What are some of the little, neat things you've included in your settings Veeky Forums? The stuff that, odds are, no-one but you will notice, but you feel add to the setting.
For me, it's Mexican food being the primary cuisine of my !Not!Roman empire. Tacos, rice, beans, the whole enchilada, and I don't mean Texican food either, I mean genuine, legitimate Mexican food, like pic related.
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Shopkeepers have villain-twirling moustaches and blacksmiths are all half-orcs.
It happened purely because I accidentally described a shopkeeper with the same description I had written and the half-orc was a coincidence till one of my party members said "seems every smith is a half-orc".
I'm Mexican and this, my dear gringos, are real tacos
They ones you can be proud of
Well fuck, now I'm hungry.
Texican is better.
This
Delicious flatbreads.
The last missing secret ingredient in any mcguffin (unique powerful potion, rare spell or obscure ritual) is always dragon semen.
Its kind of a running joke with our group that has been going on for years about inventing new euphemisms for dragon jizz.
Like what, exactly?
dracocheese
lizard-dram
jam of the snake
dew of the rigid-looking
etc
I'm not proud of it, but I inserted my weebshit into my setting. In the far east of my setting, there's an island chain occupied by Oni, which are essentially demonic ogres. Their society is organized in dozens of meritocratic chiefdoms, which are united in half a dozen feuding alliances, which are divided by the racial animosity between Red Oni and Blue Oni.
Their island has very little in the way of resources, and the little iron it has is of low quality, so Oni smiths had to develop extensive iron folding methods to produce swords capable of withstanding the rigors of combat. Due to the Oni's martial culture, an elite warrior caste developed, and over time they began to forge their own swords, which became status symbols.
To solve the lack of material for armor, the Oni began to link thick layers of hardened papyrus and hard wood, eventually creating splint mail. As the Oni warrior caste developed, the splint mail slowly became a status symbol, as only the warrior caste could afford them.
> tl;dr: Oni Samurai are a thing in my setting and I've justified it with my autism.
Nobody notices because nobody reads the setting notes but every country is named after a alternate name for england
I love how I can use my lifetime reading of odd things into something useful.
I knew for years that romans had an amphitheatre filled with water to simulate naval battles, how arena fights struggled to keep fresh, about sinkholes and how tunneled a city's underground can be. Those became a city ruined by a sinkhole due to careless mining, abandoned then bought by a gladiator owner which made it pretty much a Las Vegas with fight pits, centered around the water arena he made out of the hole.
Local bar fights are seem as oportunities to be knocked out by the guy himself, just to wake up with an offer to be a gladiator. He caomes up with new ways of fighting all the time, even comedy with clowns hitting each other with soap bars inside socks.
Voycrater is a murderhobo dream city with a golem* militia to keep things below all out civil war.
*Turns out golems were a bad idea because they don't bleed for the audience.
...
>The stuff that, odds are, no-one but you will notice, but you feel add to the setting.
Not really a small thing and the idea was given to me by a joke one of the players said during prep time but in my 1895 Tokyo the players can get Coca-cola if they go to luxury hotels and such. And it costs extra.
I think it probably wasn't exported outside USA at the time but its one of the little things that point out the fast modernisation/occidentalisation of Japan at the time.
The joke actually was about Pepsi but since it was created in 1895 it would be kinda exaggerated
Elves have basically modern high school but with state-enforced rape gangs and clases based around both being impregnated and impregnating other races.
In every setting, somewhere in the world, there is a man who does everything backwards, including speaking. His name is Backwards Joe and he's never relevant to the plot. He's just kind of also there from time to time. My player do notice him and like interacting with him, but he's really just scenery.
Every conspiracy theory isn't true, the evidence for them is actually the result of godlike aliens that enjoy trolling humanity.
Irish Tacos are better.
Whenever I introduce a rather hostile tribe or species, I always make them have a traditional enemy in the area which gives them the motivation to be hostile towards strangers. It also somehow happens that the group gets to meet the nicer of the two factions first and then murderhobos the fuck out of them so the genuinely aggressive faction wins over the defensive one. Usually none of the factions are an actual part of the story.
Example:
>players are supposed to investigate a lost town in a swamp
>stumble into traps in the jungle laid by bullywugs
>party delays their mission and revenge-genocides the bullywug tribe
>bullywugs just defended their territory against a crazy necromancer
>party notices a sudden rise in very hostile bullywug zombies
The party usually enjoys the hell out of slaughtering folks like this, so I don't mind too much. Poor bullywugs though
Never had irish tacos. Only irsh nachos.
Those were alright if you like getting a years worth of sodium on a single sitting.
Irish Tacos are like normal ones, except with their own seasonings for the Chicken or Beef, a "secret Irish Sauce," and potatoes.
i used to live near a pretty decently sized mexican population in the detroit subs, and there were loads of mexican grocers that sold tacos al pastor, barbacoa, cabeza, lengua, and the ones that would pass on blancas like pollo and carne asada.
i'm planning on going to mexicantown in southwest detroit on cinco de mayo for tacos and maybe a papusa (i know, not mexican)
unrelated, pic is detroit's superior form of pizza.
so... guinness? irish food isn't really known for its wide variety of flavors...
is that a shwarma?
There is "bluebread" in my setting; it is made of the slightly blue seeds of my settings equivalent of bluebonnet. Fantasy Texas has blue bread.
No, it isn't. That's why the filename doesn't say 'shawarma.'
I wouldn't know, I never get far enough into establishing a setting to come up with these. Just don't have what it takes, I guess.
Same.
There's a hard eyed smoking man that gambles in every one of our long term games that represents Death. A man that doesn't compromise with people he's due to meet, but has shown sympathy to some of the more moral characters throughout the numerous campaigns. Even saved the life of the team loli by reading her fortune over cards. She took the reading to heart and ended up skipping am area that was all-but set up to kill her.
The evil megacorp villain in my modern campaign doesn't actually have any control of the company, as the board knows he's an insane, egotistic expansionist who would either get them into legal hell for owning a technical monopoly or run the company to the ground.
>pizza
I'm italian and that isn't pizza any more than it is a fucking apple pie.
>I'd still eat it
I take a page from Tolkien and make my Dwarves fantasy Jews, but I take it a step further and literally make them as close to Pre-Imperial Rome-era Jews as I can.
They even border my setting's not!Greco-Roman human Kingdom.
>Not!Rome has trading relations with a foreign island
>Faction on the island views not!Roman culture as exotic and superior to their own, imitate it the best they can
>Not!Romans use real Latin names and correct Roman naming conventions
>Faction on the island uses their own naming structure and names that only sound Latin
Every one of my characters has had a mullet. I play in various games so nobody has noticed... yet.
youtube.com
>My most recent PC
One of the times it was my turn to be GM I had the players invited to a fancy dinner party hosted by a dracula-type guy and one of the dishes served was braised unicorn ribs. Got the idea from pic related. Got the players more interested than I thought it would.
Most of my NPC's names are convoluted jokes and/or metaclues as to their role in the plot.
My main villain, "Elba Teau", is one of those pulling-the-strings-from-the-shadows types - has never been seen, by anyone other that his lieutenants. Little do the party know, they've already met him: as the innocent friendly street magician Bartholomew.
>Elba Teau
for my next trick, I'll need a volunteer and a pair of pantaloons