/wbg/ - World Building General

10/10 would adventure in.

What’s a setting guide?

A highly detailed guide to anyone looking to run games, adventures, and campaigns in your setting.

How interesting would it be, though, to run a game in what is basically an Eden-lacking-man? Most of the things I have are individual locations that I find beautiful and write about.

Anything can be fun with a little imagination!

>Most of the things I have are individual locations that I find beautiful and write about.
To some people that's already enough, like a sort of lone man exploration game where the entire premise is to go from location to location trying to survive on the new environment, while fighting off the psychological hazards of being alone or in a small group.

>a game in what is basically an Eden-lacking-man

Sounds like a faerie land controlled by magic and nature.

>Why do people in your world travel?
Same reason most people travel. CASH MONEY. Military Campaigns and Crusades are also an acceptable answer.

>What are the common methods of transportation? And are they yet commercialised?
Caravan over land, galley over sea. Commercialization is a distant memory, or perhaps a legend, but it's how people got to this planet. Scholarly types theorize how it might become a reality again, if only they could reinvent a few wonders of the ancients.

>Is there such a thing as culture clash?
Yes. See "Crusades".

>How do people get around the language barriers?
Universal Romantic and Mandanese are the primary trade languages, as most cultures speak at least one or the other as a second language. Part of the services organized religious groups like the Blue Rose Catholic Church provide are translators. Public Mass is often used at chapels not only for the distribution of the daily bread and traceroot to the poor, but to provide translators for tradesmen in return for minor considerations.

>Describe a well-travelled route: Where does it start and end?

The Ash Road starts in the Selian Highlands and follows an old colonial road down into Courser's Valley, before following Diamond River all the way to the coast. The road is noteworthy for being straighter and more cleverly engineered than more recent roads, as it was once a paved, asphalt road carved by contragravitic tools. When it began to fall into disrepair, it was slowly replaced by a re-invented Roman road. This road was once the main throughfare from the original colony to the spaceport for the main marketable good on the planet all-natural penis / breast enlargement cream that actually works. Various industries have replaced it, including coffee, llama wool, traceroot, and silver. The caravanserai along the route are also notorious for local matchmakers looking to match up daughters and sons of their tribe to landed gentry on the coast.

The head is too small for the rest of that pictureq

Tell me more about your setting user.

>Does your world have a Creator Deity?
>Why did they make the world?
>Are they benevolent?
>Are they active?

Hard Mode:
>Are they Evil?

Impossible:
>Why does Evil exist?

>Does your world have a creator deity?
Yes
>Why did they make the world?
They’ve created the full set of worlds; some are allowed to exist, and others not.
>Are they active?
No
>Are they evil?
By definition, no. See the Paradox of Euthyphro

>Why does evil exist?
Evil is temporary; just because the world is suffering now does not mean it always will be. The Creator doesn’t intervene, but knows where things will go.

>some are allowed to exist, and others not
That sounds equal parts intriguing and disturbing user, please continue.

The Creator is necessarily beyond the universe, lest He couldn’t create it. Being an infinite being, He can see all possible worlds. And, being a benevolent being, He allows only those with more joy than suffering to exist.

Consider it like gardening: You may plant a thousand flowers, and some will fail; be born rotten, catch a plague, and so you trim them for a more beautiful garden

Makes sense.
Is the creator you?

Renaissance era Venice but in the air

Her body is in fact over over an entire foot too tall for her head.

Related to this, this is the incomplete pantheon of my world
>Ovals are the main gods known as the Seven
>Red bubbles are widely known legends related to the god
>Yellow diamonds are demi-gods that are related to the god in question
>rectangles are minor gods that hold dominion over lesser aspects of life

