/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

What would the economy be like in a world with necromancy?

Consider that it would require very skilled labor to produce, and the undead resulting from it would be durable enough to work for maybe 12-15 years.
I propose that the undead would be owned by the relatives of the deceased, or if nobody wants to, or can afford to, raise them, the state can raise them after some time.

They wouldn't be good for war or any mental work, but they can farm, dig, move stones, work in construction, stuff like that.

Write down some policies on how they should be used, the different political movements to liberate the zombies, to attack other states for zombies, etc.

How you can miss so many environmental ques is beyond me.

>-On same latitude you have the rapid and stark shift of Stranglethorn vale into the dry steppe of Westfall next store and the less stark but still off transition of darkshire and Elwynn. Darkshire has kind of a humid pseudo jungle feel to it but Elwynn and Stormwind never felt say, Mediterraneany to me.
Un'goro is a specifically managed micro-climate for use as a testing pot by the Titans. Same reason there's a similar area in Northrend. It's climate is artificial.

The only issue with Elwyn and Westfall's border is how abrupt it is. prairie and forests exist neighboring one another in the real world in several places. Texas, for example.

Duskwood's got a slightly altered version of Elwyn's tileset. The only major differences are the cobwebs in the trees and the glowing eyes in the bushes and dying vegetation. These all exist because Duskwood is cursed, not because of the local climate.

>-Winterspring is same latitude as Tristfall glades and Lordaeron but is wintery.
Winterspring is also at a really fucking high elevation. It's something like halfway up Mount Hyjal, the largest mountain on the planet while being far enough from the World Tree that it doesn't get any of that sweet, sweet druidic magic falloff.

Hmm... for the time being the civilized nations are at peace with eachother (tensions are brewing though). Monsters are always a problem but not to larger settlements or those with a proper adventurers' guild. However, the so called "monster races" are beginning to create their own civilizations and the hatred between arcane magic and "Orcs" runs deep as always. The civilized races live in a Medieval society however relics from the past civilization have allowed for greater crop yields and safer harvest so famine rarely strikes so I'd say things are great but hardship looms around the corner. Also adventures might mess it all up by activating the greatest work of the ancient civilization. Haven't gotten to specifics yet.

Because I'm tired and just realized I'm being an ass: The regions in Azeroth don't actually make any real geographic sense, you just chose poor examples.

It helps to remember that the different regions were literally carved out by Deathwing while he was still the Earth Warder as opposed to having developed naturally.

>>How comfy is your world?
It's a world stuck in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, populated by people destined to destroy and rebuild it again and again to serve as a prison for Satan. So pretty comfy.

posting again looking for more advice since the last thread died
hey /wbg/ this is my first time ever really seriously putting a world together, so I'd love some input on the initial draft of my mountains and rivers. the northeast is going to eventually be a pseudo-Europe with the southwest being pseudo-Africa
what do you think? where did I go right/wrong and what should I add/remove?

They are made of brick where they are tall, and basically artificial hills where they are not.

Pretty cool. Is it large enough that it creates disturbances on the surface when it feeds, from the water stirring up?

I'm not sure that little chokepoint you have in the middle would be enough of a divide to prevent more cultural homogenization. It'd be very easy to sail across. Your mountains and rivers look great though. My only question is that some of the rivers look like they just kind of end. Do they terminate in lakes?

>How comfy is your world?
While a lot of people live perfectly normal and comfy lives, the world as a whole is not comfy. Its undergoing the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Commercial Revolution, and the Enlightenment at the exact same time and within the time frame of a century or so. Of course it isn't all happening in the same place and since creation was recent (a little over 2000 years ago), the Renaissance isn't really rebirth, its just birth.

Sounds interesting, though odd. Historically speaking each one of those had to be in place somewhat before the others could flower. How do you reason them all happening at once?

Yet there was a cultural divide between Persia and Greece, and Carthage and Rome.
They were very close too, and definitely exchanged people and goods for a while.

