I'm sick of generic fantasy settings...

I'm currently working on a setting with a group of friends for a game we're working on, not going super weird with it but trying to make it distinct from the fantasy default.

The central hook is the idea of a world under siege- The Gods are in a constant war for survival with an unknown, but vast number of ancient, powerful entities we've yet to find a good name for (Primordials and Titans are overused) who were originally responsible for creating the world.

As a brief history, the world was created and then promptly forgotten by one of these entities, the sentient races developing alone for a while until one returned, to clear away the old creation to make space for something new. They fought and died and fought and died and then, one fateful day, through some impossible chance, they won. The Gods are remnants of people who were there that day, but are basically entirely focused on keeping all of reality existing under the constant onslaught.

Something we're trying to do to make the setting feel different is emphasise that this is a young, fledgeling and somewhat undefined world. We're going for an aesthetic more in line with antiquity than the medieval default, as well as making magic more mythical and ephemeral than the science it ends up being in most D&D settings. A young world full of promise, birthing heroes who might rise to fight alongside Gods, but constantly on the precipice of destruction.

falsemachine.blogspot.com/2014/05/where-veins-begin.html
falsemachine.blogspot.com/2013/01/panic-attack-jack.html
Veins is a setting based on spelunking and a creative variety of horror. The players explore caves deep within the earth and have to constantly stave off starvation, madness, and hypothermia, while hunting and being hunted by a wide variety of bizarre monsters and people. It's all very atmospheric and original.

Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor is a setting for Monsters and Other Childish Things in which the PCs are all unadoptable orphans with no monster friends to love them, but who are at least a little monstrous themselves to make up for it.

If you roll 10d10 I can generate a creepy orphan for you.

Can I play a qt3.14 catgirl belly dancer?

Holy shit this, it's like they focus so much on feeling unique that they forget to have relatable shit and feel openly soulless

Rolled 10, 9, 1, 8, 8, 5, 7, 9, 8, 6 = 71 (10d10)

Hit me, I want to be the creepiest little fuck in the entirety of what I assume is super-edwardian not-england.

This might also be useful. I wrote the original for a DSoCM game back in the day.
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/04/dickensian-npc-generator.html

I've never seen so much shit taste in one post.

...

Sounds like a narrow comfort zone to me.
These "snowflake" games hardly contain something unrelatable.

Ship flies through space, so difficult.
Powerful bad sorcerer reigns over the land, much strange.
Train runs on magic instead of coal, wut?
Elf with different culture, so confuse.
Have to mind heat and water in desert, totally lost here.
Noble savage is green insectoid instead of green orc, so wyrd.
Powerful highly magical society destroyed in the past instead of powerful magical society destroyed in the past, wait a minute...
Magic robot instead of robot, does not compute.

It honestly baffles me how quick peoples empathy and imagination breaks down.

>dwarven geomancy allows for the cultivation of geodes into city-sized chambers
Literally the only thing of value in your post.
>samurai use firearms
So original man. So original.

Pretty much. But I don't care about that, I care that it's different for the sake of different and it tries way too hard. Middle Earth is a better setting than 90% of these donut steel OC ones with "unique" premises.

Kill yourself. Sorry that that original Veeky Forums meme world idea you stole from a worldbuilding thread, isn't catching on like you hope it would. You have no argument, bye bye.

>spaceships and trains and heat mines
But they add nothing. They aren't hard to understand, but they add nothing of value and are boring as shit. Explain to me why I would want to PLAY in that world. Not have the GM autistically loredump crap about how ebin OC his world is, but why will I have more FUN playing in that world, instead of using it to try to distance my campaign from the others based on how ""original"" it is(n't).

Plus with spacecrafts you're not beholden to only 2 dimension, which could make for some interesting encounters.

