/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

I've been collecting questions from threads into one file, thought it might be helpful to someone. If you guys want to contribute some more general starter questions I could set up a more professional looking questionnaire.

You might want to fix the impossible question.

ooo aaah what's that user you also made a worldbuilding/campaign planning/character developing workbook? so cool

For reals tho let me know if you guys have any suggestions, can do a next version or add some pages. Was asked to add a magic system planning page but honestly I don't know what to put on a page like that. Any ideas?

I literally barely read them, so if you can be more specific that'd help.

My goal at this stage was just archiving the questions before they get lost, but I would love to get a nice list of useful prompts and add them to the worldbuilding workbook I made.

Pretty good. The Magic Consortium thing raises a few questions. Like, wouldn't governments sponsor the hell out of all the apostate mages in order to secure their own magical powerbase?

>What is the 4th most powerful military force in your setting?
The Elven Kingdom in Wyoming
>What is its main focus or philosophy?
Just trying to keep the humans war with the ferals outside of their territory, which basically means telling human clans to fuck off and getting into skirmishes with feral tribes pushing too far into the former state
>What limits its growth or prevents it from reaching the Number 1 position?
Lack of zerg rush-tier numbers the feral tribes have and lack of the large concentration of firearms both the human clans have

If it came down to all out war they could probably hold their own against the small human clan in a stalemate but would get stomped by either the feral's or the larger human clan; though they're on non-hostile, albeit shaky, terms with the human clans

Anything that goes more in-depth than "there's just airships man ain't that cool?" gets my approval. Which is to say, I like that you put thought into different models of airships, as well as how and why they are being built differently.

What is a "Telluran Airship"? Are there non-Telluran Airships being made outside of Alyssia?
Are the bound air elementals a danger to the crew on the ship if, say, whatever binds them is destroyed during a battle?

They do. The biggest of those are in Oslaria, known as the Silver Council. It operates much the same as the Consortium, but works for a specific state than as an international organization.

>Do you start with an objective for your settings (gaming/writing/pleasure) or do you determine a use for a setting once you've begun working on it?
My main setting is a clusterfuck of both, because it grew out of games of pretend when I was seven and got overhauled like fifty billion times.

But as for "spin-off" settings from the mainline -- well, the eventual purpose is always nominally Veeky Forums shit. However, in reality I start with some sort of idea that hooks me, and work around that. (e.g. this wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey_Amazons, or a vending machine for gods). I have no idea how well it works, because I have never used these for Veeky Forums shit.

>Setting questions
In my most recent overhaul I decided to ignore geopolitics completely, because I went way too far with it. Now I want everything to feel fantastic and vague -- so, the Sawas will still be endlessly squabbling among themselves, but I won't detail the shenanigans of each individual city.

So that means I have no idea who has the fourth most powerful military. I'll pick a weak-ish one: the Black Confederates.

They worship the dark side of the stars, and it permeates their warfare. Commanders call down the shadows of shooting stars to smite their enemies. Each house's 'little guard' wears a mirrored star with a certain number of points, which tells their family demons not to slay them. Musketeers pray to the stomach of the dancing bear constellation to keep their souls from burning out, and they drink a holy "white wine" to fill their stomachs with fire.

Their limits are inner squabbling, and, alternately, hamstringing from the Empress, who wishes to increase central control. Also, all the administration is either handled locally (i.e. by families who play favourites) or by bureaucrats (who are notoriously low-paid, and accept any bribe). Note: all this paragraph is old, and will probably be discarded.

Thank you for reading this Wall of Autism. Pic semi related.

>Do you start with an objective for your settings (gaming/writing/pleasure) or do you determine a use for a setting once you've begun working on it?
Not that is specific to any world. I treat them as thought exercises but the goal is that they could be used as a setting for a novel, pnp game/other game, and/or provide interesting concepts to be integrated into other settings.

I can't answer the "Setting" question because I don't have any settings that have structural military forces that are really comparable in that manner.

