/wbg/ - World Building General

my map is in this thread, i'm just asking for general river and lake advice

not much to show at the moment, i'm just trying to make this as geographically accurate as possible

the rough draft is also in mspaint

That's exactly the point, the medieval world wasn't "still under exploration".
They thought they knew where everything was already.

thnx. same for lakes?

*isn't in this thread

Alright. River basics are to make them look like they fit with the rest of the map stylistically. After that, make sure they always merge towards the ocean, not diverge. There can be river deltas, but they aren't very big, and only form at the end of big, slow rivers. Rivers always go from high ground to low.

Everything else is just sprinkles.

Is there any systematic approach to making races/species? As in, each race is partly symbolic in a way, or each race is meant to represent an ideology, ways like that. Kind of stuck on how many I want to have, and I don't want to go gonzo and just have a 100+ that are only visually interesting.

There's about a thousand methods of doing this. Some go by general archetypes (magic race, warrior race, thief race, etc), while some make it more abstract (tvtropes' Five Races and Axis of Evil pages).

It really depends on what you're doing and why. Having a billion races can work if that's the sort of story you're telling.

Any underworld maps?

That's a good point. I have been trying to add a few more religious and racial divides in my setting to offer some plot hooks, although thinking on it further that would allow for a lot of potential with religious wars or disputes within or between people groups.

what is this map from?

lingonb.deviantart.com/art/The-Tartaros-Basin-a-map-of-hell-451923899
Sadly it's only a one-off map.

shame, i love the idea of real world countries going for a land grab rush in hell

It's pretty interesting as an idea. I especially like it from the context of the Chinese showing up, who obviously have a rather different view of demons and the afterlife

Can someone tell me how to make steppes interesting? The largest, most important nation of the current campaign world is mostly steppe, but a journey being mostly
>Yeah it's pretty much nothing as far as the eye can see. There's some hills to the south I guess. And the occasional bandit tribe. Just keep walking another three days you'll hit something eventually
isn't the most thrilling.

Well, if it's a fantasy setting, there would probably be some more strange wildlife to worry about, as well as the possibility for something underground. Weird weather or portals to some other plane cropping up randomly might also be an option

You can make the steppe nomads interesting, they proved to be a main transferer of news and ideas between europe and asia before rail and telegraphs became a thing. I'm talking pastoral nomads that would drive huge herds of sheep and whatnot around, not warbands of horse archers.

Maybe the nomads are upset at some upstart state that claimed part of the steppe as its territory and is blocking the nomads from traveling through? Or there was gold discovered in them hills?

My current progress. Only texts are missing, other than that I think I am done with this. Before printing it, do you guys see any obvious mistakes, any jarring points?

Put a giant worm underground and chase the players? That might make it interesting. Basically make the steppes less about the land and more about the creatures in it.

...

The rivers on the eastern island don't have any bridges, which I'm not sure is intentional or not. Other than that, the lake on the western island seems a bit odd for just coming from the mountains and not flowing anywhere else.

Seems fine overall though.

noice

Shit, I totally forget those points, I fixed them now.

Thanks man, I hope my group enjoys it too.

I'm working on a Victorian steampunk setting that'll take place in pseudo Western Hemisphere and I want to incorporate a lot of different cultural elements namely from Southern America, Latin America, and the Caribbean is there anything I should keep in mind or use?

Take into account how superscience steampunk technologies affected the institution of slavery. Did slavery end earlier because machinery took their place? Did it end roughly around the same time as real life because the costs of steampunk technology kept human labor in the business? Did escaping slaves get recaptured by mechanical attack dogs and electric rifles? wow I feel like a dirty liberal saying this

That always bothered me about wolfenstein, why would a civilization with robotics that advanced require forced manual labor?

Out of universe: because their Nazis and they want to exterminate all the non-Aryans.

In universe: the robots we see are all military machines. Could be that making a robot is relatively expensive, hence human labor (aided by machinery) is still a thing.

Most rivers should start in places of high elevation (mountains, inner highlands) and run towards the sea or a large lake. Lakes shouldn't have more than one outlet.

>Out of universe: because their Nazis and they want to exterminate all the non-Aryans.
But didn't hitler aready won in wolfenstain? Why not just shoot them?
Probably because the plot demands it so you can have some sort of slave revolt thing.

Fuck. I overdid it, waaaaay too much.

That's an odd claim given that the size of the planet was known since ancient Greece
Sure, no one expected America to exist but there were speculations on what's going on on the southmost end of Africa and about Terra Australis

Well, A common approach would be to have a set of 4-6 major races, corresponding to something like elements. Could also go for a larger number and something like virtues/vices or a zodiac.