Well, the Scientific Revolution going into its later phases, it had started as a period of advances in astronomy owing to the world's rings, so they have about the same amount of knowledge in that field as the mid 20th century in real life. This jump started the equivalent of the Age of Sail, something that would soon allow the fast transport of goods and labor throughout the world, one half of the Commercial Revolution. The other half would come out of the island colonies that began several centuries earlier. By then the colonies were acting essentially autonomously and had a very private system of property considering people were given individual plots of land during the colonization. The system was adapted by small, poor states along the coast of the nearby continent. Not only would they stay afloat from the profits, but soon several states merged into a confederacy that could more effectively exert its power, now primarily economic. Nobles across the world became convinced by the new capitalists to privatize the lands within their holdings, filling their coffers with greater rents in the more rural areas and taxes in the more urban ones. To justify this change in politics, the supporters of the market system employ the ideas of Renaissance Humanism and the Natural Law aspect of the Enlightenment, ie Humans, when meeting in the islands, they were all used to different systems of government, but eventually drifted toward the same, thus that system is the most natural AND Humans, being created specifically by the gods, and having such dominion over the world, are its rightful rulers, therefore, the most exploitative forms of government and economics, capitalist systems, are the most in line with humanity's place as a species. This is really crude right now, and i'm probably going to get further in the nitty gritty later, I might even move the time period forward to the revolutions that are probably about to take place.

That's a lot longer than I expected.

Separated from the fractured and warring principalities of humanity by the Nohoch Mountains and the great Kavir Desert is the greatest empire that is was and ever shall be (or at least that’s what they tell themselves and any foreigner that asks). The oldest of the Elvish realms, there was a time when the rule of the Shahenshah of Parishahr stretched over most of West Giperboreyia north of the Nohoch Mountains (the nomads of the northern steppes never bowed to the Shahenshah in Tyspwn). The current ruling dynasty is the third to hold the imperial title, though they claim descent from the first dynasty. In part because of the age of their civilization, the Pari don’t pay much attention to humanity, or to anyone else for that matter. The era of the warrior Shahenshah has long since passed and the current Shahenshah sits in the Sun Throne enjoying the vast wealth of his empire, loving his sister-wife and his many concubines and smoking hookah while the imperial bureaucrats and priests do battle behind the scenes to decide which direction the empire goes in.

yeah, this. my plan is also to have that range contain a volcano (pictured) that erupts frequently and spews ash near constantly, creating a large ash desert that would act as more of an impasse before the age of sail.
the ones that just sort of end will either terminate in lakes or keep going in later drafts of the map. i havent decided yet. i looked at maps of europe for inspiration and some of the rivers seem to end inexplicably there (likely they just go underground or something) so i have some more thinking to do.

Pandaria is absolutely terrible, though. Same distance south as Northrend is north, northern region is central Asian steppes, the southern most is jungle, its like they flipped the development map upside down during a meeting for the expansion and never bothered to fix it.

ok, I've moved forward a bit to laying out climates and some potential kingdom/culture boundaries
what do you think, /wbg/?

boreal islands? does that happen?

idk, its pretty far north so im not sure temperate forests are appropriate. cant find any boreal islands irl though so i guess not?

worldbuilding is a lot of work

Double dubs of truth.

hello guys, what do you think of my map?

gifyu.com/images/VelikaJebenaMapacc8f3.jpg

I posted in the last thread but it was near dead.

It's huge as fuck, too big to post here. Here is a foot size comparison, by the way.

>I propose that the undead would be owned by the relatives of the deceased, or if nobody wants to, or can afford to, raise them, the state can raise them after some time.
I would find it much more interesting to have the custom emerge of people selling the rights to their corpse's labor. It would be an almost flawless means of supporting the poor in retirement without the need of a state welfare program.

It could even be a status symbol for the wealthy to retain ownership of their bodies and be buried upon death.

You really need to get the whole thing scanned bro. It's pretty great.

wait, there are scanners that are big enough?

I have a mouse-scanner. I was expecting it to be a piece of garbage but it's actually not half bad.

So I could use some advice on a very early stage setting I've had pieces of bumping around in my brain for a while.