>Why do people in your world travel?
Trading, pilgrimage, migrations, invasions... plenty of reasons.
>What are the common methods of transportation? And are they yet commercialised?
Horses, bulls, rams, donkeys... Rich and powerful may use griffons, pegasi or great eagles now and then. Now I realize I need something fun/fantastic to add to that. Hmm.
No, virtually nothing is commercialized in my setting, because reasons.
>Is there such a thing as culture clash?
Plenty of it. Latest bit of that I added are a HFY warrior kingdom that is within spitting distance of a kingdom of elf-friends. There's quite a bit of clash.
>How do people get around the language barriers?
It depends. Some break the language barrier with diligence and learning - dwarfs tend to do that. Others break the language barrier with a warhammer - if you can't understand it, then it probably ain't friend. Elves just use sorcery to understand and be understood, cheating fucks.
>Describe a well-travelled route: Where does it start and end? Is it neutral ground, or is it taxed by the owners of the land it passes through? Are bandit's a problem, or is it defended? If either, are there any major groups of either role?What's traded along it? Is it infamous for any reason, e.g. deathtoll or narcotics?
Peril Pass. Long trail between sheer impassable cliffs and highlands.Quite dangerous, because highlands are festering with the kind of people who see all others as subhumans and pay for goods with arrows and sword blows. The route leads to a remote mountain kingdom which exports artefacts from a ruined dwarf/elf kingdom. Dwarfs pay well to get their heirlooms back, elves pay well to keep their magic out of wrong hands, collectors, wizards and warlords all pay well to get their hands on stuff.

>Does your world have a Creator Deity?
The God and his worshippers say it does. Elder races tend to disagree or just shrug. Its complicated. But lets assume is has, since dominant human religion claims so.
>Why did they make the world?
Apparently to trap the Devil. Hell is literally the world's molten core.
>Are they benevolent?
More or less. Devil wants to break free of his prison, so his agenda involves the destruction of the world. God wants to preserve the world, so kinda has to help mortals battle the devil. He's still more of "smite thy enemies with lightning" than "heal the sick and the lame and the blind" - unless the sick and the lame and the blind are soldiers or would make great heroes.
>Are they active?
Somewhat. Creating the world (or trapping the Devil inside existing one) was incredibly taxing, and major divine interventions sap the divine power for a long time as well. But they do happen, as do bolts of divine lightning, miracles of healing and prophetic visions, they just need some help from the mortals and really good reasons.
>Hard Mode:
>Are they Evil?
Not really, but not that good either. God just wants to preserve the world to serve as Devil's prison and keep the Devil's influence away from mortals. His motives may not be good, but his actions do help mortals.

>Impossible:
>Why does Evil exist?
Some say Devil is not inherently evil, he just wants to break free - by destroying the world - and it just makes him a villain towards those living in the world; but before that Devil and God were equally neutral.
However, Devil's powers focus so much on twisting and corruption, and his servants are mostly vile sadistic and bloodthirsty horrors, that those who claim that he was always incarnation of Evil probably do have a point too.

>Creator Deity?
Yes. My players "know" that the world was created by the three Harvest Gods. That interpretation isn't far from the truth.
>Why?
Nothingness really isn't very fulfilling.
>Are they benevolent?
Relatively so, yeah. Fan of the world.
>Are they active?
A fraction of their presence focuses on clerics and paladin, but mostly they observe.

List of my space opera races:

>Humans.
>Plain old boring humans.

>Cyborg humans with ability to psionically control a specific metal that most of their bionics and tools are made of.

>Giant shapeless slugs or amoeba that wear huge hollow metal suits (humanoid, ofc) of sorts to give themselves limbs and protection.

>Dolphins (no, really)

>Sapient spiders with human-like faces.

>Disembodied sentiences capable of controlling clouds of special nanites.

>Large robotic suits (shaped like egyptian gods) operated by sapient housecats. Them housecats indeed have 9 lives because quantum immortality.
>Sapient giant sloths that live on a ring of metal vines, of sorts, around a white dwarf.

>Grey- or green-skinned humanoids. Males are pigmies, but powerful psionics. Females basically humans with some weird facial features and body proportions (longer limbs, etc.).

>Energy beings wearing long cloaks.

>Atlanteans (no, really) with skin like white porcellain and blood made of gold.

>Vat-grown humanoid bodies possessed by demons

>Red-skinned humanoids with tentacle legs

>Turquoise-skinned humanoids with skin covered in kinda scales. Think X-men Mystique.

>Blue-skinned humanoids covered in bony ridges, horns and spikes.

plus a bunch of artificial stuff like

>Sapient free-willed robots.

