/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

When worldbuilding, do you tend to be inspired more by visual mediums and if so what artists inspire you?

Sin is Evil because God says so, and he will smite your ass and send you to the Evil Afterlife if you do it

When he's drunk (which is usually), he has to walk his shots, so he'll probably smite everything around you also

I tend to be inspired by random shitposts on Veeky Forums more than anything else

>Tell us about the nature of evil in your setting.
It's all relative.

In practice, 'evil' usually ends up meaning 'working against the PCs'. I'm fine with that.

>Is it a tangible, measurable force or social construct?
No, absolutely not. It's when people screw others over for whatever reason.
>Is it black-and-white or relative and situational?
Relative and situational. Nobody thinks they're evil, and they usually have a point.
>How did evil arise in the universe?
How can friendship or logic or evil arise? As long as there are conscious creatures, there's evil.
>Is there an ultimate evil being like Satan or Morgoth?
Oh yes, I have a Satan, but he's most definitely not evil. He's tasked with preventing souls from returning to their origin - the magitech reactor at the heart of the world, which is actually a colossal spaceship. Eventually, as lesser gods came into being and created various afterlives for their followers, only wicked souls were left to enter his soul repository, and it evolved into Hell. The guy has a wicked sense of humour and loves experimenting.
The guy who is considered the absolute evil by most is the original creator of the world. He requires the destruction of all life to power up his ship and leave his eternal confinement. But, again, can you really call him evil? The life was created by his enemies to imprison him, it's only natural that he would want to destroy it all.
>Where do the souls of evildoers go?
See above.
>What are some notable evil individuals or organizations?
Various conquerors and usurpers, mostly. But, as I explained, they generally have a good point. For instance: there's an evil vizier who's in fact the legitimate heir to the throne; there's a genocidal crusader who does humanity a great service by drawing the wrath of an enemy race to himself; there's an elven dictator who thinks that elves have grown too weak and pathetic, and he's actually right.
I don't like alignments.

>Tell me your thoughts on my setting's religions
I think they're all extremely unoriginal, down to the names.

Well, that's not very constructive.

R8 my map.

>Catholic Church
>The religion from Dragon Age, down to the name
>40k meets Feng Shui

Why are there so many strange scattered mountain ranges in the desert?

Yeah it is based on Catholicism in an aesthetic sense, but isn't really similar outside of that.

I honestly didn't know about the Dragon Age thing until you mentioned it, the name and faith were both actually based on Astraea from Demon's Souls more than anything else.

The last criticism just seems silly to me.

I see no differences at all from Catholicism.

Well tough luck, because you fully recreated the religion from Dragon Age.

Facts are silly to you? Oh well.

Partially because I misjudged the size initially (thought the map would be smaller scale than it ended up being), and then I simply liked how it looked.

It doesn't seem like you want actual constructive criticism given that your immediate reaction is to go on the defensive.

The first religion is boring femYahweh Catholicism but with none of the actual depth and richness of that religion... It reeks of "I don't actually know anything about Catholicism, but I've heard its dogmatic and shitty; this would be good Catholicism"

Second one makes no sense. The dude is known to have killed gods, but they're atheists? and an atheist religion? The fuck? Boring vanilla godkiller shite

Third one is starting to be interesting, but you need to flesh it out. Why is space so important? Tell me about ropes around trees. Describe the temples

I literally have an Evil Incarnate kind of creature in my setting who rules over a hellish plane. But there's no objective evil. Rather than dictating what is and what isn't evil, this Adversary figure adopts and masters everything that mortals and inmortals consider to be evil in order to be the most massive cunt to ever exist. He/she/it embraces this self contradiction with gusto, as there's very few cultures that appreciate it.

Souls of evil doers just randomly reincarnate unless they're tricked by this or other powerful entities to sell their souls.

Sup /wbg/, I have been busily writing away at a setting I hope to play in with my DnD group (eventually), and while I've made a lot of points about the basic Shape of the world and what its like, I haven't been able to make much headway in the basic premise of the setting, which is basically that I wanted to make a Tolkien-like classical fantasy world that incorporates Great Ones/ cosmic horrors into the setting in much the same way that Bloodborne did for its setting.

