I'm trying to build more stuff for my setting, the intention is to be sword and sorcery as fuck, I was wondering if people could think about various implications of my setting and help a dude out?
the TL;DR of it >generic medieval society slowly making it's way through history, generally on point with our own >world has a massive chaos realm called The Sill, which is accessible but hard to get at to the east. >gods live there >one man, a prince who was second in line went to seek knowledge on how to become a great ruler >gods of the sill, being chaos gods who love to shake up our ant jar and watch us fight taught him in his own terms the extreme value of modern urban planning >guy comes home, immediately wipes out the aristocracy red wedding style and starts building cobblestone roads everywhere. >builds hospitals >better than anywhere else public water systems >better irrigation than anyone else >begins to set up factories industrial era style and sends out people to conquer tribes that live near valuable resources >teaches people how to great guns and gun powder >nation becomes insanely powerful and prosperous >gods of the sill getting more pilgrimages >after about a hundred years 1000 AD is looking like 1865 AD >cities swell in size to house millions, mostly because doctors are required by law to practice sterilization techniques and there are fewer deaths to infection than ever before >this causes some issues, naturally, and a massive war breaks out >millions die >magic still exists in the world, and the civil war technology means nobody can kill one another in large enough numbers to end it >lets hire the wizards to help >goes completely to shit, fucked up wizards opening chasms in the ground to hell dimensions and chaos realms
>wizards also realize "fuck normies", promptly wipe out each of the ruling classes, have a short civil war, and at the end all of the massive cities of the world are run by a single super powerful wizard, a la dark sun, with the title of City Fathers being the general term. >countryside filled with shrieking gibbering monsters, mutations and awful shit >cities are so large they have crops enough to sustain them, trade helps
Also, for other lore, I posted in the previous bread:
I'm trying to cover all of the bases and think about how people would be able to handle life like this, how it would change viewpoints, religions, etc.
Halp? In return post your shit about your settings and I will try and ask questions covering things you haven't thought of.
Nicholas Wilson
for starters it sounds like, as a basic consequence of the Sill and The Architect you've;
A: forced all nobility to be either in possession of antimagic facilities and the means to eliminate wizards (so I'd suggest coming up with anti-magic materials so there's some means, if only as a failed remnant, to oppose casters by non casters.)
B: created a world wide magocracy with various magic fighting one another. Also that favor of the gods leads to strange but often effective favors.
so instead of venturing off to get a magic sword heroes return with antibiotics, nervegas, advanced metallurgy, flight technology, or esoteric applications of alchemy.
it sounds to me like while magic may exist industrialized use of various things is whats important.
Also your world is probably a major shithole in between the megacities, which should probably be full of pollution and garbage thrown out by the city dwellers so maybe nature spirits and gods are starting to take offence.
Aaron Johnson
lots of mutants too.
That's pretty good, thank you. I didn't think of it that way.
Michael Phillips
no problem, secondly you need to think of how widespread your cities are. Do they cover the entire world, one continent? Is some guy from bumfuck asia land gonna stumble into this mess and go HOLEEE- SHIEEET! Because all this megacity shit is relatively isolated?
Oh and food, you're gonna need hydroponics, fungal farming, meat cloning and all kinds of crazy shit if you want to feed megacities at their height, if only for aesthetics...which might help explain where your dungeons come from.
instead of the obligatory abandoned temples you can have research facilities and undercities taken over by mutants and experiments.
how far advanced is your communications tech. They have radios yet? Could be interesting to see them running meat breweries and hydroponics with couriers and carrier pigeons as the best means of communication.
Caleb Rodriguez
This has to be the worst wbg I've ever seen
Landon Bell
QUICK!
I need some good sci fi / cyber punk company names. They can be medical/ Research/ armaments/ entertainment/ omnipresent/ literally any kind of company. Just give me some good names for them. Also names for space ships(Types not pet names), guns (not pet names), and Drugs(Street names or medical) would be so fucking helpful.
