastoralists, though the bread and butter of the settlement remains fairly agrarian. Soil is poor enough that the farming population is capped, and has deep anxieties about splitting land too many ways. Hence the expulsion of many members of any given family into the shepherd's life. "Well off" shepherds might have flocks of their own, but to a large extent shepherds are hired to take care of a landowner's sheep on their claimed pasture (or rented or illicitly borrowed pasture). As elsewhere landless laborers do a lot of couch surfing and camping, but there are also some of the sorts of cabins and seasonal camps used by properly nomadic types squirreled away between settlements. Also worth noting that shepherds move seasonally but hug the outskirts of settlements.
Asher Brooks
Civilized mountain settlements are usually governed only half-assedly by their respective states, since they produce less food than the effort is worth. However if there is ore, timber, or a thriving meat market this arrangement can change and produce strife between the center and its satellite.
Higher or distant-from-civilization mountains work a little differently. They usually house populations fleeing from one or another sort of lowland strife (either agrarian servitude or plains raiders) and are a good place for ethnic and religious minorities to settle down because of the difficulty of accessing the area or deriving any real economic value from it. They tend to settle where they can fish, engage in or access riverine or pastoral markets, hunt (often half-wild pigs in secondary growth), and swidden some tubers (yes, I have potatoes in my setting). It's important here that it's hard to field troops in the region and little to be gained by doing so, but it's an okay life for a low sparse population.
Back downhill, coastal and riverine states rely on ample fish and trade. Usually these act more as city states than as territorial empires, but occasional exceptions occur. Coastal towns are more vulnerable to raids by other states than river towns usually are but have access to a much broader market. River towns usually only have access through the coastal towns, but have the added bonus of being able to send timber downriver and a more defensible location.
Finally, the swamps are sort of a second choice for the refugees of civilization (either from coastal raiders or what have you). Again, the subsistence strategy isn't great for propping up the machinery of state. But again the right kind of person can comfortably subsist and not be bothered. They'll tend to lean a little more heavily on hunting, small boats allow a little more mobility and contact with neighbors, and disease is a little more common here.
Mason Gonzalez
>what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements
That last chunk was a little long winded, but generally I don't really build the individual settlements around a larger culture except if there's a state interfering in order to impose some sort of uniformity. And my setting is balkanized as fuck, so that shit is uncommon.
My preferred method is to start with the subsistence economy, then look at neighbors and history afterwards to inform the features of the settlement.
Matthew Roberts
>>what is the center of a settlement in this culture.
Shunga-Kiyans build their villages near one of the rivers and streams that cross the Plains. a typical village is made up of several houses arranged loosely around an artificial mound, upon which the chief's house is built. a second, bigger mound outside the settled area serves as an altar to invoke the Spirits (or what's left of them anyway). since the Plains are almost entirely flat, Shunga-Kiyan villages don't have walls. instead, they are flanked by a handful of watchtowers and moats to keep animals away from the huts at night.
>>what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style
Shunga-Kiyan houses are round in shape, with wooden walls (insolated with a coat of clay) and a roof that is literally just a teepee mounted on the walls.
>>what are the fortifications of the culture like
watchtowers made out of wood with sail-like cloth to protect the person on them from sunstroke, and 5-6ft deep moats that can be fortified with rudimentary palisades when a village is under attack.
>>what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements
every village has its own wooden flagpole that represents the chief's clan and is displayed at the chief's home and the altar mound. some bigger villages (seats of the clan-chiefs) also display the Chief-Uniter's flagpole to show their loyalty to the one ruler of all Shunga-Kiyan clans. however, the Shunga-Kiyan people are way too scattered into thousands of little villages for the Chief-Uniter's influence to reach further than the bigger villages and his immediate surroundings.
Adrian Peterson
So how does my map look?
Dylan Lewis
Do you have multi-species societies?
Not talking about humans and dwarves/elves/orcs, I mean species that are very different and have much different behavior and physical abilities/limitations.
I possibly overuse it, I have an addiction to having my setting's people utilize the things they have that we don't rather than having things exist for kitchen sink. Right now I'm thinking about some towns and companies having troupes of smarter gorillas for manual labor or mercenary work but it raises a lot of risks considering gorillas are like 6-15x as strong as humans.
Andrew Williams
Look at the thumbnail. Kind of dim and muddy. Little beyond borders that don't tell me much.
Josiah Ramirez
I read Sudenlend as Sudetenland multiple times before I caught it, those sort of names should be avoided.
Joshua Gray
After threatening with an all out war and following enslavement or the choice of assimilation, the lamia tribes will in the near future surrender to the human empire. The snake warriors will be enlisted into the human army and the humans will expand into the lamia territory. The lamia common folk is then, as part of the empire, allowed to move freely within.