>Dr. Moreau style manbeasts

>Golems
>Typical golems, made of clay, with occult chem in their mouths. Those who don't believe in occult think they are just weird robots.
How's that?
Also I need to make up names for them, I know.

>The Alps are right at the boundary
If I consider the collision point illustrated in this picture though, Alps are about 900 km apart from it.

Who's your favorite villain in your world?

>Why do people in your world travel?
After the disappearance of the Evil Galactic Overlord the surviving nations are cautiously reclaiming lost lands, establishing and re-establishing trade routes, exploring.
>What are the common methods of transportation? And are they yet commercialised?
Spaceships, naturally. Few planets have it commercialized, but far from all.
>Is there such a thing as culture clash?
Plenty of it. Planets grew very isolated and different during Evil Overlord's reign.
>How do people get around the language barriers?
There's no language barriers. Everyone is speaking English. Or Common. Or whatever.
>Describe a well-travelled route: Where does it start and end? Is it neutral ground, or is it taxed by the owners of the land it passes through? Are bandit's a problem, or is it defended? If either, are there any major groups of either role?What's traded along it? Is it infamous for any reason, e.g. deathtoll or narcotics?
Since whole space is kind of "points of light" (pun intended) at the moment, there are no major trade routes at the moment.

>is there coffee in your setting?
>how necessary is it for the survival of mortalkind?
>is there a major religion devoted to coffee?

Fuck off memester

Please rate my freshly created landmass

After I started worldbuilding realistically, with decent knowledge of culture and geography, I became reluctant to place fantastic things (flying cities, impossible palaces, hidden valleys filled with enormous statues, etc), fancy races and other fantasy stuff in my worlds. I had to make a conscious effort to remake part of the world to make it more fantasy.

Your fucking realism is corruptive, you know.

Italy-needs-liposuction/10

I liked the line.

It depends on what degree: making a realistic map doesn't mean there can't be a flying castle above a realistic valley.

that's what I have to constatly remind myself

I also forget to use magic as an active force in, well, everything (as opposed to taking a generic medieval middle ages and slapping magic on top with no regard to how it would - or could - shape the world)

E.g. I had big troubles justifying why one kingdom is inaccessible to wealthy merchants, until I figured they are protecting a powerful magical artifact and so don't let anyone even suspected of peddling magical stuff enter their borders.
Likewise a landlocked kingdom that in theory had to participate in a war with ogres two kingdoms away suddenly got its problems solved by replacing horses with pegasi.

How the fuck do I have infantry on a nuclear battlefield without having enviro-suits? I'm trying really hard to convey the soldiers dread in a 1916 mid ww1 vibe only with a dash of tactical nuclear holocaust and boy howdy is it difficult.

At that point you need to create a realistic habitat for pegasi to be born and develop.
I'd say the main point of making realistic settings is to avoid mixing different landscapes in a super unreal way (like making a saharian desert in the middle of syberia with a big volcano in the middle) but that's as far as it should goes.

>Does your world have a Creator Deity?
Yes
>Why did they make the world?
They didn't, one of her loyal children did.

>Are they benevolent?
Not anymore.

>Are they active?
Not since they were killed and split in two.

>Hard Mode:
>Are they Evil?
Yes.

>Impossible:
>Why does Evil exist?
Pissed off widowed mother seeks to punish her patricidal children.

You know that Nukes were originally intended to be used essentially as a form of heavy artillery on open ground battlefields by some of the older Soviet Military doctrines, right? The whole "nukes are used as super-long range civilian and infrastructure destruction" concept was pretty much only American approach, that the soviets only adopted themselves once they got their missile program running and some reliable long-range bombers up.
The original crisis plan for soviet invasion and war in Europe was to fire Nukes at targets only max of about fifty to seventy miles ahead of their infantry line. And I can assure, nobody assumed the infantry and vehicles were not planned to be specially protected - the soldiers were to be equipped with gas masks, that's all.
I'm not shitting, that was a very real plan. So... yeah, just make your involved countries just be enough of vicious cunts, and set the technology available to be pre-long range ballistic rockets and with little to no available long range bombers (e.g. level of late 40's Russia) and you are all set.

>Does your world have a Creator Deity?
>Yes
>Why did they make the world?
>They didn't

She birthed the gods. The God who would come to be known as Demogorgon was the architect of the world.

then Demogorgon would be the creator god, no? Seeing as he created the world and shit?