Christopher Howard
This reminds me of Girl Genius webcomic way too much.
Cameron Taylor
Think it'll be more appropriate to just post this here instead of trying to make another thread that dies after a few posts
Had an idea for a setting that's kind of like Kingdom Death meets Digital Devil Saga. Basically mankind struggles to survive in a nightmare realm a la Berserk's eclipse or the warp and are constantly preyed upon by horrid monstrosities. However, through either forced mutation or a curse, mankind has transformed into monstrous versions of themselves ranging from pic related to full on chaos spawn. All I have right now is that mankind is forced to feed on something (either each other or a rare substance found in the setting, still trying to nail this down) or be driven insane. Don't have much on civilizations so far other than that tech levels range from stone to victorian ages. The world itself is completely up in the air other than being a really shitty place to live. Right now I'm sorting out humans and their possible subspecies as well as the nature of the mutation/curse that afflicts them, and what sort creatures hunt them day and night. Anyway if anybody wants help with brainstorming ideas and developing the overall world, feel free. May make a post on the human race(s) once I've got some more ideas on lock.
Cooper Stewart
>Campaign is about elven army being chased out of their northern frontier city by a powerful and charismatic general who controls an orcish horde >The only thing separating this city from the capital are two rivers, some hills and mostly small villages and farmland >Due to plot contrivances, only a very weakened army stands between the orcish horde and the capital Where do I take the plot from here? I intend to eventually have the orcish warlord lay siege on the capital to prove how big and strong and powerful he is, but what can the PCs do? I'm once again falling for a mistake I make a lot: telling a large story while forgetting where the players fit into it.
Matthew Hall
--companies-- Fabrique General Specialist Solutions Shwarz Industrial Black Cat Productions Star Struck Cinematics Hippocratic Healthcare Black Hat Exterminations
--Drugs-- Smooth Day Dream Low Ride Bitter Brew Red Eye Blue Tongue Black Gum Tingle Pexxerall Zaxaminiphul Dimmadammadrine Zorch
Juan Wood
You already have a potential hook though with the siege. Your PCs presumably start off in the capital, and if they ignore the siege, then how are they supposed to get out?
You just need to have eventualities planned out for the case where the PCs join the siege, fight off the siege, or ignore it completely. The siege is basically your pivot point. In the third case just set up other minor things nearby for them to do.
Logan Myers
>d
James Hughes
I'm working on a Cyberpunk world where I have these mysterious robots as a totalitarian government (original, I know) but I've yet to come up with a name for them. If you guys want more details lemme know.
Landon Wood
so I'm doing a baroque scifi thing, shades of Numanera but without monte cook's patented veneer of incompetence.
The idea is the PCs are on a colony world kept habitable by machines and the world in question is littered with crashed starships and caves. Among other dangers there's The Swarm, a sort of biological mining lifeform that's left over from a previous era that the Tristar Imperium has been warring with for ages.
The imperium is over pretty much, and the region is full of their remnants. In particular fission and fusion powered starships and space stations. Asteroids turned into star bases and so on.
Among other things they were prone to using 'Gambler's Fleets' fleets of obsolete starships that are almost entirely automated, save for a CnC and Supply Dreadnaught they'd rely on sheer weight of numbers (and honestly pretty well made ships regardless of how obsolete they were) to conquer their foes. Though their preferred method was to first get a foe addicted to their culture and then show up in overwhelming force and demand surrender.
So PCs would be more likely dealing with things like von nueman machines, semi--organic mining life forms, pirates, overgrasping nobles and so on.
Pondering whether or not to put them on a planet or throw them onto a spacehulk.
Bentley Cruz
Is there a maximum size for star systems? How many habitable planets can a system have?
Josiah Ross
our star system is unusual in that it has a lot of variety actually.
We have rocky planets, frozen iceballs, an asteroid belt, and not one but two gas giants.