Basically I was inspired by Bloodborne, and can't help but think "How would Elves be effected by a Great One's influence? Or what if the Dwarves uncovered a Great One when they dug too deep?"

The problem is, I want to incorporate these into the setting in a more meaningful way than just hamfisting them into everything while muttering "muh Lovecraft".

I was thinking of maybe including them as a recurring cycle, like the Reapers form Mass Effect, or something. Like part of the world's history would read

>It was Their coming that drove the Dwarves to their under-mountain homes, it was They who shattred the empire of men, and They who drove the elves to quarrel amongst themselves

But I'm not sure if that would be too blunt for these things.

You can use paint.net

>Well tough luck, because you fully recreated the religion from Dragon Age.
Having googled this, I cannot really identify any commonalities apart from some similarity in name and the fact that both of the founders participated in rebellions.
>It doesn't seem like you want actual constructive criticism
I just don't feel that the criticism offered was particularly constructive or even valid.

>It reeks of "..."
Well, no, again, it really isn't Catholicism beyond the aesthetic style and hierarchy. And yeah, it's intentionally like that because I want to invoke that institutional trope within the setting. But as far as the religion itself is concerned, no, it's got next to nothing in common with Abrahamism of any variety apart from monotheism.

>Second one makes no sense. The dude is known to have killed gods, but they're atheists? and an atheist religion? The fuck? Boring vanilla godkiller shite
Atheistic religions are quite common, even in our modern world. Adrasteans deny the divinity of the creatures that had been called gods, but they believe in souls, the afterlife, and a host of other clearly supernatural phenomena.

Here, some more details that I think address your concerns about depth and such:

>The Maiden of Light is the single god recognized and worshiped by members of the Church of the Maiden, known as Luminaries. She is understood to be a benevolent guardian and guide of all living peoples, who earnestly desires to help everyone. Luminaries believe that the Maiden did not create the world, but instead somehow came upon it, saw its people suffering, and decided to care for them. The chief holy text of the Church of the Maiden is a book of songs known as “Hymns of the Blue Moon”, which contains over 400 songs that refer to everything from love and marriage to battlefield tactics. Obviously, music and, in particular, the chorus, is a key part of Luminary ritual, but just as prominent are bells and shawls.

>Adrastean services take place in temples, in which a special blessed water is set ablaze with a quasi-magical blue flame to absolve the sins of its members. Fire (especially blue fire and magical fire), water, and cloth have special significance to Adrasteans. “Ten Thousand Broken Promises” is the name of their holy book, a compilation of works written by contemporaries of her rebellion, and it relates the tale of the Sage Adrastea as well as numerous proverbs. Adrastea herself authored a number of texts before taking up arms, though they are mostly theological works analyzing and critiquing what are now regarded as the Small Faiths.

>Rope, plants, paper, and doorways are all commonly used in the creation of Kantorist sacred spaces. Kantorists do not have any hierarchical religious organization, and do not worship gods, though they do recognize the existence of many. Instead, they believe that they, and everything else in the world, is part of the divine, as it is infused with Kantor’s essence, and strive to achieve harmony in all things. Kantorists have no single holy text, but most regard Emperor Kantor’s own “Horticulture and the Eighth Plane” (oftentimes instead titled “Order and Disorder”) as their primary theological treatise.

Here's something old that I forgot about.

I should update it sometime soon, eye genetics have gotten more complicated. I need to add specific rare mutations that completely override the basic eye color mechanism.

...

How do you get in the mood for worldbuilding?

youtube.com/watch?v=wyz5ql87ls4
incense, [REDACTED], and ritual music

I'm always in the mood for worldbuilding.

I don't know. I haven't been in the mood for months.

GIMP works if you don't want to pirate photshop and make a nice visual element for players.

Google drive has all the programs you need to sort and store all you're material.

