World-building General

Well there's raiju, which are Japanese creatures who are the spirits of individual lightning bolts. They're small, like wolves or even weasels.

This is all great, thanks. I hate to ask more, but I'm also having a problem thinking of monsters associated with woodworking/carpentry, all I've got at the moment is some homebrewed beaver and termite people, but I don't really want to use those.

Archon's Needle, the holy flaming spear wielded by the High Inquisitor of the Whatever Crusade. Shattered when it striked true on the heart of the BBEG lich. The spearhead, remains on the Lich's carcass...making him unable to revive.

>Culturally, they're inspired by an amalgamation of England and Italy.

Nice. Any name yet?

What natural disasters have occurred recently?

Woodpeckers and stick bugs for real life creatures and then standard dryads, ents, and the like for fantasy.

The Merithian Empire.

I dunno if its in the OP because I don't remember if it was, it probably was.

But I need some tips on how to manage the stores in every city. Should villages that lack a direct or indirect source of metal have an armory? If so how much should I rise the prices of swords and stuff in there?

Its hard to make a realistic trade network.

I took a map I found on Veeky Forums years ago, colored it, and wrote some stuff and renamed a couple things (sorry if I stole a name from you or something you like, I'm awful with naming stuff and this is just for a D&D campaign).

The Grand Union represents "good" in the way that the Imperium of Mankind does - super bleak, afraid of stuff that's different, built on top of well-meaning ideals but completely twisted and distorted by time and distance from the original goal. Though, in this case, they have abandoned religion, and basically just worship themselves rather than some god or godlike figure. If it isn't human, burn it, but otherwise, welcome to the fold, get to work. Culturally and technologically comparable to Western Europe during the height of the Enlightenment.

The Kharidians are an amalgam of the antiquated cultures of the Middle East. They started on a religious crusade, driving the beasts back to claim useless land simply because God told them to. They are at an unstable peace with the Grand Union due to their close proximity, but when they run out of wasteland to drive back the hordes from, they will not hesitate to turn their swords towards their fellow man.

cont.

Caledor is an ancient empire of, at any given time, a dozen kings each laying claim to the whole thing and hacking each other to bits. However, this time is different - the many kings have sworn fealty to one, a warrior with as much skill at the negotiation table as he displays on the battlefield, and under him Caledor has begun to focus its angst towards conquering new stuff instead of itself again. Prussian/Germanic styled culture.

The Beast Clans - mostly dragonkin and minotaurs, but every so often something weirder shows up. Most of them really just want to be left alone, but every so often one clan gets too big and starts to take over with ambitions of snuffing out the Union, so it's mostly big city-states with lots of empty wasteland between them. A little bit of every Warcraft Horde race can be seen in their culture.

The northern ones are mostly dead (Dwarves have been dead for years, and they set elaborate traps so that nobody could get their stuff) or are huge isolationists. (The Winterborn are your stereotypical northmen, while the Golden Steppe is home to some very religious monks that pray to the sun and will probably eat you if you get too close - they happen to be snake people)

Wrote a whole post you might find useful: coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/03/osr-what-does-elemental-want.html

post the original image before your editions

Anyone have suggestions for some viking themed orcy names? Im running a campign in 5e where the orcs are viking themed seafarers, elves are celtic forest nomads, dwarves are the remnants of a an army corps of engineers underground bunker and humans are a roman themed empire and a greek themed merchant league.

...

and after i redrew it in photoshop and gave it a splash of color

nice

How do you elegant gentleman deal with the issue of distortion when it comes to portraying global maps on 2d spaces? Do you design using mapping schemes like Mercator, ignore it etc?

I just chalk it up to in-universe inaccurate cartography techniques

equirectangular is usually the best option

if you are doing polar things you'll need a different projection, but there's a million that work fine for that

just download g.projector for converting between projections

The Helm of Conquest, an ornate helmet said to ensure victory to the wearer. Many would be conquerors spent time and money in search of the Helm, little did they know that it's just a large chalice used in celebration

How do you stay focused on your kitchen sink setting and stop adding new shit?

amphetamines

I only worldbuild within a 1-session or line of sight radius around the players and plot.

