/wbg/-worldbuilding general

Occasionally. World-building threads are never even close to being as productive and interesting as they could be, there is a lot of people shouting their ideas into the dark and meaningful feedback is rare to come across. But rare is not the same as non-existent, and as it turns out, the very option/opportunity to sit down and reformulate your thoughts to be able to the share them is actually quite valuable on it's own, even if in the end the odds of anyone actually reading it and caring are relatively small.

What I'm saying is: better post it here than just burrowing it all in your head. We haven't figured out how to make the discussion more productive so far, so we take what we can get.

>Started a new campaign for my players
>Based on an alternate England ~16th century
>The current king, about 20 years ago, withdrew to his palace, taking most of his men with him
>In the power vacuum, the church basically took control
>Villages essentially elect constables; no real police force
>The church's presence is very strong; witchhunters go out and persecute magic users and non humans
>Clerics as well, for following other gods
>Church is very similar to an Abrahamic religion
>All the players are either magic users or non human or they're clerics; some can blend in, others can't
>Game starts with them having been captured individually, and busted out by a group of magic using rebels
>Players formed their own mercenary band and now work for the magic users, who are trying to slowly beat back the witchhunters
>The magic users are also pretty fucking shady, and employ several other mercenary outfits, including "The Grey" who are a large band that act as their soldiers
>Players ended by being inducted as mercenaries for the magic users, specializing in jobs that rank and file soldiers might not be best for
>Generally assigned to a magic user as the muscle
>Basically ripped that part off of All Guardsmen Party

The original plan was for the players to seek out the apathetic king, and he'd use his army to remove the church from power. But now I've realised that wouldn't work, since the Church is too powerful. Anybody got any plot devices (that aren't a mcguffin) that could help me even out the faction's power? Or give the players a fighting chance? Basically while world building I stuffed up the balance of power.

This is all (sadly) true. Let me think of some questions to ask the lurkers then.

I have a science-fiction/fantasy setting I'm just starting to lay out the basics for. One major thing I'm incorporating is an alternate, spiritual dimension that serves the same purpose as the Warp from 40k, minus quite the level of grimderp and suck in the original. The trouble I'm having now is largely what to call it. At the moment I'm going with the Empyrean or Dreamspace, but that's a little odd/on the nose.

Basically, what can I call the Not!Warp in my setting?

>This is all (sadly) true.
I've been wreaking my head around how could these kinds of discussions be improved (perhaps adopting some kind of model similar to how Writefag threads work) but so far, I can't think of anything. It's probably something that can't be fixed by forcing any kind of model. It's a shame, because worldbuilding is an interesting hobby and interesting part of the medium. But I also know I'm part of the problem. I'm trying but I really don't know what kind of feedback to give people who post here 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% ends up with a pointless argument because they just get angry over suggestions or criticisms...

As for your problem:
I'd suggest asking yourself: Who actually named it? Or alternatively: what kind of impression do you as an author want to leave on your viewer.
This is a general rule of thumb when you are tackling nomenclatures. Ask yourself what is the name supposed to tell the audience.
And this ties to asking yourself: who came up with the name. What were those people like? Were they stern, scholarly, inspired by western scholarly traditions? Does it make sense to associate the dimension (and those who named it) with traditions of Greece? Or perhaps with ancient Jewish aesthetics?
Or do you want something snappy, to communicate it's common-place relevance and knowledge?

It's good to sort this kind of stuff out. Remember that using real-world languages is going to invoke associations with cultures that use them. There is a good reason why Warhammer 40k's Empire loves it's Latin so much, or why Tolkien invoke Norse and Old German.

Since it sounds like the Churchs power is primarily political in nature, then the logical thing is to find a way to disrupt that power.

It's the 16thC so you could have the Reformation roll into town. More and more of the commonrs are questioning the faith, and a multitude of factions are forming within the Church demanding radical change. It's not yet reached tipping point but with prodding from the PC's you could have full-on split, siding with a more mage friendly faction against the Orthodoxy. The French Wars of Religion could be a good inspiration once it all blows up and the king tempted into action with the prospect of supreme authority over a not-Anglican Church.

Instead of giving the wizards a superweapon, you make the Church weaker and divided against itself. It will take a bit of run up time for all the pieces to fall into place but you can have the players fan the flames of division to keep them involved.

