/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

That northern mountain and the northeen bits as a whole seem very parallel and,flat due to all the straight lines. Outside of that, the names feel a but off in some spots. The Hollow Tundra,and,the Frosted,Desert both sound similar geographically, but neithrr even apply to the huge expanse of ice north of both. The howling canyon doesn't even seem to have any sort I'd mountains, making it hard to get a sense for it. The trail of green through that region that follows rivers in some spots but not others is also weird. The better parts of the map are towards the south where it feels like everything isn't just one big ice sheet, but those spots suffer from a lack of names themselves.

>mix of flat isometric and profile
>bad font
>str8 text on angle

I threw up a little

Where are you getting these maps from? There some sort of generator out there that does this? Only ones I know are tile based or looks like formless Google Maps landscapes

for what purpose

>also
since meta threads are no longer allowed on Veeky Forums
what is the proper place to ask about adventure building / campaign ideas? It's not world building because the world won't be formed until that scale is needed but I have no idea if I should start a thread (usually ignored) or there is a general like /wip/ for such things.

I don't want to post in the 5eg because it moves way too fast and is mostly players. /wbg/ is the best DM/GM centric place I know.

Thoughts?

inkarnate trash

Doesn't that merit it's own thread?

The picture could be the Imperial Palace of 40k

Sorry bud but there's nothing good about this. I got a laugh out of Frosted Des(s)ert though.

The Star Wars Legends' Imperial Palace too.

How do I make magic mystical and ritualistic while still allowing it to be a feasible playing style

Healing can be moved to after the battle, instead of during the fighting.

Magic dedicated to battle usage can be long lasting buff spells instead of of "throw fireball".

Divination.

Where's hagia sophia?

kanto from pokemon?

Yeah, something like "at night at the camp your cleric sings the usual healing spells".

Or: there is on the fly magic, but the baddest stuff is done with rituals.

I would say to make it mainly based around deals with spirits, demons, etc. Rather than waving a wand and summoning fire or whatever, you'd scribe out a circle to summon a demon, or go on a vision quest in the woods to find some elemental in the river. Then, you'd strike a bargain with it to summon it at a later date.

The creatures themselves would then largerly be under the GM's purview with what exactly they could do and how much they'd listen to you. If you want to have a light in a dark cave, you have to summon a fairy to light things up, and then keep them happy so they don't get bored and wander off.

Any actual magic should be simple divinations or wards that can help identify or hold off the creatures to a degree, but as a whole it's a class that's more about making connections to mystical creatures over the long term.

istanbul, it's the byzantine-era church there

youtube.com/watch?v=iQC2_NJj2iA

How does one go about mapping an entire new planet for their setting without making it look too similar to earth or not being detailed enough?

>depends on the setting
i would say that either the kid wouldn't start changing til puberty or it would change sporadically. also depends on if it follows the "full moon" or "at will" path.
as for elder wolves, there is a natural urge that builds over the years that eventually draws most werewolves out away from cities to smaller and smaller towns towards the wilderness. eventually, they just disappear into the woods one night, only to be seen fleetingly or when they are chasing you down.

first off, start with a large blob of a landmass. draw the tectonic plate lines fairly haphazardly across it. then, proceed to break it apart and move it around. keep in mind that where plate meet does not necessarily make mountains. sometimes there are subduction zones and transverse faults. if a plate pushes evenly into another, though, mountains happen.

If the thumbnail immediately makes you think Earth, it's not different enough.

Conflict comes from the remnant of ancient proto dimensional deity entity summoned to consume this dimension.

atmosphere is like Nausicca, isolated communities and insane weather and extremely dangerous/unpredictable wilderness. world is scattered with ruins and artifacts of long gone age of advanced technology and magic. most places are superstitious or ignorant and basically pastoral mennonite survivalists.

no plot hooks cuz im hooked on worldbuilding.

gameplay revolves around rediscovering "magic" and relearning to use it. developing non vancian magic system

pick two earth continents
rotate randomly
scale and combine
repeat as necessary

you can also make substantially more or less of
>continents
>oceans
>land

In my world (worlds. 9 in fact) are known as realms and one of them is home to a Elven species that has a mix of technology and magic. (magic powered aircraft and airships. etc) And the elves want to take over the 9 realms because they feel it's rightfully theirs.

each realms is home to certain species. one i call is hrengard which is where dwarves live.

so long story short. Elves are dicks and have taken over 9 of the realms. the last one is our world Earth. but our world is in the 70s era or cold war era. so there will be experimental weapons and classified shit and stuff. one other reason i wanted the 70s was because i can listen that sweet music.