Anything else gets sketched extremely vaguely until needed. It's tempting to go nuts and build continents, cults, and cities that will never see play, but I figure my energy is better used elsewhere.

what said is not bad advice, but it doesn't work for everybody. for instance, personally, i'm not satisfied until i understand how world elements relate to one another, so i feel i have to figure out the historical political context of the land. i don't know if you're also like that, but what i found really helpful to me was working with a very finite amount of space. i conceptualized the continent first and worked out how to fit every idea in there without adding new land. density instead of vastness. that way, any new ideas i add have to make sense within the framework that's already established, and having that structure really helped with cohesion.

pic related, your landmass really doesn't need to be 100x times larger than france to fit an infinite amount of ideas.

I'm pretty bad at worldbuilding but I want to try for the first time. Pretty generic medieval fantasy.

>i'm not satisfied until i understand how world elements relate to one another, so i feel i have to figure out the historical political context of the land.

And that's fine and all, and it can be very fun... but it's also taking you further and further from gamable content. At that point, you're writing the setting of a novel without the story. It's fun and all, but in the end, it'll just be a stack of images and text files in a folder somewhere if you can't /use/ it.

This is more city/campaign building so I hope it's ok here. I'm currently building a campaign set in what is effectively the real world but magic and the like exists and is a secret and I'm stuck on a few things.

The players will be in an MCOM-esque organization and their doctor will be in some ways a rip off of Dr. Vahlen from XCOM in how she wants to study (read torture and dissect) things and people the party encounters. The problem is that I'm unsure if she should simply have been changed by magic (giving her some sort of compulsions or something) or if she should also be something other than a pure mortal (either a minor scion or has some minor power).

I'm also conflicted as I basically want entities which exist through the dreams of an eldritch monstrosity and have latched onto the Chaos gods for no reason beyond them fitting each being but I'm unsure what NPCs to have affected by them. I have a drug dealer who is basically a viking berserker, a necromancer with something which affects his bones, a wizard who was studying eldritch beings and summons minor demons to do her bidding, a minor practitioner with a cult who wants to become an extinct kind of vampire, a Stoker style vamp who is trying to take over the city through mind control, and a pair of succubi (one is prone to bouts of rage and the other gets off on hurting people)

Picture this:
An Orcish empire from the West that has access to (very crude) firearms and all look like conquistadors.
Can it work?

no, cant pull the trigger with orkish fingers, too big for human firearms

you're not wrong, user, it just depends on what you're trying to accomplish. i've been involved in sessions were most of the plot was determined by rolling on a table, and that was fun, but i wanted to write something more fleshed out to maximize immersion.

I'm trying this, but the area I need to flesh out is pretty big already. Right now, I'm trying to focus on history, but I'm not doing too well.

How can I express a more oriental aesthetic and tone in my game world?

The Black Sword

A sword wielded by tyrants and theives, many legends speak of the blade's power...and it's curse.

It is said to grant great power to anyone who wields it, but the moment you grasp it's hilt, your soul is forfeit to be consumed by the Black Sword upon your death.

Those who master the blade are said to summon Bladewraiths, apperitions of previous owners, their forms warped by the blade's dark magic.

Rice = Wheat

High level characters are not usually fucking around or doing things in the world, they are in the mountains seeking enlightenment.

Dragons are not evil, they are proud and divine.

Oni = Demons

Jungles instead of forests

Tigers instead of wolves

You're all set.

You should look up the Shinto, Taoism, and confucianism religions and see what myths and stories they have and see what you can draw for parallels, much in the same way a lot of settings that want a pantheon of gods looks to bronze age religions for ideas about them.