Cognitive realm?
Cognitoverse?
Irrational space?
Aetheric space?
Outside space?

Honestly, if you can come up with a setting-specific name instead of something generic offered by an outsider that would be for the best. You probably have facets you could use in your world for the name since an alternate spiritual dimension isn't exactly a small part of a world.

Think of why the Warp is called the Warp. It aids FTL travel by "warping" ships and the realm itself is "warped"

What do you want to do with the notWarp?

Got systems that cover survival?

Well, I've been considering a healthy infusion of Eastern philosophy, thought, and aesthetic into the galaxy, so perhaps that would be a good thing to look into? I would prefer snappy and clear-meaning over something pompous.

>What do you want to do with the notWarp?
Combination of Hyperspace, the Spirit World, and explanation for the use of exotic technologies and magic.

Literally the not!Warp.

>so perhaps that would be a good thing to look into?
I'd say. Maybe looking into Sanskrit, Hindu or Buddhist terminology could be in order, because those are generally fairly widely recognizable.
Something like "Moksha" (the idea of transcending the cycle of death and rebirth, inherently associated with physical world could be fitting). Though the word does sound kinda cutesy. Mukti is a Shikh version of that concept.
Or if you want to be very literal, Naraka is the Hindu equivalent of Hell.

Or (and I just came across this one as I was typing this), you could go for Zoroastrianism and their beautiful word "Menog". It actually refers to the "spiritual side of word" (as opposed to physical "getig"), but it also sounds like a villain from Heroes of Might and Magic game.

Alternatively keep to English (or whatever is your native language).
There is plenty of basic words that can be used:
The Veil
The Far
Xandu
Slumber
Topor

You could even go for something ironic.
"The Lotus Land" (Shortened to "Lotus")
"Shangri-la"
"Dreamland"
Sometimes ironic or paradoxical names work well.

Call the realm a pompous single word thing instead related to philosophy.

Darma, Sutra, Karma, Tao, the balance, the unbalance, the confusion.

If you want to focus more on its effects and use; call it something like Potence, Outside energy, Secondary Energy (it's not like our universe's energy), Non-boson field, non-entropy zone, etc.

If you want a more general term, you could call it something based on its ability to warp ships like the Slant or Plane. Or you could name it after the devices used to generate it, like Dynamo or Super-Mass Driver, etc.

Hope that gave you some ideas.

Would the united states become fascist if they lose their great-power status?

>Country from its inception has always believed in freedom for the common man, the right to free speech and owning firearms even during the hardest economic times and when it was small and weak compared to other world powers
>Would this same country become a country unconcerned with freedom, against freedom of speech, and against citizens having weapons if times got tough?

The answer should be obvious.

They should be focused. Frankly, the most discussion on worldbuilding that I've seen on Veeky Forums was in stand-alone threads.
I like this general, it gives me ideas, but it's hard to contribute meaningfully to shit that everyone else does, like analysing a location or an idea, save the whole world write-up. I try to comment on things that interest me, but it just seems to me that only a minority of settings stand out enough to grab anyone's attention here.

I feel like this general should actually be, uh, general in its approach. Even if this general is just full up of mad scribbles and pointless diatribes, it's better as its own seperate thing.

More specific and answerable questions should be their own generals, while this one acts as a slower, more deliberate discussion and sharring tool.

I think there is a fundamental problem with both the subject matter, and the format we are using here. I think that both of these essentially boil down to the fact that world-building is generally extremely difficult to communicate, and it's even harder to do it on a platform as exceptionally limited here. Worldbuilding generally isn't something that can be easily and efficiently summed up in few words. Hell, it's often hard to communicate even a thick book - because the nature of world-building is that it's relatively non-linear, synchronic rather than diachronic, and usually formulates in the mind of the author as a clusterfuck of images, sounds, disjointed tibbits of visual and verbal ideas, themes and concepts. It will sound good in your head, but actually forcing that into a written, concise text is extremely difficult. Doing it on the surface of some 2000 symbols is nearly impossible. Right now, there might be some beautiful ideas being tossed around, but their beauty sure as fuck won't show from the posts themselves.

Also, I may have not slept for over 40 hours and it's entirely possible that what I'm typing right now makes literally no sense. Somebody just tell me to shut up if that is the case.

