/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

I would say the first, big cats and shit are already pretty close to that

I would love some feedback on this "weird" post-apocalyptic setting I've been working on, basically it's meant to evoke the feel of those old Gmod DarkRP maps, or Shadowmoor from MTG, just a very... dark world, in a literal sense. And gray. And there are things that howl in the night and you don't know where they came from but you're safe in your sheet-metal fortress/village so you're okay for now.

My biggest issue right now is I feel like I am trying too hard to evoke a feeling that I can't in RPGs. I used to play Gmod and listen to ambient music, like this: streamable.com/lb8cs

That kinda inspired the setting, because the wanderings felt so beautiful and like I was in another world. So when my friends wanted to try a Savage Worlds campaign in post-apocalyptic, I didn't have to do much work, it just kinda came out naturally. So some of the stuff in there I've already used but I decided to expand the world.

I also want to do a post-apocalyptic setting based in Maine, with comfy walled lighthouse towns and haunted forests and that comfy new england feel. Dunno where to start on that one though.

I just tried to make a world that made sense in a weird way.

So I took the real world, and obviously there are humans. There are dwarves based on Neanderthals. There are also troglodytes based on homo habilis that sort of take the role of your typical fantasy cannon fodder goblins.

Elves are not a natural race. When a human amasses enough magical power (typically when they're elderly), they eventually transform into an elf by slowly becoming younger and growing pointy ears.

Orcs and goblins are partially replaced by the troglodytes, and partially by zombies. World needs more African mythology mate. Basically, humans, dwarves and troglodytes can be turned into zombie slaves either by direct magic, or by rituals. If the humanoid stays a zombie for too long, their original personality is gone - and they become like an Tolkien-ian Orc. An evil unnatural psychopathic creature.

There also trolls. That's what happens when someone comes in contact with raw mutagenic magic (so different from the elven and zombie transformation). A troll is an unfortunate soul that rolled on a random number generator to become something. They can look like anything at any size. That also means that they can be friendly allies, mischievous tricksters, savage murderers, uncaring mercenaries, or ultimate evil walking the Earth. They do tend to be rather perturbed mentally from the transformation, so they typically live away from people regardless of their (lack of) goodness.

Is there something wrong with my pdf-viewer, or is the file just blank pages with a few headers here and there and a chart on the last pages?

You need art. Professional art. Mood pieces.

The intention seems to be that you fill out the details.
Don't know how good it is in long run. For traditional depictions, monocultures etc. it's nifty, but outside of that might fall short.

>that comfy new england feel

No, that's all.
It's good because it helps delineating precisely what your race is all about without missing things on the way like it usually happens.
The only thing that I found missing was the history of the race but by the time you're finished talking about origin, their aims, their relations etc. you're pretty much done with the important stuff anyway.

My only problem with that is it assumes that a race is a single, cohesive and homogenic entity, with no differentiating groups or divergent factions.

What if group A of one race has completely opposite aims than group B? etc.

To what extent do you ape other settings in your own? I really wanna steal shit from Endless Space 2. I like the idea of:

>universe is permeated by some nigh-magical force
>direct exposure to this force causes people to become hyper-competent geniuses and leaders (assuming they don't die of mutation)
>there is a mysterious Academy to train these heroes
>heroes serve great civilizations, changing the course of history

I want that in my setting but a little more mystical, hewing a little closer to Destiny or Star Wars in some respects.

There is a "Inner factions" paragraph which I used to list different groups with different goals. Also "Other locations" helped with that too.

What would you call a setting that is a fictional world with technology and aethetics of the interbellum, but also magic.

Animu shite.

*wink wink*

Literally just call magic ''magic'' and you're all set

The Roaring Witchpyres

What kind of magic, like in Harry Potter?

I like animal/beastman races so I tend to add those in my setting. I remember watching a documentary in the middle of the night and hearing that dingoes can turn their heads almost 360 degrees. I thought that was really cool, so I put dingo-people in my setting and worked from there. Remember that a culture or a people don't act certain ways for no reason; economics, environment (social/natural), and contact with other cultures all influence that. It's a pain in the ass to consider all the variables, but it makes for a more well rounded and realistic peoples than just saying "they are assholes because they are evil".

that just sounds like magic in literally every setting, except the flair of when you're exposed to pure magic you roll the dice and mutate good or bad.

What do you mean by "like Harry Potter"?