>fortunate son plays while american GI's go to fight a enemy that is way more advanced.

I also thought about dwarven refugees aiding humanity in the fight. Dwarven engineering mixed with muh american guns.

you can tell this is still very early. but give me some thoughts.

elves have taken over 5 of the realms adopting and improving each realms tech

earth and hrengard are two of the remaining realms. the humans and dwarves don't have a defensive pact yet but have been negotiating.

the other two "free" realms have strengths and weaknesses as well (maybe one is very very hard to penetrate and what looks like a walk in a jungle is actually an impossible front (vietnam))

in at least one of the conquered realms guerrilla warfare is happening (cuba)

another of the conquered realms was not conquered so much as diplomatically allowed occupation.

the conquered realms have the elven tech by virtue of needing to have locals support the troops tech and having some of theirs have been adopted- this causes fractured and piecemeal understanding of the existing tech, it's application, principles and maintenance (e.g. limited charges because htf do we make ammo for this thing)

so you've got offense, defense, guerilla, diplomacy (to finalize diplomatic pacts), fractured tech, compartmentalized knowledge and sweet sweet 70s music.

and you still have a few planets to make interesting.

>adopting and improving each realms tech
which also means the elves don't fully understand all the tech at their disposal and natives need to be part of the military machine, thus options for subterfuge and sabatoge

Critique my new bbeg concept for a Fallout campaign.

>An old and jaded pre-war [profession here] who has become a ghoul and lost all faith in humanity
>Desires to finish kff humanity after coming to the conclusion that it has had its chance to thrive but instead of greatness has only sucedded in scorching the world in atomic fire

I obviously don’t want this guy to be mustache twirling killpeoplebecauseEvil and would like to develop at least a basic philosophical framework that he adheres to. Perhaps some incredibly violent form of Pessimism of Nihilism?

As for his background I was thinking perhaps a government official, a diplomat or ambassador maybe. I’d like him to have been incredibly optimistic before the Great War thinking that it could be avoided and that humanity, in the end, would realize that mutually assured destruction is a horrible outcome for everyone. When the world is finally fucked, he loses all faith in humanity and instead of having the luck of dying of the blasts or radiation exposure is ghoulified.

Any tips/advice/ideas?

It's a fine idea, but to be a serious enough threat to be the main villain he'd need a lot of backing. Humanity is just starting to come back from absolute mayhem, and with organizations like the BoS, NCR, etc. it'd be hard for one individual to make too much of a dent in anything without being reduced to a pile of particularly villainous ash. I see two ways to handle this.

First, you could just give him a growing, almost religious following. Slowly people are starting to gravitate toward him as a leader and are adapting his ideology. Only I can't imagine the chances of enough people that just want to wipe everything clean including themselves. If anything, he might have his ideology, but you might find out that the main reason a lot of tribes/raiders/communities are flying his colors is just an excuse to rape, pillage, and conquer. Which is pretty much the exact thing the guy you described hates. Although I guess that gives your players an angle to play from by causing infighting.

Second, he could be really, REALLY smart. House smart. An unseen threat that's always several steps ahead of you and has centuries to hone his talents. Any attempt to take the fight directly to him would end horribly as he's already on his backup of a backup of a backup plan just in case scenario A, B, or C happened. If his goals are really as overblown as "Destroy all of humanity" he'd have to have serious impact to be enough of a threat to start turning heads instead of just being "Raider miniboss #247". Maybe he leveled the largest civilization for miles with a GECK reverse engineered to poison the land. Maybe he's found some macguffin code that gives him access to a gigantic cache of undetonated nukes that can and will glass what's left of the US. Something on that level.

Hope I helped. I got kind of long winded because I have my own Fallout campaign I've been working on, and it has some similar elements there.

How does this sound?

>Four legendary heroes do the hero thing and take out a villain
>They turn the villain's lair into an adventurer school because adventurers are crazy and the lair is pretty neat

Most if not all of the game would be set on the school grounds. Kind of going for a Hogwarts feel. Should I keep going?

Could be potentially wacky, though the villain's lair would need to have some pretty good advantages over just finding a normal castle somewhere.

Of course the villain is slowly biding time under the castle before coming back. Besides that I'm thinking teachers might have turned some parts of the lair into test dungeons and there could still be left over remains of the bbeg's army roaming the deep parts of the castle.

