/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

What's a better race for the "big dumb bruiser" archetype?

Large lizardmen, bask in the sun all day and worship it. Looks based on sleek monitor lizards. Hunched back with age, conservative, kind of rude. Maybe raise eggs communally, except nobles.

Or

Large-handed Oni like race. Orange skin and crest on head. Thick square hands are very skilled at forging weapons and armor, but usually make stuff oversized. Explains away anime fuck huge swords.

Both work, but if you don't want any asian influence you can do without the Oni.

>tfw you unintentionally make an almost perfect copy of thing from hstory/media
I accidentally a Sekhmet. Not just a war goddess associated with lions, of which there are several and is obvious, but almost a beat for beat parallel; healing and health, fire and the sun, relationship with the solar god and being an aspect of a mother goddess. At least I didn't copy the beer myth.

What replicas did the anons of /wbg/ make without realising until later?

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This is what I ended up going with, the isthmus is a neutral city-state "ruled" by a demigod sorcerer who lets his subjects mostly run the state as they see fit.

Since it's gonna be swords and sorcery I want the two opposing powers to be exotic, real-world influence okay but not like Britain vs France or something. I'm thinking more like post-Alexander, two successor kingdoms from a fallen empire.

Maybe something Rome-ish, Byzantine/Catholic, to be the straight man, and for the other one just straight up steal Stygia from Conan. Use desertification from the fallen empire's projects to explain away any geographical issues with my desert.

So now I've got pictured, and I dunno what to put in all that green space. The hash line on the bottom is a huge elevation change, like a sheer cliff face, because Shut Up The Fallen Empire Did It. Red line is the Not Stygian border. Roads because merchants use the free kingdom as a proxy for trade between the two powers

And now I wanna draw a tavern, goddamn.

Sounds fun, but I might be biased as I fucking loved Nausicaa (that manifested itself as slowly expanding deathjungles in Zere ).

Either works, quite frankly. I'd say leave it open and see if you step into other design space while making other races (if any) if you are not in hurry with it. As for now lizards are bit more fleshed out, but kinda generic.

Is there such thing as a hunter village? Like a group of cabins, and houses close enough to be a community?

Can you guys criticize this cosmology? There is something weird about how civilizations develop in this world. I am imagining most people are stuck at 10th to 12th century level technology so mobility is very limited and people aren't sailing across oceans yet, and definitely not traveling between the broken continents at the rim.

Yes. They could subsist almost entirely on meat like the Inuit or could supplement their diet with vegetbles grown in garden plots or through trading animal products for grain, tools, textiles etc.

What should a population for a village like that be, obviously the smaller it is the more it can sustain itself. I'm thinking of 100 or less permanent residents.

Writing up a setting that takes a shitton of inspiration from that of the soft-rebooted Mortal Kombat series because that shit was original and cool as fuck.

I was merrily writing up some fluff for an insect-humanoid race of kings and queens with asexual animalistic drones, and it just seemed natural that their mating process would consist of a skirmish followed by a rape (or death, if they're deemed weak) of the losing side.

It was only as I reached the rape part that it occured to me just how realmy that shit actually seems. If you were in a campaign along with that race, would it set off red flags for you?

A lot of the northenmost inuit communities were precisely that. A dead animal provides much more than just meat and you can easily have entire economies and societies built simply on the processing of meat, hide, bone, horn, fur. offal etc etc etc.

How the hell is life more complex at the rim when time moves a million times faster at the center?

That really depends on what they are hunting. If they mostly eat the meat and forest products, you need something abundant that can supply that amount of food. If they mostly trade, the prey needs to be valuable enough that they can buy large quantities of food.

