/wbg/ World Building General

I mean I know that, I just meant I didn't want to have it be a highly enclosed world like castlevania is, and I'm trying to figure out a good way to reconcile the cosmic indifferentism of Bloodborne with the traditional satanic/gothic evil of Ravenloft.

Interesting, are you using clock mechanisms for macine entrails?

Asked in a previous thread, but didn’t get an answer. If a world has two moons and one of them gets destroyed, how it will affect the planet? Will the water mass, like oceans, on the planet shift? And what are others possible consequences?

What sort of software do you guys use for world building? I've used Hexographer, but I had found it lacking. I'm awful at drawing, but in the past I've had some success just using MS Paint.

Meteors fall everywhere, rotation and sea currents fucked beyond repair, death, destruction, hotdogs living with hamburgers in peace, more than half the population dies, and about a billion other things go wrong.

i'm a semi experienced DM who always runs homebrew

Problem is , i never do worldbuilding ahead of time. what should i do to curb this bad habit

>I'm trying to figure out a good way to reconcile the cosmic indifferentism of Bloodborne with the traditional satanic/gothic evil of Ravenloft.
Not sure there's much to reconcile. Both assume that you are but a cog in an eternal machine, yes? A plaything for the dark powers that rule the earth.

Maybe I was mixed up but I thought that the powers that be in bloodborne were cthonian or otherwise so far beyond us as to be at least somewhat indifferent.

Never played it myself. I just know it's Cthulhu-like, which can be anything from indifference to perverse fascination (at least in Narlthotep's case). So, Dark Powers, Elder Gods, whatever. It's still "you don't matter", the game.

I'd like to say somewhere in canada, but im not sure

>God of Evil/monsters made all the monsters by fucking things
>fucked a pig to make orcs
>Jacked off in a swamp to make trolls
>took all the most loathsome parts of all the beasts and filled it's belly with fire to make the first dragon- the only thing he wanted to cuddle up to is a gruesome monster

Is this too magical realm?

Nah, sounds Greek to me.

Orcs: savage, lawless, and always searching for the next fight, they are not without compassion, often taking lovers of every non elven race [differences from volo's orcs: +2str, +1con, relentless endurance, orcish strength (cannot use light or finnesse weapons, can use two handed weapons as versatile weapons but the die size goes down when used one handed {2d6 becomes 1d2, 1d12 becomes 1d10, etc},and can lift weight as if they were large), menacing, darkvision], their offspring are just as powerful in body as they are, but lack the size that their fullblooded parents have (same as PHB)

how are my orcs

It's actually fairly in-line with a lot of creation myths, actually. I mean, if Greek mythology can get away with a goddess being born from the sperm spilling from another god's castrated balls, I think your setting can handle the god of evil being a /d/eity.

Reposting. Here's my first attempt at making a map for the game I run. I hated every step of creating it and nothing went right. Please tell me what you think of it.

It's a strip of land roughly the size of europe. It's supposed to be part of a larger, undiscovered continent.

thewhitecrayon.deviantart.com/art/TSMB-The-GIMP-Edition-151774168

>What challenges are facing your world?

So, politically, the world just had its version of World War I about five years ago, which, in addition to a similar casualty rate, saw the reigning world superpower lose. The victors, an alliance of smaller nations who barely managed to eke out their victory, are having trouble maintaining the integrity of both their newly-acquired territory--lands and colonies ceded by the former empire as reparation--and their alliance itself. The war upended the global order, and with so many new power vacuums, old rivalries are surfacing, new partnerships are forming, and lesser powers are seeking to become greater.

The world is now up for grabs, and anything which will provide an edge is sought with veracity. To this end, nations, kingdoms, and others send expeditions into the dark, forgotten corners of the world, seeking riches and legendary artifacts. It's only a matter of time before the next global conflict breaks out, and every advantage counts.

And all this is before the titanic Golems start showing up and wrecking shit.

Depends on the moons and the planet. If Earth lost the moon, our seasons would become more severe (the moon stabilises our wobble), our tides would disappear and we'd gain a temporary ring which would cause meteorite storms and block out the stars with its brightness. However, two moons complicate things. If the moons are at the same distance, then they'd have to move opposite each other to be stable. This configuration is fairly redundant and so the loss of the extra moon would only reduce the frequency of the tides and increase their amplitude, outside of the ring formation stuff which itself would be reduced thanks to the remaining moon's ability to help garbage collect and keep the ring falling into the Earth's Roche limit like how Saturn's shepherd moons do it. If the moons are not at the same distance, then the dynamics change and will depend on their density. Since the moon itself is actually far enough to be drifting off, I'll only consider moons closer than it. Generally speaking, two objects can orbit freely around a given mass if they're more than ~1.5 Hill sphere radii apart, this opens up a whole load of possible orbits including out-of-plane. If the moon is out of plane, it's removal would actually be beneficial as it would have been destabilising the Earth, although the debris would still be nasty - perhaps worse given more of it would be in the Earth's Roche limit. In plane, the moon would have a higher frequency effect on tides over the mellow frequency effect of the further one. I doubt its loss would have much effect there as only organisms relying on the high frequency tides would suffer, all others could easily adapt.