I like it

I'm just guessing, but the smoking sea may be a nice vacation location with warm bays and legendary cigars.

Inkarnate. I prefer hexographer, though.

You can do it in the relevant general (5e for a dnd 5e campaign), in the worldbuilding thread if it's grand adventures, or on the occasional 'adventure ideas' threads.

Is that Anor Londo?

Sometimes it's better to just not make a map, or find one online. If you only add details like capital cities, you might as well just write it in text.

I personally prefer continental maps, as it gives a lot of room to expllore but it's of a size you can possibly fill out.

>Old World
>Washington Monument

I mean if you're going with the modern traditional Wwolf its not exactly a sustained thing, its a curse that pretty much ends with your death and suffering.
And I mean who would just go out of their way to curse a baby?

If you wanna go with the newish way of werewolves where they basically change into wolf shape at will (read:shit way to do it) yeah sure. The bab transforms into a lil feral puppy thing.

>>What is the ultimate, cosmic source of conflict in your world (if any)?
Oh you know, the basics. Hunger, greed, stress, bias, hate and giant space beings who feed on the concept but are pushed away by giant space beings who suffer from conflicts.
>>What atmosphere is your setting going for? How do you create that atmosphere?
Russia
>>What is your most developed plot hook? What's your least developed plot hook?
Most developed: Find all the pages from the Book of Life for the god of libraries and get mad cash.
Least developed:Actually meeting the god of libraries.
>>How do you tie your world into gameplay?
Say where you want to go, pay for food, supplies and a encounter roll later you are at your location.

>meta thread
I think its meant if the thread talks about the board itself and such. Not if you talk about how to handle gm-ing or things about roleplaying or what setting to use.

How about your typical jrpg ragtag group of heroes (Imreallyfeelingit.Png. I fight for my friends. Naivety. Etc) who wear color clothing and flashy hair. Swords that are two meters long. Some sort of mana powered airships. Everything is clean. With many and diverse intelligent species. Things you would normally see in a jrpg. And the main group doesn't have a single scratch from start to finish.

Now imagine if this world was invaded by War of the Worlds-esque aliens. Or like the martians from that mockumentary "The great martian War 1913-1917" And throughout the course of the war. The main group goes thru a lot of wear and tear. Weathered down by war for survival. Some of the party members start becoming more irritable. While others become more seclusive. And those who try to keep heads up.

Long gruelling battles and hard hitting losses. But each death pushes the resistance to fight harder and more determined. Sorrow is replaced with stubbornness, many former enemies unite to combat a common foe.

All effort could lead to a bittersweet victory. Or total annihilation.

Absolutely terrible, in trying to avoid becoming a swirly tached big bad, you've become something worse because it lacks the charm of a swirly mustachio man.

I understand you probably wanted a kind of evil that players just can't emphasise with but or maybe you wanted a plot arc that they had to stop or everything else they do is reduced to nothingness but I have a few issues with your plans

1: If Nukes didn't finish humanity off the first time, how could a hugely reduced stockpile finish the job?

2: Fallout is set within America, there's not much going on outside America (Because Bethesda is lazy or excuse #44564) regardless, how would your baddy finish of the rest of humanity when large organisations don't really talk or know much about Europe or China or the rest of the world?

My advice to you is, of you're gonna carry on with this idea anyways is have the guy be a Kissinger type American advisor up in the top ranks, maybe even an old world general who's inspired by how shit the world is and how much stronger humanity has become, a stoic type who views his making the world a worse place a way to make everyone else stronger (which is ironic, considering the PC's would literally base leveling up because of him) or with the end of communism he's looking for a worthy fight, building a kind of death cult.

Or you could have a Synthetic Terminator type that's a Darwinist and views itself as God with a G.E.C.K's it's scalpel and Nukes it's pliers, maybe it wants to wipe the world blanc and then start again

Both of these give you breathing room for them to have people under their command so you can deploy mini-bosses and minions, but they also give you an arc so you can come up with a background that you can deploy across your wasteland for players to pick up through terminals, old files and maybe old friend/scientist/comrades that can join/aid the group like the Burned man and Caeser

Hope this helps :)