And speeking of, I too am working on a sci-fantasy campaign and I'm thinking throwing in maybe a zero-g encounter for the players, but I'm not sure how it would work. I'm leaning towards something reminiscent of Dead Space, where either they have to leap from surface to surface at first, then at a higher level they can get propulsion jets so they can free float.

Actually now that I think about it, does anyone know if there are rules for fighting under watch, I feel like that could directly translate to fight in zero-g.

>Out of the abyss

Muh nigga. I considered running a game in that world, but what system would be best.

>3.14
If you're going to use 4 characters, 22/7 is a MUCH closer approximation.

OP here, I actually agree with you to a certain extent. I don't really care if your generic noble savage race are called orcs or minotaurs or beastmen, or if your elves worship the moon or the tree spirits. But if you actually make your world distinct in ways that change the scenarios that can take place then I'm interested. I don't give a shit about 90% of Eberron, but having a magic train means you could do a train robbery scenario with magic and swords, which could be interesting, and wouldn't be possible in your standard fantasy setting.

>>samurai use firearms
>So original man. So original.
I won't defend originality, but it's accurate.

>But they add nothing. They aren't hard to understand, but they add nothing of value and are boring as shit.
Likewise you can say the baseline generic understanding of fantasy is boring and adds nothing.
If you depart from the standard you get a different selection of set-pieces to work with. I hope we can agree the variety will increase the likelihood of finding something to ones taste as opposed to clinging to a narrowly defined setting.
>Not have the GM autistically loredump crap about how ebin OC his world is
Show don't tell doesn't stop to work when you change away from a generic stetting and good GMing doesn't either. It is all material born out of human experience anyway, you can communicate ideas just fine.
>instead of using it to try to distance my campaign from the others based on how ""original"" it is(n't).
Originality is a quality among others. The presence of differences to a basic setting doesn't correlate with worse quality beyond the impact your personal preferences might have.

I propose using the whole toolbox, a selection drawn from all colors available. That is all.
In a fictional setting one choice won't be objectively superior to another. But that doesn't mean only n number of choices is valid.

I think the gut reaction of "You tried to be different, so what you have produced must be shit." is overly cynic and useless.
Many also put forth the notion uniqueness is not a merit. I disagree, it expands our selection of choices by one and prevents redundancy to a degree.

I really like Ar Tonelico's setting but I can't explain it well

>weather light came eight years after spelljammer was released
what did he mean by this?

>Middle Earth is a better setting than 90% of these donut steel OC ones with "unique" premises.
Because Middle Earth is a strange and interesting setting written over a lifetime by someone with vision and deep scholarly knowledge. Forgotten Realms is the prototypical generic fantasy setting, not LOTR. A LOTR ripoff is very distinct from a FR ripoff and I don't know why people keep conflating them.

>a nation of megatherium herders based on gaucho romanticism
>the war god's avatar is made of 300 soldiers acting in perfect unity

Fucking fantastic.

He meant that he doesn't know about the Age of Sail.

Sorry, looked away and forgot to set it on auto. Here goes.

Okay, first 5 numbers are your creepyness roll. Your creepiness is having a Foul Mouth. It lets you attack people with preternaturally hurtful insults. These insults come to you from your Second Brain, housed in your Elongated Tongue, the bottom of which sports a Silent Screaming Face.

Your name is Edmund O'Worm Sootrubble

You're the Addams Family member born from Gomez sticking his dick into a Kung Pow dvd hole.

It has the perk of combining the structure and workings of a fantasy setting with all modern day amenities and the convenience that affords in description and storytelling.
For some that is quite a big boon. It affords the modern acting character without producing a disconnect to the world.

I'm a huge fan of Glorantha because the world's cultures are all built on worship of (mostly) the same gods.
Since the gods are such a big part of the setting anybody can find a welcoming community among fellow cultists regardless of where they travel. It's a great source of plot hooks and makes it really easy to run a travelling campaign that doesn't devolve into murderhobo.

