/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

redhead savages who live in not!sahara

The trolls are as close to an unusual people as I get, really.
They live along the southern, more hospitable edge of the tundra, making their homes in whatever makes itself available to them. Those in more forested areas might make log shelters using just their strength and teeth to fell and shape the trunks. However, most trolls are more likely to search for either a cave or a dwelling constructed by someone else.

Trolls aren't particularly malicious, but they have little concept of property or territory if they are not currently the current owner or user. As such, it's not uncommon for villagers on the tundra to find a family of trolls breaking into their storage barn, or being disturbed at supper by the problem of a troll forcefully entering their house and curling up in front of the fire, with little more than a 'good evening'.

Most villages in the Troll Country have a large militia for their size, who frequently band together to drive trolls off by a show of force. Actual bloodshed is rare.
Some larger settlements have special Troll-Houses which are large enough for trolls to use, and made comfortable for them in hopes of attracting them away from other people's property, but it really is a game of chance with such simple folk.

I love aesthetic of building huts above the ruins, but what could possibly encourage people to leave stone houses and build wooden houses near them?

The commoners of the region have generally lost the art of stonemasonry due to a war that virtually wiped both sides over a century ago. The people adapted and relied on their carpenters to make homes. If a stonemason is known to exist in some town, then he only has one or two apprentices to continue his work.

I use a personal wikia. Works great.

The ruins are cursed or haunted, but they don't bother people who don't enter the old stone buildings. And the land nearby is lush, fertile, and on a trade route, so people have good reason to settle there despite the potential dangers.

They live in primitive, single story huts with conical roofs built entirely out of dry stone. They lack any sort of decoration. Their primitive lifestyle lends itself to using hanging pelts and furs to obstruct the entrance from within, should the family desire privacy or to keep the cold out. Typically they arrange their bedrolls in a circle about a central hearth, the smoke from which rises and leaves through crude vents at the very top of the conical roof. It isn't uncommon for a family to have at least one small chamber, the entrances to which are hidden under the stone slabs used as flooring. These chambers usually act as larders, cisterns and quarters for any slaves the family owns.

They possess a curious form of oral history. Hoarding and protecting the corpses of their tribesmen with their lives, this people takes its knowledge directly from its dead. Long-deceased ancestors and the recently slain alike speak through the mouths of priests, disseminating the wisdom they bore and the skills they possessed. Every carcass carries enough information to match an encyclopaedia, yet they inevitably decay. The shamans not only speak for the dead but carry the responsibility of preserving them, preventing the destruction of their fragile vessels and the loss of their knowledge forever. A powerful, thriving tribe might have a vast necropolis that has the same function as a library, its immaculately preserved dead tended to by a small army of priests. On the other hand, a smaller, suffering tribe might only have a single shaman and his hut, within which the crudely embalmed heads of the tribe's dead hang.

Depends how long the ruins have been ruins. They could be in dire need of repair and starting to collapse. It could also be that the size of the structures is no use to the new/remaining locals and so they've taken them apart like lego and rebuilt them with worse mortar, like mega bloks.
Just do some research into areas where it actually happened like that. Wroxeter (or the roman ruins near there) in England is one good example of a city that is now as good as in the middle of nowhere, so there's bound to be some literature about that.

What are some ideas for a down-to-earth, comfy setting? In this current campaign, the adventurers are going to be dealing with an ancient Lich(they don't know that, they just think he's another necromancer), and the semester is ending soon so that means I'll get new players soon.

This time around I just want to focus on a simple low-magic setting. No world-destroying schemes or multi-verse traveling. I've been making an outline of the setting and just want the adventurers to experience fun in a quiet and cozy medieval village.

What are some ideas for quests for about 1-10 levels? They shouldn't seem too far-fetched, but not too boring like: "Wash my undergarments and I'll give you three gold doubloons." The biggest threats around I've thought about so far are invaders from a foreign land and scheming merchants who are pitting the kingdoms against each other for wealth.

Are we talking low-magic high-fantasy? Or purely historical(esque)? Because some nice sapient inhuman vermin infesting your mines or sewers is always a nice place to start. Possibly with a pied piper type who's clearing the local capital of them with no regard for where they're going.
It's like, a metaphor for industrial pollution, man.