>Does your world have a Creator Deity?
Yes
>Why did they make the world?
Out of love. When you are love by definition you want to share it, and to share it something else must be.
>Are they benevolent?
By definition yes
>Are they active?
By definition yes. If they stopped to be support world world would cease to be.
As for more direct contact he prefer angels/gods to do stuff but sometimes he chooses individuals personally.
>Are they Evil?
By defintion no.
>Why does Evil exist?
>Anno Domini 400+1618
>Not knowing that evil is nothing more than lack of good
Non sanctus est.

No. He literally only made the world. The mother of gods, Tiamat, is the goddess of the primordial oceans from which life emerged.

Alps are in fact part of larger range that includes Central Massif in France, Carpathian, Pyrenees, Balkans, Anatolian and Iberian Mountains etc.
They are not 900 km away from boundary but are boundary that stretches for over 900 km.

>>Does your world have a Creator Deity?
Sort of. Creation was complicated.
>>Why did they make the world?
They are compelled to order things, and when they found a whole reality of things they sought to order it.
>>Are they benevolent?
Close enough to it.
>>Are they active?
Not really, they've quarantined themselves from this reality because things can die here and dying's scary yo.
>>Are they Evil?
A fraction of them seeks to disrupt order, and that is the closest thing to evil they have.
>>Why does Evil exist?
Because this reality wants to return to it's natural state of formless chaos, and mortals call this evil because they like being formed.

That's a rather poor map with little detail, and numerous mistakes. The Philippine Sea Plate is particularly fucked.

Coolest picture I could find for that post.

It's around the year 6000 and once there was a big human space empire. We met some aliens, some galactic power plays happened and maybe a couple of wars. Then 1800 years ago, the galaxy plunged into an expanse of dark matter which brought back magic, opened up ways to other dimensions and in general caused a lot of weirdness to happen. This caused the collapse of the space fairing empires, leaving the world of Cyteris on it's own in the ether.

I'm terrible at naming things send help

Cyteris was once a colony world that supported a billion people, but between the effects of galactic economic collapse, war, famine, and the like, it has a planetary population of Earth around 150 AD. Technology has backslid to about the Iron Age, though a number of scientific concepts have survived like the Germ Theory of Disease, as well as the various religions of human and alien races, though after four millenea, some of the Earth religions have gone through changes and reformations. Magic is real and so are the effects of faith and the two have an uneasy relationship with one another.

In general it's a combination of Conan, King David's Spaceship, and stuff I liked from Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson, and 80's Saturday Morning cartoons. There's room for adventure on the high seas, raiding ancient stone ruins, stumbling on monstrosities and cults to old and terrible gods, but it's just as likely that the stone temple is erected around a hermetically sealed bio-bunker run by an AI who's still trying to put out this year's flu vaccine. Or that the enclave of aliens need the help of a Catholic priest to perform an exorcism on a strange alien demon.

How is all this, by the way? I'm trying to go FULL PULP, and I get that I'm overdoing it, but I'm wondering if it's in a fun way or it just comes off as random bullshit.

I got an idea for a race of sentient automatons, but I'm not sure which is the best approach to how they look. Completely robotic like Chrono Trigger's Robo, clearly robotic but with a very humanoid form like Phantasy Star's CASTs, or completely indistinguishable from humans at a glance like Overlord's Shizu. The setting is high fantasy, but I wanted something a little more flavor over elves, dwarves, orcs, and beastmen.

Nothing there to rate but subjective aesthetic value.

For me it is sub-meh. Random cloud pattern generation tier.

So, I'm working on a setting where ancient magic worked the way it was believed to (i.e., the oracles in Greece actually did receive messages when in a trance, and various curses and such did what they were expected to. But all of it was relatively subtle, and history played out much like it did in reality.

Then suddenly at the turn of the 19th century, various sorts of spirits began to manifest more physically than they had before, and more often visibly. Across the world, dozens of people, some traditionally considered "important" and some not, were offered pacts by the spirits that gave some of them supernatural powers, others information they should not have had, and so on.

Any suggestions for a system with which to run this?