That post became longer than I thought it would. Hopefully it's accurate and of some use.

> Absolutely. Three major ones in my settings
Three is not much. These are the major human ethnicity I have in my setting (I'm naming them so I can count):

> Vothian
> Thoryan
> Aldarakian
> Gyrian
> Hiirian
> Mist Islanders
> Andarians
> Half-bloods from Garoanadar
> Karooans
> Free-folk / Baradians
> Peryans
> Southern and Northern Lournians

This is excluding realms no one cares about like Teodar, Nalashia and Baerl Tir, as well as ignoring the almost extinct ethnicity like the true Garoanadarians, the Pyrofolk or the original Swyzanians from the Swyzank Empire.

Yeah, I do focus my setting on humans. Always liked humans on fantasy settings.

can i have a sword and sorcery setting with elves and dwarves?

Thanks a lot, it was really useful

You know Mr. Wizard, I don't mind you dropping in. I'm even fine with you having a beer or two. But for the love of crap please don't leave the potato chips spill on the floor.

>But for the love of crap please don't leave the potato chips spill on the floor.
Fucking potato chip spilling wizards. They're ruining wizardry.

>what challenges are facing your world in the present?
A demonic invasion which the people are just starting to heal from.

Well, it goes down from three major ones to actually being seven -- [/spoiler] and one technically has a subdivision that are dragons.[/spoiler] And given that they've been colonizing the New World, there'll be several more given time enough for ethnicity to emerge among those new states. And for a race that originally all stems from the descendants of not-Atlantis, I reckon it's more than fair.

I like humans decently enough, and they're certainly the crux of the campaign world, but among flavorful seasoning of hill dwarf traders and halfling riverboat captains, as well as the Natives.

...

your not!Florida looks like a dog in goggles. even has a shadow. mist islands are the result of you red rocketing

Not OP, but I really don't see that at all. I think you might just be horny for dogcock. Mind drawing an overlay to show what you mean?

>Mind drawing an overlay

>wants drawing
>accuses me of horny for dogcock

I mean I can't post because blueboard but here is an overlay to show you what I mean. Warning- it's pretty rough.

static1.e621.net/data/04/69/046927178fef0b379389e60c57cb4cb5.jpg

Nigga, I just mean a goddamn doodle to show where the goggles are. Not everyone is lusting for dogcock like you. I ain't clickin' that shit.

I see. My setting focus a lot on human, in fact, out of all other mortal races (humanoids or not), they are the only ones that were not created by some god. They are, in fact, gods from another dimension that came to the world a really long time ago, but lost their power. They are the older race, which I thought it would be nice for a change.

Dwarves were created from stone (uhu, super original), when the God of Fraternity sat among those stones (his mere lovely presence made the stone into living things). Elves were created by a forest god to watch over the nature or some other hippie reason like that. Dragons are really rare, and so far the only dragon lore-relevant was slain a long time ago (on Syr'vyshar, there's a huge city named Dragonfall, that is where the dragon's fell down). I haven't made my mind about halflings and/or gnomes, but I think I'm leaving them out. I also have WoW-like orcs. For the horde!

What about you guys? Anyone want to share some of your setting's lore concerning the origin of the world or of one or more races?

> To start us off, what challenges are facing your world in the present?
Actually, nothing. One of the main problems of my setting is that, right now in the timeline, stuff is pretty much static. Almost no war or conflicts going on.

>Dwarves
While it may or may not be true, the Origin Myth of the dwarves is probably not all that unlike most. Dwarves were originally sculpted of stone by primordial giants to function as slaves, laboring endlessly in the bones of the earth to appease their masters hunger for gems and metals and serving as the foot-soldiers for the titans' war against the gods. Formed of clay and of stone, they were unfeeling things until the giants' own vanity defeated them. Sculpting new servants like none before them, the giant unwittingly created the dwarven pantheon by creating a child of gold. The Gold Father, the First Dwarf, carried with him the spark of independence and the magic of his creators and crafted his own family crafted by his own hand out of silver and of bronze, of lead and of copper.