Also the conlang is great

Rolled 10, 3, 6, 5, 10, 2, 2, 4, 6, 1 = 49 (10d10)

Alright lets see what kind of creepy orphan I get

>feel openly soulless

Define what "soulless" means. Calling something Soulless is basically just code for "i don't like it and you can't either".

How dare there try to be different settings. The fucking nerve.

Obviously I'm not him, but maybe a lack of yearlong accumulated familiarity is felt as soulless.
When you play a generic games you can transplant associations from two dozen games that are similar.

>tfw not intelligent enough to think of an interesting setting

I think what he means is that it's all very surface level and flashy, the creator has went to the trouble of making it LOOK impressive without there being anything beyond flowery words and visuals to back it up. When you begin to explore the world it's either bland, horribly inconsistent, or both. Kind of like going 'Well MY elves are Polynesian rice farmer demigods of the ocean trees' but it doesn't mean anything, it's just a coat of paint for regular elves, but the creator doesn't realize that you can't just say shit and not make it fit.

Holy shit that pic is fantastic thank you for contributing to my folders

My main setting's landmasses are big ragged circular continents in a vast ocean, the moon is actively haunted, the elves are literal flowers, there's some evil gnostics, it's actually all inverse gnosticism, but there's also lords and kingdoms, dragons, an elder darkness waiting to awaken and high adventure. I feel like you should try and strike a balance between crazy weird stuff and relatable, traditional stuff. A little of what you do know, and a lot of what you want.

>'Well MY elves are Polynesian rice farmer demigods of the ocean trees' but it doesn't mean anything, it's just a coat of paint for regular elves
That example still describes equal substance among both kind of elves though. Still basically claiming vanilla is more meaningful than chocolate.
Regular elves are equally meant to be flashy with their synchronized triple arrow bow volleys and the riding of majestic stags.
So why the assumption the Polynesian elves want to pull the wool over our eyes with their flashiness?

How about settings that present themselves as bland and then you start digging and it turns out to be more wild than you thought it was?

Almost none of this applies to VotE, to be fair. You get a few pages of description of the races that live there, but otherwise the only "setting details" are on monster statblocks and not really meant to be used all at once or at all.
Out of those descriptions, one of them is almost completely gibberish, and while the other two are very loosely based on drow and duergar, they're different enough in so many levels that calling them "coats of paint" is very misleading. Really, you wouldn't lose anything by not calling them dwarves or elves except making the Underdark homage aspect less obvious.

Not to mention that flashiness often is the explicit substance of an entertainment product.

The first woman was the most beautiful thing to ever live. The first man is the most powerful thing to ever live. She gave birth to the world and, when she looked at it close, she could see that all of it together was just a tiny bit more beautiful then she was. So she died. Now the first man wants to rule this world, mostly because it took his wife from him.

The world is infinite in four directions, each featuring different terrain that gets worse as it goes on. The north gets colder and more mountainous. The east is jungle that gets bigger trees and more deadly beasts. The west is desert and sand that gets hotter and more treacherous. The south is the ocean, which has storms and islands that get more deadly and remote as it goes.

The people live in the nicer middle part of the world. There are a couple of unique races, like the long necked alpaca/sheep/goat people, who sell their own wool in traveling caravans which is where everyone gets their clothes. Everyone wears colorful robes and uses crazy ass African weapons made of various ores and alloys. Gemstones are held in high regard and you can legally avoid being tried for a crime by presenting a gemstone, since they are said to be the body of the now deceased first Goddess.

The people are pantheists and worship spirits and energies found in specific natural features like animals, rivers, rocks, trees, and the sky. The monsters are all monotheists, who pray to the first man with great fervor. Every year during not!Halloween the people sacrifice goods and gold for the monsters when the red moon rises, to avoid the wrath of the first man's minions. Treasure seekers often enter dungeons knowing full well they'll be able to steal back the treasure the monsters have from those old ceremonies and sacrifices.

Rate my fantasy setting.