Well I've just stumbled on my story for a few games.

>What sort of forbidden lore exists in your world?
>Secret tomes?
>Lost kingdoms?
>What mysteries do you leave unsolved, even by yourself?

The unspeakable league.

These are a group of monks, warrior-priests, and the merchants who finance them who collect and lock away all the horrible memetic weapons and unspeakable thoughts. To simply read these passages or hear these philosphies they have cause madness, stupidity, murder, and degredation of socieities. The monks, who are the only people allowed to look at and hide away the books and scrolls that contain this information, are specially trained to resist the influence and have their tongues removed so they cannot speak them, even in their sleep.

But...now I know about the league. Is...that contagious?

This is pretty much what happened after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Primarily due to the loss of stonemasonry skills as other anons mentoned. However partly due to the prestige attached to Roman remains and partly because the ruins were usually in very sensible places to site settlements, people still lived around them.

The apex of this trend would be small post-roman towns of single storey wooden buildings squatting inside the shell of a much larger Roman settlement. Haphazardly patched-up walls, maybe a couple of larger buildings such as an amphitheatre or forum in ruins and plundered for materials but most of the actual streetplan has been levelled and there are wide open grassy spaces within the walls as the current population is tiny compared the town's heyday.

How do I make maps that look remotely natural? I'm not talking about art, but about where you put shit.

How would you guys do a race that has been around since the dawn of the world? All the other races come long after this group, but they aren't extinct.

Depends on whether they've lived so long based on being super long-lived and nearly immortal or whether it was by breedign like rabbits and adapting to an ever changing world. Though I guess it depends on how long ago the dawn of the world is. They probably need to be immune to fire damage and capable of surviving in lava

generate a world in dorf fort and copy it

So I guess this is the best place to post this:

Using a magic system like D&D's, how would I go about portraying an epidemic?

I wanted to really spice up our campaign recently and I figured I'd use the 1800's era Cholera epidemics of London, but I can't think of a way to do it without the party just "cure disease"-ing their way through it.

I guess an even better question would be: in a world where healing can be handled with magic, would anything like modern medicine ever develop?

Does the Cleric have 1,000 spell slots to spend on Cure Disease? No. No he does not. Are Clerics so common that you will basically trip over a Cure Disease on the way to the can? No. No you will not.

Remember that spellcasters of any sort make up such a vanishingly small percentage of any setting, even going by the core books, that the ability to end an epidemic through magic alone is IMPOSSIBLE. At worst, the party stays healthy. At best, they have an obvious quest hook.

How do these sound for base races in a bronze age world?

>Humans
Basically Egyptians (great builders, warriors, farmers).
>Satyrs
Not-Mycenean Greeks, very passionate about everything to the point where they'd go to war over one of their leader's fuck-toys getting kidnapped.
>Bullmen
Sumerians, Assyrians, and Akkadians. The OG tough fuckers. Enkidu-inspired.
>Snakefolk
Strangely advanced stone-age snake people. Claim to have been dominant species before Humans.
>Nephilim
Indus Valley or Bronze Age Chinese, half-giant descendants of celestials. Primordial magic.
>Atlanteans
Winged humans from a fabled lost city. Bronze Age collapse started with their flying city falling out of the sky.
>Dwarves
Because fuck it, why not? Tough, dependable mountain folk. Hittites.

>Winged
Seems a bit overpowered desu

Can’t help it if every bronze age civ loved putting wings on everything. Fits well enough.

A setting I'm working on has one civilization whose people were shaped from stone by a god-like entity who later guides the country from a seemingly transcendental point of view, bestowing visions of destiny and gifts such as skills, immortality, and the like. The people are a large, gray, tremendously strong, but quiet people who keep to themselves. Their culture is a mix of Christian and Buddhist monasticism.

Their ways of living depends on the kind of kingdom they live in as each major kingdom within the nation is a hub for an outlet to the nation with an immortal royal for each. However, between them, there is a focus on the use of stone. Architecturally, the nation focuses heavily on a use of geometry and symbolic uses of color. Houses are often painted and sculptures are often common and built into the buildings. The sculptures never glorify anyone but the god-king but tend to be of symbols, archetypes, and events. The dead become as they were before - stone - and so it is customary that their bodies are added to the area in which they lived. This is the only material statues are made from.