The main fantasy has Kingdoms where conflicts are solved through "Knightly Contests" and the non-human races tend to avoid war on principle. The Cyberpunk one is too granular in military forces due to a focus on Corporate Subsidies funding all levels of government. My main weird modern setting is unconcerned with global politics and focuses on local weirdness. All my other setting aren't developed enough for a 4th most powerful military.

Are you attempting to make a Hard Sci-Fi world? Depending on what you are building and thematically what you are looking for out of it the Suns don't have to actually follow real world physics so long as you establish their function and are consistent with it.

Such as having the sun be the eye of some benevolent god and a number of moons which are the eyes of its siblings which periodically will open and the current sun will close allows for you to do all kinds of crazy stuff and doesn't require real world physics.

Do you want a science explanation or do you want a fantasy explanation? Because you can choose to do a lot with either.

Science could be a convergent universe based on the notion that black holes are pinholes between other universes in the multiverse. Or having some variety of time bubble phenomena. Magic could be from a god/wizard/eldritch abomination did it to the setting being a planar purgatory or limbo of sorts. Or you could make it a trash planet. Or actually a giant amusement park that for X and/or Y reasons stopped being a vacation destination hundreds of years ago and something (magic returning to the world, cosmic rays, w/e) caused there to be powers in the world and cultures have developed from what was the themes of this massive theme park.

How big would a harpy eagle have to grow to be able to carry off a human, or at least a chimpanzee?

Telurran airships refer to the airships made in the world of Telurra, my setting. I might add more kinds of airships in the future as I start exploring more aspects of the world.
Normally, the air elementals aren't much of a problem for the crew. If the wards are destroyed, they will pose a threat. An unleashed air elemental will blow and whip around like a hurricane, looking for a way out until it eventually escapes. Ship mages will try to subdue the elementals if they can.

Well, harpy eagles can grow up to 20 lbs, and can carry off sloths and small monkeys up to 17 lbs according to the San Diego Zoo. Bonobos can be as small as 75 lbs, chimps 88 lbs, and they can reach nearly 140 lbs total.

Strength, however, isn't linear. I don't know what sort of math you'd need to calculate that.

I once tried to make a homebrew setting to run Legend of Zelda games, and I made this map as part of it.

Anyone else go to such autistic lengths for some wbg project?

Wow, that looks great user. I don't think I'd be able to pour that much effort into an intellectual property that wasn't my own, personally.
>North Hyrule Field
>further south than most of regular ol' Hyrule Field

It sounded better than "Cold As Balls" Hyrule.

>worldspinner about to start deleting maps now if you don't have a membership.
this must be what the PCs feel like when I threaten to kill the NPCs they've grown attached to.

There also isn't any compass orientation on the map. And given that east used to be the top of maps, it logically follows that could be north of the rest of the field.

>east used to be the top of maps
What the fuck? Seriously?

Yeah. North being the top was only codified in the last few hundred years. Egypt used East as the top due to sunrise being East. And I'm pretty sure that through the Age of Exploration many maps were as such. West was the least common orientation, I believe.

Oh, I thought you meant in Zelda. I could have sworn they were North-top, so you understand my confusion. I get what you meant now.

That is fair confusion. Yeah, I was just talking about maps in general. So it isn't unreasonable that a map someone made of Hyrule would be East-at-Top. T and O maps, for example, have Europe in the bottom left and Africa in the bottom Right and Asia is the top. Just one possible explanation for having North on the left of the map.

Well, it was a neat idea. But no, I made the map North-justified.

I wish I could run it again, but we had a That Guy who ruined the whole atmosphere.

>autistic lengths
>wbg project
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hmmm

I had great plans for a space opera campaign which I've long since abandoned. Might return to it some time in the future, who knows

This is because the board fun police chased all the actually creative people out.

I drew this for a world builder last thread and he asked me to do some adjustments.

So if you're here, here you go, full sleeve mail and a scarf.

If somebody wants me to draw them an ethnogram or a "typical X" or maybe a depiction of a god in their setting or whatever, feel free to shoot a request my way

For some reason I wanna request, but at the same time I don't, its not like you're a bad artist, but something inside me tells me not to.