Well what I mean to say is that, in truth, there'd really be nothing to differentiate them from archetypal elves other than a coat of paint - just under the surface, they're still all too recognizable as bog standard fantasy elves, so the string of donut steel epithets ultimately means nothing and comes off as shallow and soulless, like you were making an active effort to be different without actually trying, if that makes sense.

My snowflake setting has no sun, making light/heat the primary comodidities. The darkness is sapient and malicious.

Huh. Belligerent and dull seems to be an unusually obnoxious combination.

There isn’t really any point in responding to you, but I have to admit I’m curious— did you show up here just to rage at stuff, or is there an actual message you’re trying to communicate?

I'm working on a setting to run a West Marches style campaign in. It's basically a low-magic highly political quasi-medieval setting. Would be generic fantasy if we were doing DnD/Pathfinder, but we're using Iron Claw. Anyway, the twist is a chain of islands appeared off of the continent that's high-magic. The islands closest to the starting point are pretty bog standard adventure fair, but the further into the chain they get the more things start to unravel.

The end result is something of a Frankenstien's monster of Lovecraft, Nightlands, Made in Abyss, with a little bit of Discworld thrown in just to fuck with the players.

Sounds cool. Would not mind playing. Has a good reason for ancient lairs to hold fabulous wealth.

How do I make a crazy batshit setting without resorting to mind-altering substances?

Throw in everything. Literally everything. Rip off and reference all the most famous and most obscure shit possible to the point it comes off as its own thing. Like 40k.

I think we schouldn't denigrate a setting with the same substance as a setting of a more common type or coat of paint simply for being less common.
You are assuming here the author failed at innovation and ending up with a reskin opposed to the author succeeding at the production of a reskin. All the while an author making a paint by numbers copy would be praised in the same environment no less?
Going by the principle of the death of the author we should go by product merit as far as that is possible in such a subjective field.

But it is true that trying for something highly novel and producing a reskin is indeed failing. At least there was an aspiration in that case and considering how far the selection of settings is behind the boundless possibilities of fantasy I don't want to criticize the baby steps to harshly.

Other user has it right.
But I would also add nailing down the basic character before going out looking for inspiration everywhere. You have to secure your own unique touch before it can be washed away by exposed shinies in your current sight. You have a lifetime of inspiration already there, use it.

after a celestial war between demons and the heaven, a celestial wizard created a world to act as a stopper to plug a dimensional hole that the demon used to attack heaven.

the demons couldnt break the stopper but infused the core of the world with great quantities of varied precious ores. the people are mining their way to reopeing the gate without knowledge.

also, the wizard wasnt strong enough to create a big world so he harnested the imagination of the unwitting inhabitants to expand it. explorers exploring the border mists always discover something they want to explore. an early explorer with an affinity for the sea, created the great northern sea without knowing it.
at the center of the world is a mega city, the base of civilization.

>gaucho romanticism
Elaborate

>make dominant human setting with heavy folklore with inspiration from europe and the near east
>early medieval feudalism, many squabbling kingdoms and earldoms
>throw in nature spirits, strange megaliths, a large pantheon of gods, underdark-type giant caverns, hollow earth, visitors from other dimensions, ley lines, places with abnormal geometries, and more folkloric and paranormal concepts

also made a magitech world.
1 planet of religious devout became so good at magic that they decided to access the realm of the gods to thank them.

another planet rejected the gods and went the way of thaumecanics. making their own magic generators and the advanced scientific machine that used them.

the gods, flung one planet at the other but both people used their expertise to soften the impact enough to avoid extinction. now the two people are trying to rebuild even if their culture are very different.

I like it, user

So basically Glorantha

reminds me of the Fire and Ice film, a setting I really love and wish there was more of.

Whoops, fucked off again. Sorry user.