I don't have many special reasons. Lot are just things that spawned from bunch of sketches. Desw were for a game concept I had, a sort of native that had evolved in a Blame!-esque human superstructure that was intended for them to ascend into a godhood of sorts. Draconians were something I sketched during my time in military, Caowe were something I quickly threw together during a quest I ran and then kept using them from time to time, etc.

It is rather self-indulgent, frankly. but I guess that is part of worldbuilding for me. I have been trying to differentiate creatures so they fill niches of sort or have unique flair to them. I have been thinking about making more 'exotic' things, like making nocturnal- or perhaps aquatic sapient species. However, if used in game, it can be bit too big of a hindrance.

Of course, that applies to playable creatures, but I assume that is what you meant with question anyway. Lunarians for example, live on the moon, do not age ( via transdifferentiation ) and communicate via radio waves - not really intended for players.

Well, not quite. "Magic" is actually a pervasive coating of nanobots called Dust, left over by an ancient race called the Endless (who, ironically, ended themselves through civil war long before your time). Dust has incredible networking abilities and is so valuable that it has supplanted most other forms of currency. Most planets have latent dust supplies that can be extracted from the air, water and soil.

Some of its uses include mixing into concrete to create self-repairing buildings or using it to create crops that adapt themselves to the local climate unnaturally quickly.

It's pretty similar to magic, but it has a pretty cool flavor, especially in-game. It's worth noting that there aren't really "dustomancers" or wizards or the like.

I got two ideas for a setting.

The first one is the modern world in the near future where there was a "soft" apocalypse so to speak. A giant meteor was heading to Earth and Earth's nations banded together to create various superweapons to destroy the meteor. While they managed to destroy most of the meteor, there were still large fragments that managed to hit Earth. This massively changed the face of the Earth as well as causing the collapse of most nations. Now the remnants of these countries and strange corporation-nations are fighting one another to reconquer their lost land and rely on various mercenary companies that looted the armories of the collapsed nations in the early days of the apocalypse.

My second idea is translating the Napoleonic Wars into a generic fantasy setting. My idea was that the French equivalent are the Drow who were united by a genius general and have begun expanding out of their underground kingdoms. I haven't really worked on this idea too much other than having the Brits be humans and the Spanish be regular elves.

I'm working on the cosmology of a new setting. I want to run campaigns in this one for years to come so I want to make it as detailed as I can get. My friends and I mostly play 5e, so I'm roughly basing it off the 12 cleric domains released by WotC so far. I made a diagram that associates each with a rough alignment and a constellation in the sky of the world, The alignments aren't the be-all-end-all, and each of the 12 gods might have a little overlap in terms of domain, but I'm going to use this to roughly define the relationships between all of the gods.

At least in this, the most common pantheon. I might have one or two other ones eventually.

Hey, /wbg/, I need your thoughts on something. The gist is I'm trying to figure out slavery in my setting and how it would be viewed in common society, specifically a common society trying to rebuild after fleeing to another continent.

To elaborate on things a little:
>The PC and starting landmass the players are on has only been inhabited by many of the core races for only 80 years or so.
>the original population of refugees that arrived were maybe in the 500s of each race, so the population is small and has only been supplemented by 'accepting' affairs with some of the natives who themselves were not exactly a large population to begin with.

all I do have is that drow still practice slavery, but it's a formality and status thing to own slaves in the modern times. Slaves are basically more like dress up dolls and meant for entertainment than labor.

I should also note: it is a pre-industrial society, roughly approaching renassance tech-levels.

Another idea I had had was that most dwarves would not practice slavery because they believe in "you get what you pay for" and thus, don't trust the quality of work produced by slave labor.

Growing up on the old NES RPGs like Final Fantasy 4 and Dragon Warrior 4 I have a real fondness for female only/majority cities. So is there a way to incorporate one in a tasteful way into a setting?

The easiest answer for such things is always: religion. You can justify almost any kind of strange customs, laws, habits and overall societies with it.

btw I'd like some feedback and ideas

As long as it can be done in a less... offensive or heavy handed way? Shit like banning, killing or enslaving men is not tasteful

Are you me?

It's not like Arabia and Egypt are that far from each other, I don't get what your problem is.

There is nothing really offensive about prohibiting men acces to a city by itself. They must not resort to violence immediately if they find a man there.