These gleaming champions led the dwarven people to victory of the titans, earning the dwarven pantheon a seat with the gods and chaining the titans down in the belly of the earth. As the influence of the elements dwindled after that primordial era, the stony bodies of the dwarves softened -- though their stubbornness yet remains. Today's dwarves as still strong, hardy, and dependable as the stone they were sculpted from, and their still foster a fierce hatred from giants and disgust towards those of their kin which still serve beneath their ancestral enemy's yoke. Many mountain dwarf cities are in fact built over the prisons which contain the Titans, and it is a rarity indeed for one not of their kin to be allowed entrance into these subterranean cities. Hill dwarves act as the primary intercessor between their more dour kin and the world without, and most humans have never even seen a mountain dwarf.

>tl;dr: Dwarves were a slave-race of the Titans during the Dawn War, managed to throw off the shackles after the Titans created a dwarf out of orichalcum, and to this day they act as jailers of the Titans.

I see. Being completely honest, the dwarven origin you described its really not much original (if that is a concern). The golden one is a nice touch, but everything else seems really cliché to me. Maybe you could throw in a few twists or elements to make it a bit out of the ordinary way. How many dwarven gods are there in the pantheon? Is each one of them made of a different metal? Maybe making them detailed and interesting could give the whole origin story a nice touch!

Mine is also really not that original since dwarves also come from stone/minerals, but I tried to go on a few different turns than the standard:

> The Hammer Father, a higher god (created by the first humans, a whole another arc)
> Forges a pantheon of gods that take the form of tools/weapons (axe, sword, shield, scythe, etc). Total of 8~9 gods are forged that way
> The shield one is the God of Fraternity. One day it sits among some rocks, and those rocks turn into dwarves.
> The god stay among it children for a while, but then move
> These children are the Durakian dwarves. They're bitter since then because their god/father left them.
> The god walks over another rocky valley, same thing happens
> Maeorian dwarves are born
> God decides to remain there, so those dwarves turn out to be a lot more cheerful

So its also not really that much original because also have a lot of standard dwarven elements, but I thought the fact they were not planned but just happened a nice touch. Also, the fact they were in fact created by a human god (and therefore share the same pantheon as many humans) is also a nice change.

same guy as forgot to say: please feel free to share the story of other of your races!

technically the Italian and Austrian alps, so no

I honestly don't care much for token originality just for the sake of it. And especially in a setting where Elves and Orcs and Goblins are particularly foreign given the standard assumption of them, it's nice to have dwarves and halflings be relatively mundane. As far as the other gods in the dwarven pantheon, yes. Each of them is based upon the Seven Metals of Antiquity: Gold, Silver, Quicksilver, Copper, Iron, Tin, and Lead.

Religion in the setting is fairly syncretic, so even though these deities were originally rooted in dwarven ancestor worship, their influence has been absorbed among even human culture. The reason that you leave silver pieces on the eyes of the dead to draw upon the protection of the Silver Lady, coming directly from elements of her worship in Gandoone. The reason that lightning rods all across Lorne, Carska, Sonaugh, and Bainiter are made out of copper is as much to appease the dwarven storm god crafted out of the same metal as it is any sort of scientific explanation from the magisters of Carska.

How much do you really need to run a campaign?

At least 3-4 cities and and an approximate 100 mile radius around each.

A single metropolis and its surroundings, if you want to do an urban campaign.

The Prince of Change, Lokiel is in the Frostlands, causing havoc & starting the Northlander's Ragnarok.
The Prince of Pleasure, Ch'Adiel, rules the Pleasure Isles, full of exotic spices, drugs, fruits, & people. It also plays host to beautiful but dangerous creatures, siren songs causing sailors to crash, demons, etc.
The Prince of Slaughter, Sa'Hadiel, leads an unholy war against the walls of the Holy City Al-Solsalem. He bore through Hell with his army, now he & his brass skinned Sultans of War direct the bloodbath from the Pit.
The Prince of Pestilence, Urshiel, has marched his diseased hoard to conquest & corruption, he has been held fast at the boarders of the elven kingdom Slyvania, though he has sent a special plague to its leaders, turning them into vampires.
In the center of this circle of woe & peril lies the Republic. Unified from warring city states centuries in the past by a demigod, it is now the best hope for survival against the growing threats all around them.
Rat-men, undermining the infrastructure
Orc hoardess sacking the country side
Bitter nobles squabbling in boarder wars

Faith & fellowship are our guiding light.
Only they will save us in the dark of night.

