/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

>tfw learning plate tectonics just to make a realistic world
You actually don't need to make a "realistic" world. In fact, "realistic world" is a pipedream. Your world is never going to be realistic.
What you may want to do is create a beliveable one. It's particularly important if you are making non-stylized maps, where poorly placed geography and horrible river placement can very easily shatter the suspension of disbelief and a lose the interest of your audience.

It's just always worth keeping in mind that whenever you aim for "realism" in world-building, it's never because you want to create a facsimile of real world. It's purely an aesthetic decision: it's because you want it to look in some specific way, not because your world "needs to be realistic". Realism, as a doctrine in fiction, is a lie. There is no such thing as realistic fiction - not in fantasy, or any other genre.

>How come I've never seen this general before
World-building generals have been around for at least two years. They are slower, usually live for several days but get bumped only once in a few hours. That does not mean that it's dying, merely that it's going through a slower phase.

As for your setup: without wanting to be insulting, it does sound incredibly generic. Which I guess might be the point, but it's a question how much actual world-building is necessary if you seem to be just following what is a popular and well-explored trope... There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing what has already been done (originality is as much of a myth as realism is), but it's a question whenever the same purpose would not be served by other means than world building, especially if you plan to write a novel there...

It's very much generic by design, I'm aping an established genre and tone, though doing so with more than a little parody.

It's for a single short campaign so I'm not looking for a large, flowing setting, what I'm fishing for are 'neat' ideas for shit to throw in to make players go 'huh thats kinda cool'.

Constructing a space fantasy campaign. It's very much like Spelljammer in that each system is contained in a crystal sphere, and is essentially it's own universe, with the main solar system and the stars fixed into the crystal shell that surrounds it.

Should I build it like a dungeon, with rooms being star systems and the hallways as the paths between them? I can develop systems fairly rapidly this way, but that leaves many systems that are empty and the systems that are populated have one major thing going on in them, and it removes a certain variety like geocentric systems. This method also gives me planets in the vein of Star Wars.

The alternative is wholly constructing each individual system, but the method of doing so leaves them unpopulated until I put something there. This is much closer to the default method of generating systems in Spelljammer, with figuring out planet sizes and orbits, but leaves me with 5 types of planets with little variations. It also seems a bit inimical to the tone of the campaign I want, which is very cosmopolitan, the populations of thousands of spheres mixing in space. This method mechanically gives me fewer worlds but in greater detail, and slower development time.

Help?

Shut up, the only thing that matters is realism.

Went to sleep after posting, sorry

Not sure yet where land trade goes to port, etc., this is the first settlement i'm developing in the region and the other will be bound by this wrt trade

Roughly 11 miles per pixel, so a following posters gulf of finland startement was good for inspiration

Blue dot is an isthmus

Bump

How would I fit FTL/warp drive/interstellar travel into a dieselpunk world?

How many kingdoms are too many?
I've probably got 50+ named kingdoms and tribal groups between elves and men, not counting minor tribes and petty earldoms.

Actually how the fuck would I even get an internal combustion engine to provide thrust in space? Maybe just as a generator and use electric propulsion? But electric propulsion doesn't seem very dieselpunky

Any help here?

I would say go for the second method as the first method will result in boring systems that won't have much depth to them. They'll probably end up being like planets in Stargate where each planet has one thing going for it and it never really feels alive.

How big is the world and how good/bad are communications? How big is the average kingdom?

I'm trying my hand at crafting a modern-fantasy setting. I've got the magic bit sorted (more or less- mainly less, honestly), but the creatures are posing difficult. The implications are hard to reconcile with a world that is still recognizably similar to our own. Phoenixes, for example.

>Always on fire.
>Not impossible to kill, just a pain in the ass.
>Eventually comes back unless you scatter the ashes really far or some shit.

Simple stuff, right? Except being always on fire is going to take a ridiculous amount of calories. So you either get massive, gluttonous, flaming fowl ravaging every cornfield in Iowa, or a very serious pest that rips into everyone's trash. It also makes them a good power source. Presumably the eternal conflagration produces heat, so you lock a Phoenix in a cage and wrap the cage in water pipes, ta-da, magitek nuclear reactor.