The big problem is what to do when winter hits. The bottleneck in population growth is the amount of food available at the lowest point, not how many people the land can support in the summer good times. It's quite likely that the village is only seasonally occupied, the population either migrating between a series of semi-permanent hunting camps or they take on paid work in farming villages or towns to earn enough until spring comes and they can go back to hunting. This is more likely the larger the population is, a small hunting community might be able to scrape by. It also implies that hunting is attractive enough to support the population despite this problem which might be due to the profit in selling valuable animal products or the freedom from being a farm serf.

Obviously this is more important in temperate or colder climes. Warmer areas will be more able to support year round hunting populations in one location. Although the wet/dry season cycle might still prompt moving between camps.

Because all the land originated in the middle and has moved out, so the further out you go the older the land underfoot and the more time life has had to advance.

I really, really like this cosmology.

i imagine a cosmic space laser forcing land to grow ex nihilo would make the area around it pretty inhospitable to higher life

all land originated from the center, so no matter how slowly time moves at the edge, that land is still going to be older than the land in the center.

This is pretty cool, I could imagine there being rings in this thing if you were able to look at it from way up high. Like in the inside of a tree.

>How the hell is life more complex at the rim when time moves a million times faster at the center?

Three reasons:
1) As () mentioned, you can imagine the center to be like the Earth when it was a newly formed lava planet that is still cooling down.

2) Life seems to take a long time to evolve, but then once it gets going, it really goes. The history of life on Earth is like 99% single celled organisms and 1% complex animals.

3) The land underfoot is constantly being pushed out towards the rim. So all the life that hand millions of years to evolve at the center eventually gets pushed out towards the rim and emerge as complex animals who sometimes develop intelligence and civilizations.

>rings in this thing if you were able to look at it from way up high. Like in the inside of a tree.

That's a good idea, I'm going to add that into the local geography of the continent that the players start on. There will be subtle bands of geographical faults and discontinuities that form as the result of the space laser's non-constant power output or whatever.

The other geographical faults are really tall spindles of rock and really deep shafts in the earth. The idea being that the space laser things generates a lot of vertically exaggerated features.

So this world is actually an alien terraforming project, right?

In a world that is regularly destroyed and rebuild by the last few people who become gods, how much would you groan to find gods dropping cultural references implying that the the previous world was the real one?

I'd groan a fair amount.

Make it 2 iterations past.

Define "real".

A lot to consider, I don't want to spend a lot of time developing this one village. I just want a sort of out of the way vacation spot for the party that journeys out that way. In my head its
>Mild climate
>On a lake shore, surrounded by forested mountains
>Most of the population are miners for the salt mine that is not open year round
>Permanent residents are hunters, trappers, and fishermen
>Most permanent residents have small gardens but the land is not arable
>Bath house with hot springs

How do you guys organize your worldbuilding? I've been using Evernote but now I've got way too many notes, everything is a mess, and there's no good way to navigate within a single note

Try a private wiki.

holy shit thats a really good idea

I ran into that problem and eventually I put everything into a word document. You've got a lot of written stuff and you want to categorize it, but also keep things index-able so you can actually find it.

Use headings and sub-headings and section headings in a different font than your body text. So when you look for stuff in your document (what the animals in this region?), your eyes are first drawn to the largest text to find the big category (regions category), then the next largest text to find the section category (the specific region), then finally the small bold text to narrow things down to what you were looking for (the region's animals).

Or just make a hyperlinked wiki page.

That's fine, it's just more likely to have a number of small hunting hamlets scattered over the forests than a large, denser population in a fewsizeable villages. The lake could support slightly larger villages on the through fishing. Cheap salt locally sourced would be perfect for preserving meat and fish for export and the winter stores, allowing year-round hunting.
Bam, done.

If I make a document of setting notes, should it have illustrations in the form of pictures from the internet rendered in black and white to match the page? Or should the pictures be in full color instead? And "how about you put your literary skills to work instead and describe it" is not a valid answer, because a picture says a lot more in far fewer words than having paragraphs of description.

