/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Coast-to-coast rivers. Cartographers worst sin.

how should the rivers look then?

Flowing from top to bottom, like real rivers. River has a spring, usually somewhere fairly high, and then flows down towards the coast and the sea. Think about it: if your river connects one coast to another - that is two places with elevation exactly ZERO above sea level, how does it flow? Why does it cut through the land?

Identify highlands, let the rivers flow form there towards the coast. Don't forget: rivers rarely ever fork, but rather, multiple small rivers join to form a larger and larger torrent as they get closer to the shore.

The absolute best way to get them right is - as always - to find some place relatively analogical to what you are creating on a real-world map (google planet can serve well) and study it in detail. Your islands are relatively small, so the rivers will be short, fast and relatively narrow.

Look up fakllands or any island that is climatically and scale-wise similar to your islands, google up their river network, and learn from that.

I've been wanting to make a post-apocalyptic Maine setting. I already have one I use for post-apoc set in Russia but seeing as I've never been there it's hard to portray well. Mostly just a cold dark isolated world with weird cthulu-esque monsters running around. But with the Maine setting I want it to be comfy, with quaint seaside villages and forests full of strange and terrifying monsters. As with the rest of the setting, the cause of the apocalypse is unknown, and campaigns in the setting take place 15 to 20 years after the apocalypse.

I don't really have much besides lots of D&D-esque towns centered around lighthouses, lots of taverns and inns for travellers, trade and scavenging are very important, population is very low, like 1/1000th as many people. As for monsters to put there... I'm not sure. I like the idea of fast-running ghouls that hunt in packs, animal intelligence type creatures. I don't want to just do zombies though.

I have demon wolves and weird spider creatures from the other setting but I am not sure I should use them here. Technically they exist in the same world but I do want to differentiate it a bit.

t. Stephen King

How do I make an interesting Stone Age mythology without just relying on the typical staples of Sun God, Moon God, Fire God, Water God, etc.

its late where i am so im not gonna work much more on this, But is this a decent size?

Human-on-human conflict is meant to be a fairly big part of things, too, so I was thinking a couple of factions that might be at odds. Of course, being thousands of miles from Russia I can't use my old Fleshcrafter factions, or any of the religious cults. I do want religion to be a fairly large part of the game. I like to use it as a two-edged sword: vital for keeping communities together in a hopeless world, but also vulnerable to perversion in the form of cults and evil cabals, perhaps looking for human sacrifice victims. Also, psionics and psychic powers are a real thing in this world, but nothing extravagant like turning invisible or flying or shooting fire, it's not like D&D psionics, more like the psychic abilities in Dune where it is much more subtle, although gifted psions can read minds or even control people with eye contact. If you've read Apocalypse World, think the Brainer. I want the psionics to be very weird and foreign, thus I haven't let any players take it for their characters. I didn't even let them know that psionics existed when we started the campaign. They only discovered it when they ran into a woman leading a group of bandits and learned of her psionic powers.

So I guess the basic ideas here are:
>small tightly clustered towns bound together by religion
>some psionics
>a few different human factions, some even with organized uniforms
>mysterious origin for the apocalypse
>cults and "dark side of religion" without too much fedora-tipping
>lighthouses, taverns, comfy feels
>dark forests with monsters in them, a strong horror aspect, an urge to stay within the walls
>"evolved" post-apocalypse: civilization has been re-established to a degree, but life is still hard and survival is not a given

Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone done anything similar?

How do you decide why a dungeon exists?

Fallen empire's abandoned fortresses, built for mysterious reasons, with tribes of humanoids or insectoid beasts moving in for shelter. The fallen empire trope is a stale one but it makes so many things easier, and it gives a nice feel to things in my opinion.

Seems like it.

Lost dwarven holds that they filled with traps because of their paranoia.

>How do you decide why a dungeon exists?
Despite the fact that my world is pretty much LITTERED with old-ass ruins of older civilizations, I rarely ever use "dungeons". I find the trope pretty worn out and when we play-test the thing, we usually end up focusing on social or political play instead of dungeoning.

But on the few cases I might need something of that sort, there are generally few basic simple excuses:
A) tombs. People used to build quite amazing and elaborate and massive burrial grounds, and often equipped dead with a lot of riches. The whole idea of entering an old tomb or crypt to loot for valuables is rooted in pretty logical, historical grounds.
B) ruins of places that were abandoned in a hurry. Any natural or supernatural catastrophe could result in a place - temple, city, but something like that - to be abandoned in a hurry, leaving the valuable shit back.
C) nests of creatures. Birds collect shiny things and build nests, some animals build elaborate networks of caves or complex structures like ant-hives.