Enviro dude here. When making your climates don't forget they shift ever so slightly. Look at the ITCZ zone's yearly fluctuation and see how it impacts the African Sub-Sahara. IE: African Monsoon.

Climate is never "stable" in the short term. If your kingdom is permanently green on a multi-decade length then something is wrong (or very very preternaturally right.)

To Emphasize what I'm saying here, I don't mean the yearly cycles. I mean the migration of yearly cycles.

Where "wet season" happens will change over decades/centuries. Sometimes only briefly (re: bad droughts for a few years or decades) sometimes very long term (Central US, re: mega-droughts.)

So for example, some years the African Monsoon simply is to far south. It never makes it high enough to bring much needed rain to the Sub-Saharan during its raining seasons.

Or alternatively... the US Midwest is sometimes a massive, dune-filled desert. Naturally so. The dust bowl era droughts look tiny compared to these mega-droughts. Imagine what the onset of one would do to your setting?

Environmental cycles are rife with potential story telling mechanisms! It isn't just about glacial periods!

If you have so much trouble with races, maybe your setting would benefit from being human only. Or with magical intelligent species but minoritary and peripherical, relatively unimportant for the focus of attention.

I posted the hex-version of my map last week, spent some time earlier today turning into a more parchment/"realistic" map. Idea is to host a strongly naval setting within 2.5 colliding supercontinents.

I know the borders are probably way too edgy, but they're hand-drawn so I'm happy with them for now and will look to smooth some out later.

Tangentially related, but also put some effort into a Hawaiian-based conlang this past week to go into this setting (whoever has primary ownership of the islands, am thinking a stylized Aztec civilization). Have the phonemes down, just looking at some verbal morphology and defining roots in my lexicon.

d'oh. would help if I attached the image.

As mentioned above, details/fixes to come.

I'm just fucking unable to grasp how those winds, fronts and shit work so I mostly ignore them.

Working on the map for my first campaign. The country is very wip at the moment, i'd just like some feedback to see if it actually makes sense.

Imho the islands are too big and there's not enough sea. It doesn't look very aesthetic.

I suppose it could be part of religious customs or something, for some background on the city in question its an isolated city deep in a forested basin with many springs, creeks, and branches that flow into a large river that is the primary (or only known by outsiders) entrance. The city proper is timber walled, with a very garden like interior with streams that run through the city itself. Not sure what style of dwellings though, probably timber framing with masonry for the more prominent citizens.

About the history, I got some ideas but nothing really seems to make a lot of sense. Then again its fantasy so ignoring a little logic here could be fine.

Also, a closeup of the area around the port which is where the campaign will start.

Make them part of a bigger culture and religion that isn't female only. This specific city exists because [insert myth that justifies it] but aside of some customs caused by isolation and conditions they're not that alien. They don't kill their male children but send them to nearby towns. In the same way, cities from around this cultural sphere send some young female children from time to time so the sacred women city has another generation.

It's okay. We barely grasp it too. I learned everything humanity knows about the weather systems in 2 semesters. Everything else is theoretical-physics-formulae that simply explain why those 6 months of knowledge is "cutting edge."

Just got one problem with this, if they're close to neighbors then its like how have they not been conquered by them and their presumably all male armies? I like the relative isolation angle, with a river port to move goods and people keeping the location of their city secret.

>what are you working on?
I'm building a setting for Starfinder based on some old notes I had for DnD in space. Not like spelljammer, but a few years back I really wanted to do basically Star Wars but with fantasy races like elves and stuff.

Ever since Starfinder was announced I've wanted to work on something for it, and I think there's enough info on the player races and such that I can make a somewhat coherent start.

Pic related, I'm using Nasa's rendition of the Milky Way as a base, but I've decided I wanted plenty of room to explore. I'm only using the small spur of starts that rests just above the 45,000 light year mark on this map, which should contain around 700 million stars in it just by itself. That should be enough for a Space Opera Fantasy setting.

I'm working on a scifi setting on a partially terraformed planet, and I'm trying to see if there's a way to integrate some form of native life in way that's plausible but actually interesting and relevant to players without disrupting everything else.

It's colder than earth but generally similar, and about 150-200 years after the beginning of colonization. The air's breathable but only just so, and you'll probably want to take a mask if you are going much above sea level. Most of the population lives in the heavily terraformed and fairly forested green zone on the equator, while beyond that is mostly tundra and lichens and nomads.