Take all that work you were going to do on 3 continents, 40 kingdoms, and 12 races, and put that into a much smaller area with 3-4 key races and a handful, or even one, kingdom. Have a little bit of background fluff when needed, but have an intimate setting with lots of detail, not a land where hundreds of miles are paintbrushed the same

fucked your mom to make ogres.

I haven't actually started yet, I'm just really nervous after trying to start campaigns in the past and having it flop. I always feel like I overload myself.

...this is just Europe & N.Africa though, right? I mean, there's nothing wrong with drawing upon real life, but this isn't even disguised that well my dude.
But I think I like it.

A lot of it depends on what type of campaign you want to run, but if you are worried about overloading yourself having a tighter focus on a relatively small area is a good idea. You can always expand the setting later as the party moves to other areas if it all goes well.

it's fine, I checked it's just MSpaint

and how is that different from WHFB?

...

Nice text.

What is the equivalent of the Lord's Prayer in your setting?

>...this is just Europe & N.Africa though, right?
Pretty sure that's his intentiona, senpai. Especially since he's literally running the Old World with the four Chaos Gods, Skaven and Orkz.

I am Chad Forger of Worlds. I've posted in the last few threads, critiquing my map/world.

I've got some really good reactions from people with it. I really love the map for its Not!Europe Qualities, I free handed it in a sketch app.

The nature of the world has it where Africa & the Middle East are smudged together so that Not!Jerusalem is to the direct south, Not!India is to the direct East, Scandinavia/Sweden & Russia have been merged into a giant landmass together. There are no Americas so far, though I might decide to add them. Instead there's the Pleasure Isles which are full of exotic animals, plants & hedonistic pirates. The idea of the world is that the Holy Republic is literally beset on all sides by Chaos from each cardinal point

Because it's a different world, with my own themes & ideas. Yes I adapted ideas inspired by Warhammer, but my world doesn't have the same origin, or outcome. Also, my map is different. It's different to reflect some of these themes.

Yeah, it's an excerpt at least. Trying to make something lengthier. Some thing that I feel sets my setting apart from WFRPG is that it isn't grimdark, it's grimperilous. Like, yes you can die, shitting your armor, fighting a pointless war against some threat that could have been avoided, but you can also band good men together & fend off the encroaching evil. It's a setting that feels like it could be won. Everything is shit, but there is most definately hope & courage, instead of ignorance & blind violence.

Ooh, I'm just liking it more and more man. Is the deeper history behind the world anything resembling ours (so like, not!ancient greeks and stuff)?

>the Holy Republic is literally beset on all sides by Chaos from each cardinal point
I dig it. One of the most interesting aspects of the setting of Exalted, imo.

Yes Aventine is Not!Rome/Greece,
I'm still working on history, but the Not!Constantine of my world founded the Holy Republic, he was an aspect of a Not!Christian God. There were other lesser gods who set up traditional patheons like the Norse, & Olympians. I was thinking that the Chaos gods were fallen angels who turned against the Not!Christian god, hence the "iel" at the end of their name. I also need some cool stuff to happen in Al-Solomas the Not!Jerusalem of the setting

For got to mention the Not!Greek name, before Aventine was a kingdom it was called Atlypia

It's almost like I was inspired by other stuff, like I mentioned before. Just like D&D's Holy Avenger is inspired by Excalibur & stuff. There are no new ideas user, only new takes

No reason to get so defensive, fampai. I wasn't judging, I was just saying that I liked that aspect in Exalted.

Not that guy but can someone post that map which just straight up had Baldur's Gate as a city?

Sorry, I though you were being sarcastic. My apologies, & I'm glad you like it

I don't think the sex stuff is something i want to work into the backdrop for this unfortunately

>uninspired flavorless generic ethnonyms

how do elven nobles?

AN ENTIRE WORLD THEMED ENTIRELY AROUND CANDY

PEOPLE FORGE THEIR WEAPONS AND ARMOR WITH MAGICAL SUGARS

BATTLEAXES ARE LOLLIPOPS AND DAGGERS ARE CANDY CANES

hello Tumblr

Post some flvavorful ethnonyms

so should i not go through with it

By all means, go through with it.

Put the gun at the base of your chin, not inside your mouth.

:(

Mind sharing yours, user? If you're going to make fun of someone's creations, it's only fair that you offer up your own for similiar critique. I'll go as well. My primary human ethnicity.
>Carskans, both magisters and lowborn
>Lornishmen
>Baini
>Sonnish
>Kahtani, both "windward" and "leeward"
>The Marifah

Slowly working on this shit.