That and looking at the structure of society in these places will help, Like the Edo society of Japan or how Confuscian teachings influenced Chinese government. There will be a lot of parallels to what we normally see in western fantasy stories, but you'll realize after looking through that in some cases an important scholar or craftsmen can have similar influence to nobility.

On the more fantastic side of things look at how oriental demons and spirits operate. It should be a key factor in how you characterize monstrous creatures in your campaign.

*bumps u*

What do you think of this map so far, /wbg/?

If you hear the word 'homunculus', what comes to mind? In terms of mythology, literature, pop culture, etc.

Definitely take a gander at Eastern religions and philosophies to understand /why/ their aesthetics and worldviews were that way. I wouldn't try to mix them or copy them wholesale, either, but that's just me. It's worth the time and will go a lot further to making your setting believable and consistant rather just being another European fantasy but with a different coat of paint.

My connotations aren't great. It's definitely anime, then steampunk.

A deformed red fetus in a jar lovingly nurtured by an alchemist

youtube.com/watch?v=HNLPXzlz6-I
also these

A human grown in a jar.

Three old men are tasting vinegar.
The second man says the vinegar is bitter.
The third man says the vinegar is sweet.
Those men are Confucius, Buddha, and Laozi.

Three old men are tasting vinegar.
The first man says the vinegar is sour.
The second man says the vinegar is bitter.
The third man says the vinegar is sweet.
Those men are Confucius, Buddha, and Laozi.

Forgot the first man

How do I translate cultures into geography?

When worldbuilding, I tend to start with the different cultural groups in the world, their values and worldviews, relations with each other, etc. But when it comes time to make a map and populate it with those people, I tend to draw a blank. Some cultures might suggest a certain general terrain they live in (eg, a merchant empire would be generally be based on a major port or trade route, a nomadic tribe probably roams a large plain or desert, etc.), but for a lot of them they could go just about anywhere.

Should I try to draw a map based on the cultures I have in mind, or should I try randomly generating maps and slot them in where it seems appropriate?

i think the issue is that you`re doing it backwards. cultures develop to take advantage of their geography, so, if you want organic cohesion, you should build the geography first and when you fill in the spaces you created with people, their culture should become apparent.

Englitaly

Very specific question here: how hard would it be to create modern jet fuel and its accompanying infrastructure if the rest of the setting is about 1920s/30s tech level, and assuming the only experts you have access to are the engineers and maintenance guys of a military vessel?

The issue I think would be knowing the chemistry required to mix it from the refinery products, and the engineering knowledge and skill to build the refinery...

I'm not sure they would have that information offhand, and I think it would be challenging to reproduce, and risky to just experiment. (Presumably they also have a finite amount of aircraft available as well.)

I don't think the refinery technology is terribly complex, but you're basically boiling highly flammable/explosive chemicals to separate them, so if you don't build it right, prepare to have a bad time.

>Fantasy setting with knights and stuff.
>A whole continent is too big for me.

Could many city-states, spread across a territory of the size of france +germany, fulfill the same role? Or would that look stupid?

How could I justify that they all have a similar culture?

The cannonball
A cannon ball used to kill legendary heroes and villains alike, somehow salvaged from each battle until it had spilled such holy and unholy blood over itself that it became enchanted. Then some crazy bastard wrapped it in chains and started swinging it around.

This sounds similar to my setting. I solved the problem by making the area once the land of a large empire who imposed its culture and language on any it dominated.

FWIW, by the time you have interbellum-level tech, you are already distilling petroleum to get fuels. Jet fuel itself is primarily kerosene, which has been around since the mid-1800s.

The issue is mainly the trial and error it takes to get the right cocktail of additives it takes to dope up the kerosene to the right properties for a jet engine. You need to mix in other hydrocarbons to get the right properties (viscosity, freezing point, boiling point, flash point, burn temperature, etc.), and for best performance you use additional additives like antioxidants and metal sequestrants (to prevent formation of byproducts that can gum up the engine), corrosion inhibitors, de-icers, etc. A basic jet fuel would be easy to make with interbellum technology, but getting it up to modern performance standards associated with the term "jet fuel" just isn't something that happens overnight. It's not a question of technology so much as just R&D effort. Finely-tuned inventions like that simply don't pop up overnight as soon as the infrastructure to make them exists.