>chromatic space ayyliums
>color coincides with strongest mental attribute
Is it too gamey?
I've already ruled out color correlating to physical attributes.

I would not say "gamey", but it is incredibly arbitrary. Like: what would be a point of such feature? It¨s space aliens, so I presume some rudimentary laws of nature are involved: what kind of advantage would such a train have? Even if it's not a biological trait but perhaps a cultural adaptation, it's still weird and arbitrary... I don't really see the point of it.

Gives some purpose to having aliens that are basically humans but not flesh toned.
Also, if I focus the worldbuilding on the colorful aliens, it allows me to shift the characterization of humans from jack of all trades race to sneaky race (since you can't tell their strengths just by looking at them).

>a country unconcerned with freedom, against freedom of speech, and against citizens having weapons if times got tough?
Those aren't inherent to fascism. Fascists believe in whatever it takes to unite the country and strengthen it, which differs immensely based on the situation - American fascists would in all likelihood have to be anti-racist and racially integralist. Strength through unity is the fascist ideal.

Sometimes, very rarely, people will stop dumping their own shitty work and actually foster an interesting discussion.

Have a cool picture I found. I love the mood.

Gnome castles must be such a joke, just walk up and hop over the wall. But then again, thats probably what giants say when they see our castles made for fighting other humanoids of the same size.

Kek.

I'll just keep posting cool things that I found on my search for refs.

I came up with a relatively shroomy idea for a sci-fi world.

There are aliens, but there are only the later homo.

All alien races are of basically hyper-evolved humans that have unlocked time travel, and have used it to escape from the destruction of the universe (this is something even the most advanced race in this world cannot handle). The more jumps a civilization has made, the more advanced it is.

Physically, they are all extremely varying, being billions of years of evolution and technological and biotechnological progress away from the origin that is the Terran human, and they become more abstract as they become more advanced.

Terran humans don't know this, though, because the details of the great exodus back to the beginning is long forgotten. They are just aliens with exponentially more advanced tech than they do.

The carnage war
Humanity had learned much from the Elves, magic, writing and arts. But from the dwarves they learned industry and commerce.

As the human poplation exploded around the great fertile lake, forests were cleared and nature spirits were slainas they tried to defend their magical sources.

The Elves were outraged, they ordered all human scholars and mages from their temple of Winds and closed its teleportals to the human lands.

The human emperor,Morlune the Mighty was angered, and started listening to a hedge wizard who had seduced several princes's into introducing him to the emperor.

There were other avenues of magical research that the elves had purposefully with-held claimed the wizard, fire magic was potent and could be taught by spirits of the underworld.

Morlune blanched, the underworld was the lair of monsters and nothing good had come off it

"But our allies the dwarvs live in the underworlde, and the spirits of the depths power their furnces to creat magical weapons" replied the sly wizard.

Morlune sent his court wizards to the great Dwarf manufacturing city, to enquire of the fire magics that create magical weaponry but they were rebuffed by the secretive dwarves,quickly the hedge wizard suggested countacing other-worldly spirits.

Through great expense, the hedge wizard and several princes had built a wizards tower on a former nature shrine,here the wizard prepared various magics to communicate with the "outer spirits"

That night, a great meterorite shower hit the human empire, creating some damage and widespread damage, and the next day, the grinning wizard and his princling followers left the tower, the princes had changed, their eyes burned with fire and they spoke in unknown tongues. Their powers of fire were impresive, and the emperor ordered the building of other towers on magical spots so he could command an army of fire wizards.

But all was not right...

Where to forests go in regards to rivers and mountains and wind?

Typically forests are on the other side of the rain shadow from mountains. So they're on the side of the mountain that gets hit by wind.

If you ever get the opportunity to stand on a mountain you'll notice one side is usually green and the other is a blasted craggy shithole. Not always, though. Nature doesn't really deal in absolutes

Working on a Sci-Fi setting. Here's a quick write up of one alien race.

>The Zin Hegemony
The Zin are a race of insect-like humanoids with green skin, red-opaque eyes, and small antennae. While all Zin are eerily thin (at least compared to humans), their height varies greatly between individuals. This seems to be one marker of a caste system within Zin society.