TL;DR: I need help dealing with magical creatures. Alternatively, I need more magical creatures that would make modern life problematic.

Does someone know of a good resource for making flags/heraldry/crests and stuff like that?

I've been using this site lately as it's the best one I've seen by far. But it got some limitations and it's completely useless if you're not gonna draw your inspiration from medieval knights.

rpg.uplink.fi/heraldry/

Why not just make them a fire elemental thing that lives in fire

Yeah, no offense, but you are really doing it wrong. You are mixing together speculative and symbolic fiction in a really inexpert and pointless fashion. You are counting CALORIES? On a fucking Phoenix?
Is it fantasy, or is it sci-fi? Is it mythological and symbolic, or is it speculative? You have to clear that out, you have to figure out what you are going for. If you want Phoenix, a creature that comes alive when killed and is consistently on fire, then your world has to be driven by other logic than physiology of metabolism and calorie consumption. That is just completely stupid, it just does not make any sense, fiction wise.

Phoenix is a SYMBOLIC creature. It exists because it represents combination of multiple abstractions, sentiments or intuitions people used to have about the world. And it plays SYMBOLIC role in stories.

You have to chose if you story is going to be based on symbolic logic, or causal, speculative logic. You can't do both. It's just not going to work - not only because you are going to run into constant contradictions, but also because its going to make an incoherent and meaningless narrative.

inkwellideas.com/coat_of_arms/
Great for heraldry.

I can't get to make it work. Can it be because it uses java and I'm using chrome?

>Describe the most basic facts of an economy in your setting. What (if applicable) currency does it use, and why? How would one get rich? What resources are most valuable in terms of profit vs. effort?

A lot of it works like it does in every setting, there are blacksmiths and woodcutters, foremen and carpenters, miners and jewelers, all selling their goods for as much as they can in the neverending stairway to being 'richer'

Other places trade earlobes and pickled eyes.

what's the significance of the giant blue meteor thing?

The site of a big fuck off magical event, a lot of people think its the source of all magic.

World is 3-4 times the size of Europe. Local communication is good in developed areas, but breaks down across continents. Most humans in the west know almost nothing about the elves in the east, other than rumors and superstition. Bigger kingdoms are around 2 mil (going off medieval Europe numbers) while small ones or tribes can be anywhere from a million to only a hundred thousand.

thats pretty kickass, how much time has that map taken? do you expect to spend much more time on it?

3/21/15

Thats the date of the original sketch

this might just be the halfway point, who knows?W?WW?

Why weren't the smaller entities absorbed by the bigger and more sophisticated ones? Why didn't the more advanced places influence (wilingly or not) the less advanced ones, making them more prone to become big and unified?

50+kingdoms is quite a lot if there's good communication between kingdoms. Pre-industrial kings want to rule and will do so if they can. If the smaller political entities can be found on isolated places then it makes more sense that the bigger and more sophisticated powers won't bother with them too much.

halfway? it seems almost complete, impressive, nevertheless

Um... have you ever opened a historical atlas in your life?

50 kingdoms for a setting 3/4x Europe is not too many. When it comes to smaller bodies like tribes, semi-independent territories etc... it's actually still pretty sparse.
But really, the main question should not be "how many kingdoms should there be (shoudn't that constantly change anyway) but rather "how great fidelity should I use in distinguishing individual political and cultural bodies". Because a kingdom is usually a fairly arbitrary and abstract line anyway.

Personally, I prefer to avoid making complete list of political bodies, and prefer to create more dynamic, rougher structures or tendencies and then break them down into smaller constitutents and specific configurations for each specific time period I might need to explore in greater details.

still got those other two continents andI think my arstyle has changed to where I'm going back from the ground up almost

I wasn't able to tell any dramatic changes in the art style. I'd love to see more of the geography, maybe even some labels for continents and cities. Have you thought about working on the less detailed areas, then going back to update the older sections?

thats what I generally do, I started this jungle because I wanted to be fresh for the wine-country int he amber field area to the northwest of it
didn't want to go from one countryside to another, so I went from countryside to jungle to wine-countryside

>Um... have you ever opened a historical atlas in your life?