I thought jet fuel also had very high purity requirements as well? Would the refineries of the time be able to achieve that?

How would a race in a sci fi setting that has the body structure similar to a gorilla fight?

First thing that comes to mind to is the Brutes from the Halo series

To get a *usable* jet fuel, it would be feasible. The first jet engines literally just ran on pure kerosene, which should be easily achievable with interbellum tech. Kerosene isolation had been going on since the mid-1800s.

*Modern* jet fuel, the really high-performance stuff, would be another story. Like I said, *that* requires mixing in various other hydrocarbons, and getting those hydrocarbons would require more advanced petroleum refinement. The issue isn't so much purity as it is getting those compounds at all in the first place. Purification of the fractions naturally present in petroleum was pretty well developed by that time, except for desulfurization of naphtha (but jet fuel doesn't necessarily include much naphtha, and even for mixes that did, jet fuel actually benefits from having a higher sulfur content than your typical gasoline or diesel fuels). The major advances that came around WWII and onward were more to do with converting components of petroleum into other, derivative hydrocarbons.

But, again, even if all that required processing apparatus were in place, it would take a substantial amount of trial and error to determine the right mix for a high-performance jet fuel.

>Holy
>Roman
>Empire

Veeky Forums really does have a reddit problem

Yes. Go for it.

>comparing a multitude of small states in an area the size of france/germany
>to an era of time when Germany was comprised of small states
>Reddit
I don't follow. You don't think there's overlap between Veeky Forums & Veeky Forums?

My current game takes place in an area roughly the size of France + uncharted wasteland to the east and a few islands.

The players barely leave the main city.

>If you hear the word 'homunculus', what comes to mind?
I had 3 copies of this card when I played Yugi back in the golden age of life.

A clay beast, not one of solid clay, but a still gooey like one that seems to constantly be changing somewhat, its clay going in waves on its body. Something like clayface from batman.

Shit, almost over.
Is it okay?

Forgot pic

Hello Team, I'm running a DnD campaign and my players have gotten past the first story arc and the area I had built for them. Next up they're going to a port city and will be able to hear rumors about all the other places in the world, get on a boat, and go to those places.

Trouble is, I don't have any of those places made up yet. If anybody doesn't mind me being a leech, could you suggest countries/cultures/civilizations that you have invented or used in the past? I've got a few cooking but wanted to hear other people's better ideas to flesh out their options.

I always include a vanilla, arthurian nation, full of knights and what not. Doesn't feel right without them.

I am not your team.

Wakou gambling states, Persian mountain castle-states, not!Nepal/Tibet society run on demons in the mountains, post-Yuro subsaharan Africa once it's cottoned on to the fact that selling slaves = more guns = more war = more slaves = more guns.
fuk u

Thanks non-teammte

>Majority of the united states are mormons.

Would this change much?

Yeah, America's somehow more boring.

I'm working on a modern military fantasy setting, but I've run into a problem when it comes to the topic of guns. One of the parts of the setting is that almost everyone has access to magic. However, if that were the case, would gunpowder based projectile weapons still have a reason to exist, if magic based guns were just as effective? Or, if everyone was using magic guns anyways, why not cut out the middleman and just use pure magic? I really want semi realistic guns, so any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Also, any suggestions for interesting or rare guns that would make for good loot, or for modern enchanted/cursed items? Thanks.

Idk about how to make guns work, but for a rare gun, just cast shrink on a pirate ship cannon.

There's a fuckload of different ways to go about it, all depending on your magic system. The classic centre of guns n magic is "most people can't do magic so they do guns instead". This can apply to either magicguns or boringguns.

