/wbg/ - World Building General
"I ain't no fortunate son" Edition
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>What is the largest theatre of war in your setting?
>Who is involved in the conflict?
>Has a culture formed surrounding the war?
>Who are the legendary / infamous warriors?
>Is there propoganda and rationing schemes in the involved countries?
>In what ways has this impacted the international community?
>Have wars affected the rate of technological development in your setting?
>What is the largest theatre of war in your setting?
Red Tundra, where soil has been soaked with blood for decades. To the east lies a powerful dwarven kingdom and its allies. To the west lies an orcish land. These orcs are ruled by a malicious dragon, so are more focused and coherent than regular orc raids.
>Who is involved in the conflict?
Dwarves, their human allies and mercenaries on one side, orcs, their human allies and mercenaries, and lesser dragons on the other side.
>Has a culture formed surrounding the war?
Orcs live for war and destruction. Local dwarfs are more warlike and aggressive than regular dwarfs too.
>Who are the legendary / infamous warriors?
I haven't really got to that bit yet.
>Is there propoganda and rationing schemes in the involved countries?
Not really. Those are bits where I drop realism.
>In what ways has this impacted the international community?
There's plenty of wars everywhere. People don't really care that some war lasts longer than another.
>Have wars affected the rate of technological development in your setting?
In a sense. Dwarves of the aforementioned theatre of war are less shy to use firearms and experiment, that other dwarfs.
>What is the largest theatre of war in your setting?
The Continental War, 20 years ago. Light conflicts are everywhere, but they aren't organized.
>Who is involved in the conflict?
The Ring Government vs Separatist Mages. The power of the Mages meant that despite their small numbers they held out for over a year with heavy bombardment and Government Mage forces.
>Has a culture formed surrounding the war?
A lot of people lost family and friends, especially around the fighting. I would relate it to the American response to Vietnam, and the kind of artistic and philosophic questioning that took place afterwards, especially since Mages were looked up to previous to the war.
>Who are the legendary / infamous warriors?
Most mages forces were like regular military units with specialists, but both sides, most especially the Separatists used magic guns and armor to basically create super mage soldiers. Many veterans have stories about them, so they are part of the mythos now.
>What is the largest theatre of war in your setting?
The Milky Way Galaxy
>Who is involved in the conflict?
It's a free-for-all between humanity and a selection of other older, more powerful, and more malicious races.
>Has a culture formed surrounding the war?
Humanity's very existence is entangled in this fight for survival.
>Who are the legendary / infamous warriors?
I've only got one so far. Ranir, the First Paladin, was a soldier and scholar who lived in the time before humanity was dealt a near-exterminating blow. He led the greatest army and fought the hardest, collecting his thoughts in a treatise that was found and distributed as a religious text among the human remnant after he died in battle along with most of his legions. He's an icon and constant inspiration for humanity as a whole and most of all for the Paladins who consider themselves to be his successors of the human spirit.
>Is there propoganda and rationing schemes in the involved countries?
Some human groups are more or less frugal, radical, or prosperous than others. There's no hard and fast ruling.
>Have wars affected the rate of technological development in your setting?
The early wars between human groups affected technology (AI was widely advanced and weaponized to put down insurrection and to defend from alien threats, for example) and were eventually the inspiration to unite humanity under a single banner.
During the era of unified humanity, technology was advanced to help us explore the galaxy and to defend the explorers from what they found.
What's the point of these threads?
World-building. Lurk and read to learn more.
What is the point of any thread? You give it meaning by what you do with it. So, use it for inspiration, or ask a question, or talk to us about worldbuilding, or make us some cool memes like the other generals have.
I'm working on a hexmap for a fantasy setting. Something about reading the west marches article, and a dream I had about it, has infused me with this giddy excitement to get it running. Just the idea of there being stuff in the landscape, a whole hexmap to fill with features, and setting up a points of light world that the PCs can actually affect and become rulers in, excites me. So many campaign a are reactive....the PCs come across a threat and fight to eliminate it and restore the status quo. This will be more.
Naive ramblings aside I have an issue here.
What system do I use for this world?
My main system is D&D 3.5. I know it well, it has tons of monsters, and I love all the content for it. Currently, I am DMing pathfinder for a group of friends. Its ok, but I don't like a lot of the options, the races are weird, and everyone seems to want to play some snowflake shit. 3.5 has the same issue, but it also doesn't have an SRD with all the splatbok classes free online. 5e is another option, I've been running it for about a year now with another group. Very solid game rules, chargen and charadv is a bit shit imo, less options, but a really good system and I've been adapting my favorite 3.5 monsters to it now that I know a bit more the setting expectations. But once I pick a system I'll have to stick with it if I want multiple campaigns in this work and possibly npcs shared between campaigns.
So basically I am asking what system I should invest in longterm.
Your setting is covered in mysterious ruins, which attracts the sort of desperate, wandering degenerates that make up so-called "Adventuring Parties".
>Who built them? Why?
>What's so valuable in them that mercenaries and treasure hunters will risk death and worse plumbing their depths?
>Is there an industry built up around supporting such treasure quests?
>How do the authorities deal with the adventurers, random looters, and townsfolk interacting with the ruins?
I run an OSR game and I have a lot of justification for dungeons.
>Be God of Evil
>All the monsters worship you
>Demands that mere mortals must give your monster children some of their riches every year on not!Halloween or you'll curse their livestock, etc.
>Humans obey even though they hate monsters
>Monsters take treasure back to their lairs
>Human adventurers dive into monster lairs to steal back the riches that were stolen from them
>All the dungeons exist being built as homes by the monsters or were created spontaneously by the dark god's magic powers