There are also harpyies living as pets just like dogs with the people. They were actually highly intelligent but after they rose up against their slavemasters, they were bred to be animal-like dumb and docile. But I heard on the black market you can still geht the more intelligent breeds.
And also there are fairies, who fled the south from energy-vampires into the empire and work as anything light related.
In the long term I also want to ad monkey people to the empire as they are expanding.
I plan on making the empire global with all kind of species/races.
Blake Rogers
The culture in question is (very) loosely based on that of the Phoenicians/Carthaginians
>what is the center of a settlement in this culture. Ports/harbors. Cities are almost exclusively port or coastal settlements and tend to only maintain enough land to feed themselves/reach quarries. They're notable for extensive city planning, with forecasts on how and when each settlement will expand. >what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style Typically limestone as it is relatively easy to mine and use. The super-rich prefer marble, and the semi-rich will paint the limestone to look like marble. They're experts at building multi-level structures and make great use of apartment-style buildings. The villas of the rich tend to look halfway between a palace and a fortress. It's all pretty square and blocky. >what are the fortifications of the culture like Extensive. Settlements tend to be far apart and connect only via sea routes, so city planning begins and ends with the walls. Most cities have a stone wall, a palisade in front of that, and ditches beyond that. Some have secondary walls inside. >what locations are favored for settlement but this culture Anywhere with a good port and a nearby, defensible hill. >what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements City districts are segregated and strongly enforced. Merchants live in one place, peasants in another, rich in another, etc, etc. Locals and visitors require travel passes to move outside of their designated zones. This sometimes applies to minor nobles.
Luke Powell
Rate my shitty Inkarnate map.
Hunter Harris
Province borders are bit too blocky and straight. In reality they would follow natural landmarks like rivers or similar.
Plausible looking. What is the scale?
Luis Price
No idea. Just know that those aren't going to be the only settlements, just the biggest named ones.
Brandon Phillips
Sum up your setting in 2-3 sentences for me. What is the general idea?
The names seem fine.
William Evans
Its a fantasy setting with a classical era/Mediterranean feel to it. The northern area up to the mountain range was originally controlled by the humans, until a pillar of crystallized fire smashed into the the center and created that big grey ashen desert, at which point the Elves took over the eastern half, and the human consolidated and control the western. The southern desert are owned by the Sobki, a race of crocodilemen, and Gnoll nomads wander the desert, Dwarves come from the north across the sea, and the city of Inash is a trading port of there's, and the cities in the south-east are footholds established by a flightless avian race from the east. The dragon heads mark where giant, radioactive dragons rest.
Wyatt Davis
>radioactive
Uranium dragons?
Camden Diaz
...
Nolan Edwards
They rest on leylines, feed on magic and radiating an aura that warps the landscape and mutates fauna into smaller draconic creatures. The ones that survive the change, that is. Tribes of worshipers gather in the area, and hunt the smaller drakes for blood and meat in their rituals, causing their warriors to turn into dragonmen over time.
Gabriel Long
that's pretty cool
Angel Morris
Since I always loved stories about mariners sailing uncharted waters, finding islands nobody ever found, getting lost, etc, the world I'm currently building has a pretty much infinite ocean where whole islands can just appear and disappear, relocate, etc. Takes a person of specific skill and luck, or an enchanted map or something, to find the same island twice.
How retarded is that?
Noah Garcia
I'm kinda running the setting on rule of cool. I've got a few things that tries to make reasonable sense, but for every one of those, I get vampire bat Goblin rebels, giant earth elemental-hunting Gnolls, lawful Ferengi Dwarf super-merchants, Ammuts, and undead ape Wendigos.
Andrew Rivera
I'm trying to develop a world that is one massive underground. It's absolutely endless, there's no surface, only tunnels.
However, that raises a few problems. 1) How should gravity work? All in one direction, or make it radial, pushing from some "center", or maybe have gravity ores? Which option is least retarded? 2) Digging leaves behind a lot of displaced earth... and in enclosed tunnels there ain't nowhere to put that earth. Is law of mass preservation (or whatever its called) that important?
Aiden Moore
If your settings are endless literally an endless underground with no surface, then it's clearly a physical impossibility to begin with. Asking about fucking gravity is STUPID if your setting is based on a fantastic, imaginary premise. It's not a fucking speculation, physics don't (and should not) really be a bloody concern at all.
The second question is a little more valid (at least the "where do you put the earth" because your players may come across instances of new tunnels being dug, and you will actually literally have to explain where the material goes. That said: presumably, there are going to be natural caves and shit, right? Underground chasms, holes, lakes and shit? Some impossibly deep dark chasms could be used for dumping some of the materials, though it may result in situations where questions of logicstics may arrive. Better to probably state that majority of the underground spaces were made by some unknown forces or civilizations and leave it at that: have contemporary digging limited in scopes. Or or have magic matter-devoures. Worms that eat soil and rock, or magical furnaces that literally just make shit disappear. Mass preservation, much like gravity, should not be something you need to worry about.