>>What is the ultimate, cosmic source of conflict in your world (if any)?
The Abyss trying to reset existence to a state of primordial chaos. They've driven a god crazy, who in turn whispers crazy into the ears of mortals, getting them to destroy their own shelter worlds by destabilizing their "cores" (ex: wood shelter's "core" is a giant tree connected to all other plant life, now (un)dead and killing everything connected to it; water shelter's was a world spanning psychic coral reef, now gone mad and enslaving everything in it's waters)

>>What atmosphere is your setting going for? How do you create that atmosphere?
Down to earth? Despite all the cosmic shit I prefer games about somewhat simpler things: a group of thieves robbing a heavily guarded dwarven bank, detectives hired to find the werewolf serial killer in a town, ghost hunters trying to rid a cursed kingdom of a powerful spirit, etc. Some of the more supernatural stuff ties into the cosmic struggles, but overall it's just people being people. Guess if I ever run an epic level game It'll be about curing the world tree or closing off the abyss or something.

>>What is your most developed plot hook? What's your least developed plot hook?
I don't really know how to answer that. I don't really do open world campaigns where there's a bunch of plot hooks to follow up on. There's a short story, players follow it to the conclusion and make some choices along the way. I feel like trying to do more would overwhelm my preptime powers, and I'm eternally ironing out much of the greater happenings in the setting anyway.

>>How do you tie your world into gameplay?
Very slight tweaks to how magic works, vague reminders of greater cosmic forces at play through interactions with certain places or things, etc. Pondering just switching systems for more expression through the magic system.
Also I really just wanted to post my cosmology map

I toyed around with the idea of making werewolf pups born as constantly shifting manbeast hybrids that have to learn to hold their man and beast shapes separately like a normal child would have to learn to walk. Ultimately I decided to just make them born normal with some minor canine traits and learning to shift as a puberty thing. Seemed easier to integrate into a normal population that way, though I have a lot of fondness for the former idea. And I have no idea what a "highly mutated elder wolf" is supposed to be like so I can't answer that part.

Nice image tho.

>What is the ultimate, cosmic source of conflict in your world (if any)?
A karma system. You want to reach heaven. You can do this by being a good person, reincarnating through the cycles until you attain eternity. Ooooor you can hoard all the worship and coupons you can and buy your own slice of heaven.

And the founders are still wandering about as ideas, and ideals, and archetypes and graffiti and memetic fuckery. They each push their splintered "agenda", although it's truer to say they simply act in character.
>What atmosphere is your setting going for? How do you create that atmosphere?
Wackiness, alienation and hopelessness. It's got twists on familiar myths and modern-day trappings; it's also a huge cyberpunk sprawl which ultimately cannot be changed. There's actually an infinite number of cities, each with their own laws of justice.
>What is your most developed plot hook?
The players will be, at first, shepherded by their cult-master: a pre-war supersoldier named Father Jonation. This Jonation wants to seize justice from the nine founders and institute his own arbitrary laws -- if karma dictates a person be struck down, he will raise them to heaven. Ultimately, he will set himself up as this city's Devil. The players will follow his agenda until they get the hang of the new system, assuming they don't rebel beforehand. Once they're on their feet I'll introduce cult schisms and give them the idea that they could fight against Jonation or continue his plan to Kill the Gods.
>What is your least developed?
A certain character (possibly a player, if we work something out) has a pata inherited from her father, but it is too powerful to wear. I need to figure out some contact-the-father shenanigans to get her to wear it (a set piece will be when Jonation effortlessly puts it on).
Wait, are you doing the whole "each moment in reality is a static place in the universe which keeps moving forward" thing too? Damn.

>Wait, are you doing the whole "each moment in reality is a static place in the universe which keeps moving forward" thing too? Damn.
Well it doesn't "keep moving forward" (I think?), but it continues existing on some level, yes. Only the material plane "moves". The ethereal ones are like archives that grow as the material plane continues it's forward march, the astral one is connected to/experiences all instances of time at once, and the abyss just kind of...seethes at the bottom of it all.

>Well it doesn't "keep moving forward" (I think?), but it continues existing on some level, yes. Only the material plane "moves"
That's exactly what I meant. Bah.

At least I handled it differently. Execution is what matters, right? Mine is an engine which is transporting God from one side of "creation" to another, leaving past instances of the universe in its wake. Although the City I'm currently working on is situated outside of the engine, because the engine broke down and God was usurped by an artificial God, who resurrected all the past instances. Also, that's only one view of creation. Others show a wildly different story.

I actually appreciate long winded responses. Gives me more to think about. And I agree with a lot of what you said but I did forget to mention a few important details of what I want the campaign to be.