The abridged version since I assume most people don't care much for the details.
>Setting background guts are a mishmash of Elder Scrolls, Dragon's Dogma, Legacy of Kain, and Inception
>God is dreaming
>Becomes aware he is dreaming and doesn't wake up
>Realizes after dicking around a bit that these people in his dream are actual living things somehow
>Comes up with a plan to hand the dream off to the dreamers so when he "wakes up" reality isn't unmade
>Forces himself into a super-coma, except for a single Avatar he created with only a few memories related to this task
>Plan is basically to get several Mortals to ascend to a God of an Aspect (Think Pillars of Nosgoth/Towers from TES)
>Each aspect is tied to an "element", with his own Aspect being Void
>As mortals ascend, reality becomes less likely to crumble and less prone to wild magic surges/Outsiders from another layer of Dream fucking with it/etc.

TL:DR setting is in what would normally be the "dawn ages" or "ancient ages" of other settings. Gods don't exist yet.

The issue then mechanically is what to do about Clerics and such.

Ideally I'd like to let PCs use whatever classes or Cleric Domains they'd like, however I feel like it'd be a bad kick in the dick to tell them "oh yeah btw your deity isn't real, you just willpowered those spells yourself."

Do I
>Make the cosmology more like Forgotten Realms, with lesser deities ruling planes (And obviously not considering themselves "lesser")
>Make the setting godless- Gods never reply to prayers or such (Because they dont exist), and could make an entire campaign about learning that Cleric spells are closer to 5e Paladins powered by Oaths than directly from Deities, this truth potentially causing chaos worldwide if it got out
>A mix of both- as Mortals ascend they take the place of well-known (to players) Gods- ie the Aspect of Metal becoming Primus)

Looking to steal some holidays from you guys.

I've only came up with Warday, in which people gather, commemorate and tell tales about past wars and fights, go on friendly brawls and such.
Also, a certain not!Greece city-state confederacy organizes a special not!Olympiad every 5 years which lasts about two weeks, with numerous physical competitions, chess championship (gotta have dat dere strategy), bards disputing for best warstory and such.
It all leads up to a massive brawl on Warday involving hundreds of people, with the last one standing being declared Warchosen by the Warchurch.
Is it bad? Share yours as well.

>How comfy is your world?
Depends on who you are in it.
Overall pretty comfy. Affordable magic compensates for the limitations of ~15th century technology. And no big wars now that the elves are gone.

Perhaps a longshot, but I was hoping someone might know offhand the image that looked very much like it was done in MS paint, that started with a basic shape outline, then put mountains in, and then tutorial'd how to build a map that makes logical sense, such as how one side of the mountain got rains, so the other side is arid, and then settlement placement. It was a basic goofy little mspaint style drawing of mapmaking and I cannot seem to find it in my saves to look at again. Ring any bells for anyone?

It's been a literal decade since I quested in Un'goro as for why I forgot that, and if you just use magic to handwave then that's fine and it works within a high magic setting but it also means you concede to your setting having abnormal climates and a rather silly approach to it. And then what said.

Azeroth having absurd landscapes doesn't mean the setting is bad There are other reasons why the setting is bad, but you can never really pass off something that handwaves "because of magic" as a proper model for anything other than other "because of magic" handwaved worlds.

Well, shortly after posting this I was struck by inspiration and checked browser history, and managed to find it there in a map thread archive over on /v/.

Velika Jebena Mapa indeed. I have to commend you on actually hand-drawing on such a scale and I love the level of detail.

You could gain a lot by digitally transcribing it with GIMP or similar software onto an A2 or A1 format, by using the photo as a base layer, as you scribe over it. Then you have a digital copy to fuck with, + you can then print a whole, handy map at a stationery or wherever the fuck, instead of lugging around the delicate original.

This sounds pretty legit actually, its the kind of thing I'd expect to see develop.

What would a world without wind be like?

No temperature exchange, no rain except above water bodies, maybe even no air regeneration. Luckily, as long as there is atmosphere and temperature diferential, there would be wind.

Any kind of plant that reproduces via anemophilous pollen won't exist.

What do you feel about my map? I intend to make some kind of crazy robo-apocalypse game set mainly in the mountains to the west

>What would a world without wind be like?

No atmosphere. Not that this follows from no wind, rather the only way for there to be no wind is to have no atmosphere.

>No atmosphere. Not that this follows from no wind, rather the only way for there to be no wind is to have no atmosphere.