Long-term I'd like to make it into a novel or an audio drama, but for now I want to run a tabletop RPG campaign set in this world.

>Does your world have a Creator Deity?
Yes and no. There is a whole host of deities that are credited with the creation of the universe but no one can say for sure which one actually did it. I will never disclose, not even to myself, whether the universe was created by a god or something wholly different, or whether any of the gods in people believe in actually exist. Therefore I will answer the following questions from the point of view of the largest religion in my world.
>Why did they make the world?
To show off, essentially. It is believed that one of the divine Twins originally created the world as a show of strength. The other responded by creating the sun and the stars which, in turn, elicited a counterattack from the original twin. Their competition lasted until everything, with the exception of the first living beings, had been created.
>Are they benevolent?
According to the people who believe in them, yes.
>Are they active?
No, but legends do tell of a time when they did commune mortals.

Picture unrelated.

how very original

I have evil gods.

The Gods were doing typical God stuff, when humans are made by accident. They ignore humans until they reach a post scarcity society, at which point the Gods realize there is a nonzero chance humans could kill them. The rest of history is the gods trying to reset creation and failing.

Currently the gods have settled for using demons to keep society in medieval stasis while they gather more power, positioning themselves as benevolent creator dieties.

So I’m trying to think up setpieces for a steampunk setting.

British isles type society under recent fascist takeover. Goal is to overthrow fascist regime and reinstate monarchy. Takes place mostly in the capital city, and immediete surroundings.

Hooks include bioshock infinite styled quantum instability, and eldritch beings asleep on the ocean.

I was thinking-

Munitions factory
Big submarine
Big zeppelin
Big train
Battleship
Clock tower
Old castle on island or neighboring burg.
Concentration camp on far off island,
Cistern used as cultist sight.

Thoughts?

>Reinstate Monarchy
You do realise that the monarch hasn't had any power since the English Civil War, and even before then they were restrained by things such as the Magna Carte. Also that both a Monarchy and a Fascist Regime are both totalitarian, they both inevitably depend on the quality of the leader and suffer the people's discontentment should a poor one arise. Thus I should think that fighting for republicanism might be a better point considering the social state of the dickensian period (when most steampunk is set), therefore the leaders of industry uniting with fair values to carry the banner of the people into a future supposedly benefitting both.

Adressing the concept as a whole, it sounds much more dieselpunk than steampunk, then again steampunk has never been defined by an epitomistic work.

None of your single locales are particularly interesting by themselves, although evaluating from but a phrase is difficult. I sincerely hope they aren't laid out as such because you intend on railroading your players into them. You should focus on writing a wider world before creating individual locations within it. Rule of cool sightseeing does not a appreciable world make.

I'm working on a sort of pseudo Force for my space magic. I want it to be based on outlooks or philosophies on life rather than being good or evil, how exactly would I go about doing this or articulating it in a satisfactory manner?

Pick up a copy of The Complete Works of Plato start reading.

How the fuck can they get them back to the middle ages without finishing the job

Never claimed originality. The Creation Story is ripped straight from the Enuma Elish. Most of my world is compiled of stolen ideas and some ideas of my own. It's to facilitate my games, I have no intention of publishing, so who gives a fuck?

Directly confronting mankind drains the powers of the Gods. Hence the Gods have decided to use intermediearies (dragons for instance) but humanity either bands together at the last second, or convince the other side to join them.

Plus since the Gods plan to reset creation anyway, they don’t really want the demons to win either, they just want a status quo for a few millennia while they build themselves up.

Well, there are various ideologies at play. Monarchism is seen as the default, and most powers are monarchs.

There’s a Prussian style absolute monarch that owns most of the continent, with a Russia styled nation that’s mostly tundra with some puppet buffer nations.

The British Nation is a parliamentary monarchy, with Kings for certain regions (ala Scotland and Wales) with an Emporer leading the nation as a whole. The colonies have more varied governments but pledge loyalty to the Emporer. They also purported some differently cultured islands nearby, since the Prussian analogue cant into navy.

And the rest of the world includes a Japanese styled island chain that’s westernizing and industrializing, and various monarchs in exile in their colonies that are loosely aligned (called the council of kings).