Communications were extremely bad in most periods of history. user has explicitly said that's not the case unless I haven't understood what he means by "Local communication is good in developed areas".

what program?

paint tool sai

>dynamic, rougher structures or tendencies and then break them down into smaller constitutents and specific configurations for each specific time period
Can you give an example?

I just uninentionally ingsted sometthing else than I probably want to take. Soo. Right mow thhings are getting really weird to me. I'm not even sure if I shoud continue communication here or rathe jst leafe it.
Seriously this is weird, Fun but really weird. If I don't die, I should realy chek back at the person who game me this stuf.

wat

Sorry, to clarify. I just took a pill that normally should have not made me trip balls, but it making me trip balls. I'm sure it's just a temporary thing

Take the chance to write a book or something. It worked for Aleister Crowley.

It was a sleeping pill. I can barely type and I think I'll pass out peacefully in the next few minutes. Plus, I have quite a lot of writing material even without this. So far it's not giving anything plot-worthy. Just the screen is suddenly out of paper, and the Quick reply window appears to be a box made out of thin fabric gently waving in the wind, and there are little people in it, carrying the letters I type and imprinting it into the fabric. And there is blood splitting every time I make a typo.

bump for weed r

So I want one of the nations in my setting to have grown in an area that was surrounded with dangerous monsters, which prevented them from interacting with the rest of the world till they killed said dangerous monsters. Now, the issue is that I don't know how to explain how they ended up in that place surrounded by dangerous monsters.
Any ideas?

Okay guys, I need you to get into this setting for me. I made it as this sort of ... just, weird world, but not too weird. I used to play a lot of Garry's Mod while listening to BvDub and other really ethereal mystical sounding ambient music. See video below for a lot of what I would do. It was comfy as hell for some reason.

streamable.com/lb8cs

But anyway, a couple years ago I started running a post-apocalyptic campaign, pretty basic generic world, but without any fallout influence because I've never played fallout. I've been told it's a bit similar to Stalker or Metro 2033 but I've barely played those games so I couldn't say for sure. I just want to convey this feeling of unease, like some just plain freaky or unsettling monsters, effects (like a bus randomly sprouting legs and coming to life, or a rift to nowhere opening suddenly).

I don't know, I have this strong feeling for the world I want to create but I don't know how to put it on paper without droning on endlessly. I also plan to make one of these for Maine rather than Russia, with cozy lighthouse fortresses watching the sea, monsters hiding in the alpine forests, haunted acadia, that kind of shit.

But yeah, just give me your thoughts. It's meant to be a "soft" document that outlines some factions and creatures but doesn't really give specifics on locations or anything.

I should add, I did run the campaign in that world for a little while, it's still alive technically, just on hiatus because my group cycles through campaigns kind of weirdly. But the first adventure was them going into the ruined city to get medicine from a hospital, getting into a fight with the people who lived in the hospital, capturing their leader who was a River Tam ripoff, and then things went a bit weird, but there was a cult looking for her because her "powers" could allow them to make contact with their god. And I was planning this ritual where I'd describe all kinds of weird shit but never explain any of it, i don't even know the explanation myself, the idea is just to evoke this sense of strangeness and mystery that I get sometimes about the world, it gives me feels. I did a good job conveying that feeling once in a separate campaign but this one is the one where I really want to drive it in.

Anyway, enough aspergers rambling from me.