The Zin are best described as utter hedonists and debauched entertainment-addicts. They represent the worst that rampant consumerism has to offer: lack of empathy, short-term over long-term planning, chemical dependence, and an insatiable need for "New" and "Novel" experiences.

Despite this, they have surpassed mankind in the construction of warships, both technologically and in numbers. Their ships are known for being able to survive catastrophic damage and continue functioning, and their love of big lasers and explosives has led to their preeminence as weapon-manufacturers.

The Zin see little need for other species except as slaves and bloodsport entertainment.

Is this shitposting?

No? It's a bump.

It's meant to be a deliberate homage.

>>Would this same country become a country unconcerned with freedom, against freedom of speech, and against citizens having weapons if times got tough?
That's literal modern America, you shitlord.

Americans sold their rights to freedom to the NSA, their leftist government, and the fucking bank owners.

America is a slave

Forests, and specifically trees, grow around rivers and big amount of water.

Those bushes filled landscapes with no trees in them exist because they only get seasonal water via rain. So there is not enough water there for trees to naturally grow.

Forests will really grow basically everywhere where there is enough water and soil is not too weak: everything that wasn't a steppe or a desert or boreal region used to be covered entirely in forests.
For an example, pretty much the entirety of Europe used to be covered in forest - including areas we today consider typically too arid for forests to grow, including Greece, South Italy and majority of Spain, which used to be covered mostly in cheddar forests. The only regions of Europe that used to be forest-free were small portions of southern and central Spain, high-altitude areas like Alps, and cold and meager regions like northern Scotland, Norway, north of Sweden and Iceland.

Everything else used to be forested, and it was only humans that removed the trees. In some regions, including the Mediterranian coasts were deforested permanently, because as the cheddar forests were cut down (mostly to make timber for ships) and new saplings were destroyed by heavy animal husbandry (goats in particular have the uncanny ability to completely clear the region of all saplings, to a point where their excessive keeping ACTUALLY RUINED CIVILIZATIONS), the soil lost it's ability to hold water and dried out, making it near impossible to re-forest the regions.

So if your map and regions are vaguely european, you can pretty much place your forests wherever you want. If it has more continental climate, then you have to be more careful.
In general, study real-world maps to see biome and climate distribution. It's actually always more useful than dry theory about climate.

Is it a little *too* gonzo to have some primary races in your setting being walking, talking, object-based beings but still being biological in nature?

For example; a Lanternfolk person. Their skin has a metallic sheen and is cool to the touch, but still reacts mostly like skin and can be cut and they still bleed and all that. They still need to eat and breath and sleep, but they have weird object heads.

Lanterns are a good starting point; but what are some other objects that could be used? Spinning Wheel folk? Tomefolk? Swordfolk? Printing-Press Folk? Castlefolk?

I don't think it's gonzo at all in a fantasy settings. However, I find it to be based around a rather stupid question. Fantasy and mythology it was inspired by was always full of animate objects, even entire species of them, and frequently still featured them having human-like qualities, including needs.
That said, why do you need to combine that with modern, essentially scientific notions of "biology". The whole point of mythological mindset (and fantasy, which is based upon it) is that people don't think along classical modern empiric categories, but rather along the lines of analogies and symbolism. Just throw the category of "biology" away. It's imagination: symbols, abstractions, allegories. Not organic and inorganic matter, biology or physics.
Focus on what makes your world beautiful, interesting, endearing, meaningful. That is the advantage of fantasy: meaning does not have to be restrained by analytical categories of plausibility or possibility.

As for what kinds of creatures to introduce? I'd say the more common and universally used item it is, the more it makes sense. Lanter-folk, Tome-folk, Sword-folk make a whole lot of sense to me. Printing-press folks seem oddly niche and I'm not sure why that would be important enough to warrant an entire race of being to have based around.

Paper or book-folk seem really interesting to me. Musical instrument folks could be fun, I guess. Those objects have a particularly interesting role: ones provide light that guides us, other provide knowledge that does very much the same, so both could be incorporated into very interesting scenarios.
I think that objects that "guide people" or that "make people act some way" are more interesting than objects that are acted-upon: which makes book more interesting for this than a sword, lamp than a castle.

>That said, why do you need to combine that with modern, essentially scientific notions of "biology".