>two suns
increases chance of galaxy-saving heroes and galaxy-dooming heroes being born on the planet, that's for sure

>wonky shadow-play
namely, when one sun eclipses the other, the sky would go darker and it would become tad colder. if you make suns orbit each other slowly enough for eclipses last sufficient amount of time, it could seriously affect weather

>Do you start with an objective for your settings (gaming/writing/pleasure) or do you determine a use for a setting once you've begun working on it?
Setting itself always comes first. It did when I homebrewed shitty setting for my shitty homebrew RPGs I tormented my friends with, it does now when I no longer have anyone to play with and homebrew for fun and autism.

>What is the 4th most powerful military force in your setting?
Whole setting is too large and has plenty of powerful countries, but we focus on a smaller, "not!Europe" bit, then that oughta be Oressai
>What is its main focus or philosophy?
They are warlike and honorable, sword is a sacred symbol to them, and they are quite a bit HFA
>What limits its growth or prevents it from reaching the Number 1 position?
They are too warlike and absorbed by their role as "protectors of humanity" to focus on growth. They in constant war with nearby aggressive kingdom of Ogres, various goblin hordes, as well as periodically attacking nearby elves. Its a testament to their fighting prowess and their superb swordsmithing that they remain as powerful as they are.

If you have multiple moons you'll have to do some thinking about how that will change the length of the months.

If I recall correctly, a system where the planet orbits one sun which itself orbits the other would also work. Sort of like a moon of Jupiter, except instead of being Jupiter and a moon, it's a second star and a planet. Can't say I know how it would affect things, though.

That said, gravitational mechanics with more than two bodies are notoriously difficult to solve.

Literally look at it for five seconds user. The "Impossible" question is just a black rectangle.

Oh, duh. Sorry I guess that is obvious.

Wish me luck, I'm going on name-generating spree to name most places in my setting, 'cos I'm tired of namelessness.

>muh ebin """original""" world
>muh """lore"""
Cancer and faggotry. You all realize no one will care, right? Why don't you go write a book so no one can give a fuck about that. This is the traditional GAMES board and shoving your fursonas and OCs into some oh so original little world isn't a game. Just use a real setting made by people who actually know what they're doing and shut the fuck up

you do realize we get people like you like every week or so? nice try, but nobody cares anymore

Epic shitpost. Nice job, faggot. Here, have a (you).

:0 you speaking from experience? Did your mango web comic not get the attending it deserved after you didn't even try?

Til only some people are qualified to world build. Did they go to world building school?

Thanks man, looks great. Would it be too much to ask for a coloring? If you don't want to that's fine, I still super appreciate what you've done here. Hopefully you didn't take my request for some adjustments to be ungratefulness. I'm unironically going to print this out. Thanks again!

I might colour it in the coming days depending on if I get bored, but no promises. You can give me the colours you want though

I'm going to trust your artistic eye here when it comes to stuff like leather and metal, but for the other colors just a simple palette of white, black and gold/yellow would look nice. So a white skirt-piece, the cloak obviously having the same colours as the flag, metal pieces looking like metal, and so forth. But feel free to make adjustments and play with it however you want to.

could a marshland support a city like a river or lake would? lots of water in the soil would mean you could dig lots of wells and stuff, right? or purify bog-water somehow?

>working on a hand-drawn map
>hand-drawn is nice, but can't place all the city/country/region/geography names without cluttering up everything
>plus would be nice to see the map without country borders
>plus there's a system of tunnels underground, drawn on separate sheet, which isn't very convenient

is it way too autistic to have several sheets of transparent plastic with various names and borders drawn on it, to put over purely geographic map?

A river doesn't support a town so much through water and more through infrastructure. The bog does the opposite, it hinders traffic and thus makes the city unlikely to hold on to its citizens. Also, wells work better outside of bogs and marshes because sturdy ground doesn't collapse when you drill through to the aquifer. Purifying bog water is going to be a pain in the ass since you'll have to filter, boil and treat water and that won't result in the tastiest beverage.