>set during the time lf Fallout 1 or earlier. Everything just seems to have cooled off and major factions/nations have yet to develop.
>The region will not be on the South Coast. Perhaps Texas, Louisiana, or Florida. Isolated communities dominate the land but the players will be able to change this through establishing trade routes and solve the serious raider problem through negotiation or war.
>The villain will most likely seek his goal of wiping out life by releasing the New Plague once more. Perhaps even an even more aggressive strand of it.

I was thinking of him having a small cult who believes him. Perhaps a small group of Vault Dwellers? Perhaps he was within the Vault and turned them all to his side? Anything helps man this is conceptual phase for me.

What would you do as a big bad? I’ve been trying to make one that is a relic of the Old World in the same vein as the Enclave and even Super Mutants in a way. A big bad that, if stopped, will let the region move on and hopefully progress.

Cool man I appreciate the advise. Maybe look at the details up above to solve some of your qualms? No nukes but the New Plague. Maybe the guy thinks (naively) that humanity has only survived in America? Or that the plague will easily cross the oceans?

Okay
If you're focused on this one dude how about making him not a vault dweller but actually a Vault Tec C.E.O who watched all of the different experiments testing what it is to be human and what the human condition actually is, all the vaults where experiments so you'd end up with a Joker type character , a cynic who knows that no matter how much society rebuilds the inevitable will happen.

You could have it that he changed local vault protocol so rather than the regular tests in his local vaults you have yourself indoctrination centers with lots of tech and comfy lifestyles.

As for the progression bit, it could be that he's rounding up all the technology so when he releases the plague there is nothing to stop it, that way when the players beat him their treasure trove is somewhat like the library of alaxandria in terms of making the world a better place

Hope that's more constructive than before and hope it helps, bonus points if he walks about with a vault-boy mask on with microphones in it to amplify it's voice, a trope I love + easy "Oh, you didn't actually kill the real version just a body double" when players start shooting him on sight.

Hey, I'm doing some world-building, and I was hoping you could help me with some implications of a detail I've already included.

So, the goddess of the moon was killed by a demon prince, which arrested the moon's movement. It's now hovering in place, constantly full, without her to guide it. What implications can you think of for a world where this is the case, beyond Were creatures constantly being transformed and tides fucking up?(I'm already planning to start building around a wealthy trade port that was destroyed by the flooding, which pulled the water up fifteen feet higher than it used to be, thanks to the extreme tides, malicious sea creatures will be more common here because large portions of the sea suddenly became dry land in other places)

coasts are too clean, jag 'em up, especially around the north end of the Frosted Desert, those islands shouldn't follow the coast so well.

Beyond that, place more cities and villages unless it's meant to be an unsettled frontier, it looks a little baren right now. Why hasn't a village formed between the howling canyon and frosted desert, at the point where a (road?) leads directly to the village to the south? It's the perfect place for one.

Try naming things in some manner which isn't "The [Adjective] [Noun]". For example, Smokesea, or just the Tundra.

So like the moon and planet are tidally locked to each other? I'm not sure there would be tides at all. That's generated by the moons moving orbit, no? That would all just stop if it faced the same spot on the planet forever. Half the planet would never see the moon again, reproductive and feeding cycles would be fucked for sea creatures, sea trade and fishing would briefly boom in some places and crash in others before the mass extinctions. I'm not sure if water levels would rise higher than normal; maybe it'd just be high tide on the moon half of the world forever and low tide on the other half.

I don't know shit about astronomy though.

>tidally locked

No, this is a fantasy world. Things are not nearly that scientific. The moon is a magical construct in a far more real sense than it is physical. And yeah, the city in question is very close to where the moon locked in place. I'm more concerned about magicy shit, I really doubt the players are going to be interested in the geo political and economic implication of a mass die off of fish. They're way more likely to want to explore the flooded city that only had three days to evacuate, leaving masses of wealth behind.

Well if it's a magical effect in a non-earth setting that bears no relation to anything I can use as a basis, then...depends on the setting

I'm just hoping for some ideas, I'm building the setting as we speak. If you can think of shit that'd fuck up and have a huge impact on the world or make monsters behave differently, I'm all ears.

That said, the fish dieoff gives me an excuse to make port-cities the world over poor, especially with trade routes fucked, which means EXTREME GOVERNMENT COLLAPSE IS IMMINENT! That's gonna be fun.