Just imagine the knight in shining armour vs. a dragon, or an evil magician. Then imagine the exact same scenario, except a hundred years later.

Whatever you do, don't segregate tech and magic. Players love it when you integrate stuff. Give that gun-knight a belt he got from his wife, which ensures not one drop of his blood will be spilt (then have him beaten to thin pastry by some troll with a hammer).

One thing: I would not advise making magic some shitty energy manipulation thing. It sucks the magic out of magic.
>Also, any suggestions for interesting or rare guns that would make for good loot, or for modern enchanted/cursed items? Thanks.
Look at real life strange gun shenanigans for inspo. Like those airguns which Napoleon swore he would execute enemy soldiers for using, or rapier-pistols, or early machine guns. Also do something cool with the earliest guns (esp. dragon tongues or whatever the Chinks called them). Like make them ancient weapons of aweful power.

The simplest thing is for magic and guns to occupy different niche.

Magic might not actually be for casting fireball, but instead is more subtle (scrying, enchanting, summoning etc). Perhaps battle-magic is on the much more destructive end, raining meteors which replace or supplement artillery rather than rifles.

In any situation, even if everyone can cast magic not everyone can cast usefulm battle-magic but they can carry a rifle.

Even if fireball is an easy spell, perhaps it requires components or drains energy in such a way that it is simply not sustainable compared to webbing full of magazines each containing 30 bullets. Why chant for even 30 seconds when you can just pull the trigger?

Magically enhanced guns give firearms some extra pizazz if magic starts to overshadow mundane weapons. Enchanted ammo, alchemical powder or runes etched on the barrel can add both power and spell-like effects to those chunks of lead.

Battle cries are pretty sick. What are some common battle cries for armies in your setting?

So starting to worldbuild again after abandoning the thing, starting from scratch. Just doing a setting that's basically Alexander the Great to Renaissance Era.

To start things off, Im basing the mental image for the world map off of Herodotus' world map(pic related), with the basic idea being: To the west is wildland, with the densest monster populations in the known world, populated by tribes of tall, hardy people who are masterful monster hunters, if not a bit crude and barbaric.

The land masses that jut out into the Middle Sea are the true heart of civilization, made up of an archipelago and a long snaking peninsula. These people are sophisticated and brilliant, if not a bit haughty.

To the south beyond the Middle Sea is the most eldest civilizations, whose institutions and society has influenced many. But they are old now, stagnant, and their superstition will not save them from their slowly crumbling existence. Who shall rule once law has collapsed?

To the east is the plains and steppes, with a great inland sea. Here, reality of daily life is split between nomad and settled, with the western-most of these people fighting amongst themselves while defending against roaming nomad nations.

This is very WIP, as I only thought about doing worldbuilding again a couple days ago, and all of this, geography included, is subject to change.

So I ahve a random question about it: How should the settled amazons fight? 1/2

You see, the people of the east are split between patriarchy and matriarchy, in addition to their nomadic and settled categories. The kingdoms farthest west are settled, with cities and walls, but among the half dozen nations, one is matriarchal/Amazonian. I know how the nomadic tribes, both normal and amazonian, will fight(typical horse archer, cavalry with supporting guerrila skirmishers deal), but I've no idea how the kingdoms should fight war. I want the kingdoms to be influenced by the archipelago(fantasy greece), blending both cultures together. I was thinking typical hoplite warfare but modified so as to have a stronger emphasis on speed and less on spear walls. Like, the hoplites are not true hoplites, they'd be just as succesful at fighting outside of a strong, wall-like formation as they are as good as fighting in one.But they're supported by shock troops who would try to either butcher them as the hoplites have them pinned down, or by pinning down cavalry/tougher infantry until spearmen/more infantry can come to butcher the enemy.

Sound good?