You need a good reason to have a city in a bog, and a better one for why it wasn't dried up since that's pretty basic technology.

The city lies on a border of a marshland and highland.
Highlanders are territorial nomads, they wouldn't suffer a city being built on their lands, but they come to the city to sell sheep wool, meat and other stuff, and to buy weapons and various commodities.

Drying the bog is unfeasible, since technological level is kinda low (bronze age), and the land is rich in springs, plus trickle of water from the highlands.

Then sure, you've squeezed in all requirements for settlements not to be silly. It is still questionable why they would concentrate into one town considering tht the highlands are surely inhabited continuously and so a number of smaller towns would be more suitable to their trade, and that a bog doesn't allow for much agriculture so sustaining a high density settlement becomes difficult, and bronze level tech in general already makes agriculture less effective and sparser living more probable.

If you'd just put a river in it would be so much easier.

its not so much a city, as a town, really. not that big of a population. fishing in the marshes, buying lamb meat from shepherds and some grain from traveling merchants should be enough.
I just don't want a river there. I want it to be a shitty place in the middle of nowhere. Dull windswept highlands to one side, plain stinky swampland to the other.

If it's a town and you've got clean water available, put the suckers on stilts or rocks and it's no problem. The big problems only come in once you go into the thousands with the pop

Mate, I think you're looking for forces in this scenario, not energies. For example, KE = 0.5mv^2, which involves mass, and so does gravitational potential energy, being GPE = mgh.
If you're going for a physics grounding (using stuff like you described), forces would work better.

For this one, that is.

Holy shit, I remember you

>Holy shit, I remember you
Oh hi!

Superfag here,
I need some B-list villains to pull out via side plots and general superheroness.

Welp, my map turned out to be too non-bright to look good on photo.
While I decide how to best tackle photoing it, rate my autism.

Looks fine from what I can see, which isn't saying much at all. I can appreciate any level of autism capable of producing a product such as that.
This is a barbaric suggestion, but maybe take a close-up picture of each segment and stitch them together afterward with Paint or Photoshop?

...

looks great. Very Glorantha. Tell me bout the world.

This is a good idea.

i think long exposure would work fine if u could figure out how to do that

tape them together on the back then tape the top 4 to the wall, set up ur camera on a table with a long exposure on a low iso or something

thanks

So, northernmost continent, Firsthome is the hottest, with equator being a bit to the north of map edge.
It was once ruled by an ancient and advanced race, which got almost completely wiped out by then young humans. Humans' empire, which was very evil, was in turn literally glassed by god of fire. The god is gone because humans sacrificed three millions slaves and summoned one of the most powerful demon lords in existence, who knocked the god out for several centuries. The resulting desert is now ruled by undead.

Southeast continent, Dol Gar, is where humans fled after their first empire was glassed. It has some pretty old kingdoms. Dominant power is islands-based Golden Empire, which is kind of naval ancient Persia mixed with Byzantia.
Continent is full of relics of the giants, who apparently ruled the world many millenia ago. Greatest relic is the Great Aqueduct - a hundred meter tall, twenty meters wide, several hundred miles long magical aqueduct that pulls the water from the sea deep into continent (i.e. upland).
The continent is dominated by massive marshland, inhabited by another ancient race, which is little known about. Over centuries, humans (and ogres, lionfolk and dwarfs) have been trying to contain it, managed to reduce it a bit, but now its spreading again.

Southwestern continent used to house a massive alliance of elves and dwarfs, centred around great mountains. Until several centuries ago a cataclysm that shook the entire world shattered the mountains, annihilated the several greatest dwarven kingdoms, crippled the elves, and ended the alliance. The mountains became a place of horrors and dwarfs invited humans, who started to settle to the south and west of the mountains.
Far to the south of the mountains lies an enormous and mysterious forest, and between it and mountains lies a powerful human empire.
Western steppes are barren and uncharted, and orcs are streaming from somewhere beyond western map border to attack all.

yeah, I tried auto-level myself, but it messes colors up too much

I'll try that

I got no idea how to do that. I'm not even sure my camera is capable of that.

photoshop sounds like a considerably better, easier, and more convenient option but...

does your camera have a Manual mode? also, in settings, can you change the ISO?