This is also good to make node maps for how things are interconnected.
draw.io

>Tell us about the nature of evil in your setting. Is it a tangible, measurable force or social construct? Is it black-and-white or relative and situational? How did evil arise in the universe? Is there an ultimate evil being like Satan or Morgoth? Where do the souls of evildoers go? What are some notable evil individuals or organizations?
Nah, there really isn't evil, and both sources of creation are neutral. Demons are bit vague on that, since they are kinda programmed to destroy and torment life, but they can stray from it for selfish benefit...

Of course, dickwads exist, and terrible things are done for good reasons.

What are motives of the old great ones? Are they actual deities and/or how they relate to pantheon/gods? Are they malevolent or just neutral and do things arbitrarily?

Thabks! Ver y helpful

Im stuck for names for my secret, thought-dead space colony. Their planet is harsh, And has caused low level mutations in the 'native' population.

Think pandora meets helghan

The actual problem is getting OUT of this mood when you need to get something else done.

Deathrock.

My players generally aren't interested in an information dump or setting homework before the first session of an adventure.

I've been thinking of accomodating them by building adventures around the core concept of the characters waking up in an unknown world with no memories. They will all be the same race or species, and capable of recognizing each other as 'one of my kind' despite their lack of memories. They'll have to set out into the world in order to find food and shelter, and eventually find a raison d'être beyond that.

By that point, I hope to have been able to throw enough varying hooks at them to find out what they're interested in playing.

I've also thought about a possible variation on their character origin. The characters will be built as everyday people from our world in the year of our lord Yahweh 201X. I'll briefly describe a snippet of their boring, everyday life before moving on to a world-ending nuclear apocalypse that ends all life on earth. I hope to be able to paint a vivid enough picture of the sensation of dying in a world-encompassing fiery holocaust.

After that, they wake in an unknown world with no recollection of how they got there. The last thing they can recall is having the flesh blasted off of their bones, but they seem to be completely uninjured, if a bit tired and hungry. And what were supposed to be the charred ruins of civilisation are an inexplicable verdant forest, lush field or sunny beach.

Is there anything about this that sounds either appealing or unappealing to you? How would you change that, if necessary?

The lazy solution is to go with various names for parts of hell/underworld

Tartarus/Gehenna/Dis/Acheron/etc

I would have no interest in playing a generic amnesiac
But I also wouldn't mind infodumps so I guess I'm not a suitable example

What's the climate like specifically? Hot? Cold? Stormy? Any specific weather anomalies? Ash rain? Ice geysers? Poison gases?

You wouldn't be entirely generic, though. You would have a perfectly regular recollection of your 21st-century life. All that's missing is how you ended up in a wilderness you can't readily identify, and which will turn out not to be any place on earth fairly quickly.

Mediterranean/10

Seems good. Would play

rivers feel a bit odd tho

Outer Eden.
Mind, it was named when people were bit more optimistic about the colonization-aspect.

I kind have worked myself into a corner, in my setting dwarves associate mountains with their religion and culture and are based off of different mountainous ethnic groups.

However, I want to have a group of dwarves based on the Netherlands. This is a problem, because the Netherlands is below sea level. How do I explain the Dwarves that migrated to such an area.

One option that comes to mind is that they aren't willing imigrants. They could be exiles, they could be looking for specific ores, they could be setting up a position for trade even.
Or go the dwarf fortress route.

Expand the cultural area of the Netherlands slightly to the south and east. Have the dwarves primarily be inhabitants of the hilly and mountainous regions in that area. They will project their influence over the low-lying river delta to the west, even if they do not strictly have permanent settlements there.

If there even are settlements in that area (as well there should be, it's rich in food supplies and timber), they could be vassals to the dwarves.

>What are motives of the old great ones? Are they actual deities and/or how they relate to pantheon/gods? Are they malevolent or just neutral and do things arbitrarily?

Well, if I'm following Bloodborne's lore right, the Old Ones use our species' to reproduce, to create new Old Ones, but it always irrevocably curses or changes the rest of us to do it. It twists people into beasts and takes away their sanity.
It was the fact that the Church in Bloodborne wanted to become as great as the Old Ones that the Hunt never ended; one of the Great Ones cursed them to be stuck there, with the sympathetic Moon Presence providing Hunters a refuge in the Hunters Dream.