What do you think of this cosmological model?
Basically there are the planes of conjunction that are the easier to access from the material plane because, well, they're "joined" in a non-physical fashion since they share much of their contents although the material realm is the center where everything is more balanced of course. Each plane has subplanes that have a variety of "themes", especially those attached to other planes are considered equally existing in both, in a sense even those joined to the physical realm are "part" of it although in a non-physical way.
The rest of the planes are harder to get to since they are far away from the material but through a lot of travel it is possible even if risky due to the denizens of the Soulsteppes.
Alternatively there are a few portals in the right planes of conjunction, which are "closer" to them spiritually (Realm of Decay>Byduria or Odran'Pa etc., each has at least one plane more easily reachable due to their similar nature.
Then there is Aeidiggeon which is an everchanging plane which holds all the four elements conflicting with one another and is the only one not static moving though the Soulsteppes, getting into the planes of conjunction's domain and changing them with it's passage.
The external of the sphere is called the Unknowable Reaches and is an uncreated storm of possibilities, a boiling cauldron from which everything came to be. The only "real" thing in the Unknowable is the Archive of the Ages, a library containing all possible knowledge, including all the lives and thoughts of all the people who existed and will ever exist.
It's just a fast model I made so of course it's not perfect.

I like four realms overlapping like that. I like it better than the models in FR/etc., frankly.

Mine is bit more bare, with two opposing sources of creation in drifting consciousness of great beast, with deities creating physical world as barrier so spooky things from Sheol (life) doesn't get them.

Well, if magic/gods are thing, you can just argue that they were placed there, or monsters were placed around them - as a curse, perhaps? Or some unfortunate mishap brought their first settlers there (ex. very early ship was wrecked by monsters, and survivors got washed into the region)

>Describe the most basic facts of an economy in your setting. What (if applicable) currency does it use, and why? How would one get rich? What resources are most valuable in terms of profit vs. effort?
There are plenty of currencies, with western kingdoms/nations have usually different currencies from each other, either metal coinage or paper. Desw have no paper currency, but have very united currency and seals from theurgy. Some more remote areas don't have their own currencies.
As for resources or getting rich, I haven't thought of anything peculiar. The world was wrecked by some wars recently, so rebuilding effort probably is something that is booming.

>Well, if magic/gods are thing, you can just argue that they were placed there, or monsters were placed around them - as a curse, perhaps? Or some unfortunate mishap brought their first settlers there (ex. very early ship was wrecked by monsters, and survivors got washed into the region)
The only god in the setting isn't exactly a councious being so I can't use divine intervention, but I could say they ended up there after a ship wreck.
It also fits with my original idea of them being the former citizens of a powerful and ancient nation that went to shit after fucking with magic too much.
Thanks!

Have you ever thought of taking an existing setting and revamping it somehow?

I find that some anime introduce really interesting settings, but never delve deeper than what the plot requires or what is easiest to deliver to a general audience. Maybe that's with writers in general.

You could, of course, rip off a setting but steal most of its general ideas so you could do them your own way, which would probably be the best, but I feel that's kind of a copout solution.

Keep in mind I'm raving at two in the morning, so if the question's too autistic, disregard it.

Looks pretty good, spooby setting?
Also to add to my first post
I was thinking of killing off the Soulsteppes cause it's too similar of D&D's astral plane and maybe make the only means of travel to the external planes only through the conjunction planes.
Also the Mutable Palace is a huge palace existing in all the five planes contemporaneously that changes its rooms depending on the strengthening or weakening of the planes currents and can lead to many different places, supposedly even non-existing ones although its corridors are full of dangers and only the strongest of adventurer groups can hope to fight through it.
Maybe I'll put a version of the Soulsteppes that is cut out from the rest of the planes and acts as some sort of purgatory/limbo, where portals/magic acting wrong could land you.
I dunno, I know it's kinda generic but this is my second setting and I just started so there's certainly space for improvement.

Are you talking about actually rewamping the setting or just writing your own shit into the setting?

No, I think the question is very valid.
And yeah, my settings began basically as a repurposing/revamping/detailing existing settings, from a short picture book by Hayao Miyazaki called "Shuna's Journey". I found the settings and central plot themes depicted in the book absolutely amazing, but it contains very little actual world-building. So I essentially started expanding and inventing more detailed and consistent backstory and explanation for what that book depicts, eventually started adding entire new elements (much of which I borrowed from another Miyazaki's work, Naushicaa of the Valley of Winds).
Eventually the whole thing took on a life of it's own, additional inspirations from multiple different sources (mostly real-world cultures of Central Asia and Middle East) took over a lot of it... but still, it all started essentially as expansion and backstory for an already existing settings.