Seriously though, I wish people would start to realize and differenciate when is speculative fiction an appropriate approach, and when it's not. What the fuck even gives people ideas like that they should answer fucking physical laws when their settings presumed on completely impossible fucking scenarios to start with.
Mixing speculative and fantastic fiction together generally does not go well. I am baffled why so many people consistently insist on doing it.
Jayden Sullivan
If it's as I understand it, then gravity in the way we understand it doesn't work at all. I'm not sure exactly how to proceed.
This is basically a universe that's only underground right?
Andrew Scott
Nobody calls One Piece retarded.
Asher Perry
yes. so I'm not asking how it WOULD work, I'm asking how it SHOULD work. As in, which idea would look best.
I thought about devourers, but that feels hamfisted. Something goes somewhere, always. Anything else just exceeds my own suspension of disbelief. It's not that I'm trying to write speculative fiction, it's that my suspensions of disbelief is firmly grounded in it.
Meh, I decided I'll have extremely precious "veins" of quicksilver-like substance running through the underground. Veins are made of something insoluble, but whatever minerals fall into the "quicksilver" quickly disintegrate providing heat for the caverns. This also helps me explain existence of lava - which is spills of from the broken "veins", as well as frozen caverns, where no "veins" pass.
Asher Cook
Anyone use Legendary Games "Kingdoms" pdf? Is it worth the $15?
Jeremiah King
I'd say just go for normal gravity. I feel like normal gravity is one of the reasons why caves and shit are cool.
Caleb Hernandez
I am likely to get some flak for it, but I am looking for some broader critique.
Started a dev blog for a game project to be set in an old D&D setting I made a long while ago. Primarily dumping setting info as I flesh it out. Though full time work limits time to write.
Anyone interested in shitting on my work?
>tumblr link
Maple-toast.tumblr.com
(Also there's cute dog pics)
Hunter Wood
There's only two dog pictures. I feel ripped off.
Christian Smith
I'm trying to work out what a "generic fantasy setting" could be in my setting.
I was the GM for a campaign set in a world where the magic was slowly, but surely going away. After the end of the campaign, my players were divided between playing in a modern, magic version of the setting or playing in the era in which magic was still present. In the end we settled on playing a campaign where my players are players playing in a generic fantasy setting (by that world's standards). It got pretty meta.
Off the top of my head I can think of the following things: -Using the same base races as everyone, liberally inspired by folklore and mythology. (I've already determined the race trifecta of the setting: humans, dragonkin and beastfolk; all based on the lore of the setting) -Cribbling mythology and ancient texts for monsters. (In this case I guess I can just reuse the old campaign's monsters and add some more over-the-top ones) -Copy-pasting real (in-setting) cultures and placing them in the setting with minimal alteration or oversimplifying them. (The dragonkin's culture is copy-pasted from an antique civilization's, but simplifying the byzantine caste hierarchy into a Nobles/Mage-priests/Peasants setup) -Using misconceptions as fact. (In-setting, blood was just another way to power magic before it went away, but in the "meta setting" it's presented as a vile and powerful art distinct from the usual magic) -Using a stapple overall setting, in our case medieval europe. (The meta setting is largely based on the part of the world my players are familiar with) -Mixing up mythologies for fun and profit. (The meta setting mixes the living gods of an antique civilisation with the cosmology of another, for starters...) -Medieval stasis, lack of guns. (Unlike the actual setting)
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff. Any ideas?
Gavin Gray
I only recently started the blog, but I do have eight pictures of my pooch. Perhaps it hadn't fully loaded?
Asher Wood
Screw the minutement >Institute for life.
Aiden Russell
>what is the center of a settlement in this culture A small temple dedicated to the worship of the World Mother.
>what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style Typical homes are square. The foundation is made from stone bricks, mainly granite and gneiss. Walls are most often made from pine, but oak and crabapple are also used. The wood is either left as is, or painted white. Roofs are made from varnished wooden shingles, and are pyramid-shaped. Windows are made from small, thin strips of wood that slide sideways on two wooden rods, placed at the top and the bottom of the window. Temples are stonen, with polished gneiss shingles. Temples also tend to have a small, separate tower, about twenty feet high, with a conical roof. Temples have no windows, except for a small hole at the top of the roof.
>what are the fortifications of the culture like The local people of power tend to live in "castles"; they are actually more like small stone forts than castles. People tend to live in very small communities and since the cold plains have few predators that would endanger humans, fortifications are not too common. That being said, a local leader amassed quite a bit of power by raiding settlements about a century ago, so some older towns and isolated temple-monasteries do still have stone walls.