Your brain writhes with terrible cthonic knowledge. You have a Doorway of Sleep, an ability to enter the Dreamworld in a lucid state and take other people there with you. Your many sojourns to the Dreamlands have changed you: Your Hair grows several feet long overnight; you have a constant sense of deja vu, like you know something is going to happen before it does; if the light hits you just right, your bones can be seen through your pale skin.

Your name is Beatrice Gapebarrow Manblott

Well thats fucking rad, cheers user

Hey, user from here, I had a few rough ideas of the worlds I wanted in orbit, but nothing too concrete. The few I was certain to flesh out were

>A trading hub that was a lot of unexplored wilderness with a few built up towns. Took a lot of inspiration from the colonial era, but would also have a "Dark Continent vibe in the deeper wilderness
>An Elven homeworld and a seperate Dwarven homeworld. The Elves' world would be home to a tree whose roots span the globe, and would have Fae creatures in abundance, while Dwarves are more closely attuned to elementals and have enormous crystalline caverns like the inside of a geode in their cities where all manner of farms, gardens, and such reside.
>I wanted a decastated world similar to Darksun, but couldn't nail down what apocalypse did that once ahining civilization in. This would be a place chock full of dungeons and eldritch prisons.

I also wanted various moonlets to act as places for city-states and megadungeons. The Celestial Church would have a moonlet church/fortress that would act alot like the Vatican does. And one Megadungeon I still want to write up is the Titan's Archive, based around a titan's hold just like from that MtG comic featuring Dack Fayden.

Rolled 4, 5, 2, 1, 1, 3, 3, 1, 5, 7 = 32 (10d10)

Let's see what I get then

I make a shitload of settings in my free-time. My most unique would have to be pic related.

Arel appears to be a tropical paradise. For the most part, this is correct. That is, until you realize that:
>magic is everywhere, like radiation a few generations after THE WAR, which means everything mutates rapidly
>this means mana crystals grow everywhere like magical mold, and they can become alive if left untended
>you can play as one^
>vampiric insects called Alucids love to burrow into people and slowly body-horror them until they can puppet you around eating your friends and family
>due to sympathetic magic rules, the ocean technically counts as alive, and tends to pass this property onto ships that sail it (so hope you and your ship can get along)
>the Gods are secretly a bunch of squatters
>the four creator gods are Dreaming this world, and splinters of their personality sometimes appear as eldritch horrors and gods alike (also demons)
>reaching godhood yourself isn't impossible, but high level characters are rare due to them reaching a point where they can tell the world is actually slowly decaying, and so they tend to fuck off to more stable realities
>playable races include humans (mutant varieties), sapient mana crystals inhabiting meat bodies, frog people, shark people, bird people, and ooze-golems

Quick rate?

"Tower of Babylon" by Ted Chiang follows a miner hired to work on the epynomous tower. The tower reaches the firmament, and they dig upwards using Persian miners, and using Egyptian dam engineers to build flood locks as they dig upward. They breach the waters of the firmament, and the flood lock closes behind the main character. Having no other choice, he swims upward and wakes up at the bottom of a cave next to a pool of water. He inches his way upward and emerges about twelve miles from Babylon, and he makes his way tot he city to evangelize the true shape of the universe.
That night I dreamed I was part of this world's space program, which basically consisted of ICBM's to other world-islands.

You've got Genie Smoke. It's pretty difficult to pull off the lie that you've got something to put in your pants, but the upside is you can float around on smoky non-legs. You don't need to keep the fun to yourself: People who inhale your smoke can also float for a time. The smoke can turn Solid, which is what lets you fill a pair of pants, but you better hope they don't make you wear a skirt at your new school, because the borderline epileptic psychedelic sparks that dance within your smoke are pretty eye-catching. Better get some thick socks.

Your name is Belladonna Gauntash Hagginslump

How do I make maps like these, user?

8/10 for now, usually the settings people post here are just tedious shit that changes existing tropes (pantheons, etc) with similar stuff. Your setting seems unique without being random. Care to share more? I'm interested in knowing what you have for culture.