All depends on what you're after

I've been toying with an idea for an upcoming campaign im about to write and though id see what you guys thought.

>Campaign is set on and in a giant tree, civilisatons are built on or in the branches and trunks and are appropriately adapted to living there. Giant sails reach to the sky to catch giant debris like coral, and condensers line the woodclad buildings to suck the dew from the sky.
>Exclusivity is given to those that have the power to take it, and whole branches are claimed by some dominions, from the depths of the trunkhomes to the high dizzing tops of the canopy different societies have found their own niche in the arms of the great tree.
>The tree has its own guardians of course, golem like drones and minor dryads walk the depths of the arboreal heart fending off intruders and with good reason, there are many who would see the death of the great wooden world.
> A tree of this size would make a meal for millenia for scavenging alien entities, fell visitors who came on the wind intent on tearing the saplike heart from the world and feasting for aeons.

I don't undrstand this chart at all

protip, make the text white and the strokes black, it'll blend easier with the landmass outlines

I need to incorporate this into my setting. I'm imagining Hell not mapping 1:1 to Earth, so you get countries halfway across the globe neigboring eachother in Hell

>known world
>two separate oceans

Known world implies there's an unknown world, y'know
You wouldn't need to mention that this is just the known part otherwise

>Flowcharts
Nice. I love using these to keep track of worldbuilding stuff.

What sort of wacky races or entities do you have in your games, user?
I'm thinking about including an enlightened ancient memetic lifeform that starts to wreak havoc after his physical body (think phylactery) is tinkered with by a corporation.

The only thing I would classify as pretty out-there are the hyperintelligent killer whales with psychic powers. They fill in for eldritch/deep ones in the setting, although nobody really knows about them as much as the results of their actions, which is mainly an overly elaborate chess-game getting put of hand when the whales wanted more lifelike pieces and added more players

Is this the place to build modern metropolises for an action hero style campaign? Or is that too specific?

It qualifies.

Alright, I had a question regarding mapping things out. I was thinking of just going with a simple diagram of squares and lines to keep myself organized as to where things are in relation to one another. I was going to try and find something more fleshed out to show the players before I begin. Is there anything /wbg/ knows of for mapping out modern cities or should I just steal from an existing city and superimpose my diagram information onto it?

Are there any mapmaking resources that /wbg/ recommends?

Why is it unknown if you can just fucking sail to it
Sailing is literally for free
You just need to sit down in a boat and wait

>boats are free

Well look at the map. Obviously the people living there have ships and a fairly good grasp of sailing. They could just like, you know, follow the coast. But they don't.

How do you like your urban fantast, /wbg/?

Considering making a thread about it in a day or two to see if I can garner some response. I always get drawn back to urban fantasy style settings eventually, just like the themes.

How do you think our world got mapped out? Ships are actually incredibly expensive, particularly oceangoing vessels. Sailors need food and fresh water and ships need regular upkeep. It's not even remotely free.
Not many investors would be OK with you just fucking off into the unknown and probably losing everything or coming home empty-handed.

There could be any number of reasons why nobody has, not to mention you don't know who made this map based on what knowledge
The "known world" to a greek in 1200bc wasn't the "known world" of a Babylonian

Modern or medieval?

Africa was rounded by Phoenician sailors before 500 B.C.
There is no excuse.

Yes. The reason is bad worldbuilding.

There's medieval urban fantasy? Seems weird. I was more thinking towards modern, but medieval works.

People didn't discover the Ameriacas for a long time. Technology has to get to a point where travel is good enough to allow frequent travel, so the far off land is not just a lucky few can get to.

Hanno made it like half the length of west African coast, not mention Phoenicians literally lived by the sail

I think the map is supposed to be an in-universe document representing the known, mapped out world. The unknown world is marked by an arrow pointing off the map, and for all we know they could just be referring to it the way Europeans referred to Darkest Africa.

representing *only* the known, mapped out world. Like, a map of Europe is only going to show a map of Europe, and maybe an arrow going "Africa down here".

Well, mildy psionic slugpeople, lunarians that are functionally immortal thanks to their ability to transdifferentiate (returning to sexually immature state, ex. immortal jellyfish) and communicate via radio-waves, etc.

Takes time, resources.
Not exactly free or riskless.

That is interesting certainly, I'd encourage further worldbuilding. One big question though is 'what's below?'

I'm sure many have followed that exact strategy, and never found their way back home to talk about it

Now, this is obviously a rather rough and simplistic representation but I think it will suffice. Pictured is Not!Africa, specifically Not!North Africa, Not!Sahara (yellow) and Not!Sahel. My question is thus: will people trade across the Not!Sahara with this kind of setup or will the Not!Nile be the sole trade route?