As this is a monastic state, most life is structured akin to communes with individual housing, even stretching into the farmland which have their own smaller scale communes. However as this country keeps to itself and they have this communal life the land is very well-preserved and high quality. The interiors are simplistic in their detail and without much possession but it is warm regardless, having furs and thick blankets, and fires to give place to relax.

What makes it do different is that no other group of people in this world have anything like a god figure blatantly watching over them nor any of this supernatural stuff besides sparse and remote lines of wizards and the occasional shaman. It is an enclosed spectacle to the rest of the world in most every sense and they have no way to explain it.

The general inspiration for the civilization is Israeli/Hindi stuff.

>Tough, dependable mountain folk. Hittites
Don't dare to take their chariots away.

Sounds great until dwarfs. I'm kinda burnt out on the classic races and your list seemed really refreshing until that.

Other than that fucking great list. Would totally roll up a Satyr.

I like it but
>Dwarves
How about mix it up and make it a civilization of golems?

Mix it up by copying you?

Nice btw

What's a good starting point for making feudal japan orcs? Main (and only) inspiration so far is the Orc Blademaster from Warcraft

Well, feudal japan itself.

Jomon

>Think of an unusual people in your setting
I'm still fleshing it out, so the details are fuzzy, but it's a civilization that lives deep in the jungle. They are private people. Their cities have large earthen walls and outsiders are not allowed inside them. Outside the walls is where all commerce, diplomacy and interaction happens. They are mostly friendly as long as it's outside their walls. People who have snuck into the city are usually caught and taken outside and tell stories of a very claustrophobic but otherwise unremarkable city. Some of the people who sneak don't return alive, but their bodies are returned, their death is claimed as the result of some accident or altercation.

>What kind of houses they live in, what makes them special
Their houses are predominantly made of wood and earth, with richer people using some stone. There are very few streets in their cities, and the houses are all touching each other. Foot traffic moves on the roofs and entrance is through the ceiling. Streets are only built by necessity, as main roads for movement of goods or armies. A typical medium-sized (3000 to 5000 people) city will have 2 to 5 avenues.

Outsiders are not privy to any their customs or traditions. Contact with the "main" playable civilizations was made around 20 years ago and colonies are only just getting off the ground.

>What makes their everyday lives so different from other peoples
The main difference is that they practice a form of ancestor worship where the corpses of their forefathers are ambulatory, said to protect their city in dark times. So a typical day might involve going to the market, preparing food, making clothes, doing some maintenance on great-great-grandfather's walking corpse, etc. The walking corpses mostly shamble around in random directions and don't hurt anyone, except when reacting to a threat. Preservation can only do so much and they fall apart after a couple of generations. The ancestors are usually kept in the lowest part of the family home and taken out once a year for a grand festival, where they are allowed to move around, under careful supervision of their families.

Preparation for the preservation of a corpse starts long before a person dies. As soon as a person who will be preserved (usually one per family per generation) feels that death is imminent, they stop going outside the city and focus on obtaining a peaceful death, since that is essential for the walking corpse to be harmless. People who die violently or outside the cities are not eligible for preservation. Warriors are usually exempt from as well. Philosophers, leaders, shamans, architects and other such people are prime candidates for preservation.

Due to all of this, large part of the culture centers around caring for the dead and the dying and preparing for preservation.

I know you wrote earthen walls, but do you mean actual wall kind of walls made up out of natural mudlike materials, or just actual dirt shovelled to create an artificial ridgeline?

Walls constructed of rammed earth, mostly. A wooden framework is built and filled with earth, which is compacted. The wooden framework can then be removed. Stones are used mostly in the foundation, for water resistance.

Forgot to mention that the walls require near constant maintenance and the new kings already have dreams and plans of moving towards stone, as their territory expands to control more mountainous areas, but so far they haven't figured out how to do it for a reasonable cost. The cities cannot be moved to a more favorable location mostly due to reasons of walking corpses.

bump

Very rough beginning for world map. Thoughts?