Yeah I imagine they would be more disperse, this is more like a point of interest for simplicity. The last thing I'm imaging for this village is all female

It's up to you. I like full-colour images, they're more evocative and look more professional. Colouring b&w images digitally is pretty easy with something like Gimp which is free.

Either or, I don't think it'll matter that much unless you plan actually printing it.

I'm using OneNote and I love it.

I was going to do that with my setting, but then i got self conscious of the art not being consistent so i scrapped it until I can hire an artist to commission stuff for my setting. I agree with the photos being a nice visual aid.

I'm quite a fan of this, but I have a question. Those empty areas, is that water? On the smaller map you have oceans, however opening up into the cosmology map you have just pieces of land floating away to nothing. In between those islands is there water? If so, could you travel between shattered continents?

I just have a huge mess of Google Doc text files and spreadsheets
I ought to organize it sooner or later but just having it all online is useful for me to add shit I think of randomly before it escapes me when I'm not at home. The basic sorting features they have have been good enough for me so far

Does all the water fall off the edge? Is each continent a bubble of sorts? If you get to the edge, could you see every continent floating out there on pillars that stretch down into nothingness?

>nd rebuil
oh! There's a vidgjer game like this called Treasure of the Rudras. I The current generation, humanity, is the fifth.

Basically, every 4000 years a representation of the new race known as a "Rudra" is born and wipes out the previous race. This is done to recycle souls/life and allow each new race to be stronger than the previous. Apparently the mastermind behind it is an alien that wants to protect her children from the rest of her kind, but knows in order to do so they must evolve and become stronger.

You eventually prove your worth by defeating Mithra and showing her that humans are strong enough to oppose the unknown threat, and she stops the cycle.

Was actually planning on using the tavern meeting cliche as a method of giving my players a proper feel of the setting, since we are shifting from a typical D&D game to a more outlandish GURPS game, essentially a magi-tech 1910 style setting with airships.

>Think of a Tavern.
The Oaken Barrel is a small but very old tavern, its exact age lost to myth at the behest of the owner who claims it was the first building to break ground in the city after the Tower of Avalon was erected. He claims the Stone Mages who set the foundations drank from this very tap room, although he offers no proof, save for the layers of dust and the obvious signs of foundation decay. The entire inn leans slightly to the north, up against a large oak tree that was likely present long before the tavern itself. The innkeeper claims it is a dead Aether Willow, although it obviously is not, but most of the patrons simply nod at the tall tails as they order their next round of drinks. They know the inn keep will never relent on his self-made legend. The tap room is dimly lit with candles that flicker from the ceiling and on the tables as several light bulbs hang from their cords, unlit. The faintest glimmer of light can be seen from within the bulbs on occasion, and once or twice a spark of mana emanates from within, sending a sprite dancing about for a few moments before the bulb grows dark once more. The patrons chat in a constant low hum of commotion as aging farmers discuss the harvest season over mugs of warm beer along the bar where the inn keep greets them by name, while smartly dressed youngsters in military regalia huddle around the tables exchanging listening to the stories of the few among them who had already seen combat in return for a free drink.

Try magma tubes instead of caves. They're more plausible, something people already want to use for a hypothetical moon base, and are similar enough to your idea. I think it also adds some cool potential city layouts and transport systems, too.

>What makes it unique?
The Oaken Barrel is the oldest inn in the city by far, although it is doubtful it is as old as the owner claims. It's location just on the edge of the city sprawl allows a mingling of those working on the farm and those toiling in the factories within the city itself, and its proximity to the sky docks make it a popular location for airmen on shore leave, both the crews of merchant vessels and the military men assigned to keep the skies safe. The owner regularly brags that he has been approached by numerous individuals to purchase the land, and has refused, which is typically met with the regular customers claiming he should take the offer before the bar collapses, usually while someone jokingly attempts to measure how much more the building is leaning since the last time the owner made the claim.