Those are the most readily available excuses for having dungeons.

But as said, I generally drew more inspiration from what Roman ruins were in 14th century: as just places that were stripped of mostly anything valuable centuries ago, and now are just a scenic, creepy part of the scenery.

From a mountain to a sea or lake. It's not rocket science.

>/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Good, I'm catching this while it's still fresh. I've got a research request:

I need names, names of as many "Mother of Monster" type monster-goddesses (and gods if they're fathers, I'm sorely lacking monster father gods) you guys know about or can otherwise find me. Bonus points if they, themselves, are monstery gods, but it isn't necessary; I will also accept Goddesses who just birthed a whole lot of Gods/Creatures, etc..

The ones I already have are:
Echidna, Nyx, Lilith, Typhon(father), Cetus, Angrboda, Tiamat, Hariti, & Nüwa.

*Bonus: Additional just in general "Monster Gods" would also be appreciated if you can't name any "Mother of Monster" Gods.

You don't need too, dungeons exist in real life, you should read what goes on in the catacombs in France.

What conditions would be required for the north to be warm and the south to be cold? This might be kind of a silly question but I know next to nothing about this kind of stuff

Depending on how locked down the setting is, consider something like the Naya from Shards of Alara, who worship more or less kaiju as their living gods who are seen as the children of the giant hydra-god that created all things and slumbers beneath the world.

The setting taking place on the southern hemisphere. Both Dragonlance's Krynn and Shadow of the Demon Lord's Urth do this.

Only one I put much thought into tales and songs is that the Sobki like parables and epics, and they form a strong part of their spirituality, leading other cultures to mistake these characters as gods in their pantheon.

You require the conditions of my country.

We have the driest desert (or was it hottest?) in the world in northern Chile.
We have literal islands made out of ice in the south.

So really just study my country up
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Chile#The_Far_North

Southern Hemisphere.

My homebrew setting is literally this.

Dryest, I think

I've heard that parts of it are sterile because all the microbes died from exposure

Atacama has a pretty good claim at driest, but Iran's Dasht-e Lut is the hottest spot on Earth according to some shiny NASA data with temperatures just over 70c.

DIRT MOUNTAINS

What's a better name for the greatest fallen hero in my setting?

The Prince of Gold
or
The Prince in Gold

Oh, wow, I didn't know Chile had such a varied climate!

I think IN is more interesting

>What's a better name for the greatest fallen hero in my setting?

The Prince OUT of Gold

Murderhoboicus, slayer of men

The Gilt Prince
>Commonly misunderstood as The Guilt Prince, leading to apocryphal tales telling stories of his guilt.

Anybody want to help me come up with a good name/high concept for a character? He's pretty skilled and just shy of being a wizard (in the setting, Dresden Files if anybody is familiar with it, wizards have a certain level of skill at minimum) as well as the ex-apprentice of a wizard (she was suspected of doing illegal research and fled instead of being executed, the wizard group isn't much for trials). While she was training him there was a war going on between the wizards and a type of vampires referred to as the Red Court, long story short they're now extinct and he's running a cult comprised of vanilla humans and minor talents while trying to make himself into one of those vampires. He's had some success and his skill in biomancy has helped the group to fund itself through drug sales (their best being his own saliva, having replicated the Red Court's). Thus far I was thinking of something like The Crimson King or The King in Red but I'm not sure.

Oh boy, I’m going to dump my magic system as it is now. My thinking process has been “take something I like, tweak it in a new way, and keep in mind a lot of surprising, awesome setpieces that could be supported by this and THEN build the world around it. I’m having fun trying to chisel something interesting out of it so let me know what looks good and what seems like it should be cut.

The overall idea is to have something that feels simple but is a well ordered system that makes sense even if the characters or societies that inhabit the world don’t fully understand the reasoning behind it. Part of the reason I’m doing this is just to lay things out for myself so I can identify things that I added but don’t fit in a cohesive manner. I’ve posted this before but I just came up with some new things and I’ve shifted my thinking on it somewhat.

Basic idea: Certain people are able to affect weapons or machines set with special crystals or the body of willing subjects through singing complicated songs.