I can't tell what's supposed to be land and what isn't. But to sort of give an answer, the kingdom of Mali had a huge ass library containing hundreds of Islamic texts due to trade with the other kingdoms, so there's probably some kind of trade.

But look at the map. The distance traveled inland is LARGER than the distance sailed. That is something that simply does not happen unless we are talking about areas similar in shape to China

Obviously they will sail up and down the West coast as the river is not accessible by ship from there.
Inland routes depends on whether it's possible to make profit. Without information about population and resources it's impossible to say.

What I did was basically start from position x and then ask myself how it got there and how everything would shape the future? Basically how terrible was the latest war, what lead up to it and will the result of the conflict have any consequences? After you've done that a couple of times you'll soon find an emerging history and feel is starting to sunk in. The more times you ask these three questions the more interesting and complicated struggles will start to emerge. Nations you haven't payed much attention to at the beginning have suddenly gotten a character of their own.

Look at the map yourself, dipshit
It points to beyond the map and tells you roughly what's supposedly in that direction, it's just not mapped by these people whoever made the map
Doesn't mean nobody's been there
Or do you imagine in 430bc nobody from the Mediterranean hadn't been to Spain's Atlantic coast? Yet somehow the geographical details didn't reach Herodotus
Do you imagine Hanno drew maps of the African coast and then they just added a giant chunk of coastline to all their maps because it was somehow relevant to anything they were doing

Forgot my Herodotus map

I had thise setting in mind for quite some time, and i plan on writing a story in it, so tell me how dumb it is. im sure i copied this from somewhere, this thing doesnt seem new to me

>World with early 1900 industrialization, most of its civilizations are on the same tech level due trade
>big twenty years long world war fucked over everything, the nation states crashing down and reverting to feudal kingdoms and empires, due to the crushed economy most of the people migrate within the cities, who grow to be huge cities, either city-states or capitals for said feudal kingdoms
>most of the rural land is ruined, famine is widespread, but the industry still works quite well, its easier to get an armored truck than a sack of potatoes, most farms are estades owned by the new nobility
also kinda had the idea of different humanoid species to be in there, mostly tangent homo species who evolved alongside the common sapiens sapiens, or an outright different species, that looks humanoid just because they had been selectively breed during the ages to more like people. but its hard to make sense of it.

Berbers were crossing the sahara back and forth since time immemorial

Just jumping in here, when I looked at the map, I didn't interpret "Unknown Regions" as meaning they were unexplored, uncontacted, or even all that literally unknown. Each such label has a "Being by report..." text underneath, indicating that there is something known of these lands, and there is contact, but it's outside the realm of reliable or relevant knowledge for the "Great Magisters of the University of Therapoli," which is located on the bottom of the Middle Kingdoms peninsula near the center of the map.

As indicated by the "to the Islands of the Dawn" arrow on the right border, their knowledge of the world extends beyond this particular map. It could very well be that in the direction of the "Unknown World" there is still some known world outside of the map's physical border, but not of much definitive interest to the Great Magisters... for example, the north as they know it could be largely trackless tundra and uncivilized tribes, which they might not consider worth noting. They might consider the more vague report of "the Panaghians, and their Kings of Sea and Wood" more worth indicating. Between them and the Unknown World, however, lay multiple kingdoms and city-states that have a vested interest in leveraging trade to their own benefit.

It's also worth noting that trade was the lifeblood of many states in our world - the Phoenicians, since they've been brought up, were notoriously secretive with their geographical knowledge, since knowledge of trade routes, the disposition of local peoples and the nature of their resources, as well as simple instructions on how to sail there and where to put in for land were among the most valuable pieces of knowledge anyone could hold, and could make or break an empire in the long run. For example, we still don't know the identity of the Cassiterides, the alleged Isles of Tin that supplied the Mediterranean Bronze Age, despite a fixation with them for millennia.

>pic mostly unrelated

But that type of maps is my point. Single ocean. Not two oceans.

Cont.

Single ocean, because sailing is much easier than walking.

That map isn't representative of reality though so what's your point? That was the world so far as he knew, nobody had circumnavigated Africa and actually sailed from Alexandria to the Arabian gulf, he just assumed it all connects somewhere, nobody had confirmed to Herodotus that's is a single ocean surrounding the world, he literally didn't know any better
It has literally nothing to do with op map where they do know better, they know the landmass goes further, it's even indicated on the map that yeah there's more land there and they have some secondhand knowledge, but they don't know the lay of the land because maybe there's just hostile peoples there that would sink your boats if you tried an expedition or whatever, in the op map they show the "known world", the world that they know

One thing to take note of when coming up with intrareligious conflicts is that they tend to spring from disputes that to the outsider or the not very interested seem utterly inconsequential. The history of christianity is for example filled with arguments relating to minute details of the trinity which people have died for. People have literally martyred themselves or killed people over the question whether or not Jesus' divine person is seperate from his human one.

