/wbg/ - World Building General
"I can't describe it, but I wanna fuck it" Edition
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>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
>Describe what makes them so, whether it be appearance, culture, environment or something else entirely.
>Whereabouts do they (primarily) live? And how are their relationships with fellow races / civilisations?
>Do you think it's more interesting to have humanoid or truly alien sapient species in a setting?
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Seeing as it's suprisingly rare to come across anyone else on this board who has tried adapting Fallout, would you mind giving me a quick rundown of your version of the setting? If it isn't just a straight rip of course. I'm attempting to create a homebrew version without any of Bethesda's contributions and would like to see what others have done for inspiration.
Pic related is the best example I've seen of a weird species used in a played with setting.
Working on a setting where 300 years ago someone fucked with reality driving the gods that had been helping men establish civilization into seclusion, or insane. Now there's a civil war going on because of the resulting power vaccum in what used to be the central government.
Anyone got any cool ideas I could riff on?
> most interesting race
Kind of a subjective question. I quite like the Draconians in my setting.
> why
Basically dragonborn,except roman. They worship a holy hierarchy based upon how draconic/dragon something is. Mammals are close to the bottom of the list, naturally. Draconians are considered less dragon then dragons themselves. Their god-king, the Hydra, is the most dragon thing to have existed so far, so he ranks the highest. Hydras are said to have eaten their siblings before birth, gaining a head for each sibling slain. All hydras are named after the original. He left the planet a long time ago.
> where they live & what their relationships are like with other races
They live on one of the larger continents on the planet. They have the largest empire in history land-wise, and probably the most powerful on the planet, but that's hotly debated. Most humans hate them since they enslaved them for quite some time, but there are still some draconian human states around that aren't completely opposed to them. That's the only two nations I have really fleshed out at the moment.
> humanoid or alien sapient species
it really depends on how you use them
fantasy races tend to be humanoid if you see them a lot so they can be relatable, but if the author wants to throw in some really weird shit he can
scifi races tend to be weird and 'alien', but we can only guess what they'll look like and you might as well make them humanoid unless you really wanna apply yourself
> unrelated
What's the best way to style an avian beastfolk race physically? I don't really want to just give them a bird's head and wings and leave them otherwise the same and I don't really want to give them some kind of weird combo of bird wings/arms (although it seems like I might have to). I would really like them to be able to fly, but I'm open to ideas.
>someone fucked with reality
Do you mean someone mortal or something beyond the gods? From my interpetation, you could do something like a combination of The Matrix, Star Ocean and Serial Experiments Lain.
Could we please have a little more information about your setting?
>What genres do you want to encompass?
>What socio-technological era is it set in?
>Where is it set?
>Who are the factions in the civil war?
>Who are the gods?
>What is the nature of their insanity?
>What happened to distort reality?
>What genres do you want to encompass?
I see it as going between high and low fantasy depending on region. For instance, the "high fantasy" region to the far west (Trachovie, on the map) has magically determined borders between feudal kingdoms that shift, causing a lot of internal conflict, and so it stays mostly cut off from the rest of the world. I want to keep things open to different play styles for different groups depending on who's playing.
>What socio-technological era is it set in?
Think Elizabethan era except nobody can use metal to make guns because all the metals are kind of alive. People mostly live in exceptionally large cities or villages close to them since the wilds have become increasingly unsafe.
>Where is it set?
The campaign I'm running now is in/around a border town that's about to be invaded from the South.
>Who are the factions in the civil war?
The humans/dwarves that live in the North mostly have charter governments with the cabal/monarchy in Alfjord, which currently has an aging head of state and no clear line of succession. The "Baskarim" in the south are revolutionaries aligned under a kind of shadowy ideologue cabal leader without much connection to the monarchs.
>Who are the gods?
Concentrations of magic in a region that take on traits as they're assigned a la American Gods.
>What happened to distort reality?
An order of paladins tried to take over the world by manipulating the source code (a big schizoid mumbling fire in Alfjord). They failed and ruined the world. Magic got a lot cooler though.
>What is the nature of their insanity?
Mostly they roam around in the wild trying to "reconstruct" the old world by doing some kind of repetitive task like building a tower out of twigs or trying to drain a lake by hand. Some of the more humanoid ones became wanderers or warlords.
>>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
I really like mousekin and want to more effectively insert them into my setting any tips?
>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
Probably the drakes. They're a bunch of intelligent, photosynthetic wyvern-type dragons.
>Describe what makes them so, whether it be appearance, culture, environment or something else entirely.
Well, they're fucking dragons. Duh. To be serious, though, I think the fact that they're an airborne and photosynthetic race has made for some interesting ideas in regards to their outlook and presence in the setting.
First, a flying sapient race means all sorts of things for this world's history. Drakes have long been couriers and mapmakers, and have served as respected airborne cavalry in times of war. Their ability to fly is something humans have only just begun to achieve themselves, and even then, only through the use of machines.
Drake brains are also better adapted for mathematical calculation, and possess a preternatural sense of time. This means they're extremely well-suited to, among other things, music.
>Whereabouts do they (primarily) live? And how are their relationships with fellow races / civilisations?
They originated in the alpine regions of one of the main continents in my setting, and have roughly paralleled humans in spreading throughout the world. They are well-adapted to mountainous regions (flight and all that), and have built many nations centered on the great peaks of the world.
In contemporary times, they're pretty well-integrated with human populations the world over, but that's not to say there isn't plenty of racism to go around. One of the better places for them is the Republic of Ehreist, which has equity between humans and drakes as one of its national cornerstones.
>Do you think it's more interesting to have humanoid or truly alien sapient species in a setting?
Both have their purposes, but for my tastes, I like having something entirely different. It opens up a lot more possibilities.