Because if its worldbuilding for any kind of game then the -folk based on nonliving objects need to have human weaknesses like having to breath, eat, sleep, etc. Anything else is wildly unbalanced and makes for less, not more, believable worldbuilding.

Damn the fucking nametage transfering between threads... Anyway:

Do you think you need biology to explain that a fantastic creature has weaknesses?
Do you think Wizard of Oz thought in categories of biology when he invented the weakness of a witch to be water? No, you don't.
Balance of playable races might be a concern not in any way related to world-building, but rather to gameplay systems. And this is where systems and actual world-building and story-telling can often end up conflicting: there is a reason why really good world-building or good fantasy stories almost always focus on humans, or just completely cosmetical variants of humans (like Hobbits) to tell the story through their perspective. And I'd recommend against trying to formulate say, a lamp society as a PC race for that reason: you'll end up losing what made them interesting (the fact that they are lamps) to the fact that you are going to have to make them too similar to humans.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with narrativity aspect, which the world-building is a part of.

>and makes for less, not more, believable worldbuilding.
And is where you are very, very, very wrong. In fact I can't even stress enough how wrong you are on this. Inexpert mashing of speculative and mythological elements in fantasy makes for terrible world-building, and is the main reason why most fantasy worlds, ESPECIALLY the amateur ones completely suck. Hell, it's one of the reasons why fantasy has such a problem of being taken seriously as a genre.

Consistency is actually overrated in general in world-building. And "consistency to modern, secular, scientific and empiric view of modern average people and their intuitions about the world" is COMPLETELY MISGUIDED and just flat out wrong. That shit has it's place in speculative fiction set more-or-less in our universe. But absolutely not in fantastic worlds ostentatiously set in alternative universes.

Gonna repost this from an earlier thread because I still could use some advice.

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:

Mundus 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?

Ever heard of a game called Pathologic? Because that might actually be of some interest to you.

Otherwise: It's not an easy task you set up for yourself. I like the idea, I can imagine it working, but like most good ideas, the execution is going to be hard, because your skill will have trouble living up to the image you already made up in your head. It's like when an inexperienced writer comes up with a good complicated plot in his head: it often ends up terribly because his skill will never match up with the vision.

There are few things I guess I could try to recommend.
A) I don't think a setting like that can really have a proper map. I sounds too big, too complex, too organic to be possible to set in stone. The best you can do is create illustrations, and set up some general outlines like relative positions of individual important locations (maybe in a form of a graph or flowchart or mind-map rather than a classical topographical map).
B) start drawing. Don't draw a map though: don't go straight up to mapping your city. Instead, practice.
Start by searching reference materials. What you have is neat, but you'll need more. Maps of hundred of cities, from ancient ones to contemporary ones like Mexico City, and even sci-fi art works. But also look into things like organic textures, anatomical maps of animals, graphs of population distribution. You should take PARTICULAR interest in something called "Emergence" and "Self-organization" and try to find some images illustrating it. If you could get your hands on a book called Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, I think you'd find it amazingly interesting.
Also look up something called Slime-mold growth experiments. Like this:
youtube.com/watch?v=GwKuFREOgmo
It's about how primitive organisms organically create networks.

Now: take all that material as inspiration and start drawing. Don't draw a city: draw organic shapes. (cont.)

Cont:
Here is another good explanation of what the slime-mold is about.
youtube.com/watch?v=2UxGrde1NDA
I think the relevance to what you talk about is pretty self-evident.

Back to practice and drawing: don't draw one image: draw dozens. Try actually drawing a sketch of human or animal nervous system, try drawing a fictional one. Do this over and over, try different angles, perspectives, techniques. Try more figurative, and try just drawing some abstract shapes loosely imitating what you saw in your reference materials.

You should eventually find out that certain shapes and patters are more interesting than others.
So focus on them. Draw them bigger. Perhaps try to overlay them with the think-maps or graphs of key locations you made earlier. Expand on them.
Remake them.
Those will serve as your inspiration. And if you want, you can eventually take one of those, and start drawing the city around those patterns and shapes. Try overlaying some kind of grind into it. Then break it up.

Remember that you can flip between scales, and you can determine scale ONCE you already draw something. You don't have to go ahead thinking "now I'm going to draw a map 1:720 scale".
Just draw shapes that fit your logic and aesthetic sensibilities, and if it's looking like something you want, go "I could declare this a scale 1:150 map of part of the city." but you can just as well change your mind and go "or maybe it's a map 1:750 map of entire city".