Yeah. I'm not sure if I want them to be that confusing or minute, but I do want to have some divides to squabble over. Right now my current idea is a god of strength, with his followers disputing which of their god's aspects gives him the most of his strength and power, and thus which they should aspire to more

I mean the ocean connecting to the known, mapped world. The Mediterranean. Sailing places is much more efficient than walking there. Mapping one ocean fully makes much more sense than mapping two oceans half way.

Have large caravans cross the steppes. Due to their need for protection, the long journey and the precious goods transported these caravans will come to resemble a nomadic town protected by hired tribes. Any nomads in the vicinity will stream towards them to trade and take advantage of offered goods and services and powerful tribes will either try to attack the caravan or extort money from them.The more ambitious of chieftains would possibly try to negotiate with it so that crossing their territories would become a staple in the go-to route for future caravan enterprises.

Some areas of the steppe could be hallowed ground where kurgans containing untold riches dot the landscape. If a powerful necromancer ever got to them s/he could certainly stir up some major shenanigans.

Huge, gloomy boneyards that animals trek to when they feel that their time in the world is coming to its end wouldn't be out of place either.

And ofc there're always huge nomadic confederations to take into consideration.

If farming fails, civilization fails. Your setup wouldn’t work if there was so little or no food. Everyone would LEAVE the cities to work on farms, as is the case in real history.

But i said there are estades, just like it happened in the late roman empire, but ok.

Missed that. Also mispelled. Also doesn’t matter. People historically flee cities during times of crisis.

>Sailing is just sitting down in a boat and waiting.

Honestly that claim can really only be made for the late medieval period.

The age of exploration only really started near the end of the medieval era, start of renaissance.

...There's three? (Med, Indian, Atlantic)
Then maybe it's similar in shape to China you retard.

For big parts of history exploration by sailing wasn't a big thing, because if people hadn't figured out stuff like star navigation, compasses and cartography worth a shit then they weren't really willing to sail out of sight of land. As for maps like those in the OP, assuming it's a fantasy world then there could be like, actual sea monsters or magical storms or some shit preventing people from going further south to map out that coastline - or maybe people just can't be fucking bothered. Why waste men and resources on going to map out the coastline of the big desert continent of fuckshit when there's goods that need shipping?

No, he's right, historically people move out of the cities, not into them. See: fall of the Roman Empire, Russian Civil War, North Korea.

There's only one ocean mapped to the degree the two in OP's map is.
And you hopefully see that the map looks nothing like China.

It's always been a thing, because traveling by ship is more efficient than walking, and hauling goods by ship is vastly more efficient than doing it by cart or whatever.

>It's always been a thing
Medieval Europeans knew shit all about the shape of the world. Your claim that 'they thought they did' is bullshit because they literally just made shit up.

>hauling goods by shit is vastly more efficient
Yeah, shipping them to places you fucking know about. A merchant didn't load up his ship with precious spices then send it out into the middle of the fucking ocean on the off chance they'd discover a new civilisation out there, you faggot.

Yeah, the steppe wasn't a thing at all. It's not like we first travelled to China (and China first travelled to western Europe) by land or anything -- no, of course they went by boat!

The map does look like China. Have you seen China? Most of it is desert and mountains.

Not really a world, but a chunk of it.

>Are there any ongoing conflicts in your setting? If so, what's the biggest one? Who are the belligerents? What are they fighting over/for?

There's an island with three Demigod kings, all siblings of the same volcano god, and each of which ruling over a fortress-like city state. They all hate one another, and are stuck in a dead-lock fighting over a great big cedar forest in the middle of the island, at the base of their dad volcano. Right now they've declared a ceasefire, but tensions are once again brewing.

>Are there rules of war? What is considered dishonorable in war?

Haven't thought much about it. It's Bronze Age level technology/culture, so mass pillaging is about the worst that can happen.

>Do women have a place in the army? If they do, what function do they serve?

They do whatever the guys do.

>What was the most destructive war in your setting thus far?

The entire world was flooded, leaving only a couple of island archipelagos. Could have been caused by a war, could have been caused by gods angry at mortals for being too loud. No one really knows, it happened aeons ago.

Do you write up encounter tables for your various regions? What are some tips for doing so?

Nope.