If we allow "wind so still, nobody can feel it", you open up a bit.

The game might be set in one big underground cave.

It might be set in a deep circular recession into the earth (if it's too wide compared to depth, you'll get stronger winds again)

It might be set in several deep recessions with tunnels in between. That could get you some air flow through the tunnels but not necessarily a lot - especially if the geography isn't favorable to it.

What is water to a fish? It might be set in a deep still lake. There'd be no real feeling of streams except for the place the water comes in and the water runs out. If the water diffuses in on one end and out in the other, you might not have any noticeable current at all.

>as long as there is atmosphere and temperature diferential, there would be wind.
This actually answers my follow-up question.

This face?

>How comfy is your world?
Not comfy at all.

Face of someone who posted into the wrong thread.

And it should be more like "point and laugh" face, because it means everyone suffered but me.

My world is pretty comfy. Seasons are exactly 91 days each, there are basically no bad harvests, and natural resources abound. This is all so people can focus on waging war for the glory of god, though.

Eruka Frog is best frog.

What is the most optimal ear shape and size for hearing in mammals?

Why is everything blurry in shitkarnate?

I think your idea is fine but for some reason the word "warday" feels weird to me. Maybe because I'm parsing it like it's the name of a weekday since it's all one word.

In real life most holidays serve one of a handful of purposes: appeasing or thanking a diety/force of nature, reestablishing connections with nature or the divine or the ancestors, reaffirming the power of the ruler or ruling class, giving the working class a break, or temporarily smoothing over social unrest.

Usually they do several of these at once; a harvest festival, for example, often involves some manner of sacrifice or ritual to thank the forces responsible for the harvest while at the same time getting the farmers out of the fields and silos after a grueling season of work to feast and drink freely, and for a brief moment at least the resources are flowing freely amongst the community and the uneven distribution of harvests isn't so important.

Think about what activities a holiday might entail. Feasting? Drinking? Travel? Fasting? Not working? A holiday that requires a lot of labor for preparing food and drink is more likely to take place while the supplies for those things aren't running thin. Traveling a week to watch the god-king ritually commune with his holy father at a sacred site probably isn't going to happen when the seasonal weather is poor (unless the struggle is part of the journey, of course).

Think about how long a holiday lasts as well. An afternoon? A day? A couple weeks? Is it repeated throughout the year at certain times, or just once? Longer holidays mean less time working on normal social functions, and more resources burned up during that time. Revering a local spirit might be best served with a night of fasting and observance, but taking two weeks to host a country that could push your shit in for some decidedly less bloody competitive sports is probably worth the strain on resources if it prevents war.

I know these are vague but hopefully they help.

Zombies = robots.
Magic upkeep for zombies = electricity upkeep for robots.

Are there mana batteries for upkeep? How portable are they?
Maybe some rebellious undead rights unit can attack the mana upkeep stations to release the undead unto their final rest, and the police hires the adventurers to investigate.

Could nomads use elephants as their main means of transportation?

theyre used a lot around indochina irl so probably? they could potentially be difficult to domesticate and i think theyre resistant to moving around a lot, which would make it even harder for nomads though.

>elephants don't have a lot of resistence, because they lack fat, actually most elephants are underweight and have to spend most of the time eating
>elephants to give milk, though considering how much you have to feed them to get them to maturity, it overall isn't worth it
>elephants are great as a source of labor, but for nomads that would not be very important, unless your setting demands some heavy duty lifting
>elephants give ivory, which is a great instrument for very low tech societies, and a good decoration for any society in general
>elephants go into heat, males and females, so you will have horny male elephants wanting to kill and main anything they see
>elephants can't be castrated, their balls are inside their bodies, where your kiddies are, so you can't avoid the horny roid rage
>elephants are very smart, they can tell languages apart, and they can tell your mood by body language and voice, you won't trick them
>elephants can communicate via infrasound over several mile distance, so taking one out of the herd to kill would enrage the others over a very long "earshot"
>animal domestication takes several thousand generations, and elephant generations are slower than human ones, so domesticating them is a mythical task

So basically you are better off having some sort of partnership with really smart elephants, an alliance they understand and consent to, this would solve a lot of problems and would honestly be more interesting.
The elephants can gain blankets over their low isolation bodies, medical treatment, other perks, humans gain labor, transport, defense is mutual task, etc.