>Who's the owner?
Gavin O'Neil, a large, loud, and merry man. His stern and burly look can cause confusion when mixed with his endlessly optimistic cheer. He seems to always be speaking, and almost always it is entirely nonsense, but he is enthusiastic enough in his delivery that there is entertainment in even the most obviously false claim he makes, and he makes many, often contradictory, from his time as a sky pirate, or his time pressed into the service of a Hessian war barge during the Elysa-Hessian war, to his time training as a mage within the druidic Circle of Thule, or the time a native tribe of bush folk made him their chief after his airship crashed in the wilderness beyond the southern colonies. No matter the topic, Gavin claims to have had an adventure relevant to the conversation, and there are always a supply of ears at the bar to listen, no matter how far fetched.

It wouldn't need to be "rape". After all, insect people are generally seen as instinctive, and so the losing side submitting to the winner (in any way), could be a perfectly normal biological imperative.

No? Because in the land in the middle time moves millions of times faster? And so, has had millions of years for every year of outer time?

>Who's the clientele?
Soldiers, both green and veteran are a regular sight, often fresh off the airship with their bags still swung over their shoulders. Merchants often are put off by the tavern's appearance, but the hired crew can always be seen, and heard for some distance, and a regular stream of farmers come and go from the nearby shires, coming with bundles of wheat for brewing, and staying to drink the resulting product. Factory workers will often shuffle twice each day, at the end of each shift, although on days where the factory runs out of mana they can often spill out into the street where empty barrels and crates make for makeshift tables. Gavin makes a point to claim it as a patio, and serves each one in turn on tab, sometimes recruiting local gangs of rapscallions in return for a few pints of their own, and what spare coin can be found.

>What's the neighborhood like?
The vast factories, powered by their great mana forges rumble constantly in the distance, their chimneys creating a constant smog that settles into a thick layer of grime over everything. Soot sprites scamper about the alleys, chased by cats and young children with sticks. Airships float just bellow the layers of smog, coming and going from the local sky docks with cargo, passengers, as well as troops and munitions for the colonies. Only the great Tower of Avalon remains sullen, piercing the clouds in the distance where the mages serve the kingdom by reading the aether winds and gathering what mana is left in the air to be distributed in the city's strained power network.

>What's the mysterious hooded man in the corner looking for in an adventuring party?
He scans the local patrons as the crew of the latest batch of airships files in for an evening of fine drink and camaraderie. He seems to know the kind of person he needs, but he refuses to advertise it before he knows he has the right person in sight. The military offers the perfect set of skills, but he also needs someone who is willing to engage in more ambiguously legal activity, although such questions would likely be secondary to the obvious physical danger of his proposal. Even still, only he knows the location of a very particular island well beyond the charted trade routes, deep within the aether-swept storms of the Hadreatic Sea, and the treasures promised within are well worth the cost of any crew, including those he has already lost to pirates, storms, and monsters all in his quest to reach his goal, but to the lucky few who would succeed, it will be well worth it.

I really like it. It reminds me of a mix between Discworld and A Fire Upon the Deep. While my only questions would be those already asked, I can't help but wonder what the bottom of the world is, exactly. Does the creation laser add verticality to the world, or does it only stretch outward in a disc shape? If so, how far down does it go, and does it serve any function to the cosmology itself?

Also, is there air between the land chunks, or is air an aspect of the land itself, so if you were to go between the land chunks somehow, would you need an air supply, or could you breath just fine?

>If so, could you travel between shattered continents?
>Also, is there air between the land chunks
There is just air between the chunks. Aircraft would be capable of traveling between the chunks, but there is no such technology near the players.

>Does all the water fall off the edge?
It does, and currently I have no explanation for why it doesn't all just disappear. One idea was to have vertical shafts in the ocean floor that refill the water. They would shoot out of the surface like a waterspout.

>Could you see every continent floating out there on pillars that stretch down into nothingness?
The gaps between the chunks is between 400 to 700 miles apart. I'm going to say that is too far to see between the chunks because there are too many clouds that obscure vision. Part of the plot is that the characters don't know they live on a chunk; they sailed to a new continent, their chunk got broken off, now they can't return to their old continent. They do not even know if it exists because it isn't visible.