There is some pre-Devonian tier native life in the sea, but everything on the land is species brought from Earth. The problem with this is that the native life is pretty much irrelevant at this point except for atmospheric oxygen levels unless I wanted to turn it into submarine adventures or something. The issue with bringing out of the water, though, is that the land needs to be a very barren place for the whole setting and theme to work and I can't find a good way satisfy this while also creating something interesting and worth interacting with. Large animals won't work without some kind of supporting ecosystem, and making things like fungi and bacteria interesting without going down the diseases route is tricky.

My ideas so far:
>Barren land but complex subterranean life, maybe from before the planet froze over - and now that things are getting warmer from terraforming the surface is habitable again.
Thematically I love this idea, but there's a lot of plausibility issues with energy sources/metabolism/etc that I can't think of good bullshit for

>just keep all the native shit in the ocean and maybe fluff it out a bit, leave land with earth shit only
Entirely workable, but but I feel like it needs some more exotic elements to keep it from feeling like Alaskan Tundra Planet: Megacorp Edition

>fuck this shit, expand on the spooky shamanic shit to spice up the wilds instead
I also like this option, but i've have to give it some thought on how to make it work best without just making another shadowrun

>maybe some kind of sentient soil fungi that are linked with the shamanic shit or something

I don't think this is the right thread for this, and I don't want to make a thread for the question itself, so I'll just ask here and hope for the best.

A friend of mine is looking to do an RP with two GMs, himself and me. Neither of us really know how to go about doing this without stepping on each others toes or splitting it to where one of us is handling major stuff while the other handles just minor bits.

So, the question is this. How would you guys go about running a campaign with more than one GM?

I'm not really willing to concede in where the outer continents are. Do you think it'd be more interesting as more of an archipelago?

For context, pic related was what it was when it was more colored in hex form.

I told you, they're part of the same culture and probably serve some cultural/religious niche. It would be like attacking and sacking the oracle of Delphos or the Papal State. It can happen but it should not and you're gonna face consequences if you do it.

They can be relatively isolated but not completely because otherwise the population cannot sustain itself unless you go full "it's magic" and that's just lame.

Dunno man, I just know that the size of the islands makes it look like a river or a lake, not a sea separating massive amounts of land. I mean look at the mediterranean and the baltic.

No worries mate, thanks for the feedback. I'll think about splitting them further apart. Shouldn't be much harder than free select -> pull apart and bumping the file size.

I tried to do that and it was an awful experience. Be sure you don't get into cosmology or how the world works. Every time I said "this doesn't exist" he was like "uh, it does in my parts of the world" or viceversa. Like there's this powerful gods but "uh, but they're powerless in my parts and these more OP guys exist". "This race was created artificially some centuries ago" "except in my place where they always existed and are completely natural but identical at everything else"

If despite my advice you decide to continue, please make sure you're both starting from zero. No crossover.

If you're looking to use a world both of you create together, I'd consider working in "batches". Ex: You're running a jungle campaign, so talk with your buddy about what enemies might live there, how cultures work, etc. None of it has to be super detailed, just broad strokes. From there you'll be on the same page when it comes to answering your player's questions.

If you're using Forgotten Realms or similar, feel free to make shit up as you go and just keep notes for the other DM.

How do you name your days and months, /wbg/?

Well real life ones are named after gods, so probably just name them after the setting's gods.

There's only one God.

>2017
>being a monotheist
The only god to have displayed his power openly in our age is from a polytheistic pantheon, so the odds of that being accurate are basically zero.

I care not for your ignorance as I was discussing about a fictitious world and not trying to have a theological discussion with some random ignoramus who gets his "knowledge" from group-think.

Now, do you guys also name weeks?

They're named after the eight Zodiac constellations

Is that a pic of HP Lovecraft?

I'm going with relatively isolated in a thick forest region, with the only entrances being a large and an unknown mountain pass. There's the capital city with a no men allowed policy due to religious customs, and a river port where men are allowed but not permitted permanent residence.

Looks cool; can you tell us anything about the setting?

>entrances being a large river, and an unknown mountain pass.
Had to fix that.

>Worldbuilding for both a tabletop setting and a video game RPG setting

I'm not in trouble am I?

Keep it up dude, it'll turn out great!

Beware, long post.
I'm encountering a problem in the setting I am creating.

It's supposed to be huge, the planet is Jupiter sized, the players in my campain will play 3 acts, the first act will be some sort of tutorial for the system and the setting, so it will be pretty straightforward, I'll give them a mission with very clear objectives and places to visit with a start and an ending.