I agree. Furthermore, a wacky setting is always a form of overcompensating for a boring system.

Proof? GURPS has no setting but the best system. Maybe they went too far I'm this direction but it proves the point

Fate or Strike also have no setting.

Not him but I can help. The transparent hex grid can probably be made with some filter or another in ps/gimp, then lowering opacity to 50% or so. After that, you draw the outlines of the continents. There are ways to generate random coastlines with a bunch of filters and selections, which you can find easily in websites like the Cartographer's Guild forums. The rest can easily be colored in with fuzzy selections and bucket fills, plus the pencil tool with a full hardness brush.

It's actually not hard to get something a little bit nicer if you're willing to scavenge for textures and have a few hours to burn to learn how filters and transformation tools work.

Full random generation is a plague on world maps.

Randomness is only for greebling.

I mean, yeah, but it's enough for most purposes and I'd guess that's how user's map was made.

What said. Basically a combination of random shape generators, recolors, and grid layers.

>Cultures
Hm. Well, for starters, the three dark horizontal lines are the Equator and horse-latitude marks, and none of these island-continents quite matches Australia in size, so most of the setting is gonna be warm and humid as fuck. The Western Sea and pretty much all the islands around there are dominated by the Calistan people, one of the three main human branches. The central two island-continents Akroza and Zokos (plus Ammos) are run by another human group called Zarn. And R'Tun is run by the Witch-Queens of the Tulan people, the last main branch of humanity.

Calistans have some vaguely elvish features, possibly due to heavy exposure to mystical energies. They are otherwise blonde, bronze-skinned, and have an innate weathersense that has made them the premiere sailors, pirates, and sorcerers of the world. They prefer to wear practical, if stylish, clothing and love to adorn themselves in bones and baubles. The Zarn are a fractious, warlike race of Man. They are heavy-set, with dusky skin and brown hair they prefer to dread and cover in decorations of gold and seashell. Despite their "Manly Way", Zarn cannot grow much in the way of facial hair, and possibly compensate with highly decorative and well crafted armor and weapons. Tulans are tan, with straight black hair and eyes of bright red or purple. They live in a matriarchal caste system built around their religion, which emphasizes the restoration of magic and knowledge. They wear very ceremonial garb of bright colors, and are the most advanced human race in terms of technology, even if it is largely unused (Hero of Alexandria style steam power).

1/?

The oldest race (maybe) would be the Shards. Shards are created when a mana-crystal colony grows large enough to become sapient, at which point a meat-body similar to a human's is created using magic, though with a living fragment of the colony serving as the creature's core. Shards, as these beings are called, are sent out into the world to serve as the eyes, ears, and sometimes hands, of the colony. But they are also free (hell, encouraged) to live out a life as full of new experiences for the colony as possible. Shards are actually not terribly well-known about by the general populace, and most don't show any outward signs of being inhuman.

Shard culture is hard to pin down due to this. They have a few secret rites amongst themselves, and generally won't interfere with each other's assumed lives too much unless colony rivalry becomes a thing. It is believed that, in the early days of the world, Shards fought alongside the Gods (and other mortals) to preserve the world, and have since been collectively charged with safeguarding the world. Actually, they helped put the creator gods back to sleep so the world wouldn't vanish in a puff of logic, and try to destroy evidence of the true nature of the cosmos, lest some asshole BBEG try to mess with things and doom us all.

2/?

Proteans are an ooze-construct race. They were originally meant as a cheap alternative to stone, flesh, and earth golems, water being far more common a commodity on Arel. But once they attained sapience (an unfortunate byproduct of their creation process), they fled into the world and became a little too numerous, powerful, and sympathetic to eradicate. It didn't matter all that much anyway as Proteans have very, very short lifespans. Proteans look like regular humanoids, though made of vibrantly colored slime and ooze. They hold their shapes well enough, but they are chemically volatile, leading to a lifespan of only 30 years or so. They keep their method of reproduction intensely private, one going on record saying that other sapients would find it "upsetting".