1. Speakers
Speakers are people who can use magic. A Speaker is readily identifiable through a thin pair of horns that circle and sweep up the forehead never actually meeting. All Speakers are women (I’m still thinking of a reasoning for this. I want it in due to my distaste for male singers) and it’s impossible to know who will have abilities before puberty and their horns come in.

Speakers use magic through a connection to a higher order being who is basically the soul or “Ardor” of the planet. Because magic is the method whereby these beings created heavenly bodies in the universe, its application is too far above human understanding to use under normal circumstances. A Speaker’s horns are actually an organ that allows them to connect to the deity and queue an effect. The deity understands what the Speaker wants to do and provides the divine language and melody needed to achieve the effect. I called them Speakers because they’re considered to speak for god, but in reality god speaks through them much like they are actual “speakers” in the electronics sense.

It takes a great deal of concentration and training to be able to properly utilize this connection. A Speaker needs to feel the melody provided to their body through their Quality of Motion (More on that later) through syncing their heartbeat/movements to the song. Using these abilities on a human’s Ardor instead of an artificial one born of the Speaker’s own soul requires the human themselves to also keep this rhythm to avoid the interference their ineptitude can cause.

2. Matter
Matter in this world is a shell for “Waves”. Waves are basically energy patterns that give matter its characteristics. Fundamental forces such as thermodynamic energy, mass, and electromagnetic charge are dictated by the wavelength and amplitude of these waves. People who use magic are able to affect these waves through the Ardor that is linked to them. In this way someone can heat or cool an object by singing a wave pattern that harmonizes or interferes with the natural waves dictating the thermodynamic energy of the object.

3. Ardor
Ardor is what we would think of as the soul. All humans are born with it, the planet itself has it, and Speakers are able to create, through training, time, and effort, artificial Ardor called Simulacra, or “Sims”. Ardor itself has characteristics but unlike matter these are more conceptual than fundamental.
Ardor has:
>Form – The Quality of Shape
Dictates the form of matter that an Ardor is maintaining
>Life – The Quality of Motion
Dictates the movement of that matter within the bounds of its form
>Mind – The Quality of Sapience
Gives humanity its sapience. Sims are imperfect Ardor and do not have the Quality of Sapience so no talking swords allowed. The planet’s sapience is used to facilitate magic
>Trust – The Quality of Permission
Allows another Ardor to connect with itself. Even non-Speakers understand this and can instinctively repel or let someone in. Needed so hostile Speakers couldn’t just kill people by hijacking their souls at a whim
>Connection – The Quality of Relationships
Allows the Ardor to make contact with another. The pair to Trust.
>Memory – The Quality of the Past
A record of what the Ardor both is and was. I’m thinking of using this to justify magical healing and maybe life extension as the body remembers what it was and it can be paired with form to alter the body accordingly

4. Sims and the use of magic
Sims are placed into objects or used to create objects (I’m still wondering which to do) where they dictate the characteristics of the matter they’re linked to. A Speaker uses their Ardor to interface with the Sim and affect its characteristics or the waves that pass into the linked matter. A Speaker can only interface with an Ardor that is either their own Simulacra or one they have been given permission to use by the original creator, or the person themselves if the Speaker is accessing a human’s Ardor. There are also sims made during antiquity by the planet itself whose Quality of Permission is keyed to every living person. These were used in many ancient machines that amplify the abilities of a speaker to affect change and could even allow them to interface with the planet’s Ardor and basically grant godhood (something I plan on addressing)

When used on people, a Speaker can use their powers to bolster a human’s abilities to superhuman levels by accessing the Qualities of Motion and Form within their charge’s Ardor. Combined with a weapon set with a Sim, you could have a magically augmented warrior carrying an unreasonably large weapon that dynamically shifts in mass and can even burst into flames or explode with electrical power to fit with the needs of combat.

5. Issues
I’m unsure of how Simulacra are linked to the matter around them. I was thinking they could just be set into key points but that feels a little lazy and the matter that objects are made of are actually part of the planet and linked to that rather than the Sim. Also after I overhauled Ardor and gave it characteristics of its own, I think that altering matter at this point is redundant and I could just use something like the Quality of Motion to make airships and stuff rather than dealing with mass of the actual objects. So I don’t have “well THIS is altering matter, but THIS is altering the soul” If that is the case I feel as though I need to add more qualities to Ardor. Or somehow merge the two. I feel like I still have threads to tie and feel like maybe I should hammer down what I’m really trying to do in the setting before continuing?

You should hammer it down, leaving loose threads will lead to problems. Keep going Song user.