Posted this in one of the last threads, and someone said there was issues with the rivers, but the thread died before I could get a follow-up response from him. Can someone help point out what's wrong with them (other than lack of tributaries, Inkarnate has a limit on its scaling and it sucks)?

So, what's the hook of your setting? Why should anyone care? What's special (and also interesting) about it?

Yeah, I'm still thinking about a good name.
Those pointers sure as hell help, I'll use it as guidelines for the holidays I still have to come up with.
Thanks man.

>Why should anyone care?

That is a question that /wbg/ struggles with on a daily basis.

It's hard enough to answer that question about the real world, let alone a fictional one.

The Ghafji region looks weird, what's happening there?
The island of Suta is peculiar, was it natural or there's a special story in it's formation?
Also, purely graphical stuff: north of Drak'Tul the mountains are extending a bit into the ocean and, south of it, a bit into the lake.
Other than that, it looks pretty good. I'm not an expert, tho.

Hey /wbg/, I have a question I've been pondering.

Would a species of sapient beings that are exclusively carnivorous ever develop permanent settlements??

My thinking is no, but I don't really think I know much on the subject of farming and ranching to know.

My reasoning is that the discovery of farming by herbivores or omnivores would encourage them to settle down, as settled living is better for a farming lifestyle. But for carnivores, who would develop ranching and animal domestication instead of crop-raising for food, a nomadic lifestyle would seem better suited, to allow the animals better access to grazing lands.

So what do you guys think?? Would carnivores ever settle down, or would they be more inclined to nomadic life??

The island Sutaq is in need a bit of shaping, I know that. Its too cookiecutter. Ghafji's region is just kinda supposed to be a large lake with a large island in the middle.

And yeah, there's a lot of places where the mountains stick past where they should be. Inkarnate sucks.

Oh, I see. Bifurcation lakes aren't common, but it's alright.

It depends, man.
If you're going for a similar population density as that of other species, then I think the land would be well demarcated and fenced, and consequentially there would be plenty of settlements. That's because you need much more space for cows to graze than you would use just farming stuff in order to feed a certain amount of people.
So you can have your sparsely populated nomadic area or a decently populated country filled with ranches for more effective use of terrain. Or something in-between.

Well, with the heavy forestation there, I'm thinking of turning it into a swampy area by the coast, make it the draining point of the lake and the mountains to the south. Pull the 2 major rivers and fill it with smaller waterways.

Hey /wbg/ maybe I'm just a blind fool and missed something in the OP, but I can't seem to find any resourced that say where settlements actually pop up and what places create the most successful settlements. Anyone got a source for this kind of info? All I can seem to find it population density and distribution, not /where/ they actually distribute themselves to geographically.

This picture from one of previous threads has some pointers.

Industry. Smelting copper/bronze/iron happens where the ores (and wood) are. The nomads would trade foodstuffs with the settlement in return for tools and weapons (and trinkets).

The industry part could be done by another species, if there is one close enough. But even then some of the carnivores would set up in the settlement - like outcasts or novelty seekers.

Also magic. If its a wizard thing, needing spellbooks/scrolls and research then there would be settlements with paper manufactories, magic laboratories, teaching services and so on

Land enclosures seemed to come pretty late in development. True nomads might never get to that point.

Forgot to mention.
Exclusively carnivores does not automatically mean hunters.
They might be living near a (large) body of water and get their food from fishing or whaling. This would mean a more settled life as boat/ship workshops wouldn't move and population would concentrate at natural ports.

Any tips on making maps in GIMP 2? I have limited experience with it and it'll be my second attempt making a map with it. I can only find Photoshop tutorials around mapmaking sites.

I like Inkarnate too, but after the most recent update I want to give GIMP a try before resorting to Inkarnate's downgraded system.

How do you define your Hell? What about your Devils? Are the tempter adversary or part of the structure of faith as testers and punishers?

Rate my derivative shitbrew if you even care to read it

Option 2 for sure, with the PCs keeping the secret and potentially aiming to become the first gods themselves. Would be FUCKING AWESOME.

great ideas btw, enjoyable read.