Proteans tend to dress pragmatically, yet will go to great lengths to cover themselves in jewelry, ranking insignia, and anything else to show off their wealth and power. This is born from their need for validation and sense of importance. Their culture emphasizes material wealth and achieving social rank and recognition. Strangely, they are often drawn towards the service industry, seeing a wealthy majordomo or adviser role as being the height of professional success. More than one Protean has hesitated when offered a ship's Captaincy, for fear of losing face at having lost the coveted First Mate position.

3/?

>unique

Ugh

>spaceships and trains and heat mines
But they add nothing. They aren't hard to understand, but they add nothing of value and are boring as shit. Explain to me why I would want to PLAY in that world.

Why would you NOT want to battle tiny dinosaur riding pygmy savages atop a flaming train whose engine hates you alongside your robot buddy, while en route to a flying ship destined for formerly Aztec giant enslaved Drow Africa?

Mako are a race of sharkmen who sail the seas without a true home. It is said that their ancient underwater empire was cast down by some nameless horror lost to time and memory, and the Mako will be the first to tell you about it, right before they ask you to buy a scrap of their ancient underwater artifacts, for a good price they assure you. Mako live in large flotillas (some say schools) that follow the trade routes, setting up shop just off the coast of major cities and looking to score a little gold from the local rubes. They have a poor reputation with law enforcement due to the upswing in pickpocketing, larceny, and kidnappings that follow their arrival.

Mako culture is very tribal, with Houses and Guilds making up the larger part of their social structure. Laws aren't important amongst the Mako, only Who you know, and How Much do they owe you. Mako tend to dress in wild costumes, if only because that's what tourists think they dress like, and many of their cultural traditions are really scams and exaggerations in order to make themselves more mystical. Most Mako who break from this culture typically do so in order to find some sort of meaning beyond suckering marks at cards and dice.

Mako are beastly powerful, however. It would be your last mistake to insult them openly or to mock their ways. Much of their mystical lore may be a charade, but they hold much of it dearly to their hearts, and will respond in explosive violence to any assault upon their honor. Mako can swim like a shark, breath underwater, and even on land are considered one of the fastest beasts alive. One look at their fanged maws will tell you not to treat them lightly.

Give the world different rules and extrapolate from there. Like for instance make your world run on wordplay, because it exists in the minds and words of authors who your worlds inhabitants see as gods.
As a result of this a pointed verbal jab or a witty retort are actual physical attacks, men literally grow a third leg in their old age, and great people actually have sunlight shining out of their asses.

Guppi are a race of small frog/toad men that inhabit the shallows and the lands nearest the sea. Guppi have a reputation as cannibals and barbarians, but also of being cunning traders, spies, and singers due to their amazing voice control. Guppi all possess astonishing singing voices, as well as an innate ability to perfectly mimic sounds they have heard long enough. This has also led them to develop an amazing ear for sound, including the tiny variations in someone's voice when they are lying, making Guppi Spymasters and Interrogators invaluable to many rulers.

Guppi have mutated in a similar fashion to humans, with some great diversity between their ethnicities. Sand Guppi, who dwell amongst the sand dunes, are tough as rock, and able to crush bone with their jaws. Tree Guppi who dwell in the tall forests upriver can leap a dozen feet into the air at a moment's notice. Swamp Guppi can secrete a deadly toxin from their skin, making them exceedingly dangerous to fight, much less eat. Seemingly living down to their reputation, most Guppi will wear bones and trophies from their kills, and their folk-faiths all demand that they carry obsidian knives wherever they go. Guppi are a bit skittish around outsiders at first, thought to be a sensitivity to psychic or metabolic fields they used to use for identifying predators. Their relative small stature causes this sixth sense to trigger a fight or flight mechanic, meaning most Guppi adventurers have had to undergo a sort of acclimation ritual prior to direct contact with outsiders. Guppi are for this reason considered aloof and alien to most people on Arel.