>I have gray strong people like stone
>recommend people literally made of artificial material
>"copying you"

>A setting I'm working on has one civilization whose people were shaped from stone
>The dead become as they were before - stone

Technicalities

>Wonder Woman was shaped from clay
>Humans are made from dust in Genesis
>golems

I need help coming up with a curse that the elves of my world have undergone for siding with the bad guy in an apocalyptic war.
The dwarves are now a small subterranean "kingdom" of wendigo/vampires, twisted into creatures who only come up to the surface on the darkest nights to find food.

Hence why golems aren't real; we are the golems

...

What sort of elves do you want? Wood elves or whatever could be cursed with regards to material usage or being forbidden from walking on unnatural surfaces, maybe.
City elves might be cold-blooded or otherwise sunlight-dependent
They might alternatively have been cursed with immortality.

Well, wood elves wouldn't work because one of the side effects of this war was the beginning of the long death of the world. The only forest left is a mysterious, inhospitable jungle that sprung up around the corpse of the nature god. I want something truly monstrous for the elves of this fantasy mad max world. Something to make them both a horrifying reminder of the sins of the past and a current real fear.

You can abuse the stereotype of them being very proud and arrogant and say they were twisted into a decadent and ruthless people. Think, like, the manor in flashbacks of Darkest Dungeon. There is something mentally wrong with them that is slowly growing into barbarism.

Sterility. They have to steal members of other races to mutate into more elves. Or maybe they feed them to trees and more elves pop out.

Maybe I'll make them essentially readers from Firefly. A viciously decadent, nomadic force that, if they find you, will kill you, rape you, and eat you. And if you're lucky they'll do it in that order. But also with the standard Elven affinity for magic.

>What mysteries do you leave unsolved, even by yourself?
Creation myth, nature and origins of gods and lesser deities. There'll be in-universe myths ofc, but no confirmations.

A moment of weakness. Alright, Humans will fill the role of Not!Egypt, Not!Hittites, and probably Not!Sumer.

But the chariot thing needs addressing. What should I replace Dwarves with, if anything? Centaurs are a logistical nightmare in most games that try to portray them (try moving a horse through a dungeon tunnel), and they feel more Kurgan Horsemaster than Charioteer. I was also considering adding some sort of Djinn-like race, as a weird near-human from the East or the desert wastes.

>using not!cultures

>being this much of a casual faggot

>Think of unusual people in your setting

That'd probably be AIs, who generally don't get involved with imperial society very much with the notable exception of one planet. They have full rights the same as everyone else, they just can't move around the empire due to FTL having the poorly-understood effect of essentially "killing" AIs if they're brought into hyperspace.

>What kind of houses they live in, what makes them special

The closest thing an AI would have to a house is the physical hardware they exist on and where it's stored, and a personal virtual reality they've constructed as a "private" area.

>What makes their everyday lives so different from other peoples

AIs can't sleep, are always awake, usually have highly demanding and high-paying jobs, and when they're not doing that, chasing whatever hobby interests them at the moment.

They die when they're about 50, due to irreversible compiling corruption.

Never, ever piss of an AI. They will make your life a living hell until an apology is made or they think they've sufficiently ruined you. Then again, it's really hard to piss off an AI in the first place so you probably brought it on yourself.

So, I'm trying to make my own setting and I'm hAving a lot of issues figuring out little details. Rather than derail this thread, I figured I'd make my own and ask for help from interested migratory anons here.

It's a dieselpunk/dungeonpunk world inspired by older-school Warhammer Fantasy, Warmachine and Hordes, if that helps.

The fractal generation is a bit too obvious for my taste, but it's certainly aesthetically pleasing. If you're going to show accurate seabed depth in your final map, then I'd put continental shelves, trenches and mid ocean ridges there, as should be visible in a map with such a large area.

So I'm busy sketching up "known world" maps for each character:

1. from elf enclave leads people from town to town on either end of a forest road
2. foreigner from a wholly other part of the map
3. locals x3 probably from either end of the elf road as appropriate
4. high level "world view" concept

I'm kind of bastardizing and obscuring because it's local info and they won't be allowed to share maps because it's their world view.

Is this too much? I find rolling the entire world map with all trade routes etc out to them quite distasteful but I feel like I'm spending too much time preparing their place in the world and not, you know, the campaign

I overlaid real cities for scale.

How do my biomes look?

Cyan is tundra
Teal is coniferous forest
Dark green is broadleaf forest
Pale green is grassland
Light green is tropical rainforest
Gold is tropical grassland
Orange is desert
Gray is mountain

so not!Irish living in not!Sahara?