Gonna bump with an idea. Much in the same way that Howard's Conan takes place in a forgotten past of the earth, THIS is a setting that takes place in our distant, forgotten FUTURE. Think of it as the Post-Hyborian Age.

In a few centuries, the earth is wracked by massive, cataclysmic forces. Earthquakes and volcanoes throw mountains down, open up vast rifts in the continental plates, creating and destroying much of the old world, leaving a very different one behind. The high technology of the old world is far and few in between, and treated like magic by the world's populous. Humanity loses its grip on the world, and ancient magicks are returned with the rise of dark cults and their blasphemous, gibbering gods. The great cities lie in ruin.

Millenia later, few remember the world of before. Tyrants rule through force of arms and the power of their Techno-Sorcery. Forgotten evolutions return to plague mankind. Mutants, Apemen, Lizardmen, and stranger still haunt the land. Yet this is a land undreamt, a world of wonder, horror, and adventure.

>"Hither came Conan...to trample the jeweled thrones of the world beneath his sandaled feet..."

I want this setting to basically be Howard's Conan, plus Moorcock's Elric Saga, and Burroughs' Barsoom series. What are the most important things/themes/ideas from each needed to really echo these worlds?

In case no one can tell, the map is the Americas, transformed into the New Hyborian world.

...

Frankly, it look liked a 2hu from the thumbnail

>2hu
I'm not familiar with that.

Its a game with a massive fanbase, just go to /jp/

Ah. Okay. How does the map resemble a 2hu though? I'm just curious.

There is a character that dresses in similar colors.

bimp

>What songs, tales, epic poems, or sagas exist in your world?
Several. Though, I haven't actually detailed most of them as I don't think they'll be relevant as more than small references being namedropped by NPCs or the like. The three I have worked rather extensively on are 1) the mythological tales about the gods, 2) a tragedy about a prince of a conquered kingdom who seeks revenge on the lord who stole his birthright, and 3) an epic about a hero who becomes a king and later dies while defending his realm from a monster.

>>Are these stories in and of themselves fictional in-universe? Or are they real, historical fact? Something in between?
Usually somewhere inbetween. The most common stories are recountings of historical events; family feuds, wars, conquests. Those sorts of things. Though, obviosuly, these stories are still primarily transmitted orally and are thus not necessarily entirely accurate. Heroic characters generally never make an appearance in these stories, though sometimes the storyteller will sneak in a quick cameo or note that an event within the story takes place at the same time or place as something otherwise unrelated in a more embellished tale.

Then you have the heroic tales that usually concern real people but also include a mythological main character who may or may not have been originally based on an actual person. This is common with national heroes who often start out as slightly embellished stories about a good king or particularly brave warrior, and then take on a persona of their own and start to pop up in all kinds of different stories that they originally had nothing at all to do with.

And finally you have the purely mythical stories which concern the gods, the creation of the world, why things are as they are, etc, etc. These are about what you'd expect.

>Who is the author?
Unclear. Even though the ability to speak and sing clearly is looked up on, the people who made the stories are rarely remembered.

Cont.

>>Who is the intended audience/message of the piece?
The general population. The stories are, primarily, a way to keep people informed about historical events. Though, the "liar tales" about legendary heroes and tricksters with godly blood in their veins are often far more popular, and not just among the common folks.

>Bards, Skalds, or Oracles?
Skalds.

>Your above story is adapted for film. How successful is it in USD?
It does poorly.

>Uwe Boll is the director. How fucked are you?
At least he'll get a nice tax return on the deal.

Does he rule over gold, is made of it, wearing it or painted with it?

Fucking forests man how do they work?
Could I have coniferous and deciduous forest on the same lattitude, but separated by mountains?

Neither type of forest is particularly exclusive. It is common in many forests to have both, though I would assume that they would be slightly clustered together by type.

Something that vast and ancient, try to run it through multiple owners over multiple eras, each with their own style and purposes. Think about who would tunnel that deep and why. Dragons and dwarves are cliches for a reason.

No one's into old pulp fantasy these days?

How do I coastline? This is a very, very rough sketch of where some things are in one of the continents of my world (purple line is equator, red lines are national borders). I'm plotting out the geography right now. I can't figure out how to make a coastline any more detailed than this outline.
Also struggling with climate. I downloaded a climate simulator program, but it's hard as hell to draw things on because the scale is fucked, so no matter what I do it ends up thinking the southern coast of my nation is Antarctica tier (the mountains don't help).