>does your camera have a Manual mode? also, in settings, can you change the ISO?
hm, it has, I can
what next?

so i'm not even close to being an amateur photographer, but i'll try and explain the basics i learned taking one photo class in high school and then taking my camera on vacation

ISO has to do with sensitivity to light; low settings (100-250) require high levels of light but give you the best detail. high settings (800-1600) don't need much light at all, but give you low detail and more digital noise

in manual mode, setting your exposure to 1 second might even be enough to make your image good--indoor lighting is a LOT less bright than outdoor lighting, so it's common to do long exposures even in "well-lit" rooms. just take a few pictures.

p.s. if there's too much light coming in at 1 second exposure, change your aperture (the opening of your lens). a NARROW APERTURE = LESS LIGHT. to do narrow aperture, do a higher number

also i got too excited about explaining things and forgot to tell you what to do in clear terms:

A) set shutter speed to 1 second. take photo.
A and 1/2) if it's out of focus, reset your focus

B) if photo too dark, increase duration of shutter speed. if too bright, narrow aperture (make aperture a higher number). take photo.

C) if too dark, increase duration again. if too bright, reduce shutter speed.

I'll try that some other time.
So far it seems that whole map is to large for a single photo anyway.
So I decided to go a lazy-ass route and post it in bits

So, here's the bottom left corner, with imaginatively named Endless Plains dominating right half of the map.
In the top middle lies the mountains that once were the heart of elven-dwarven alliance, now shattered and crawling with monsters. Dwarfs still dwell in their western part, while elves live to the north.
To the south of the mountains lies still-nameless human empire, while to the west lies a bunch of kingdoms, mainly human, though there are several lionfolk, dwarf and ogre ones, plus one elven forest. Of note is region called Hundred Kingdoms, where borders change every few months.
To the south lies the Greatwood, and some more small kingdoms. Of note is Ussur Steppe - inhabited by what is a cross between ancient slavs, vikings and celts, they are kinda divided, but quick to band against external enemies.

Bottom right corner.

Of note here are the Great Aqueduct and the literal river of blood in the east (flowing from the gigantic split skull of the demon lord of war).
This continent is inhabited by mostly humans, ogres and lionfolk (plus whatever horrors lurk the great swamp). Dwarfs live in the south, a an elven kingdom lies in the east, near the start of the blood river.

The original human empire, that was glassed by God of Fire a millennium ago. Glass mostly shattered back into sand, aside from a few remaining sheets.
The God was almost killed in the process, and sparks of his divine fire ended up scattered in the desert. The undead that dwell in the desert are animated by them.
South-eastern part of the continent features weird tall steep flat-topped mountains/plateus.

Of note here are tiny island to the left of word =CONTINENT=. which is the home of first human empire's capital, the city that survived the glassing of the continent and is directly responsible for a god being knock out cold for hundreds of years, Dragon Isles that are obviously full of dragons, and source of major pain in the ass for the Golden Empire, and the Sandstorm Gates. One in a while a titanic sandstorm comes through them, blowing south, colliding with tempestous ocean winds, turning west, until it hits the mountains, turning north-east until it hits itself, and so becoming a spiral, that ends in the Churning Sands, from which a sand river flows northwards.
Also could be noted Kraken Island which is the world's biggest pirate haven, and the nameless mountainous island, which houses a huge underground gate and serves as neutral ground for underworld lords, and a harbour for their fleets.

and the last, least complete bit is top left.
it houses a few minor kingdoms, mainly lionfolk and minotaur, some lizardfolk and one of the last enclaves of the race humans wiped out.
Plus a bunch of islands with basically no backstory yet. This is most incomplete part of map.
That thick blue line near the row of islands is supposed to be kinda like Marianna trench.