>what locations are favored for settlement but this culture Rivers, hilltops and hot springs. Trade with the south has become vital to the people and rivers help the distribution of goods to a wider area. Also fishing provides sustenance to a large portion of the population. Hilltops are just easier to defend. Nothing special about that. There is quite a lot of geothermal energy in the area, so hot springs are not rare. Some towns have sprung by them, for quite obvious reasons.
>what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements Duckboards function as pathways and roads in towns.
David Diaz
>what is the center of a settlement in this culture. The Shrine-Temples to the City Patron Deity. >what are the homes made of, what is the architectural style The main city centers and upper-class places are made of marble and greek columns. Military installations are stone, with more simplified columns for support. Lower class are wood-plaster houses, small stone structures, or huts on the city outskirts. >what are the fortifications of the culture like Heavy stone construction, with a heavy emphasis on having the local heights. >what locations are favored for settlement but this culture They like to build on top of hills and mountains with easy access to the sea via a harbor. Hills and cliffs provide natural defense, while allowing them to overlook the all-important sea. >what are some other bits about the design of this cultures settlements Both poor homes and religious buildings use white wash to make their homes look nice, any houses near the shoreline or owned by wealthier or even noble owners typically enjoy excessively bright and garish color-finishes, often with illustrations depicting family history or invoking the God's wrath on potential burglars.
Ayden Young
Howdy /wbg/, I've got a question I'd like some recommendations on: how many races is too many?
I'm in the process of building my own setting, as I imagine most everyone else is too, so I thought I'd reach out. I dislike how even classic D&D and similar games allow characters to choose from a wide range of playable options, but I'd rather not limit my players to just humans. At the moment, I've settled on three as a solid number of options, including ever-present humanity.
How many (playable) races do you like to have?
Jack Long
If they are indepth and complex enough, you can do as many as you have time. Which means something like a wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire for example. Work your way down the article and fill everything with your own lore and do that for every of your race. Thats the way I do it.
Michael Sanders
And new map. With new names because fuckit. My players haven't seen this yet.
Jace Smith
>How many (playable) races do you like to have? I personally think that races in absolute majority of fantasy are just glorified cultures anyway (and for good reasons, because having races really divergent from humans creates a LOT of problems). So as far I'm concerned, you can completely cut out the middle man, having just humans with some really interesting cultures and perhaps some minor ethnical physiological differences, and you'll serve your world-building a lot better than people who invent tons of races who are either generic, not fleshed out, or result in inconsistencies.
I know I'm actually a minority (though vocal one, apparently) on this. I just don't think races are generally well handled in most fantasy, and I think they tend to actually detract rather than add.
Focus should be on interesting cultures, and interesting CHARACTERS. Though it's not a perfect rule (TES handles this fairly well, for an example), but in majority of cases introduction of fantasy races has a tendency to actually distract from establishing good cultures and good characters, as the racial distinctions tend to lead to stereotyping and flattening of both.
If you insist on multiple races, then I recommend having them admitedly close to each other, with the actual racial differences being superficial, and focusing once again on cultural complexity and variety instead.
Liam Baker
Not a bad idea at all, user. I believe I shall use your method in the future.
Correct me if I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, but it seems as though you're inclined to write a from the perspective of a people rather than a statbook entry. I do believe that a variety of peoples could be made following your distinction, without necessitating that they all strictly speaking be humans, on the condition that the playable races are humanized.
The playable races that I spoke of in my previous post are, besides humans, quite human-like and often interact or live among one another. That said, I have already added several regional cultural varieties for these peoples to allow for differentiation that is not along racial lines. Races that depart from humanity by any extensively noticeable amount should not be playable, in my experience.
Xavier Young
>but it seems as though you're inclined to write a from the perspective of a people rather than a statbook entry Yeah. I world build for both writing and roleplaying purposes equally, and I believe that roleplaying is really an interesting activity if it's treated as a psychological, character-driven exercise, where rules and stat-systems exist solely to better accommodate what really matters: the characters and related stories they produce. It may not be a common point of view.
>I do believe that a variety of peoples could be made following your distinction, without necessitating that they all strictly speaking be humans That is basically what I was proposing at the end. I'm just not entirely sure what is the purpose of distinguishing them as humans or non-humans though. And while I don't think it NECESSARILY harms the narrative, I think it's a potential trap and that it can easily have negative unintentional side-effects. Not only for the DM, but possibly among the players too. Trying to drive players from excessive abstractions, stereotyping and meta-gaming is already difficult, and adding races as another (largely unnecessary) idea to form these negative assumptions may make things even harder.
Again, all of this can be handled with dignity. I'm still struggling a bit with the point of it all. If you have races that are all essentially human, what is the purpose of their distinctions again? I mean: they might not necessarily harm the experience, but how do they really benefit it? That is actually a question, not a rethorical one. I'm interested in your thoughts on this.