However, there are hints that there are other chunks. Every year, there are "tower eclipses" where a certain really tall chunk gets in-between the Sun and the chunk that the players are standing on. They see a massive vertical shadow during the sunrise. If they are smart, they might figure out that the shadow is being cast by another chunk.

>I can't help but wonder what the bottom of the world is, exactly.
I don't want to write an answer to that because I think it's better if it is left unexplored. However, I do have a problem because there is a dungeon in the campaign that is an alien ship in the form of a giant Chrome Ball. It was designed by aliens to be dropped over the edge of the world to explore what happens at the bottom of the world, but it somehow missed and ended up landing on this continent instead. I don't know if I should let the players fulfill that mission. If they do, they probably will not be returning.

>dropped over the edge of the world to explore what happens at the bottom of the world

Okay, I'm hooked.

20,000 Leagues Under the Chunk when?

I need a name for my Arabian Nights-inspired human empire.

The history is the previous empire was destroyed by the arrival of a goddess that literally blew a good chunk of it apart. I was thinking of naming it after the goddess, but that feels too on the nose, especially since she's not the only diety they worship.

"Trapper" villages still exist in Siberia, they're basically your bog standard village, with most folk growing potato's and shit in their backyards and a handful of trappers going out every trapping season for meat.

Do you guys use some program to make these maps?

>tfw you love world building and have created huge, lore heavy worlds in your head, but you don't GM or even know anyone to do tabletop RPG's with in general and will never get to share your world with anyone else

Isn't that the point of these threads?

Ruling dynasty (the usual historical Arab and Persian choice), ruling tribe/ethnic group, city or region of origin, something auspicious or self-aggrandizing similar to Chinese dynasty names, mythical founding figure or patron deity. The previous empire eating a divine nuke does sound like a compelling reason to keep the trigger-happy goddess on side by dedicating the empire to her glory. Or the glory of another god who can protect you God-Nuke 2: Nagasaki Boogaloo.

Probably should name it after the goddess, since there are still remnants of the old empire around contesting the new one, and one of the highest ruling bodies is made up of people that were turned into living stone and fire statues by the destruction.

Bummed sure, still I like building up my world.

>Think of an Inn, Tavern, or Pub in your setting
The mercenary market
>What makes it unique?
People go there for the sole purpose of hiring adventuring parties. The beer is free and the management makes its money off commission on bounties and jobs.
>Who's the owner?
A bald guy with a big nose, he's got some knife throwing skills and big thugs by his side at all times.
>Who's the clientele?
People with problems that need solving, representatives of the local government, representatives of foreign governments, etc.
>What's the neighborhood like?
It's in a district where most of the buildings are temporary, erected by roaming merchants and entertainers. This tavern is the ugliest building in the neighborhood.
>What's the mysterious hooded man in the corner looking for in an adventuring party?
The various people looking for mercenaries are usually looking for what ever party they are offered. The turn over rate in this industry is just awful and the owner likes to save the smaller jobs for the weakest groups to mitigate this. Mercenary groups are all ranked to keep this system organized.

This is where the campaign started, it's very sand boxy.

Could use some assistance if anyone is willing.

>Developing Not!China setting where imperial bureaucracy is cranked up to 11.
>In the empire, literally everyone (save criminals) belong to one of 5 ministries that are responsible for some broad aspect of life/society
>the ministry of law produces, enforces and maintains the legal system/ legal justice
>the ministry of magic studies, controls and protects against magical forces/ spirits
>the ministry of production creates all the goods, as well as moves them and oversees the trading of them
>the ministry of conflict deals with all things martial
>the ministry of peace oversees the healing (both physical and spiritual) as well as higher learning as a whole.
>wanted to base each of the ministries off of higher 'heavenly' ministries based on the 5 elements. earth, water, fire, wood, metal.
>literally no idea what the heavenly ministries should actually DO.
>I've tried doing some reading of wu xing/5 element theory but I'm finding it difficult to actually get my head around the ideas.