>Like, the hoplites are not true hoplites, they'd be just as succesful at fighting outside of a strong, wall-like formation as they are as good as fighting in one

That sounds pretty much exactly like the historical Thureophoroi, used from the 3rdC BC until Rome stomps on the Hellenic world.

europabarbarorum.wikia.com/wiki/Thureophoroi_(Hellenic_Spearmen)
Also check out the rest of the site, it is an amazing resource for Classical warfare from Britain to the Indus.

Thanks dude!

I'll look through this. I may go with what I'm already planning, and then have the fantasy Greeks adopt this tactic as well, before fantasy Rome stops them.

I was thinking of having the Amazon state rise to prominence and subjugating the other kingdoms, but have trouble with the nomads. That's when t he fantasy romans would come, take heavy casualties beating the snot out of them, and both eventually agreeing that the amazons would become a client state. I dunno. I just want an excuse to have a matriarchal society far into the medieval period because you never see amazons beyond greek fantasy settigns. THought it would be unique. Yes / No?

So, I noticed this little short on the Storythread archive, and it really caught my interest.

I was thinking of expanding on it to make a three or four game campaign based around this idea of a cut-off colony on a hostile planet, and would appreciate any suggestions from you guys for setting flavor.

I'm looking for a rednecky/old west sci-fi feel mostly; my goal is for the players to by these space-hillbillies trying to strike it rich and build a base for themselves, so the gameplay is going to be sort of base-buildy with bits of combat (probably simplified GURPS) thrown in as they deal with the local dune-esque worms and eventually a raid by hostile humans.

Like I said, any input on setting or mechanics would be appreciated. I'm going to run this as our start-of-school campaign in August, so I've got plenty time to flesh things out, but I'd love to hear any ideas y'all have to make the setting more alive.

>and I posted the thumb...

So you have four possible flavours of society in the east, arranged in a grid where x is matriarchy/patriarchy and y is nomaid/sedentary?

Is there an in universe reason that the super-culture is arranged that way? Or am I misreading and you just have matriachal settlers and patriarchal nomads?

Either way, I'm guessing the super-culture is going to be pseudo Irannic with settled Persians and nomadic Scythians?

How much information do you include about each race/faction? What are the vital points to hit?

I want to do two-page spreads for each race in my science fantasy game (one page explanation, one page art) but I'm not sure what the most important things to include would be.

Sort of. As I said, WIP. Ideas may and will change.

Basically, before fantasy greek influence, the peoples there where tribal and gender equality was sort of a thing. Not like nowadays, they just had everyone, women and men, do whatever they can. Then, as colonies were established along the coast and interaction between greek and them, some adopted that culture to different degrees. Or something. I dont know.

The reason why some are sedentary and others are nomad, and some are matriarchal and some are not is because it's sort of like I said above, with some holding to the old ways(running around the steps and whatnot), others settling and being agricultural(the kingdoms). And some followed through with different political theories of gender that I havent bothered to figure out why yet. And of course, they're all at each others throats because of this and other, more practical concerns(like resources and land). It's a melting pot of old and new, foreign and tradition, ready to explode.

Also, I want to base them off of Ionia and Pontic-Caspian peoples. People like the Scythians, the Sarmatians, Cimmerians, and the Pontic Greeks. Perhaps a bit of Russian influence too. Maybe a lot actually. I'll do more research about slavs, I guess.

I was saving Iran and Persia ofr the south eastern part, with the egypt-type people for the west-south.

Then work on the best of both worlds. Build tables and systems that let you worldbuild on the fly. Focus more of your worldbuilding on the immediate area around the PCs - the dungeon, the village, the road - and let your tables do the rest.

Why do you "need" to flesh it out?

Don't write just to fill space, the factions will get fleshed out over time

>Setting's cultures are established around species' basic biological needs and their adaptation to different environments
>Actual world is Earth for the time being, so I need to make a semi-rational planet to keep things interesting
Maybe all those earth sciences and geology courses I took in college could be useful after all. Unfortunately, they all assume Earth as the planet in question.