Easton Cooper
And just to make things clear: I actually do have non-human races in my world. Or more precisely ONE non-human race, and it's actually a human variant, a population of people who went through some genetic modifications. And even then, they are extremely sparse in the settings and play minimal role, and I would be very hesitant to let anyone play them. I included them because their altered physiology allowed for some potentially interesting possible imagery and small cultural plays, but I really restricted their presence to being essentially a rare anomaly of the world. Their function is mostly just to provoke and challenge my players and their tendency to form misconceptions and mis-assumptions.
Elijah Davis
As many as you need to fill the archetypes you want represented in your game / As many as the narrative needs to work.
Wyatt Walker
How much 'Science' do you put into your Science-Fantasy setting, if you have one? Is your Magic based on science or is your science based on magic?
Aaron Cooper
>I know I'm actually a minority (though vocal one, apparently) on this. I just don't think races are generally well handled in most fantasy, and I think they tend to actually detract rather than add.
THIS THIS SO MUCH
Nathaniel Nelson
I call my settings science-fantasy for lack of a better term, but I don't actually have magic in it. At least not the fantasy idea of real magic - magic in my world exists in the same way it exists in real-world, as part of cultural customs and beliefs, a way to look at and interpret world more than anything else.
Maybe I'm mislabeling my settings when I call it science-fantasy, but to me science implies speculative element and settings with consistent physical laws not entirely different from real-world, while fantasy implies mythology-or-folklore inspired aesthetics and tone: which applies to my world.
Pic related, one of my main sources of inspiration.
Dylan Murphy
I am one of the OP's for the Veeky Forums space opera, and I did the Ploraxians.
Cooper Perry
there's a type of gold-colored pigment that becomes both waterproof and extremely flammable when mixed with a lipid and left to dry. a character uses it to rig a councilwoman's ball gown to burst into flames at a dance, to make it look like divine punishment
Dominic Cook
>/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General
Yeah, sure, I need help with something- quick n' easy:
Is there any meaningful way of crafting unique & advanced weapons and armors using animal parts beyond just the traditional manner of tanning hides and tying animal bones/teeth/claws to sticks and rocks?
I'm trying to go for a situation akin to monster hunter where Animal Parts can be just as useful as rare metals, but I can't wrap my head around something better than smelting, sort to speak.
Any advice/input?
Jordan Smith
>take animal bones >cook them to make glue >acquire linen >layer that shit >use glue to harden it and make it stick together >slap a layer of leather on top of it >have linothorax
Christopher Jenkins
What is the hardest part for you to do in worldbuilding?
For me it is comming up with consistent and intresting architecture and the technolocical level of general engineering.
Ryder Jones
>If you have races that are all essentially human, what is the purpose of their distinctions again?
Aesthetics, for one. The image of a colorful bazaar with unique people is an image I've grown to love, for the oddities one might experience there. Being able to push the boundary with what can appear is always enjoyable.
Yet therein lies a trap: the familiarity that the characters should have, which the players lack. Hence why I wish for most non-human races to be mostly human-ish, and (as the other user advised) well-described. Different enough for description, without losing the sentiment that these are in fact groups of people with their own cultures.
>I mean: they might not necessarily harm the experience, but how do they really benefit it?
It depends upon the creatures in question, I should think. Including all manner of unnecessary/bizarre and inhuman beings detracts from the world by leading the players astray. Adding peoples who are unique, but remain recognizable, allows for immersion into that place that is not our Earth. So long as they are well-written, of course.
Juan Reyes
keeping track of the various cultural costumes... being a visual thinker and a scatterbrain is not a good combination
Don't forget about scales. You can also use scales for things.
Oliver Bennett
>What is the hardest part for you to do in worldbuilding? For a long time, it was making a map of my world. I desperately struggled with that for about two years, almost entirely halting the world-building process during. I could not marry the fact that I wanted a fairly realistic map, and the fact that I already had invented certain types of environments necessary for the overal feeling of the settings, which were not always making realistically sense. Also, I really wanted a good topological map, but I could not for the LOVE OF GOD figure out how to make one. It got so far that I've learned how to use software like GIS and OpenJump to help myself out of the slump.
In the end, I had to give up on realistic map and ended making some improvised, rough hand-drawn shit I could at least tinker with (pic related) but my god was it a painful compromise.
Also, my general lack of visual art skills makes my life a nightmare. I have a lot of visual images about the world in my head, but I can't for the love of GOD actually draw them for shit. It's frustrating as fuck.
Ryan Miller
Its a perfectly reasonable thing to do, settings can be based on absolutely silly shit (magical space wizards) that break all kinds of rhyme and reason, yet still want the setting to feel like its grounded in reality despite the premise.
Its about expectations, suspension of disbelief. People can accept that the premise of a massive cave system, seem cool. But then they will ask questions that seem reasonable and a good setting might be as whimsical as it can be, but also be internally consistent
Caleb Wilson
Names. Hands down, no contest, other cliche; naming stuff is a bitch.