Should of probably given more context. Werewolves who get to an advanced age have the chance to undergo a final transformation, this can either change them permanently into a large, normal looking wolf, a bloodborne beast or a massive anthrowolf creature. They cant speak and only half of them are lucky enough to be sane.

>Should probably have given more context
should have put ", in my setting werewolves etc."

Lmao this is literally just earth

I don't think that map is canon, to be fair.

> The moon is a magical construct in a far more real sense than it is physical. And yeah, the city in question is very close to where the moon locked in place. I'm more concerned about magicy shit

Well, to provide a little more constructive commentary; does your late Moon Goddess have a portfolio of sorts? If not I'll make a few assumptions:

Firstly, the Moon is a magical construct, as said by yourself. I think we can use this for a good basis of what the moon used to do before it got locked in place. The Moon moves through cycles, and changes Were creatures when its full, and has something to do with sea creatures as you've alluded to.

The next assumption would be that the Moon would kind of emanate a magical force onto the world. this is implied by the Were creatures and sea creatures you've mentioned, but taken with the idea that the moon would, normally, have phases we can assume that these phases maintained a cycle of magical energy that would accomplish some task. One that can only be handled in gradual doses, with the Full Moon acting as a necessarily larger, and more powerful dose of this energy that would turn people into different creatures and such.

Based on these assumptions we can, by and large, assume that with the Moon now locked in its full state that its almost magically irradiating the planet, and is the reason I was asking about the Moon Goddess' portfolio. If she has any magically inclined followers they'll be having a hard time of it; their spells and abilities will be far more powerful now but will be harder to control, and even harder to stop.

Also, Idk if this has anything to do with your setting but the idea of having to go to a gigantic clockwork temple on the Moon to either revive the Moon Goddess or put someone in charge of the now vacant controls of the moon sounds like a wonderfully epic campaign and I would definitely play it.

r8 pls (yes i know its inkarnate trash)

Almost Mordor/10.

...

splitting rivers
I crie everytime

Back to the drawing board, it is....

sometimes rivers do split, irl
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_bifurcation

This has to be the laziest map i've seen in a while

I honestly have no idea how one would fix the moon, if it even could be.

Also, the Moon Goddesses' followers have lost most of their magic, since their goddess is dead. Only a very small group, operating out of a castle built directly more-or-less directly below the moon, have any magic at all left, and they call themselves the Church of Our Lady in Silence.

I really like the idea that magic is running amok, it gives me an excuse to give wizards a forced percentile roll to see if they're wild mages, hehe.

Also, the sea creatures are going there because the water is swelling there and receding nearly everywhere else. Some might also be attracted to the upwelling of magic, but most are just desperate for a place to build a lair that won't be above water in ten years.

I'm thinking the campaign will start about 50 years out, so things have settled somewhat, because I don't really want to do "and now there's ten civil wars, multiple cities are dying, famines are raging the world, and also a goddess just died", it'd give the players a biiit too much to focus on, I think. I like the idea of one side of the world getting too much magic, and the other side too little- it'll force most wizards to live in a so-called temperate zone.

Honestly, that'll be the fun part of running this setting- seeing the solutions the players come up with.

>I honestly have no idea how one would fix the moon, if it even could be. Also, the Moon Goddesses' followers have lost most of their magic, since their goddess is dead. Only a very small group, operating out of a castle built directly more-or-less directly below the moon, have any magic at all left, and they call themselves the Church of Our Lady in Silence.

The Church of Our Lady in Silence is probably asking that very same question.

Another thing to think about; Why exactly did this Demon prince kill the Moon goddess, and do we know if the Demon prince has survived the encounter?

This, I think, is an important line of questioning, because the Church more than likely would be out for this thing's blood. Not only that, it could be relevant to the church's religion. It would also explain some of what's happened over 50 years' time considering that I don't think a Demon Prince would kill a goddess without reason. Perhaps it needs the magical powers of a full moon to create an army of weres or something.

Also how did the other gods react to this death, if there are other gods? I would think that the Poseidon of this setting would be right pissed that half his realm is now stagnating and the other half is in uproar.

Perhaps the Ocean deity's followers wish to fix the moon's current state?

It could be an awesome bit of tension to throw into a campaign setting; the Church of Our Lady in Silence may want her to rest now that she's passed from this mortal coil, the ocean-god's church may wish to restore balance to the world, and both could come to blows over it.

In all honesty I’m not 100% committed on having the antagonist be the way I described earlier but in all honesty it was the only solid thing I could think up.