The more materials you'll have: both reference and illustrations, the more it will become clear what to do next. Digitalize (I really, really recommend start drawing with soft pen and paper) it, simplify down, or scale up and fill in more detail.

Well, that is my advice, god knows if it's worth anything. Good luck. I think the idea is good.

Oh, one last thing.
If you haven't, you also might want to look into Tsutomu Nihei's work: Blame, Abara, Knights of Sidonia. Just for the environments.

>Ever heard of a game called Pathologic?
I have heard of it, but never played it.

Anyways, thanks for the solid advice.
Those slime mold growth patterns are exactly the sort of stuff I was visualizing the streets, canals and veins of the city being like.
I have done one rough, and I mean very rough sketch of the city, but it mostly was just me visualizing it's general shape and how it was located in comparison to the outside world.

Most of my drawings for this setting have been focused on characters though, as that is the field in which I am most comfortable with.

Stuff like this for example, is what I tend to doodle.
I am not used to drawing scenery at all.

>I have heard of it, but never played it.
It's quite interesting on many levels (it actually started as table-top roleplaying session too), including ideas of organic aspects to a city. If you are bored and aching for inspiration, you might want to give it a try: it's easy to pirate (and currently like three bucks on steam, though the game is so damn flawed and difficult to get into that you really might want to consider pirating before anything, just to not feel cheated out of your money).

Damn I hate people with artistic talent. Anyway, looks good, but I think going out of your comfort zone might be good for you. And drawing items that might serve as an inspiration for the shapes and patters of your city seems like a good way to start moving forward with laying it out at least in general or illustrative fashion.

I might check it out.

And yeah, I need to move to drawing more stuff than just characters.
I did try to run a quest in the setting some years ago and made some backgrounds to it, but I am not very happy with the look I had for the setting in that quest. It was too fleshy. I want a sort of balanced middle between clearly designed architecture, that is just made out of organic material, and just raw fleshy growths etc.

I'm digging this pretty hard.

That looks painfully generic

>everything that wasn't a steppe or a desert or boreal region used to be covered entirely in forests.
Living in prehistoric times must have been such a fucking wonder.

thepiratebay.org/torrent/16559310/BBC_Planet_Earth_II_COMPLETE

When you watch how many animals in islands live. You can only imagine how much fauna there must have been back in those days when the planet was forested.

In what way?

Would anyone go adventuring on my continent? Still working on it, about to move to rivers. The Greyish area are mountain ranges

...

What's that huge inland sea?

Tell me what to work ok in my setting right now.

I rolled with it off a randomly generated map, haven't thought up an explanation for it yet.

Based off the right Continent

I like it. That huge ass bay underneath the right landmass looks like the best god damn pirate territory in any setting. Looks pretty comfy on land too, 8/10 would sail the high sea.

Shit nice idea, I was going to make it a fully controlled area with the weird arm protecting it but the whole premise of this continent is it being untamed and were the Definitely Not Nords live. It's a practically untouched by human "high" civilization

The other continent im connecting to my groups last campaign, its 800 years after the first campaign and it has come to have no need of adventurers and restrict magic users after a "World War" where magic was used to devastating effects.

The folklore/legends

>still putting that shit tier website Inkarnate instead of hexographer
Why are you so gay, OP?

Not him but it seems to be fine, why is hexographer better

>Not him but it seems to be fine
Opinion discarded. How about you try it instead of shitposting

>Ask what's better about program
>Instead of giving any examples has autist backlash

both are bad, just draw it in photoshop/gimp/SAI/paintNET etc where you have freedom

This. A monotheistic, overzealous religion that's heavily involved in politics? That shit will fall into internal squabbling and vicious schisms the moment they sense internal weakness. Unless, of course, they get deflected into some good old fashioned crusading....

Tell me about your Vampires and Werewolves /wbg/

I honestly don't have any, becasue I don't think they fit.

Vampires are alive but decaying creatures that use biomancy (or biology manipulation whatever) to replace their decaying parts with fresh bits from living creatures. New vampires often try to hide like The Thing, but older vampires are often chimeric abominations due to experimenting with new forms.