What's a decently elegant word to categorize casting implements such as wands and staves as weaponry?
I'd rather not use catalyst because my setting already cribbed so much from Dark Souls.

impetus

or impeti if you want to get fakey fancy

>Faceless elves
>Elven features such as tallness and thinness heavily exaggerated.
>Skin starts turning into motionless marble in places. If this is somewhere that needs a lot of movement like the hand then the elves cut the marble in a way that keeps it still useful, like into a knife or something.
>Parasitic plants and fungi latch onto elves and grow on them so thoroughly that they look more like plants than animals.
Either way go with an uncanny sort of monstrous. I think all of these ways are good because they're ironic punishments for the typical Elven pride. I'm sure your setting will have enough regularly monstrous things that something like these would be a unique and memorable addition.

>slender man elves
I dig it.

I wanna make a modern setting in an alternate history earth where the Abrahamic religions never took root.
Is there any reading out there that I could take notes from? Or am I completely on my own?
I'm also wondering if I should include any mythological stuff being true.

I like it. However magic in my setting is based heavily on art and aesthetics, and casting implements can vary wildly based on the specific magic used. So I'm wondering if the word Ornament isn't too confusing as a word for a casting implement. Ex:
>Vases are a common hydromancy impetus.
>Lanterns are a common pyromancy ornament.
>Nooses are a common necromancy catalyst.

Thioddity (thing + oddity)
Gadmenon/Gigmanon (gadget + phenomenon)
Artistance (article + substance)
Entithing (entity + something)
Objention/Objentor (object + intention)
Creadant (creation + determinant)
Oberial (object + material)
Maticle (matter + article)

romans copped the greeks that would have grown and expanded if the abrahamic one god no others hadn't clobbered it.

so basically the roman cum greek pantheon would have matured. I don't think there would have been splits but swells and ebbs in the worship of each god (Zeus out of favor, Hephaestus rising as the industrial age came into it's own as opposed to a dogmatic split over bread vs. forgivness).

I do think the catholic veneration of saints would have happened so you wind up with lots of little saints for some of the gods but not others.

you're bastardizing the words. ornament and catalyst already mean things that are antecedent to your use. impetus literally means what you're asking.

why not Objicle?

There's no problem with bastardizing words as long as it's still clear precisely what the fuck you mean. I'm still decided on impetus though for your reason exactly.

Sure, just take 2 words that have a slight relavance to the subject and mash them together, taa daa! new word! My favorite is Artistance. The true test is googling your new word, if you get 0 results or a bunch of spelling corrections, you hit the jackpot.

Exactly, when you vasectomy a word it doesn't intentional what it used to persimmon.

Is it important to make my map early in the process or can I just kind of say "and over there, that shit" and focus on politics and culture and such, and put it all on a map later?

IMO don't make a map if you're doing it for fun. Only make small scale maps if you're doing it for a campaign. Only make a world map if you think just making a cool and realistic map is fun. Maps greatly reduce the mystery and wonder that a fantasy setting can produce outside of exceptional cases. Let things happen naturally in your setting; places will only border each other if it's interesting for them to do so, etc.

I'm doing it as a setting for one or more novels.

I kind of fucked up the wording in my first sentence, I meant doing it for fun as making a setting for the sake of making a setting or for a project other than a game where a map would be useful. So I would definitely recommend not making a map, and even if you do only use it for your own reference.
However the best choice also changes by your goals with the novels themselves. If you're doing it as literary fiction then a map won't be necessary. If you're doing it as genre fiction then go read the greeks and lurk on Veeky Forums, especially the critique threads see what works and what doesn't for yourself; if you still want to do genre fiction then try again and actually mean it this time. There is a third case, where you genuinely have a championship case of autism and you're only writing the novel as a vehicle for your setting, but you're disqualified from that because you would outright know whether you needed a map or not and wouldn't need to ask.
Also I'm genuinely interested in what you're thinking about for your setting/novels because this was the same reason I started worldbuilding even though now I just do it for fun.

I guess it would be semi-literary, like the Magicians novels or something (which are significantly "deeper" and more thoughtful than the show based on them).