My basic idea was to have the 'heavenly laws' like death, fire is hot, gravity, aging, etc be mandating by the heavenly ministries but I'm not sure if that makes any kind of sense, or if one ministry should be in charge of that stuff or if i should spread it out. I'm also not sure how to incorporate the promotion/controlling cycle or if I should even bother at all. Right now I'm leaving it all undefined and somewhat mysterious, but I would like to define it eventually.

I also know that I don't have to be constrained to the actual meanings behind that stuff, but I feel like it adds a level of... authenticity? That might just be autism though.

Thank you for the comments, kind Anons, there were a few things I'd like to elaborate a little more on the setting beyond my brief hook introduction while I'm here bumping my request for help/ideas:

>Terraformers abiogenesis complete and self-sustaining ecosystems composed of plants, fungi, bacteria, insects, animals, etc based on the genetic memory banks of provided Human DNA as well as from their microbes if they provide scat samples. These machines take into consideration environment, so they're capable of filling out any location and can even produce clean air, water, etc..
>Biospheres, though, can vary wildly but are still 'similar' think like snowflakes: massive amounts of variation, but the medium remains the same.

>Technology is at a 'scavenged but not replicated tier' with manufactorable medieval tech: people only have access to tanks and planes if they can salvage and fix them, but by themselves they can make armor, swords, muskets, by their own skills.
>Entire wars have been fought and won on the basis of kingdoms capturing factories, power plants, hospitals, food processing/canneries, armories and bunkers.

These are some of the less immediate, secretive, or "shit they'll have to look for, I'm not gonna explain it to them" details I have planned:
>There is no dirt unless it's made by the Terraformers, it's just layers of ash, ruin, remains: underneath that it's all machines, metal plating, a chrome world of connected automated machines.
>Terraformers don't kill people who're thrown into them: they're treated, go under gene therapy, and converted into genetically 'superior' super-humans. Common folk don't know this, leaders do and purposefully kill people before throwing them in.
>Terraformers that become broken will generate cancer biospheres. They need to be fixed.
>Psychic powers do exist and they're contagious.

Any constructive discussion would be appreciated- I'm out of my element.

I could see that being a cool bit of story. Keep it mysterious, the less you know how a bureaucracy works, the more mystical it seems that it does work.

The Rock Steady. A Tavern built in the tunnel of the first skirmish between dwarven and drow forces at the start of the under war. Built by an old dwarf who was discharged after being wounded in the battle. The front lines have moved far forward but the tavern is frequented by soldiers heading to and from the front. Depending on how late in the war it is theres a chance of catching the occasional republic spook looking for info, before the republic got involved in the war.

Just to give context to the setting. The world I'm building is a mid fantasy 1930s tech world war setting. The 4 major powers are the Drow kingdoms, a prussian influenced elven kingdom, a not roman republic comprised of many races (mostly conquered semi-autonomous states), and the Allied Dwarven Clans. With about 4-5 secondary powers. The lead up to the grand war is the under war(fought for two years). After a massive drow bomb sunk a Republic village on the surface the republic declared war and came to the aid of the dwarves (The Sunken Village incident). Which in turn caused the Elven kingdoms to declare war on the republic. Starting the grand war.

Is it okay to give hybrid demihumans a flaw to get over to make up for their inherit strengths? For instance, I've got a half-dragon with impenetrable skin and sharp claws, but is unable to control fire to the extent of their kinsman. Or a half-unicorn that can manipulate earth and rock, but is physically weak and frail compared to the strong physiques of their kinsman.