So I suppose if I use a similar model; the Old Ones using us to reproduce, but that always causing some calamitous upheaval in the process, I could make something off of that?

Is there a particular reason you want to base Dwarves on the Dutch?

Their proximity to the sea and their position as a gateway to the British Isles (and later on, the world) played a massive part in shaping their mercantile mentality, but I don't generally think of dwarves as a seafaring race.

In my mind, dwarves are fearful or at least suspicious of any body of water that's deeper than they are tall.

>Started in the Ardennes and moved out to the lowlands for economic expansion.
That might work, thanks Veeky Forums

In my setting dwarves have no native dislike or affinity for the sea. The region experienced a boom as an economic breadbasket and neutral trading hub for the human states to the south, and the Elven kingdoms to the north who were both concerned with civil wars at the time. Fast forward to modern day the dwarves run a trade empire using their religious connection (regardless of culture all dwarves claim descendance from the same deity, who scattered them among the world's mountains) and reverse engineered elven naval vessels to get early footholds in new regions and exploit them for profit.

Its earth like, to a degree.The dominant biomes are swamp and jungle , it rains alot ,theres a massive rocky desert below the equator. And you It has a heavy nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere with slightly more toxins in the atmosphere than ours and elevated radiation levels which has caused mutations in the people.

What's your favorite way to get inspiration ideas? Looking at art, reading random history, etc.

Interesting books. Fox tossing, octopus wrestling, and other forgotten sports for example.

Who knew that would have an entire section talking about a lost/dying french subculture of nomadic stilt walking swamp herders. Like how could you not steal that idea, transplant it to some deep snowy land, give them guns, and have them worship long legged fairfolk?

I also listen to a lot of vaguely historical or paranormal podcasts, art is a pretty obvious one, its just so easy.

Sometimes I get ideas while just out walking about.

>nomadic stilt walking swamp herders
Didn't Eberron have their orcs do that?

I actually wanted to do something similar, and the reason why Elves don't sleep and resist charm effects is because they cut themselves off to resist the Old Ones influence.

>What are motives of the old great ones?
As for this. I had the idea of they just want to sleep. I think sleep and dreams are a big deal in this campaign in some way, They want to sleep but the clangor and prayers of the mortal races make them restless. Some try to placate, other to silence.

I don't really do dedicated worldbuilding sessions, but write pieces here and there and slowly put the puzzle together.

Art. Medieval period to renaissance and surrealists works. Weirder the better.

Right now working on a Gnomish mechanical city inspired by the works of Oleg Denysenko.

I like it.

Would using our world circa 1620, slapping on some magic that gets crazy and manic over the top of it, then extrapolating out from there to 1640 be a good idea for setting? I'm wanting to run a Lamentations of the Flame Princess game where a coven of witches actually do bring magic into the world and it's been a while since then. Shit is going nuts all over the world and peasants, adventurers, armies, clergies and kings are all trying to get something from this.

Here is the 'starting map' for my game. Willing to take tips and pointers for it.

Yeah, for some reason I simply find maps centered around a sea comfier than maps centered on a continent.

They do, right? Dunno what to do to make them feel more natural, but they seem weird to me too.

Evil is not some tangible, detectable thing in my setting, theres no major ultimate evil, or even evil souls. But as for evil individuals, theres the majority of Dragons, who just hate existing, the Dredbreg Orcish forces, who are mostly nasty savage fucks, Demons, who are corrupted machines of destruction, Vann Doran, an immortal knight who just wants to fight shit, and the closest to a "ultimate evil" is the Ink Burner, a being who exists solely to unmake reality, but he's not explicitly evil, it's just what he is.

There is no objective evil but there are certainly evil beings present. The nature of souls in my setting being that those driven by powerful emotions overtime become them, essentially spirits of people essentially degrade overtime until they become powerful spirits and essentially aspects of whatever they embodied.

For instance, people who saw themselves as guardians become guardian spirits who's existence hinges on the fact that this what they are. They may or may not remember why they do what they do but it's all they do now. Similarly, people driven by hatred or sorrow can become truly dangerous and powerful demons who's very presence can be poisonous

Great map, would definitely Mount and Blade that shit up.