Nowdays, I deeply regret it though. I love the settings, I've put a lot of work into it, but I'm still consistently reminded that it's very core is blatantly derived from another man's fiction. I can't really remove these elements without basically throwing the entire fiction into the trash, but the unoriginal elements of it prevent me from using it for any other than purely personal purposes. I have a friend who suggested multiple times he'd like to use the settings as a background of a videogame he has been working on, and since I'm a writer I've been yearning to use it in some literary works, but Miyazaki-based elements in it make me really, really uncomfortable to use it in any public or commercial manner.

So yeah, I've done that, and I regret it.

Can someone point me to some ressources regarding nanotech? Aside from reading wikipedia. Just want to get a general overview.

What overview do you expect, exactly? Nanotechnology is a label for all technology that relies on manipulation of matter in orders of nano-meters or smaller. There is nothing more to "generally overview" than there is to overview "macrotechnology". It's a broad as fuck category, especially when you include potential fictional applications.

Right, nanorobotics is probably what I'm looking for.

Personally, I would say detail out a few core systems and major players using the second method, then use something like the first to get a brief overview of other parts of the galaxy.

Basically, the way that I see it, colonization of other solar systems will usually start with those closer to where a civ starts; for example I don't think that, unless there are literally no other options to us, we'd colonize an earth-like planet on the other side of the milky way before getting a colony on one that's closer.

So you have these dense clusters around a central group of systems where a civ sprung up, with plenty of colonies and different political bodies, but the farther you go out you'll encounter emptier systems, ones that were only recently colonized and might only have a single planet and a few mining/ resource outposts on the other worlds in-system.

that looks like gibiltar/constantinopolis.

someone will build cities on the 2 coasts and will demand taxes and offer services to all the trade ships passing, that is 100% guaranteed.
i would probably expect all the small islands to be inhabited too since they can enjoy a good climate and fishing enviroment without the drawback of commercial isolation.
i expect cities on the passage to be the true winners of any trade in the zone, so other harbors won't be that successful.

local history can be shaped by wars for the control of the passage, which can be partially resolved by both coasts splitting the income from the tariffs.

as for the inner sea, given it's all so well connected, many cities could surface, mostly based on what the land nearby can produce and offer in trade.

>MiddleAgeEurope.world

Nearness of systems is strange in the case of Spelljammer, because it's rather indistinct on how close crystal spheres are to one another, and the paths between them. That's why I considered using the dungeon generation method, as each sphere would then be connected to at least 1d4 other spheres by currents, but then I get into things like temporary connections, or spheres that can still be reached but have no currents going to them. How do you determine things like that?

There's basically no limit to how many you could have, but there is a limit to how many you can expect the reader or participant to care about or be conscious of. Most people will not give a shit about the ten billion fiefdoms of Westeros, just the seven houses and then maybe the major 1-2 within.

That's why it's important to make sure that subdivisions of polities have an over-arching association that outsiders can refer to them by. Locrians, Athenians, Spartans, Messenians, Pylians, Cretans, Cypriots, Thessalians, Sicilians, Phocaeans, Leuctretians all exist but more often they will be dealt with as Ionians/Dorians/Aetolians/Achaeans, or dealt with as Greek.

Think of it as the "Franks rule" or "They're all Greek to me" rule. Outside of specific political circumstances a Muslim or Orthodox dealing with a Westerner didn't care if he was Norman or Provencal or Saxon or Lyonese or Vasconian or Burgundian or Lombard or Bavarian or Suabian or Bohemian. He was just a Frank.

Always make sure you have a good reliable over-arching ethnic group to group those various polities.

Just where did the whole idea of elves being really good archers from?

Is it all just down to Legolas in LotR? Because as far as I know, most legendary archers in mythology and fiction are just human, like Robin Hood and Odysseus.

What are some real life languages which lisp in their English accent? I've noticed it with Chinese people. I'm trying to find how a language should sound for its speakers to have a thick lisp when they try to speak English.

DnD basing their elves on the Sindar and Legolas, who are the woodnigger bowmen, instead of other elves like the Noldor.