Fuck it, just gonna post the favourite out of all my ideas.
pastebin.com/R3EATqzY

Also trying to work on the lore of the "orcs" in this setting. The basic idea being they were experimental super soldiers brought by the USSR relief effort in decent enough numbers that they could eventually gain a very small part in the world as small groups of nomadic tribals that operate much like military squads. They look basically like the average green skinned orc (a little more on the human side than most fantasy stuff though), but the twist is their green skin is just a neutral colour and they can actually change their pigment to better camouflage themselves in the environment, which is also why they're usually half naked.

>Think of an Inn, Tavern, or Pub in your setting
The Marble Pit. More of an exclusive nightclub/casino/hotel.
>What makes it unique?
The MP was founded by an adventuring party just after they cleared out a megadungeon that had been teleported to just outside of the city limits. They renovated it, and two hundred years later it's still the headquarters and main moneymaker of the Adventure Guild they founded.
>Who's the owner?
Current owner is a descendant of the party wizard and party rogue/monk. Sileus MacGorth is a Gnome/Goblin Bard who acts as de facto head of the Guild due to being the last living descendant of the original founders, though there's always been a rumor he made sure of that himself.
>Who's the clientele?
Stupidly rich nobles, merchant sons, and adventurers flush with loot.
>What's the neighborhood like?
Typical Italian Renaissance-style Fantasy city. Lots of pseudo Roman architecture, red roofs, advanced magical/alchemic supported infrastructure, etc. The Marble Pit was founded in the old Foundry Quarter, the city's former industrial heart and Dwarven neighborhood. Shifting demographics have now made the MP the center of the Tourist and Merchant's Quarters.
>What's the mysterious hooded man in the corner looking for in an adventuring party?
A member of a rival guild hopping to snipe some talent.

What could be the name of an inn or tavern in an all female city?

The setting I'm fleshing out is sort of a lava lamp, where bubble dimensions float randomly about the universe and ocasionally intersect and fuse with each other for short periods of time (from a couple weeks to a few months) and when they split some chunks of material or life can swap realms.

I still need to flesh out which is the "main" realm but it's probably a smallish, sort of static one, that frequently collides with other realms just because the rest of them are moving. It'll probably be a hub for all types of races. I'm trying not to rip off Planescape too hard.

What is this architecture supposed to be? Looks modern with the gutters and all

What are opinions on magic being structured as so?

>First magics
Sorcery(innate magic from powerful beings shaping reality to their whim), Warlocks(Making a pact with primordial and powerful spirits), and Druidism (Animistic worship, the first religions)
>Older
Clerics(More refined worship of gods, developing from Animistic Druidism where specific spirits are named and gain power through mythopoeic property, and are very real now as long as they continue being worshiped.)
>Early modern
Wizardry (Chaos magic. Secular and profane magic from use of rituals to bend reality using similar mythopoeic structures for personal use)
>Modern
Techomancy (the combination of engineering and mechanical uses of mundane technology, only bolstered through imbuing of Chaos Magic)

The Bean Flicker

The same as normal. Why would it be different?

Fold Minipax into the others, and have the 5th ministry be the Ministry of Heaven.

were you looking to have a 1-1 analogy between the empires ministries and heavens? If so I would think wood=peace, fire=conflict, water=magic, metal=production and earth=law... i guess.

All my knowledge from the chinese 5 elements comes from LotW, and I'm probably the nuance. if you havent read LotW i would maybe check it out, as it offers an ok look at the 5 element theory.

As for what they actually do, the same thing the empires do but, you know, in heaven.

All the land at the edge was originally in the middle. What's so difficult about this?

I’m giggling at work and I can’t tell anyone why. Thanks user.

I want to build a world with deep and interesting lore. Any suggestions?

Start at the beginning or at the middle. Don't explain everything.

Is it possible to do autistic worldbuilding while maintaining awareness that the tone of the setting isn't supposed to be terribly serious/is supposed to be silly or fun?