Go with it. Candyland the Rpg. The players can be kids lost in a fucked up fairytale type world ruled by the Muffinman & his gingerbread army

I wish I could buy yourself services. ;_;

Khayrut
Shurkessians
Buyran
Boghconidah
Vassaghk
Kurscarz
Kephrite

Try to look at actual ethnonyms and see how they're structured

Didn't you post a really rough draft a day or so ago? This has come along well & looks really good

>Thread question:
On the immediate level, war is brewing. The elves have been united for the first time in their history and now the empress is looking to expand. The Sobki have been more aggressive about the borders, fearing the spreading influence of the Pyrisian cult and shift in power that the Fireglass gives the Pyrisians. Meanwhile, rumors of undead and Goblin rebellions in the Elven lands are becoming more common.

On the grander scheme of things, the Fireglass is very, very slowly eating the world.

To add, you could even base an ethnonym off of someone's name such as a founder of a dynasty/tribe/kingdom/etc

Yes, I did. Thank you! I'm a bit concerned that the shoreline is too thick, but it's too late for that. Next map will be better.

Considering that a single black and white map takes... I don't know, 4 days? It would have to be rather expensive.

Leggo

Not really seeing any in his list that doesn't work like real-world examples.
>Germans
>Englishmen
>Sami
>Gaulish
>Afghani
>The Sak

Nah coastline looks fine.

Where are the Big Rockcandy Mountains? Or the Cottoncandy Forest?

The Ru'kendi Mountains are on the other side of the desert and the Candycotton Forest is going to be on the border of the Holey Donut Empire and the Republic of Theobroma.

Meanwhile the Mochi Empire is going to be east (as per tradition) and the land of Mil'kenoni will be to the west of the Ru'kendi.

Rising tension between hegemonic kingdom and a technically subservient but de facto sovereign knightly order over access to a powerful artifact

So, for a while now I have been trying to work on a concept for vampires for my setting to make them unique in some way. And until recently I couldn't figure out a niche, but then I had an epiphany. I was thinking of having vampires in my setting revolve around Etiquette Magic, in exchange for being incredibly powerful undead creatures, they are bound by their mannerisms. So stuff like needing to be invited into a house, and possibly other already established habits (I am not too knowledgeable on vampire myths) but I also think of some new stuff, maybe
>Vampires need consent before they can drink your blood
>To become a vampire, you must have a 'tea ceremony' sort of ritual with another vampire, where you drink blood from that vampire that is prepared by the two of you
>Vampires are required to dress fancy and prim to utilize their full nature
So far all I have in terms of ideas.

Name expensive, user. That map looks fucking gorgeous, and depending on what you term expensive, I'd be happy to commission a black-and-white map from you.

Depends on the game.

For OSR/D&D, you need a concept for a dungeon and that's it. Maybe a name of a town or its population if you really want to get fancy about it. Everything else will come in time.

For VtM, you need to detail 15-30 Vampires, their family trees, their motivations, their personalities, their goals, their plans for accomplishing their goals, their powers, their allies, enemies and other social connections, and so on. Then you need to figure out what external events are going to occur throughout the campaign.

This isn't true at all in regards to Vampire, though. 30 Vampires is a city of 3 million. If you want to play a game of Vampire in a smaller city, you can easily get away with closer to 10. Hell, technically even 10 is a city of a million RAW.

Dunno, man. Nearest major city to me is 4 million, and it's not huge. And I've played a game based around London, which is like 8-14 million people. 15-30 Vampires seems pretty reasonable as a good amount in the city regardless of size, just on the basis of gameplay constraints --- It's hard enough to do 15-30 vampires, I wouldn't want to do 80-140 just to play in London.

That said? I'm not convinced by 1 vampire : 100,000 people.

And anyway, that's just the vampires. The games I've played in have occasionally had non-vampire major characters, such as the ghoul mate of one of the vampires and such. And if you've got any Malkavians with multiple personality disorder...

>The rocky road
I love it. Tell me, how to jelly or Boston creme donuts fit into the Holy Donut Empire?

>how to jelly or Boston creme donuts fit into the Holy Donut Empire?
Like this:

The Holy Donut Empire is actually a set of multiple kingdoms which are: Munchkinus, Baggels, Eclaire, Bostonia, Czeli, and Bavaria, united under the Glazed Throne in the Ringed City, the city being what remains of the old Donut Empire.

Despite the state religion being the Church of the Holey Circle, other faiths were tolerated: Munchkinus worships the Orb of the Remnant, and Bavaria is mostly secular, believing that strength comes from with.

it took me way too long to think about this