It does boil down to the Tolkien tropes, who presumably chose bow for Legolas (and elves in general) for the same reason why bows are given so often to females to genre fiction: to reconcile frail, gracious constitution that does not seem well fit for violence with some form of violent activity. Bow allows you to look like you participate on the action, but avoids having to answer the difficult question of "that guy/girl looks like a twig, how comes he hasn't been snapped in half yet".

Sort of a more - hands-free type of combat.

In reality, it does not make much sense of course, because bows required considerable amount of physical strength to be operated. More than most melee weapons, in fact. The boy in Odysseus serves as test of physical strength.

What are some different human racial and ethnic groups you've created and what physical features do they have?

What's your opinion on mixing up fantasy races in a "country"?

For an easy example, let's just imagine you visit a village in medieval France. Most people in town are human, but a few hunters are elfish, and the human smith was taught how to do his craft by dwarves in the Alps. (Wild) Orcs are typically seen as bad news, unless they're from the martial families, orcs that have served as military servants to human chieftains since ancient times.

If this helps: There is nothing inherently wrong with it, though I think that it doesn't help the fantasy races and makes it more difficult for them to retain their own identity, which makes it harder to justify them being in this world in the first place. It's very excusable in big cities of importance or on the borders.

>It does boil down to the Tolkien tropes, who presumably chose bow for Legolas (and elves in general) for the same reason why bows are given so often to females to genre fiction: to reconcile frail, gracious constitution that does not seem well fit for violence with some form of violent activity
That doesn't make any sense considering how many elves died fighting in Beleriand. His elves were never frail anyway.

>The boy in Odysseus serves as test of physical strength.
Oh my.

>Oh my.
It's ancient Greece, the culture that invented the word "Pederast". What the fuck did you expect.

Homer pretty much avoids all that, even with the Achilleus/Patroklos thing.

Which is pretty stupid considering Tokien's elves were also excellent warriors.
Fuck, one of them 1vs1 frigging Morgoth and managed to severely wound him before dying. And he did this when Morgoth was almost at full power.

He's just stupid.

It's about aesthetic sensibilities rather than in-world logic. And admitedly, Tolkien was not quite as guilty of this as those who followed up on him. It's not about them not being strong enough to fight, but rather about the fact that for aesthetic reasons, the author wants to avoid the somewhat jarring visual imagery of them engaging in a melee fight: both because it may look odd - their physical description does not really fit the combat situation, and also to maintain the aura of being untouchable and above direct physical confrontation. Again: neither Tolkien, nor any of the thousand authors that adopted the same trope claimed that they CAN'T do it, but rather they just use various narrative and visual tricks to avoid showing/describing them in such scenario. Giving them bows instead of swords is one of such trick.

Says the person literally not understanding some of the most basic literary devices in the genre? Yeah.

Except Tolkien arguably showed the elves fighting in direct combats way more times than he showed them using bows.
It's just that Legolas is his most famous elf and he used a bow most of the time to add a little variety to a party made almost entirely of sword/dagger users. And if I remember properly he had a sword too.

>the author wants to avoid the somewhat jarring visual imagery of them engaging in a melee fight
user, you are a retard. Noldor clad themselves in full armor and fought with swords and spears in melee, and occasionally got massacred. Also consider what Tolkien himself wrote about Legolas:
>"He was as tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship."

He had a dagger.

Not in LotR, actually. Later, in Silmarilion, though he generally avoided direct descriptions of battle beyond a sort of an old epic/mythological tale style. Remember the elves that joined the battle in Helms Deep? Yeah, bowmen. Elves otherwise rarely feature in combat descriptions across LotR series. Hobbit mentiones them fighting, but again avoids details on purpose.
It's also well worth keeping in mind that elves themselves change radically across his various works.
It's also further well worth mentioning that the LotR books also often put a lot of emphasis on elves having unusually keen sight, the ability to move around extremely silently, move across tree-tops, stay perfectly hidden in the forest: further stressing out their proficiency at non-direct means of war.