Thread Question:
>>Think of an Inn, Tavern, or Pub in your setting
Yes
>>What makes it unique?
Ambulant tavern
>>Who's the owner?
Some guy
>>Who's the clientele?
people from all races come to drink when they hear the bells
>>What's the neighborhood like?
refer to question 2
>>What's the mysterious hooded man in the corner looking for in an adventuring party?
Strength and intelligence

hey, if you don't have anyone to play with and i don't know why you don't use roll20.net maybe you should try to write a story.

Hey everyone.

So this is my first time posting, and i'm in a bit of a conundrum.

I started a campaign about 3 years ago.

Originally it was just going to be a side game to the main one we had going with another DM. Long story short, the other DM flaked and my campaign became the main game.

At the time it was just a bunch of garbage I threw together, stolen from a variety of sources. However all my PCs are now invested in their characters and the world.

We've been on hiatus for a year now, since I had moved away, but we are going to start up again with the beginning of the new year. I have been trying to come up with the entire world and cosmology and stuff for this world that I originally just threw together in a day.

Everything I make I just see as trash, and my confidence in it all is rattled as well.

My ideas are all over the place, and I am stuck on coming up with even a base cosmology and shit.

Do I scrap it all? Tell them we aren't doing anything more in this world?

WHAT DO I DO?

Anyone know any good site to write names and translate them to ancient greek and/or latin?

My setting is heavily inspired by such, and I want to name my cities accordingly, instead of just call it River City or Port Town.

One is glad to be of service.

Just search "_____ in Greek/Latin" on your internet browser and derive a name from that.

Start them off in the old location, but have the quest take them on them to distant lands.

Make those distant lands not trash. Maybe we can help with that.

Or you can suggest a new game in a new world. It really depends what you would enjoy and whether the problem is being shackled to the slapdash setting you bashed out or that you are just trash at settings in general even with a blank canvas. If it's the latter a new world is the same problem all over again. Or you can play a game in a published setting if you really can't enjoy your own creations. It basically comes down to what you will find fun, and what the players find fun.

For greek you may try
lexilogos.com/english/greek_ancient_dictionary.htm

Thanks both for the answers, but:

Ancient greek is quite different from modern greek, and;

A really good site, but either I don't know how to use it, or it gives me the word using the greek alphabet only.

If you assert that the time dilation around the String is one million years, then upon reaching the outer edge of one year per year time passage, a total of 125,000,125,000 years have passed, older than the universe.

If you scale it down to 100,000 years per year pass, then upon arriving at the edge where it is one year per year you have had 5,000,050,000 years pass, which is a little bit older than the age of the Earth.

If we assume that the periods that you don't want represented technologically fall away into oblivion before blossoming into realization, then that would be a more accurate representation of your idea.

So, how exactly would a world get to a 1980's sort of tech level but without nuclear weapons having been developed? How could any major superpowers emerge without such weapons of destruction to safeguard their hugeness?

If there's a magical explanation, that's acceptable, but I'm more interested in some sort of cultural/political angle to things rather than the "it's magic, I ain't gotta explain" excuse.

One of the problems with this even scaled back to 100,000 years in the center is that if the star orbiting the world comes close enough to be hit by the time dilation effect it will age 10 billion years in one orbit. If it is a main sequence star, it will expend all its fuel in a single pass over the top side of the setting.

This results in either the star stops existing in one pass, it passes through unharmed (barring that it doesn't make contact with the space laser at all, and given that stars are typically large, that seems a bit odd, or the star it outside the laser origin point which lets the origin point of the laser be visible as it transits the star's face.

A better way to handle this is to remove the star entirely and have the String act as the light source for the setting. The variations in the power cycling of the Space Laser cause it to fluctuate in and out of visibility (giving the variations mentioned ) and allow it to be the cause of the day / night cycle.

>A better way to handle this is to remove the star entirely and have the String act as the light source for the setting.

Done.

The campaign only just started last week, and it's still the middle of the night for the players.