>enjoyable
Ugh

>creative
Ugh

>good
UGH

>last one
It is a common sight in ports across the globe to find Aeolans scavenging for food, hawking their tacky crafts, and occasionally tearing a hapless sailor into ribbons for crossing their tribe. These small lizard-bird-folk are disarmingly charming, clicking and whistling away in their strange language while waiting for the right moment to snatch a purse or reach for a shiv. Aeolans are the youngest race on Arel, and it isn’t known exactly when or where they became intelligent, but some think the shift may have happened as early as within the last 200 years! This would go a long ways to explain their lack of as rich and developed culture as compared to the other races, instead incorporating elements of every other culture into their own.

Aeolans do have a few unique aspects to their culture. They are deeply gender-split, with men and women rarely having any contact with each other outside of mating and a few festivals spread throughout the year. They also believe in a pair of deities, tentatively correlating to the Ocean and their own founder, a Trickster God not unlike the major deity Utsaba, the Arelan God of Wine, Sex, and Celebration.

And that's the playable races and whatever I could remember to type up about their culture. What you guys think? Am I an utter faggot? Or merely fag-like?

Adequate only semi-fag like, only races I didn't like were the human variants that resembled dwarves and elves.

Cool. Semi-fag isn’t so bad. Which humans did you think were elf-like? The witches or the surfer-bros?

>Veins of the Earth
is garbage
all of that scrap princess rot needs to go

Calistans, didn't really get surfer bro from your description, I got bronze sea elf.

>Literally the only thing of value in your post.
I would be surprised if someone liked it all.
>So original man. So original.
I didn't say original, I said "unique". Never seen a fictional rpg setting have this, so I added it.

One tries.

A republic where the colonists sucessfully mixed with the natives, managed to rebel to be independent, support freedom to such an extent they don't allow slaves. One of their gods is the very wind

any link there user. shit sounds pretty cash.

Sorry user, can't upload it at the moment. You can probably find the game in some of the largers troves in the share thread or just ask there

Oh. Hrm.

i really like Kingdom Death's approach. " youre just some meatbags who happen to survive in a huge world with monsters walking around"

So what's stopping you?

The Big Slide, but it was more of a dungeon.

Every year adventurers from all over the world climb on top of Mount Asland to enter in the Big Slide. The doors of the Big Slide only open on the march equinox for one hour, before closing in for the remaining of the year. They go in to seek riches, but also to be the one to pass the golden door on the bottommost layer. The door only open once per year, and only for one person. No one knows what lie beyond the Golden Door, because while exiting the Big Slide is easy, and indeed the losers all do to (usually) try again the next year, no-one has ever returned from beyond the Golden Door.

The Big Slide is a huge, labyrinthine slide made of sinuous brass, branching off and returning again and again in an almost eldritch manner. It goes on for hours, far below what should be naturally possible, and is full of secret passages, roughly divided into three layers:

The starting layer is where people begin when they start their journey. It is a labyrinth of brass in a claustrophobic underground, where it is easy to jump from one slide to another, and where vision is severely impeded by rocks and brass. The primary paths goes down quickly, but often secondary paths goes toward rock caverns, and even smaller and smaller corridors, until they stop entirely and unexpectedly. The Carnival of Horrors is in one such corridor, as is the legendary high path, that inexplicably travels up instead of going down, and is an useful secret passage.

The second layer is the pasture, where the slide suddenly exit rocks out of the top of a cavern thirty kilometers high and fifty long, a green pasture where the legendary Witch's house is located. The numerous branches of the slide goes down, of course, and down, and down, first in the cavern's sky, then under the pasture.

The third layer, under the pasture, look like the first, but eventually all the paths converge and stop in front of the Golden Door.