I'm starting to get satisfied with the level of detail in this map

cant wait for road systems and towns/inns markings and shit

wew

Really nice art you got there my dude.

There aren't any

Just humans doing human things in a world saturated in the remnants of a god that committed suicide to save humanity.

thanks, have a cliff city thing

I have no werewolves. No real reason why I don't.

Vamps are mortals taught incomplete Vitomancy by the Lich Priests. It grants them increased physical strength and the ability to return the dead to life, but need to feed on fresh blood in order to sustain their magics. They also lack tge ability to full heal the resurrected, at most mending flesh.

The commonly encountered vampires are members of the Goblin Rebellion, escaped goblins trying to free their people from their elven masters using any means possible.

Why is making magic, especially low powered and relatively useless magic, so despised and hated on this board? Why is every setting "magic users are rare, magic is DANGEROUS and hard to do, etc." on this website?

Because then you'd have to overhaul a setting from with similarities to real life to to be one where just about anybody can cast spells with simplicity, which given that it could include stuff like poison clouds and teleportation and god knows what else, conceptually creates a setting that's hard to balance and make relatable to any real life time period or culture.

(Note, I ain't talking about magitech, which is just using magic as a stand-in for technology.)

While this would be alright for something narrative-driven (i.e. stories) where you get to show things as you go, this would be difficult/too dense to present as an internally consistent setting within a brief information packet.

TL;DR Or it could just be people like to stick to real life/pseudo-European medieval fantasy, and making magic abundant and simple would mean they'd have to throw out everything they knew.

Because making settings where everyone can use high powered magic without any effort is difficult to do properly when the "why don't they use magic to fix it" question gets asked constantly

What would the cuisine of an aquatic species be like? They wouldn't be able to regularly cook anything so... different combinations of different foods, maybe?

>Spear a fish
>Roast it over a volcanic vent
>Over time learn cooking

>it could just be people like to stick to real life/pseudo-European medieval fantasy
I hate this crap

Much like asking that question almost accusatory and yet having people explain that "yes, I do have vampires in my setting"

Do something actually new and interesting instead of digging up Tolkein's grave over and over

Not only would they not be able to cook anything, but they wouldn't be able to arrange anything either. Unless you have them maintain bubbles of air if for no other reason than food preparation, you'd have to consider everything they prepare would basically be done in a zero-g environment. Maybe they can tie pieces of fish together with kelp, but that's about it

Consider exotic flora and fauna that somehow works in this situation. I'm not sure how.

>Roast it over a volcanic vent
The water around it wouldn't be safe to swim through if it was that close to water temperature that could cook flesh

I need real star charts.

>Get a weird idea with a friend on how to combine Flat Earth, Hollow Earth, and other various silly theories
>Realize it could actually make a kickass setting and system
>Get to work
>Realize I have to draw 14 earth sized maps
Fuck.

>The water around it wouldn't be safe to swim through if it was that close to water temperature that could cook flesh
Hot water rises like air I'm pretty sure, it essentially plumes upwards rather than spreading evenly.

Wouldn't worry about it too much. How much of that are your players likely to a) see and b) care about?

Plan is to make it reusable and potentially disputable rather than just for a single campaign/group, so basically all of them.

Well then get cracking I guess. Or outsource it.

As do I. What are you working on? Cause I have been working off that map myself for a project.

I could try making a star chart generator in a few hours if that's what your asking for. I have a preexisting project that I could rip out some parts of and probably get it done quickish.

>because settings where everyone can cast spells
>everyone can cast high level spells

I did specify low powered magic, not even spells necessarily. Just magic.

I'm looking for a few more realistic maps of space. Doing a setting that is about realistic space warfare and I'm trying for a map around 40 light years in radius around Sol. I found these two maps off of the projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacemaps.php atomic rocket page that op has linked. The first one is 15ly the other is 25ly but it's not really big enough for a bunch of system variety. Haven't found a good set of star charts I can base my game off of.

Though if you wanted to make a star chart random generator that would be badass.

Yeah I've been drinking. Sorry

Hard part is making a 3d map in a 2d plane. May I suggest you use a sculpture model?

starferrymusings.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/P16908083.jpg

That's the point of the numbers under the points to show how far the actually are. Lines connect those that are the closest to each other.