That’s mostly window dressing though, since as I said I want it mainly in the capital city and nearby locales.

As for other ideologies, there are a democratic flavored Illuminati that are pushing for democracy from the inside, to avoid the knee jerk reaction a revolution would entail, but enjoy making themselves out to be boogeymen.

The fascists are your usual harking back to the good old days, decrying how weak the current ways are, so they can seize power for themselves.

The tech is somewhere between 1890’s and 1920’s, but with a steampunk coat on it.

The locales sound a lot less impressive when listed like that compared to in my head. Each one is supposed to have a hook, like the train is on the move, and play out like the train segment in uncharted 2.

user cares. user is a hard man who does hard research. user is better than you. user could be published. user would be universally praised. user is too good for that.

you're confusing totalirian and authoritarian
both fascism and monarchy are authoritarian, and there's nothing wrong with that (as long as leader is decent or can be kept in check)

but monarchy need not and in fact rarely was totalitarian

There were often checks of a monarchs power, even without parliaments. It’s how feudalism works. Hence there was a difference between an a feudal monarch and an absolute monarch.

As monarchs usually weren’t high off their own egos like fascists are.

Sun King was high off his own ego and wasn't that bad
Fascist is as likely to be idea-driven zealot as to be a power-tripping overlord, and zealot may be humble ascetic - look at many church hierarchs, who were ascetics but quite fascistic

I need some good sources about cool underground realms. It may be RPG modules, video games, books, movies, just simple artworks.

Just not Dark Elf novels thankyouverymuch.

I'm pretty much out of ideas.

I can’t think of many humble dictators or fascists.

I’m also talking about the kind of thinking that made the axis powers think that declaring war on everyone at once was a good idea, they bought into their own propaganda.
I can throw out setting ideas.

That's probably better asked in the PDF Share Thread or in a thread of your own.

Dwarf Fortress

Agartha/Conspiracy Theories about a Hollow Earth

Minecraft(?)

Grim Dawn has a small section called "The Mountain Deeps" which is about a strange world inside the earth.

There's the classic novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth"

>Why do people in your world travel?
To get off Earth, which is the most boring place in the system, or for work, or explore and research uncharted space.
>What are the common methods of transportation? And are they yet commercialised?
Private starships have been commonplace for the better part of a millennium, but it's still something of an achievement to get one. A lot of people don't leave the planet where they were born. There are public ferries, but they're strictly short-range. Private long-range ferries are exorbitantly expensive. Most people just get passage on a freelance ship.
>Is there such a thing as culture clash?
For alien races, yes.
>How do people get around the language barriers?
They either learn to speak/comprehend other languages or get a translating aid, either magical or mechanical. The former is more expensive, but let's you understand and speak other languages easily.
>Describe a well-travelled route
From Jupiter to practically every other planet. Jupiter is notorious for its bleed mines, which while dangerous, produce unique and valuable resources vital to some technology. Jupiter is technically an Earth colony, but since it's so large and mainly untamed, it's easy as fuck to sneak in past orbital security if you've got the right shielding and smuggle something out, which a lot of people do, if they don't meet for a deal on one of the bajillion moons. Ironically, this means that official trade routes are rarely attacked by pirates and marauders. Criminals just buy some precious materials or alternate reality drugs on the DL and smuggle them to various black markets instead of raiding well-protected UN routes.

If you're into weird stuff, Veins of the Earth is great for ideas.

If you go by the EU, the Force is based on a ton of different philosophies. All you have to do is make the space magic and then look at the ways people would see it.

Arx Fatalis is pretty neat, despite the god-awful writing.
Also, while not an underground realm, I strongly recommend reading Nonstop by Brian Aldiss. It's a sci-fi and and not set under ground, but it does actually capture the feeling of entire new civilization rising in the confounded, claustrophobic space and embracing such space as the actual limitation of the possible world incredibly well.
For the same reason, I can also somewhat recommend the Ray Bradbury's short story Jack In the Box.

thanks, i'll check those out

also I made a thread to aggregate more stuff on the subject

Believable/10.
Not much else to say. Good starting point at least.