I tend to do general worldbuilding for campaigns well but I feel that my plots always suffer. In most cases I just steal other shit but I thought I’d give trying my own thing a go and seeing what comes of it.

My players enjoy villains who stick to a code and/or personal philosophy. They enjoyed Ceasar in New Vegas for example just because he wasn’t just the “lol evil” bad guy but had some depth to him.

Idk might need to go back to the drawing board.

He survived the encounter, but he's dead now. The Goddess of the Moon was in love with the God of Combat, and he fucking murdered the fuck out of the demon prince, who killed the Goddess of the Moon because he used to control both the sun and moon, but due to shenanigans the Goddess of the Moon stole the Moon(going for a more mythological feel on this stuff) while he was involved with a challenge against the Goddess of the Sun for control of the sun, and his rage from being robbed caused him to lose focus, and lose both. This is also how they ascended to godhood. They were sisters, BTW, and now the Goddess of the Sun has literally locked herself inside the sun to mourn.

The gods are where I started world-building. I find you can come up with an entire setting with just gods and goddesses as a basis.

Also, I guess there's no point hiding it since I won't be running this online- the Church of Our Lady in Silence, while they still venerate the Goddess of the Moon, no longer worship her. They worship her infant daughter, who was born at moonrise the night she died, and they've kept hidden within their fortress out of a misguided desire to protect a nascent goddess. The only one who knew she was pregnant was the God of Combat, and he assumes that the child was killed along with the mother, which helped fuel his rage.

The Ocean god would be more likely to demand it be ceded to him, since gods can take each others domains, while the church would demand it be left as a tribute, secretly intending it as the birthrite of the infant goddess, who happens to be the goddess of Love, due to her having been the first god/ess to be born as such, and not ascended.

Of course, gods aren't meant to be locked away from the world, and don't mature like mortals, so she can't age to maturity while locked in the castle.

>What is the ultimate, cosmic source of conflict in your world (if any)?
Basically, a conflict among the second generation of gods. Sort of like the Titanomachy, but if it played out amongst Zeus and his kin rather than having them united against a common foe. Think lots of smaller gods ("diminished" might be the better word) all with their petty squabbles and rivalries over the centuries fueling strife that spills over into the mortal world.

>What atmosphere is your setting going for? How do you create that atmosphere?
Going for a hybrid of 80's action schlock, neo-noir, and superhero tropes, plus classic fantasy stuff tossed into the mix until it gets pulled apart and warped like taffy--elves with punk aesthetics, Top-Gun-esque fighter jocks in planes fueled by magic crystals, a Royal Guard made up of Chuck Schwarzenegger commandos... That sort of thing. The atmosphere tends to be bright for the most part, with an emphasis on high adventure, but with some scatterings of supernatural threats and a looming international conflict ala the Cold War.

>What is your most developed plot hook? What's your least developed plot hook?
The most developed is probably the guy who holds an entire banquet hall hostage with a suicide vest and dead-man switch. Honestly, he's developed enough as a character that he doesn't even need to show up at a banquet--he can enter stage left at basically any point I need him to and set the players down a nice rabbit hole.

As for the least-developed, it's probably that aforementioned Cold War, honestly. I haven't given much thought as to how the battle lines are drawn, nor to exactly who the competing powers are. I'm trying to avoid something as binary as capitalism vs. communism, so it may even involve three superpowers vying for domination.

>How do you tie your world into gameplay?
Pretty easily, really. The PCs get to choose an icon of whatever god they feel like becoming a champion of, and that affects their stats and skills.

>setting takes place in the 80's
stopped reading there, this shitty normalfag trend needs to die

Would the concept of the nation-state survive the advent of colonies on other worlds?

Since I use a stamina and morale system, most in combat healing focuses on keeping these two resources up, and mitigating secondary effects like bleed and poison. Proper wound recovery and surgical treatment is always out of combat (except for a few emergency midfight triage scenes which were kinda fun)

"Battle" magic is almost always psychological attacks: fear, confusion, weakness, andthe coutners to these. I reserve the fire and lightning for siege magic, which is much higher priced in terms of resources. War magic is done through invocations of friendly gods/demons and exorcism of unfriendly gods/demons (both of which the players don't know if they succeeded or not til they get in the thick of it).

In short, I try to keep most combat magic limited to invisible and unseen components, and reserve the big flashy stuff for major events and backdrop pieces.