Justin Carter
Same for me, took me fucking years of hand-drawing time just to get a acceptable map on paper. Even then it was still shit. Now I just use gimp for multiple layers and simple copy-paste-shenanigans.
Chase Wright
No, it's not and no, it's not. This is a whole lot of misconceptions that people who do not understand basic narrative theory think. The problem is different. Problem is mixing narrative approaches that FUNDAMENTALLY GO AGAINST EACH OTHER, and consistently projecting poorly rooted assumptions into your work (or work of others) simply because you are blinding by following some dumb stereotypes and don't have basic literacy.
Michael Richardson
Naming is actually really fucking fun once you start realizing that it's not about finding random words (or making them up), but that it's rather about telling stories through your choice of terminology.
Caleb Peterson
>be history student >get really into learning the etymology of place names >tfw nonsense gibberish names suddenly start to make sense
Angel Butler
Yeah, and applying that to world-building, combined with basic understanding of narrative theory, is really damn fun. Names tell stories: both diegetic (e.g. stories from within the world), and also nondiegetic (e.g. things that are not automatically part of the world, but you still need to communicate them to players).
For an example, just the act of choosing a fictional word instead of one based in english (or your native language) can already automatically tell quite a lot: apparently this place was named by a culture that spoke different language than is the most common current language. You are already communicating that the place is special - exotic, maybe has a very long history, or maybe it's currently settled by exotic culture.
And then you ask yourself: OK, so what was the language of the culture that named it? Perhaps it was similar to some real-world language of a culture that may have been my inspiration: perhaps it was a nomadic culture, so maybe I should look into Mongolian for inspiration for interesting words, and consistently base all the names this particular culture established in Mongolian. And then, once your players notice this consistency, next time they see a mongolian sounding word, they immediately can tell: OK, I know, this place has been significant for that particular nomadic culture! That means they must have once lived here (even though currently a different culture lives there): and suddenly you are teaching your players history of the word just through fucking names. It's great. So much you can do with it.
Blake Johnson
leaves you room to name places after real-life or fictional things if you're good enough at twisting those to fit the setting.
or like I did, just name a town after Tomi in Romania because it fits the language of one faction and the theme of the place (former iron production town at the outermost margins of the civilized world)
Joseph Long
It depends on the animals you've got available, to be honest.
Savages in the Pacific islands would use the face/snout of a sawfish to make a badass sword.
Cameron Cruz
>Savages
Michael Ortiz
Well what else are you going to call a bunch of half-naked cannibal tribesmen wielding spiky weapons?
Joshua Sanders
>Savages! >barely even human!
bad ass motherfuckers for one
Christopher Price
"Some Pacific Islanders" works, and it doesn't insult both them and yourself in the process.
Samuel Hall
Since there's another thread up that's asking a similar question I won't repost the exact same one here, but: What is one event in the last 100 years that impacted or even greatly changed (a part of) your setting significantly?
Elijah Sanchez
"Please don't point that thing at me, sir?"
Cooper Collins
Here, let me rephrase the question since I think a little was lost in my vague wording:
I have a lot of animals and monsters with fantastical qualities: swimming through lava and sand, elemental breath weapons (fire, ice, hot water, acid, lighting, magma), regeneration, spell reflection, burrowing through soil and rock, EATING rocks for that matter, and so on and so forth.
I'd like some ideas, techniques, or inspiration on how to make fantastical fantasy equipment from the bodies of such wonderful monsters... That doesn't does amount to, "tooth spearhead", or "dragonscale jacket"... I've got it covered quite well with industrial & domestic uses: ship hulls, medicine, oils, shoes, etc.. But with weapons and armor I come up blank.
So, yeah- that's my current issue.
Jack Jenkins
The Drow found The Bow. Certain weapons fell to the world thousands of years ago. They were found sporadically, and those that held them carved their people into history. They made you better at killing, but more importantly, they made you better at leading.
In my setting, at least in one large region, the Drow do not worship Lloth, they simply to not worship or revere Corellon as the High Elves do, and are inclined to the sea more than their High kin. The Throne of the Elves has been occupied by Drow and High Elves at different times. When they encountered humans, the Drow sat in it, and they went to war to subjugate the humans. They lost badly. Many generations later, a Drow Queen finds the bow, and seeks to reignite the old flames and reclaim the honor her people lost so long ago. She finds the bow amidst one of the many jagged isles of the Sea of Teeth which separates Humanity from the ancestral home of the Elves. During her plotting, she is killed in an absentminded act of a godlike being the Drow revere, known as The Kraken, an escapee from the elemental plane of water that is treated as a Great Old One (a warlock player of mine made his pact with this being).