I like nice atmospheric music that puts me in the mood, often stuff that reminds me of campaign music from total war but nto always.

I have to have time on my hands and not be a sad cunt at the moment.

I like looking at images, watching fantasy and sci-fi flicks, playing games and reading books. Pretty much everything gives me inspiration.

>/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Nothing to report besides this lovely Easter-themed picture I drew of a family of Gnomes having a nice little dinner- maybe they're celebrating the coming of spring, or perhaps their son has finally earned his +embarrassingly+ traditional Red Cap.
Either way his father is making him wear it, damn it; those hats are expensive!!

Happy Easter, /wbg/!

Excellent art. Happy Easter!

On a semi related note; i would love to use david the gnome as a setting one day

I don't. Mood gets into me and I start worldbuilding.

what conditions would an ammonia world have? I have some aliens that have to wear suits as tey evolved in an ammonia base enviroment, also what mix of gases would cause a red gas giant?

me neither user, its sad desu. I have all these ideas I wanna put on paper but no desire to do it.

Which style of drawing mountains and hills looks better: left or right?

I asked this last thread but I don't think I framed the question as well as I could and the conversation got derailed.

Right.

Right

It depends on the time of day / position of the sun.

Right is right

Right motherfucker we told you this last thread goddamn.

Guess it could work.
You don't have to make their motives to be too obvious ( so that players have to rely on guesswork / etc. ), but it is good to have them thought out. Part of Lovecraftian charm is that the whole basis of the horror of it is insignificance of man, and what uncontrollable and unknowable things can threaten that existence or life as it is. Or not.
Although, that is if you want to go with horror, but I think it is more satisfying when setting delves into more themes of it.
For example, my setting's universe is in bit of an azathothian conundrum, being born in psyche of vegetative Great Beast of Void, with some other beasts occasionally making contact with the world, out of curiosity or sympathy, such as when THVBH made contact with Adel ( which kinda caused him to become more lucid ).

Music and environment/equipment pictures usually.
Sometimes I get some ideas in middle of the night, which I sometimes I just put in notebook of my cellphone.

Loving the red caps.

How do I know if my made up language makes sense? Is there any website with comprehensive examples of how languages and sounds evolve? For example, does it make sense for the suffixes -in, -on and -an to mean the same in different dialects? What are some sounds that never evolve into the other?

Just go to college and get a four year degree in linguistics and you'll have a rough idea

I don't mean this degree of knowledge. I mean, people here talks about climates, tectonics and such without a degree in geography. I'm sure the same kind of half-assed basic assumptions can be made about languages without a degree.

>I mean, people here talks about climates, tectonics and such without a degree in geography
To be fair, a lot of them are wrong

Well it's not relevant if it's right or wrong as long as it provides an illusion of coherence.

Posted this up a few times already but my settings map is finally almost done. Last time I ever listen to my players suggestion that I should colour it in.

First shitty attempt at a map, any suggestions?

Your map looks like someone's ass and thighs from behind. You better have a gaping maw to the underworld somewhere in the center of those arctic mountains

Thank you!

Lol.

Wow I was actually planning a pit into the center of the world right there

what a eye sore to look at

Do Russia and Dwarfs go well together? In context they're evil dwarfs who are greedy bastards who exploit "lesser races" for gold, are as sane as Dwarf Fortress Dwarfs with no booze and have a vast bureaucracy that's completely insane. I was thinking of giving them a sort of Tsarist Russia look rather than the Soviet look.

What exactly is wrong with it?

>Do Russia and Dwarfs go well together?
This comparison is made on Veeky Forums often enough.
>greedy bastards who exploit "lesser races" for gold
>no booze
You have an extremely weird image of Russia.

Well it's not that they have no booze, it was jut for comparison. They're as if not more drunken than regular dwarfs.

At any rate, fucked up bureaucracy is the only really Russian thing you described. If they're like the Imperial Russia, they should a) have absurd inequality across the social classes; b) extremely diverse society that barely holds together; c) messianic complex and strong emphasis on extremely obsolete values that overshadows everything else.