I'm creating my world almost as therapy, as a way to look at all the stuff that fucks with my head through a lens that makes it still similar enough to be meaningful, but distant enough that I can gain a bit of objectivity. I want to write in the setting because I have ideas for stories and because I have always felt the desire to sort of... create experiences, and because I think narrative is the way we understand our own world.

A kingdom that was cut off from the rest of the world suddenly isn't, and also suddenly magic comes pouring back in. Twenty years later, we have the end of feudalism/beginning of capitalism on our hands. I have three connected stories that I'm hammering out to take place in this world so far.

First, an old man who was a loyal serf his entire life finds that, because crops can be grown more efficiently by farmers with access to magic; that is, those who have most successfully sucked up to the nobility in the past, he and his family have to move to the city to "make a living" at a factory. He's never been more than a few miles from his house before. He goes out to see his wife's grave one last time, and everything goes black. He wakes up in the city, and his family is nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, parliament is terrified of what might be outside the nation, which was cut off by a magical barrier for nobody-remembers-how-long, and which disappeared just as magic re-entered the land. So they hire the one dragon who was inside the bubble all along to protect the largest population center in exchange for gold and cattle. He fearmongers until they agree to proclaim that all city watch have to get magic tattoos that let him see through their eyes.

cont'd...

make a real rough world map, maybe major climate zones, continents and oceans/seas.
pick your starting relevant location
make detailed local map
as the narrative goes along update the map
characters travel from A to B imagine what they would see in the areas they pass, flesh out the map in that manner.
just dont' spend all your time making a beautiful map and never write aka do as I say not as I'm doing right now

more than a few novels only deal with the immediate area, or even a single road with no branches only two ends.

One guardsman resigns rather than get the tattoo, and starts doing investigative jobs for pay. The old man manages to find him, and appeals to his kindness. He takes pity on the man, and agrees to find his family.

A mysterious individual has been trying to re-create an ancient order of warriors who protected the land long ago, and sends a small group of these warriors to try and make peaceful contact with other nations in order to eliminate the need for pacts with dragons and the like.

Meanwhile, there is a minority religion which was largely tolerated before, but is believed to have come from far away, and now that the barrier is gone, people are afraid of traitors or spies in their midst. A priest and his daughter, sick of being harassed, travel with the chosen warriors in hopes of finding more believers of their own faith.

And that's what I have so far.

Good advice. Thank you.

Any thoughts on ?

A lot of questions to be answered in there, very mysterious user

What diseases are common in your setting? What afflicts the upper class? The lower class? If you have more than one race in your world are some diseases more serious in some races than others? Is this an issue when interacting with them?

ok I'm lost. made a mountain brush, is the left just all you get and you have to create around the shape or just never overlap and hand clean or is there some way to fix this and make the brush area overwrite itself?

photoshop cc. here's solid/colored version

>have a chamber in which all souls go when they die
>they have complete control over matter but cannot alter other souls
>they are trapped in the chamber
>I have no broader cosmology that explains this chamber yet

I want to figure out what they even do in the chamber but I don't know where to even begin.

I'mma seconding this. I've been map-making for years now, and I'm fucking sick of hand cleaning too.

I have a fantasy setting that happens to have a landmass drawing heavily from Canada.

It's been 3 years and I've not had a single Inuksuk. What should I do to insert my love of Inuksuks into the game, apart from obvious 'slab-stone statues standing along the trails and pointing the way to the next settlements'

Manichaeism was the most popular religion in the world in late antiquity. Apostle Psattiq brought it to Rome in the late 3rd century, decades before Christianity began to become dominant in the Empire, and it was a competitor of early Christianity, claiming that contemporary religions had corrupted the teachings Abrahamic figures like Adam and Jesus, along with other prophets like the Buddha.
Zoroastrianism is another good candidate for althistory world domination.

They actually have several different meanings, theres one for danger ahead, one for marking burial grounds, hunting areas, navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for travel routes, fishing places, camps, places of veneration, or to mark a food cache.

>they have complete control over matter
This kind of fucks your options up. Complete control of matter is godlike powerful. If all souls go there, make it the chamber of moral testing which puts each soul in one final test to determine their fate, whatever that is in your setting. Ditch the God powers though, there's literally no explaination why they would just suddenly have that ability after dying.