A succession crisis sees a relatively benevolent High Elf cleverly ascending to the throne. His ambitions, to mend relations with others, are anathema to the Drow, and so their de facto leader takes them from the homeland to settle elsewhere. The Drow become a pirate faction for hundreds of years as their new Pirate King plots and searches for his former master's lost ship, and cargo.
Easton Thompson
Five hundred years later (we can never escape the trope of incompetent Drow), my player, an elf enslaved by the Drow, makes his pact with The Kraken, and is given the power to escape. He burns his ship near shore and escapes to the mainland. The ship whose captain had just rediscovered The Bow and was eager to race back to his king. The Drow are raiding the coasts now like never before, with no regard even for the lives of High Elves. It's maybe two months later that a High Captain discovers its location. In the next session, my players will attempt to beat him there, this gambit taking place only days after the new King of High Elves, crowned only days ago, announces plans to make war with the Drow, a plan announced to calm those who feared a new war against humans that the King's failed rival promised if he took the throne, and to appease those who thirsted for war enough to support said rival.
This war could prove disastrous for the High elves, and indeed humanity itself, if this relic finds its way back to the Drow again.
Noah Morris
I really like your map, but it always bothers me when a region of a continent looks like an animal and all regions are named after animal parts. Presuming the area was settled over time, why would a society know the whole shape of the land they were settling on and be able to give each part thematically appropriate names?
Jack Kelly
>The Sea Sledge A Sledge is an aquatic leviathan monster that roams the sea lanes in order to devour ships. It doesn't do this for the crews' meat (mostly), but for the cargo itself. They feed off the gold, magic items, and wood of the ship itself. They're called sledges due to their huge, sledgehammer like heads.
Sledges can strike the water with their tremendous heads, magically solidifying the water as they pass through it. Not freeze, mind you. Solidify. As though they cause raw kinetic energy to hold the water in place, making natural barriers in the way of ships so it may prey on them more easily.
One can remove a bone from within their skull that apparently controls part of this process. By lowering it into a molten metal, one can imbue the metal with similar powers, though the bone is destroyed.
Jaxson Bailey
Something that swims through lava could easily be fashioned into fireproof/resistant armor, or perhaps whatever organs produce oils/skin/etc allowing it to do so could be used to anoint all varieties of equipment, though I assume you hae this covered with things like dragonscale jackets.
Maybe a beast with some kind of long horn that collects static/ambient magic energy/what the fuckever from the air and uses it as a weapon or some kind of bolstering power, the material from the horn could be fashioned into weaponry that absorbs spells to deflect or reflect them, particularly effective against lightning style attacks.
Aiden Nguyen
>Well what else are you going to call a bunch of half-naked cannibal tribesmen wielding spiky weapons? Redneck meth/bathsalts users?
Lucas Cox
There are examples of that in d&d although magical properties often fade awhile after death without further enchantment or alchemy. Flail-snail shells can be used to help block spells for awhile after the snail's death and can be enchanted into a full spellwarding shield, it can also be crushed to use to make a robe of scintillating colours. You can actually remove the organ that beholders use to levitate and use it similarly yourself. You can also have all manner of properties for different organs and fluids, cave-fishers have flammable alcoholic blood that is used in some dwarven ales.
Resistance to elemental or other damage could obviously be transferred in some degree to armour or a suit made from the resistant creature's skin or other parts.
For weapons you could have them maintain various abilities of the source creatures; paralysis whips made from alchemically cured tentacles, gusts of wind from mystical feathers, minerally attuned weapons that can pass through some metals. It might help you get ideas if you could actually describe how the fantastical qualities of your creatures work, that is what specific body parts are involved.
Jace Myers
Do you feel like there's something in the nature of your setting that has to change if you decide to use Psionics as opposed to more traditional Magic?
Levi Lewis
Metaphysics have to be fundamentally different, but metaphysics vary greatly between settings anyway. "Psionic Potential" also tends to be a genetic/inherited thing, rather than a learned thing.
Wyatt Scott
How do metaphysics get involved?
Gavin Mitchell
Source of psionics, nature of souls or lack-there-of, what fuels what, etc.
Landon Lewis
Fair enough. Anything else? What do you do to get in the Psionics mood?
Xavier Jones
Personally, psionics have no place in my setting. "Psychic powers" are too open-ended and anime cliche-laden to work well.
Blake Lee
>tends to be a genetic/inherited thing The same is true of some arcane casters like some sorcerors that get their magic through dragon heritage.
Excuse me if I'm just not aware of something in the material but how does psionics differ from magic on the topic of souls?
>"Psychic powers" are too open-ended and anime cliche-laden to work well. You could say the same about "magic", it's more about how you fluff and crunch it. Actually, it seems to me that magic has kinda moved ahead in popularity over psychic powers in a lot of recent anime.