>Why do people in your world travel?
Mostly for trade, allthough as a result of the increase in huge commercial plantations owned by rich nobles and worked on by their slaves alot of impoverished farmers have sold off their small strips of land and relocated to the nearest urban center. In the most populated regions these former peasant families often find themselves in one of the many great slums that has emerged which are a hotbead for criminal activities as local gangs pretty much run the show there as the cities administrator are either unwilling to deal with the problem or incapable of it.
However, most people don't travel farther in their life than to perhaps the closest city.

>What are the common methods of transportation? And are they yet commercialised?
The most common method would be walking or travelling by wagon, allthough alot of slew of naval transportation is availible to the ones who can afford passage.
>Is there such a thing as culture clash?
It is. A myriad of cultures exists within the Empire of the Tetrarchy alone, which leads to obvious friction in the metropolises which is only exacerbated by the influx of rural people. Luckily pogroms happen only rarely and are mostly isolated to followers of the Cult of Gullveig.

>How do people get around the language barriers?
By the usage of Silent Trade and similarly processes. There are also a couple of Lingua Francas such as tyranian in the eastern half of the Empire.

>Describe a well-travelled route:

The city of Gastram have grown immensly wealthy, enough to rival the imperial capital of Nyhem, by being the end-destination of the long trade road that brings zalaian goods to the Middle Sea through the Benga Desert. No civilised power know where it begins because it stretches far into the unknown parts of the dark continent of Zalai. What is known however is that control of it is of central importance to the region's various realms and kingdoms. Many bloody wars have been fought over it. The Empire of the Tetrarchy is however content with controlling the stretch that lays between the Benga Desert and Gastram. The nomads of that great and inhospitable desert are payed to safeguard the passage from the Desert's end to the Oasis city of Ödsliga Vomm, which is located in the middle of the desert.

The goods that are traded along the road are many and varied, but the most significant ones that the Empire imports are gold, ivory and precious gems. The most important exports are medicinal herbs, timber, silver, iron and weaponry.

Some enterprising gastramite traders who aren't afraid of going outside the law have also dabbled in the export of grain. This is however severly punished if discovered as all grain produced in the extremely fertile province in which Gastram is located is earmarked for other imperial province who rely on it for their sustenance.

Saw an interesting map of the Roman empire, decided it looked neat. So this is a redo of another map I've shared before, this time with a new style.

How does it look?

*other imperial provinces.

This is mostly a sort of rudimentary wellfair system designed to alleviate the food need of the urban poor and keep them docile. Food riots are not an uncommon occurence whenever a grain shipment is delayed.

Conveys almost no information

Are those supposed to be mountain ranges or many standalone mountains in a line?

Ranges. Pic is the original map I saw and wanted to emulate.

But that conveys information because we know the geography. All you've done is recoloured the countries and removed any useful info. The style is fine, extrapolating the crayon colors from an otherwise monochrome musk is where it goes bad.

Do it again but make countries in monochrome and use the red for trade; or some other single, non geographic metric about your world, but one that's interesting and relevant, like original spread of the not!Elf empire or the original not!zombie outbreak that ended civilization. Whatever is interesting and impactful. Or leave the red out.

Like this?

When you make something original for a setting - like a fancy race or a conlang or something trivial like alphabet - do you only use it in that setting, or you also re-use it in other settings you make? Or that's cheating?

There is no such thing as cheating, because that would imply the existence of rules. Generally, I will reuse something if I would end up fully recreating it, but there are very few cases where I would want precisely the same thing as I’ve already done. After all, why would I copy myself, when I do this specifically because I enjoy being creative?

desaturate maybe

Rephrasing a post:

Is there a good guide to hex travel?

Pre-steam, medieval. I need a high level comparison with upstream travel, downstream travel, horse, carriage, walking, marching etc.

mph or kph is fine, my map is set to 1 hex = 1 day walking on a road (20mi)

I just don't want to have to look up marching speed, then boat speed, then rowing up a river, then being towed up a river, then rate of flow of the river, then "well what if we rode the donkeys up the river without the boat".

So what already exists for travel and fantasy games?

www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

This is what I used for my hex map game. I can't testify to it's accuracy.

I don't see anything about travel rate, although I have an idea of how many furries are in my town now!

Actually that just raises a question: in a town of 4000 with a temple and a church (separate dieties), how many clergy would each have?