Seems interesting, though it uses Planescape Cosmology so a lot of people will be turned off immediately. If you want feedback, try posting specific parts of your world here with a question or two you might have.

Is it fucking retarded to have a world where the races are wolfman, sheepman, and Hue(hu)man?

For the most part it's never been relevant in my games because I don't run high level stuff - I've originally made it to accommodate an epic 7 pathfinder game, although I've abandoned the system long ago.

As such, cosmology isn't set and I am looking for interesting ideas for it.

Otherwise, I'd like to know your guys opinions on:
>What things immediately put you off as unrealistic (within logic of a low-magic fantasy world of course)

Animal people acting out animal stereotypes are dumb, but can still work.

>How comfy is your world?
Depends on whenever you consider Central Asia and Middle East comfy. If you don't, you are probably going to be shit out of luck. A lot of Himalaya-esque mountains and extensive steppes, Black/Caspian Sea-like coasts, lower-flow of Volga like valleys and wetlands, grassy highlands and a few major sand deserts etc... Forests are rare and rains are sparse and usually seasonal across most of the settings.

>magic runes as an optional substitute to gunpowder
>runes just recharge for a few seconds, no reloading or powder re-filling required
>however, they are limited to a number of shots, greater runepower = more shots

thoughts?

I think you basically invented a magic want.

I used idea of runes as a source of magic once to explain why guns are not widespread. You need to cover all parts of them with tiny runes so it's really expensive compared to drawing a big ass bulletproofing rune on your cloak.

Páči sa mi tvoj nápad priradzovať fotky prostredí ku lokáciam mapy, človek si to hneď lepšie predstaví.

Tell me about the deities of your setting.

>Did the Gods create the universe or did the universe create the Gods?

>Are they Gods in the mystical sense or just beings beyond mortal comprehension? Can they be killed? Are they even real? Are they merely mythological interpretations of nature?

>Do different races and cultures worship different Gods? Are there overlaps in worship between different cultures?

>Is there religious intolerance? Is there religious warfare?

>How do souls work in your setting? Where do mortal souls go when they die?

very impressive, I second this being scanned.

I really like this idea of putting example landscapes on your map. I think I might have to copy this.

Thanks. I was struggling for a good while to figure out how to visualize the environments in the map and this proved itself to be a useful method. Personally though, I would REALLY want to make a proper interactive map, where clicking on individual region would create a pop-up window with sets of images and accompaning text. I suppose that it should be very easy for anyone with basic knowledge of web design or something, but I have no idea how to go around it. I guess what-you-see-is-what-you-get editors of some kind might work? I'm completely technically inept though...

I don't suppose anyone knows a software that would allow to create interactive maps? Nothing fancy, just a background images and overlaying items that prompt a pop-up would do...

It's been a while since I've browsed this particular general but I realized why I left: there is absolutely nothing of note/discussion that happens. its just circlejerking and self-masterbatory posts about your own OC setting. no innovation or any creative productivity, just fucking around "detailing" a world no sensible player will care about to the extent you do. if this was Veeky Forums and was about creating a setting for a book or something I would understand, but in the context of TRPGs this is absolutely autistic and retarded.

Sometimes I have a question about rivers, though.

What kept ancient peoples, or even, say, peoples during the middle ages, from deforesting their countryside? When Americans expanded West in manifest destiny, deforestation was rampant and seen almost as a goal, since people thought that American wilderness was inexhaustible. did they just realize the limitations of their forests? were the forests just too big? were the tools too shitty to get the job done?

Nothing. Anatolia was a big forest once. Though people were not dumb and knew that when a forest is gone there won't be any wood left, so they would tend the forests they own. Lindybeige may be full of shit, but he made an interesting video about this. Though I don't recall any ancient records on something like this.

In the UK ancient peoples basically did deforest most of the island by the late bronze age, they generally did this to make as much space for agriculture and pasturing. Though they would leave the woods near to their homes and treat it as a sort of garden for various resources (pollarding).

Look up Dartmoor if you want an example of what happens to the land a thousand years later.

>You should only make things that other people will like
ok