Jupiter is important because its a shield, draws in comets and stuff that might strike the earth, and the asteroid belt is important because it holds more wealth than the human race could probably spend before our extinction. Icy Rocks are important for the water content.
As for size? boils down to the gravity well of your sun and whats on hand. Obviously cold or hot stars will have different goldilocks zones.
Brayden Hill
Everything and more about building star systems, now with 300% more Irish.
You could go for cannibalism being the means of remaining sane, but societies would be difficult to form and would act more like temporary alliances. We'll work together but if it comes down to the wire, I'll eat you to stay sane and that does not bode well for civilization. Maybe they feed on some mineral or substance which they must keep mining/ manuafcturing or go insane. Or maybe they need to farm some herb or animal for consumption. Whatever food item keeps them sane is definitely going to be defended with lethal intensity.
Ayden Wood
megacities are just around the size of places like New York and Los Angeles, which in medieval times was horrifying as fuck.
And that's a good point.
There's no "asialand" because it's all Sill. All of it is Sill.
Parker Fisher
I have no idea how to actively worldbuild. Like I'll think of a new weird or interesting concept like 'the moon is a mega dungeon!' and I'll like it, but actually designing the shit in the world and writing it down to codify it starts to escape me. Any advice?
Levi Thomas
Foundation then expansion. You create a base and work off on tangents from there.
Carson Sanchez
Try this.
The Moon is a Megadungeon: Who lives in it? Who built it? Why? Does this affect the world? Tides? Animal behavior? Was there a regular moon before? What happened to it? Do people know? If not, why not?
Charles Richardson
Thank youu.
Isaac Richardson
How do you come up with the names of kingdoms or countries?
Cooper Hernandez
First make a weird sound with your mouth. Type it out, then add -ia at the end.
Josiah Morgan
Spamming a random name generator until I find a nice arrangement of letters then changing it to sound good.
>tfw all your favorite names are for a setting that was complete shit and you abandoned it
Jace Diaz
Was thinking it'd probably be cannibalism along with some rare resource, like maybe a mineral which can only be found in an extremely hazardous area, or a substance extracted from deadly predators native to that world. As far as societies went, I figured most would just be villages and towns which would send expeditions or hunt for whatever rare resource they need or raid other settlements to steal their resources or just eat the inhabitants. However It would be interesting to see what kind of large kingdoms or cities could sustain themselves for more than a decade, though it would take some effort to think them up without going full Aztec.
Andrew Murphy
I just look at historical lists and transliterate a bit. I've got 3xd20 tables here if you'd like.
Feedback on this? It's not meant to be anything special, just a comfy horror post apocalyptic setting. Kind of in the vein of Apocalypse World, but more gray and dreary with creepy monsters, instead of Mad Max high-octane chases and whatever.
Charles Campbell
Oh jeeze, whatever you used to make this PDF makes copy/pasting text super hard. Anyway just "10 years after" the collapse of civilization? Man, for 200 years after the Roman legions left Gaul and all the bathouses turned into stables people were still electing senators and calling each other "consul" this and "procurator" that. 10 years man...
It's short, but there's a lot of /k/-porn cruft I don't find appealing. The art is handy - I'd do all the art in the sketch style. Otherwise, the game is kind of generic, desu.
Honestly, I'd just run straight Apocalypse World, if you haven't before. It's quite the experience. And it doesn't need to be mad max unless you make it mad max, and with Apoc World, the players decide with you how they want it to go.
Charles Edwards
Well it's an indeterminate amount of time. Maybe 10, maybe 30, maybe 50 or more. I said at least 10 cause it seemed easy, i dunno. Will probably change that. The /k/ porn is meant to be a side thing, it's an add-on for Savage Worlds anyway. I wanted it to be semi-generic just because I want to leave it open to all the weird stuff I can put in.
>Honestly, I'd just run straight Apocalypse World, if you haven't before. It's quite the experience. And it doesn't need to be mad max unless you make it mad max, and with Apoc World, the players decide with you how they want it to go.