For the second act I will just make them able to discover the surroundings of the zone where they will start.

For the third act even if I'm really SCARED about what my players would do, I'll let them do whatever they want.

The first act will start in City X then they will go to Ruins Y to then be back to City X, Where should I focus with my map? The trip will be of medium lengt and for most part they will use a particular travel method to cross a really dungerous zone without getting killed.

For Act 2 instead, They will stay on City X and if they want, they can hung around a little bit. I will probably focus on the city for this part, then I'll give them a really nice job opportunity where they just need to go to the nearby Town Z to "convince" a guy to come to City X and work for the questgiver.
The problem will arrive in 1-2 days, when Town Z will be destroyed by a MOVING City A, so they will end in there and decide what to do, exploring it from the lowest to the highest level, or just trying to escape, in this case shall I focus on the Moving City Structure and ignore the world map or shall I give them infos of the surrounding area?

Act 3 will start when they will complete everything/escape from the city.

Sorry if the post may seem too much convuluted, it's late in here, if you need any further explaination I'll be there to answer.

Heck, on my world a blight drove the elves south and caused them to make first contact with the other liveborn races.
The fantasy component comes in when the blight had been foreseen by one of the (deceased) ancient spirits of an elven ancestor, who promptly called up the living elf chieftains to offer advice.

literally me post

Magic exists but it's fucking retarded.

>Woah Dumbledore, so this necklace allows travelling back in time''
>''Yes Harry, now you must use it travel back in time to stop save yourself in the past and perpetuate a time paradox''
>Gee Dumbledore, could I use this thing to go back in time to, like, save my parents from Voldemore?
>''NO of course not Harry for fucks sake your parents were cunts they had it coming!''

Yeah, you can tell by the effort he puts into not smiling.

They're named after the most beloved emperors of the first empire, and these emperors were named after constellations so odds are they're totally mythical.

I feel like Rowling really didn't consider the implications her clearly made up on the fly magic system would have on the world.

Actually this sounds pretty good as all three existing at the same time, just in different places on the planet. Have 3A be where city center have existed, 3B is takes place in military bunkers and 3C is where the apoc hit the hardest.

Also
>teleportation, invisible flying cars and brooms exist
>still have to go to Hogwarts by a fucking train

What vidyo?

One that I'm making.

>It's that time again Veeky Forums, what are you working on?
I had an odd idea to make a world that fundamentally accepted the Ancient Egyptian worldview. Order and Goodness are natural, the Gods are ultimately benevolent and shield us from Darkness, and the universe operates on narrative causality (patterns, archetypes, mantling, kalpas, etc).

I feel like that sort of universe emphasizes the type of games I like to run.

>having a good-evil axis

Large rivers have been conecting people since the stone age. Having a large river near you is basically the way to ask everyone to come and visit you.

I wish you luck senpai. I love this kind of setting with a sea that links different lands.

Im trying to write down the lore for the 'mystery' elements. Currently im thinking of what my ancient venus aliens were like, instead of making them advanced i was thinking of having them perceive things differently to us, Like the parallel between Alchemy and Chemistry if that makes any sense. Might make them analogous to trees too.

You should throw that map into wilbur for a bit to give it a bit more definition!

In world's/cultures you've been working with for years, how do you deal with retarded stuff you added when you were more ignorant? I don't really want to start from zero and retconning left and right would probably end up making everything worst, full of contradictions.

For example, I'm in a situation where elf longevity and (to a lesser degree) reliance on magic conflicts with their history and political structure, but this two featured are the only thing left to call them elves (beyond aesthethics).

Not really, since the setting itself can work on both, plus making PnP first might be a good prototype of the mechanics.

You just drop it if it doesn't work anymore. Time spend on fixing something that will never work is watsed time.

Can't do that, I'm an emotionally attached bitch.

It's a cruel thing to do, but it's the best for your child, aka the setting.

Make a second setting with your discarded ideas.

>tfw you really want to run shit in new setting already but too busy daydreaming about setting to finish actually writing it down and getting shit ready
we are as one

>keep daydreaming about setting without really writing it down
>the hype calms down
>try to actually write it down now that you don't have so many ideas popping at the same time
>now it's too much of a hassle, your mind is aiming at another different thing
>never write it down, keep remembering it every now and then
>rincse and repeat