It might for a while, but it depends on how quick travel and communication are. You can look to real life colonialism in regards to this, as once you get to the point where it takes several weeks for even a basic information exchange, it becomes harder for the colonies to still think of themselves as part of that nation. It can last a while, but you need solidarity to have it all be cohesive.

Any love for a West Asian setting? So far I have this put together of it:
>one large continent, about the size of Eurasia and Africa, but a northern portion roughly the size of South America (and home to the Elves) extends as north as the Arctic Circle.
>No one has done anything like circumvent the world yet; if they have it was lost in the 30,000 of the world's extant, recorded history.
>Dominant cultures are the Kharosth, who don't really have a single source culture but are like the North-Eastern Assyrian counterparts to the more Mesopotamian/Sumerian urban-compound (called "hatru") dwellers to the south, called the Syl, who have Indo-Bactrian styled cousins called "Takshila" to the North-West. Roughly speaking, the Kharosth (were) the bloody conquerors, the Syl the culture that they conquered in name but were practically assimilated into, and the Takshila an offshoot/cousin of the Syl.
>Jugupharians, rough Germanics/Franks/Dacians with a northern river valley dominated by merchants and a southern half known for great forests and hill-top forts. Impoverished compared to their neighbors to the South and emerging from a more "tribal-state" stage into a hierarchy of noble lineages. Fight like bulls, fall like them, too.
>Medes, Eastern cousins to the Juguphare, also white-haired, more Frankish and settled in taste, and with a more strict feudal society rather than their more free cousins.
>Haubpsi, or "Tower-Peoples", known as great silversmiths, poets, and sophists, though average warriors at best, and very economically invigorated (though of a smaller scale than the vast urban compounds far to the south). Will, Habsburg-style, come to dominate the continent through intermarriage, eventually collapsing millennia in the future. Also: the "-psi" is intentional, they're known to have oracular psionics born out of every few thousand births.
>Fierans, archetypical Celts who are known as the foremost talents in aggressive elemental magic.

Thoughts?

Hell yes.

Created by lazy MERPfags, the bane of the Tolkien fandom.

thanks man, here's a bad/fuzzy picture of some of my sketches

Just realized- the fae are often strongly associated with the full moon, and many have things they can only do during a full moon. That's four things now- political collapse due to the destruction of 90% of sea-based trade routes and loss of fishing, sea-beast near invasion, werebeasts, and fae. I think that might be enough shit going wrong.

I'll respond to OP's questions later tonight when I'm off work, but for now I've got a question of my own (my apologies for the wall of text):

In my setting a magic/divine disaster occured long ago which corrupted much of the planet, smothering it with dangerous energies in the form of a dark fog (think Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles).

These energies have corrupted whole areas and people into monsters and strange new environments. Some enclaves and minor nations survived however, and some even maintained a level of contact, but much of the world was not so lucky.

In the time before this the gods walked the earth, magic items were easily created, life wasn't perfect, but it was good (think the time of Myth in Runequest).

Now, with that context, my question is- How long after this disaster should my game take place?

I want the game to take place 25ish years after the evil energies have started dissipating from the world, allowing enough time for nations and groups to meet again and some new cities and outposts to form before the players go out into the world.

What I don't know though is how long the world should sit in the evil energy. I would like it to be long enough that even elves have a hard time fully remembering the before-times, but that starts to be a very long time... That starts to be crazy long for humans, too long for my tastes and how I want the setting to be.

How then do I reconcile this, with time passing being too short for elves to be phased by it but also too long for humans to not be totally ducked by it (inbreeding, becoming too strange)?

*fucked, not ducked, I'm a fag for phone posting

>What is the ultimate, cosmic source of conflict in your world (if any)?

When the universe was young, it was chaos vs law. A pantheon of mostly lawful gods won and invented morality. Now the main source of cosmic struggle is good vs evil.

Well, a simple answer would be to make it so that elves don't quite have as long lifespans. If they only live for 200 years, for example, then you would be able to have the world be in darkness for a hundred and you'd still end up with a relatively small number of elves who remember how things were before.

That, or the oldest amongst the elves were wiped out in numbers not proportionate to their race, leaving their last sons and daughters are inheritors of lore and potential immortality absent the presence and guidance of their forebears.

I like it a lot, you gotta go over the top with the lair tho. I'd put it in a volcanic caldera or at least give it a lava moat, heavy skull motif, crazy-ass traps, every type of horrible monster, curses and magical traps, etc.