I plan to run straight AW one day. This is for Savage Worlds not AW, but the implied setting of AW inspired me a lot for this. Even though half the point of AW is the cooperative setting creation.
Jose Reed
thanks for the feedback though, i don't want to sound like I am dismissing it. I'll try to add in your suggestions feed back
Matthew Hernandez
I usually go with a motif so the big one with one of the cultures in my setting is color.
Aaron Wood
Fuck yeah thanks mate
Noah Butler
What races should I use?
I also want to use wolfmen. Is Lupe a good general name for them?
Jordan Young
I dunno, that name could cause some kinda fiasco.
Sebastian Moore
Guerilla warfare against the advancing orcish horder through the frontier land (the two rivers and hills etc), perhaps through a not!Underdark cave system that the orcs don't know about for a while. Turn it into Shadow of Mordor and have the PCs headhunt officers in the army. Does the charismatic general lead from the front or the rear? If it's the rear, have the PCs sneak around and attack him from the rear of the army during the city battle. If it's from the front, contrive some reason (shouldn't be difficult) to lock the PCs into a relatively small encounter against him, possibly with a steady yet unending stream of grunt reinforcements, for example. Either way, you'll want to focus on breaking the enemy's morale (presumably their ranks will break when the general falls) rather than wiping out the entire army, unless they have access to some crazy stuff, like that old greentext of the player who had a magical bottomless quiver, that when its arrow was fired, it fired every arrow held in the quiver. And he stuffed it full of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of arrows and used it to kill and entire army, breaking the quiver in the process of course. Alternatively, you can turn it into a strategy/management game, where the PCs decide how to set up fortifications for the oncoming horde, possibly doing small, quick sidequests in the vicinity to collect materials or rally support or the like before the army reaches the capital. >I'm once again falling for a mistake I make a lot: telling a large story while forgetting where the players fit into it. My biggest fault, I feel ya.
Lincoln Cruz
he looks sexy
Adrian Bailey
>I've got 3xd20 tables here if you'd like. Not him but those sound very interesting, do share.
Joshua Sullivan
They're... in the post I linked to?
Ryan Brown
Oh my bad, I assumed the link was just the mapping system.
Noah Walker
bump
David Fisher
I use a lot of foreign languages. I take one or multiple defining characteristics of the Kingdom or Country I want to name, and then I put that characteristic through a translator to get the word for it in a language that fits said kingdom's culture. I fiddle with the end result a bit (corrupt it, make a composite with other words) and then usually something good will come out of it.
For example, let's say I have a kingdom that's Celtic in character, and its defining characteristic is that it's at the western-most part of the continent. I'll take the Welsh word for 'West', which is Orllewin. Land in Welsh is 'Tir' so I'll fiddle with that and turn it into Tirlewin.
And there you go.
Jacob Cooper
When it comes to fantasy, I already have a pretty good idea of what players would be doing in a game world. Go around fighting monsters, righting wrongs, beating back evil and doing quests, etc.
Then I have a modern fantasy game that I built from the ground up. I know what they'd be doing there too; city neighborhood crawling. Acting as loose cannon cops, fighting gang members and fighting weird alien monsters that crawled up from peoples basements.
But what about science fiction? What should the players be doing in that kind of game? Even as a ragtag group in such a large scale universe it seems unlikely for them to be dramatically important, and high levels of technology make fearing the unknown that would be normal in a dungeon crawler less of an issue. What should players be doing in a science fiction game, which in turn dictates what the world is like?
Charles Jones
Building map right now.
What are some cool terrains to include in my continent? Real or fantasy.
Asher Cox
I have begun working on a proper google doc for my setting where I describe it and it's inhabitants. I want to make a map of the setting though, but I am unsure of how to best get across the look of the world.