The empty bit will most likely house a huge island ruled over by a dragon demigod.
So this is it.
Hope this is autistic enough.

crap, forgot image

this is the kind of weird anthropoligcally minded shit I like to see in these threads

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Er sorry I forgot to write- There's no way to do this without better photos, literally take good straight photos that are crisp and high res if you want anyone to see this thing. What camera are you using? Use the one on your phone, it should be better than this. If not, go get a scanner.

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/LeftBeyond

I DID THE THING

you did the thing!

I remember being with the last thread

Ok /wbg/ I accidentally made one civilization pretty much correct about how the world works (magically speaking)

What are some of the fundamental tenets and beliefs of different religions in your setting?

so no mention of that weird God as a memetic parasite theory that was treated like it was an established fact towards the end?

How would you do 3D map of underground?

On a flat piece of paper? Impossible.
Best you can do is a top-down traditional map but color-code the caverns/major tunnels in order to convey depth, or if the area you're covering is a small enough area in vertical terms, you can do a cross-section.
For extra work but also extra payoff, you can do both at the same time.

The Arcane Consortium makes sense to me, but you should show how each discipline in taught differently if the players ask or when it comes up in the game. Since little details like that can be fun.

The Red mages are my favorite aspect because I could have a lot of fun playing as one or hiding from them .

My biggest question is why Paladins Clerics & Warlocks seem to be treated the same as the other Arcane classes. Traditionaly the beings that Warlocks make pacts with are kinda evil & tricky and Gods could be seen as trustworthy beings than man most follow. From what I read it sounds like the government and mages both use the power of the godly creatures like tools or something kinda similar.

I haven't read about your airships yet or any other lore.

I want to make a comfy weeb-shit setting that mimics all the Final Fantasy-style watercolor-looking games that my players love so much. Besides Human, Witch, and Nekko/Kitsune what races do I need to get the vibe right?

I read over the airships and I do like the fact that there are different styles based on nations. It gives you something you can identify with and a sense of national pride as a character within your world. Overall I get the sense that the world is advanced, and Civilized. But there is still room for conflict

tabaxi with a housecat on his shoulder

he is snow leopard fur she's a cat so whatever

donjon nigger

also good luck

my question is why wouldn't they just move back away from the bog until they are on the edge of the bog and the edge of the nomad territory. surely the nomads aren't going to give a shit about walking a tiny bit further to trade their shit.

or build a third castle, when it burns down, falls over and then sinks into the swamp, build another one. that one will stay up.

Tiny frog-people.

did you try CTRL+T instead of liquefy? hold down ctrl and grab the corner or side handles.

I mean, kind of by definition any off perpendicular will be some combination of sheer and rotation, and putting rectangular things into isometric or other 3D planes is the main thing I use it for, but it's quite handy for reversing the process as well.

There are a lot of ways to slice the apple here, but pic related is a guesstimate. If I were doing it seriously I'd put a layer up with horizontal and vertical stripes approximately where I want the sides to be, since unwarping can be hard to judge sometimes. Once it's more or less back to rectangle you can do all kinds of minor adjustments, like putting the individual sheets back to scale (although it looks like OP is not using standard paper in the first place)

dude.

1. get some decent supplies
2. nothing will EVER fix the fact that all your work lacks contrast. it's probably the worst starting point you can possibly have.
3. by decent supplies I mean smooth watercolor paper, and inking pen and a better pencil while you're at it

once you're inking the lines consistently they will photograph better, you can actually light the room without the photo turning all white, and everything will be more consistent page to page and within coasts.

you're putting 11,000 hours into this, you might as well drop 15 burgers for some decent drawfag shit.

Are those a thing? Doesn't look loli-enough.

isometri..

>Impossible
oh I'm sorry, he's right it's impossible. my bad.

but a REAL world builder would foamcore the entire complex

holy fuck that's adorable

>isometri..

crap, I didn't think of that, though I'm not sure it would be enough...

>but a REAL world builder would foamcore the entire complex
problem is the "entire complex" in question is a continent that is as deep as it is wide and choke-full of caverns and tunnels