Dude, can you NOT FUCKING READ? Who the fuck are you calling retard if you can't fucking read or put basic concepts together. I don't give a fuck that you don't like what I'm saying and need to lash out on principle, fuck off until you can act and think like an actual human being.

>Remember the elves that joined the battle in Helms Deep? Yeah, bowmen
That''s some shit added in the movie. There was literally one elf in Helm's Deep in the book.

It seems like you need to quit Veeky Forums for a while and read a book before running your mouth.

>beyond a sort of an old epic/mythological tale style
You need to read some old epics my dude.

I can pretty much assure you that I've done more of that already than you will ever in your life.

>and read a book
Says the person who literally cannot comprehend the difference between aesthetical literary tool and in-universe diegetic one? Are you fucking kidding me?

"BUT YOU ARE A RETARD BECAUSE ELVES ALSO USED OTHER WEAPONS, DURRR".
Yeah, fucktard. But the the author intentionally decides to put emphasis specifically on this element, because it helps to subtly build a certain aesthetic notion. You STILL had not even began comprehending that you cretin, so fuck off.

You are actually right on that, sorry about that. Then again, further emphasis on elves and archery happens right at the beggining of Fellowship (when Frodo meets the elves near Shire, when discussing if the elves could offer him protection from Nazguls, the elven leader says that he'd need a battalion of elven archers like in the ancient times, later in Lórien it's mentioned that it's a place where the very finest of the finest elven bows are made. Bows are also described as the primary weapons of guards both in Lorien and Mirkwood, if I remember correctly.

So yeah, at least in the trilogy, a lot of effort is made to stress bows above other weapons in connection to elves, and it's not only Legolas.

Arguing that the fact that they also use other weapons is about as logical as arguing that Tolkien did not also helped to popularize the mage staff stereotype, because of the fact that Gandalf actually wears and uses sword as a primary weapon.
He does, but for aesthetic reasons (both emphasis on age, traveling, and allusions to older mythological tropes), the staff is what ended up being most associated with Gandalf-derived image of a wizard.

But Homer and Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied and the Kalevala all have pretty direct descriptions of combat. Like I know you said "beyond" epic style, but that seems a bit strange to say unless you think an epic style isn't very direct.

You can throw around fancy words between capslock all you want, but Tolkiens elves were not frail, they were not weak. Read the description of Legolas again. He was an archer and Tolkien knew that archers needed to be strong. And the most noble and strongest elves have been depicted as fighting with close-combat weapons.

The aesthetic notion was "cunning woodsman" not "lithe qt trap".

>not frail, they were not weak.
God you are fucking retard, and I'm just sick of explaining the same incredibly simple concept over and over again. You are literally brain damaged and beyond any help. You literally cannot distinguish between aesthetical intention and diegetic (that is in-universe you fucking monkey) content. You LITERALLY CANNOT COMPREHEND that an author wants to describe one thing, but also creates an aesthetic impression that is slightly different. That your character can be in-universe strong, but as an author you might chose to use indirect tools to also add an impression of say, elegance and sophistication, by for an example, chosing to give him more indirect ways to still remain part of a battle.
That whole idea is fucking completely lost on you. And that is fucking sad. Can you now fuck off please?

I don't think you get the 'realism' approach it all.
It's not to create some "whooaaaaa this could be REAL LIFE DUDE!!!1!" reaction. It's to create a map that doesn't look like dogshit, and thus keeping the suspension of disbelief.

Lots of people do it for whooaaaa real life dude, user.

Other than that he said what you said.

>I don't think you get the 'realism' approach it all.
I'm pretty sure that I get it, because you just literally said what I said. Like, basically you just quoted what I said, almost verbatim.

Can you write a single post without capslock? It doesn't help your argument. Alright, can you cite me some sources on what you are rambling about? That that was his intention? You already got the elves in the books wrong and seem to have never read the Silmarillion, so I'm excited to hear what you have to say about that.

Hey guys.

Just did an expansion to the /omg/ library y'all use.

Organized a fuckhuge folder about the rituals and practices from Peru to the Hopi (roundabouts, if I recall).

Update's in the usual thread on /x/. Thanks again for using the library.