This is a short description of it:
Mudus Carnis is a setting about an ancient city, that has stood at the edge of the Great Red sea, and the endless wastelands for untold millenia. Eclipsing any modern metropolis with it's sheer size, the City stretches for thousands of miles across the coastline, and into the wastes, while it’s labyrinthine roots and foundations dig miles deep into the earth, and the spires that rise from it’s urban sprawl, reach the very clouds. It is a city with a long and storied past, that has reduced much of it to decrepit, decaying and sprawling ruins and slums, known collectively as the Warrens, that scar the city like festering wounds, leaving the still remaining pockets of mostly intact infrastructure, and civilized society largely isolated from one another, barring the few major trade routes, both on land and in the canal network, or airways for those with the wealth to posses means of flight.
I want to make a map of the city, and sorta get across the fact that it is mostly just ruins, with blood vein like network of waterways running trough it. Make it look more like some weird hive or wast organic growth, than a proper city map, but I got no idea of how to do this. Picture related sorta has some of the elements I desire, mostly with how busy it is.
Any tips on what I should do?
Isaac Moore
Volcanos are cool, same with grassland.
Isaac Gutierrez
Is there an equivalent of the internet in your setting? Have you thought out how it works?
Lincoln Ward
This, your setting isn't really anything special so try not to sacrifice the useful infromation that's in the OP normally
Gabriel Thomas
One bakery, and one smokehouse per 100 people sounds right to me. Every population center from a village of 100 too a metropolitan city of a 100,000 absolutely needs places to smoke meats and bake bread. What other necessities would be needed for living?
Kevin Morales
you're talking industrial levels of baking and food processing here bruh.
Also clean water and booze.
Lucas Watson
There's not really any sort of facility or industry to provide clean water
So a brewery too, I'm just trying to get an idea of what kind of businesses and industry should be found in every populated area of a pre-industrial setting. I imagine something related to textiles, fur, leather and linen can't be going around nude. Fisheries for coastal areas that won't have ports.
Carson Thomas
>TL;DR of the important parts of the setting >roughly 80% of world building focuses on a single city. The Great City of Desmon, City of a Thousand Saints. >the two most important features of the setting are infectious divinity and the looking glass, both of which interact with the Pel >divinity as it is understood happens in one of two ways, either someone is infected with a parasite that hides its eggs inside the Pel (essentially higher dimensions) to keep them safe from lower dimensional predators or the individual survives a wound from a upper dimensional predator (which is highly improbably) >this infection of parasites most often kills the host when hatched, which means the ranks of Saints are filled with lucky destitute poor and homeless who were infected and survived >the rich who are infected are put into smoked mirror chambers so the eggs never hatch and live out their days hidden away >these parasites cause a connection with the Pel and allow the infected to interact upper dimensionally >one of the effects is what random objects near them will form the Silver Ratio (plants grow into the silver ratio near them, broken glass cracks into a representation of the silver ratio, etc.) >new saints are taken in by the church, examined, and assigned areas of concern before being turned loose >leaving the city causes most Saints to die immediately as they are no longer near where the barriers between the world and the Pel are thin >the other means of interacting with the Pel is through the Looking Glass >Looking Glasses can do many things, such as actually seeing into the Pel, but the most common use is cosmetic surgery >a Looking Glass technician can reflect someone through a looking glass to change their body >this is used to beautify individuals as well as punish, it is common for debtors and criminals to be changed into something fitting their crimes >as well the creation of warped prostitutes is common as a way of catering to exotic tastes (1/2)
Jayden Watson