How to make a human-only, low-magic setting weird?

I want to have the feel of the tales of Solomon and his occult wisdom, or 1001 arabian nights. Give me some inspiration for esoteric practices, cults, whatever.
>inb4 do your own research
I've been reading, a lot. I just want more.

Fyrtallskla: History of the Kings of Alarikka

it's a collection of various sagas about various kings, written over several centuries. they're generaly considered to be historically accurate to a certain degree, but over time, the stories and achievements of the various kings have been exagerrated. it has been compiled by a scholar from the sheep isles, askilder great-skald, who travelled all around the northern kingdoms, gathering poems and stories of the old kings

Coastline is too smooth. Go in by hand and draw more squiggly coasts. Add some little islands and square bits to break up the shapes. Wheather goes East to West along the equator, dies along 30 lat, goes West to East at 60 lat, and reverses twice in between each.

I use AutoREALM for drawing the outlines and copy paste it into another editor.
It has a fractal tool that lets you make coastlines that looks more natural and less smooth.

Assuming a global catastrophy like occurs, but humanity somehow survives, what human structures could potentially also survive the initial cataclysm? The next thousand years? 100 thousand?

I want to give Hell a new look/theme. Should I make them Norman/Crusader Knights, or Sengoku Era Samurai?

This may be a stupid newbie question but how do you incorporate unique worlds into game rule sets? I was thinking about getting into tabletop and I always see systems come with explicit races, enemies and stats, but I have always wanted to develop different types of worlds like you see here. Do we use existing rules and just alter names and backgrounds? What if I want to use DnD rules but hate "Tolkein" universes? Is there a basic rule set from which you develop new rules from? Are there general genre rule sets that you pick for a game and expand to fit your own vision?

I honestly know just about nothing about tabletop so bear with me. I don't know what I don't know.

Could a nomadic society have a lunar calendar? I don't see any reason as to why they couldn't but I just wanted to make sure

Either use a universal system, like GURPS or Fate, or homebrew your own setting-appropiate rules for a system you otherwise like. There's also always the option of just making your own system.

It's easier to keep track, the moon is pretty consistant.

Gonna be DMing for the first time doing a stars without numbers

For a starting adventure I was thinking that the party stumbles across a tiny rebellion happening in the police state planet they're on, however the leader of the rebels is a doppelganger of a party member and they caught up in the shit storm. Then they either help the rebels and escape the planet by stealing one of their ships or they sell out the rebels and the government pays them for their services by giving them the Rebel ship.

Thoughts? Any help fleshing this out?

Thanks man, I will probably learn how to use Fate or GURPS and tweak things a bit to fit in setting unique aspects.

>There's also always the option of just making your own system.
Is that as tedious as it sounds? I feel like if I tried that it would wind up with a lot of holes and things I didn't account for.

>Is that as tedious as it sounds?
It depends on how crunchy you want the end product to be, but yeah, it's definitely more work than most people like to put in or everyone would do it.

Just homebrew, my man. Homebrew and repaint.

What exactly do you mean unique world? Like alternate physics or something?

>Is that as tedious as it sounds?
You're already on the right track by starting with the setting. One of the biggest things people do wrong when creating their own setting is that they open up Word (or whatever text processing software they happen to use) and start by writing "Chapter 1: What is a role-playing game", write that for a while until they get bored, and instead start working on "Chapter 2: Combat" and start to churn out rules about which dice rolls you have to make in order to crush someone's skull with a hammer, or how fatigued you get from swinging your sword four times in a single turn and what that means in practical terms. Sometimes they even manage to start on "Chapter 3: Magic" before they get bored out of their mind and abandon the entire project forever.

If you're gonna do it, then start with the setting and make sure that it is unique and interesting. Rules can be made up whenever to fit whatever tone you're going for and there's no point in writing rules at all for things that won't even show up in your setting (if you're making a sci-fi setting, for example, it's good to know that there actually are psychic powers in your setting before you start writing rules for them).

And now, when I say "unique and interesting" it's easy to assume that the latter is more important than the former, and it is. However, a setting that isn't unique isn't gonna be interesting either, and it certainly won't be worth it build an entire game from the ground up just to end up with Runequest without ducks. If that's your end goal, you're better off just playing Runequest and houseruling out the ducks.

And when it does come time to write the rules, it's more important that they're easy to understand and thematically appropriate than that they are realistic. It's also much easier to end up with an extremely unrealistic and hard to fix feature or bug in a complex, realistic system because of a slight miscalculation than it is in a simple one.