James Green
I'm only referring to psionics as a general concept rather than some edition of D&D. I usually consider psionics to be abilities gained from some intrinsic nature, like "I have a big brain" or "I've been thrice reincarnated, and am approaching nirvana". They tend to have an unclear cost:effect ratio and most users have some "theme" that their powers follow. The first example that comes to mind is A Certain Magical Index.
Jaxon Jenkins
>abilities gained from some intrinsic nature, like "I have a big brain" or "I've been thrice reincarnated, and am approaching nirvana". They tend to have an unclear cost:effect ratio and most users have some "theme" that their powers follow. I mean, again I'd argue that you can say the same about magic with sometimes unclear cost/effect all sorts of sources for magic and plenty of examples of specialised/themed magic; time mages, fire mages, druids, summoners, illusionists.
I'm by no means trying to insist that you must include psionics in your games but merely pointing out that it seems to me many of your complaints about psychic powers are things you're arbitrarily applying to it while there are likewise examples of them being applied to magic.
John Martinez
It's all a matter of perspective and fluff. >system A has well defined rules, with clear input:output and means of cultivation >system B is highly mysterious, with individualized power that varies in scale greatly "Magic" and "Psionics" are just two themes that can be applied to either system, depending on personal taste.
Matthew Thompson
I'm in a similar boat to you, when I am mapping my world I cannot do other world building at all until it's done.
William Young
>You are already communicating that the place is special - exotic, maybe has a very long history, or maybe it's currently settled by exotic culture. I get what you're saying, but this is still a pretty big oversimplification. Place names tend to stick around even if the culture that originally named them doesn't, and they also don't age the same way the rest of the language does and can retain archaic grammatical features that native speakers don't use anywhere else or even withstand, or at least be affected differently, by sound changes in the language so that even indigenous place names can become nearly incrompehensible to native speakers after just a few hundred years.
In Europe most place names are Celtic in origin, and many of the others of Roman. This doesn't mean that places like Eastern Europe and southern Scandinavia have less history, it just means that they haven't experienced the same amount of cultural displacement since.
William Harris
How would I go about making a more Conan/Hyborian age kind of setting, but is also distinctly fantasy.
Colton Morris
The geography does not really look like a bull, actually. I mean even in that map it's a bit of a stretch to see it. And it's even worse when you realize this particular map is in isometric view and stretch it out to correct shape. The reason why the landscapes are named after bull parts is not because the people knew what the shape of the land is, but because it's connected to a very old myth of one of the old cultures, that believed the land was literally formed of a body of celestial Bull who was sacrificed: his muscles became soil, his bones into rocks and mountains, his veins into rivers and blood into sweet water etc... The myth has it's origin among nomadic people who lived by herding bovine animals, and the myth was partially a "justification" for their regular acts of animal slaughter on which they depended (we must kill an animal to live just as an animal was killed for the world to exist kind of thing).
When later first settled civilizations emerged around the Cot, they frequently hired members of the nomadic cultures as scouts and cartographers (because unlike the settled people, these nomads were skilled and experienced travelers), and these semi-integrated scouts projected their religious beliefs into naming conventions they used when exploring and mapping out the lands. The body-metaphor has also further advantages too, as it actually gives somewhat of a convenient orientation guide and relative location intuitions.
Kevin Rivera
What do you mean by "distinctly fantasy". To me Conan is already distinctly fantasy.
Ryder Perez
>What is one event in the last 100 years that impacted or even greatly changed (a part of) your setting significantly? The bull land guy here: The Battle of Elements was the last major shake-up of my settings. It was a conclusion of what could be considered the quintessential "battle between good and evil stoy" of the previous few centuries: end of series of wars that started when nomadic hordes from east invaded and destroyed the largest and most populous kingdom of it's time, established their own reign over it, and started violently expanding.
Things got so bad that basically all of the remaining major countries had to band together. The battle of Elements was concluding battle of this events, in which the (formerly) nomadic Goh-Sum were stopped by joined armies of most remaining relevant realms. It was more of a stalemate than victory though, forcing a tenacious peace among all involved parties.
Of course, in reality things are a lot more complicated, and frankly, the peace treaty itself may have been one of the worst things to happen in recent history. My world is fueled with war, and the stalemate situation it has been in since the Battle actually makes things worse for commoners and just slowly corrodes all existing kingdoms.
Pic related is very outdated (a lot of the terminology, datation etc. has been changed since, but roughly illustrates the history of Goh-Sum expansions and the Great Slave wars.
Brody Perez
I'm in the process of writing a race of mountaineering historian-ascetic moth people for my new campaign, but am hung up on how to make their method of communication fresh and interesting.
Currently, I'm caught between two possibilities. Either they
1.) are generally mute around humans, and communicate to them via gesticulation/body language and writing (while using feeler gestures and chittering to talk amongst themselves)
2.) transmit ideas and feelings to people via empathetic telepathy.