>more advanced looking glass interaction lets individuals interact with the Pel, like someone becoming two dimensional, reaching across space as they pass through the Pel to strangle someone, or hiding their organs in an upper dimension >looking glasses can also be used as a weapon, some individuals hiding looking lens in their mouths so that they may stealthily open their mouth and warp someone >this causes most of the wealthy to wear fantastic mirrored masks as self defense >a structure that interacts with the Pel directly is the Switchback, the state building for Desmon >the only way in and out is to be reflected via a looking glass into the building >the ruling body of Desmon serve for life, and once they are inside they are now allowed to leave >the only people who go in and out are the Corgette Guard, looking glass technicians who have their vocal cords clipped >looking at the Switchback for a prolonged period can cause you to begin seeing the Pel, this is often thought of as mere hallucinations, it can also cause schizophrenia >their vocal cords are clipped because being reflected too many times causes you to speak in tongues, listening to these multilayered upper dimensional speech can cause schizophrenia >schizophrenia is extremely common and can be caused by simple prolonged exposure or nearness to looking glasses & Pel predators >schizophrenia is controlled through Red Scotch, a government subsidized drug that dulls the 6th for 8th senses >Red Scotch is administered through the eye and causes the whites of ones eyes to turn red, heavy use does this permanently >looking glass divas exist, addicted to the surgery and singing upper dimensionally for others (listening to upper dimensional speech is extremely pleasurable) (2/3)
Josiah Peterson
>this schizophrenia is hearing mostly things from the Pel and yourself reflected upper dimensionally like an echo >upper dimensional beings sometimes interact below like the Quartarvele'olheim'urakaka a being who looks like a several hundred foot long snake covered in white fur with an enormous featureless, save for a mouth, human skull for a head covered in the same fur >Quartarvele'olheim'urakaka is quarantined in part of the city because of a supposed plague, but really it is just a government gag order on information >Quartarvele'olheim'urakaka's back half is never seen, always protruding out of a large black cube constructed from buildings in the district it has disassembled >no matter how much material it as the cube never grows >this being along with others, as well as pure intelligence ones (one of which who has created and is controlling a secret fraternity at the local university) interact with humans on some level (3/3)
Ryan Davis
Why do people think we want to read multi-post blocks of text about their generic setting in every single thread? Especially when you're not even asking specific questions, but just requesting general ideas or asking /wbg/ to develop your plot further based on a few half-baked concepts.
Ethan Lopez
Actually that's the question I want to ask, is my setting too generic?
Connor Parker
Everything in fantasy has been done a million times, everything is generic now. Stop worrying about i just make shit you think is cool and fun.
Asher Scott
Well, can you give me your thoughts on the setting then?
Joshua Long
sounds like some furry name, I'd use something more generic like wolf men or something.
Leo Rodriguez
Wave transmitted information with relay points set periodically in space, kept in place by dedicated facilities that filter out interference waves. The wave strength is the part that I handwave since hard science would dictate that the energy required to transmit waves with no losses would be tremendous, but it effectively achieves the same thing as an internet.
Joseph Hughes
Thank you user.
Carson Collins
You have a lot of tidbits scattered about but the backbone that links them doesn't actually have much on it. Like, you've given us all these little details about who lives there and what they are, but very little into what they do, and the picture you paint for the world is a bit haphazard because you jump from place to place.
80% of the worldbuilding focused on a single city is ok, but then you only tell us that there's stratification in the city, some castes who don't like interacting with each other, a landmark or two, and scizophrenia is the major medical issue. There's not much else that ties the citizens to the city from what you've described.
Josiah Allen
Need some ideas for stuff that happens/ happened, stuff people do on mars please.
Also how do tribal 'natives' descended from first wave, lost martian colonies sound?
Dylan Morgan
The nervous system of the city itself, which is organic in nature, and is tapped into by connecting one's nerves to the system.
Christian Brooks
Makes sense. This is coming out of a novel and I realized I basically wrote down things chiefly relevant to the novel's plot and not the more mundane aspects of the city.
Ian Morgan
Depending on the novel, knowing the mundane details can be helpful. While you don't have to spend any plot time on them, a few sentences here and there really deepen the world around the plot. As an example, Perdido Street Station has plenty of such sentences, making the novel feel really busy around the protagonists and the world more real.
Xavier Sanchez
I know the mundane details but there are a lot of them. Perdido street station is partially where I drew inspiration for Desmon in fact.