What climate simulator?

Old map, still want to use for something, can't figure out what.

What kind of setting should go here anons?

Post apoc because it looks like a giant crater

Could ANYTHING survive an impact that would make an impact crater that big?

Pirates. Post-Apocalyptic Pirates.

Magic

What if magic doesn't work like that?

Then it's a barren world repopulated post collapse by aliens

maybe whatever did it thinned the crust of the earth, which started to bubble

>all the oceans are like, almost bathwater level warm, because of the volcanic fissures that exist FUCKING EVERYWHERE underwater
>the ocean floor is almost boiling in places, causing the coldest point of the ocean to be slightly below the middle of whatever total depth you're dealing with

after the impact, a rapidly growing shoreline forced a lot of slow moving species to the surface, the ones that survived were the ones that could survive in the air the longest, thus becoming amphibians
>they adapt to life on land as time goes on and land becomes more bountiful
>que aquatic ape evolution theory

boom, you have a land populated with humans in some fucking weirdo alt reality

also I drew more mountains and shiet, but puush made them blurrier than all fuck

This is good shit.

There's mechanics for how magic works. But now for how magic is done.
Make different cultures or even wizards have VASTLY different ideas of how to do magic.
This one tribe has a bunch of throat-singers that can combine their casting, one tribe does specific dances. One guy can summon demons.
It's all in the fluff, make the magic sound completely different every time the characters hear about a powerful wizard.

Bah. Messing with my magic system and I feel it getting away from me constantly like a bar of soap in the bath.

How do people with well-ordered magic systems keep things straight? I often feel as though I have to completely restate what the magic is so the things I forget, and are thus unimportant, are dropped in favor of creating a slightly tweaked core system.

The holy grail would be something simple yet leads to amazing compounding results yet is still grounded enough to avoid the "Why don't they just use magic" question in regards to conflict.

I'M SO CLOSE TO SOMETHING GREAT, I KNOW IT

It is fun to look at old notes and see how things have evolved, looking a the seeds of what you have now buried in wild brainstorms and getting inspiration from what you left behind.

Bumping my own request with a little context.
The reason I'm looking for so many "Monster God(esses)" names is because my settings pantheon is entirely composed of Monster Gods: the original "traditional" pantheon of good vs evil Gods were all killed very early during the worlds Titanomachy- with the Titans having actually won, though, suffering heavy loses with few of them remaining.
The settings celestial literate inhabitants acknowledges this as "unusual" as most worlds are often or almost always conquered by such Gods and without them... The Monster Gods have free reign to apply and expand themselves into numerous circles of worship that were or are typically denied to their demographic and it has become a buyers market.

So, basically, you've just got a bunch of primeval/ancient Monster Gods who're trying to reeducate themselves on things like agriculture, prostitution, medicine, economics, and other topics of interest to humanoids so they can diversify their divine portfolios and get larger shares of worship...Some of which they directly invest into more monsters, while others into themselves and their new identities.

So I need NAMES, please.

Well, what are the gods or titans and their roles?

Ralsagnagoth
Vinskair
Uadinis
Velsikaim
Orandellia
Kasran
Yeisva
Wuovu
Ihrei
Qverenias
Kearken

>Well, what are the gods or titans and their roles?

They didn't 'have' roles, so much as they were by products of certain processes or embodiments of what they would be worshiped for. Gods were basically just a very big soul/ghost left over from the big bang that wanted to be worshipped because they liked JUSTICE or FARMING or some other specific (or vague) concept like SECRETS or MONETARY VALUE.
Titans on the other hand were just natural occurring creatures or monsters that kept eating, killing, and eventually grew so powerful and intelligent from their own merits or deeds they became like or equal to the gods- they popped up all the time on primitive worlds all the time, but Gods usually slay them due to being.. "crafty".
Monster Gods are just a sort of Titan; many were bottom of the barrel, and even more are just Demi-Gods than actual equals to Gods.

*Real names, I need real names, sorry! Sorry! From mythology n' wot naught; like what I've got listed here:
I CAN just make up names, that isn't the point- I take inspiration on character/monster design and what they might like to do or aspect they'd like to take up from what or how they were like in irl mythology.

Well, don't take it as a insult, but you can look for a list in some site or perhaps in the shin megami wikia, which is a series about a shitload of gods togheter.

Well I guess I'll take my names back with the drunken stupor that created them

Fuck, no wonder writers are all alcoholics.