/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

In real life, knowing exactly how many people are living in a certain area is very important to a bureaucracy. It determines how much tax revenue can be obtained from a location. It determines how much public funds are allocated for use in that area. It tells the bureaucracy how much manpower can be drawn from the area for use in war or public construction projects. There's all sorts of reasons to conduct a census, and even more if these bureaucrats are on the lookout for, say, magic users or other demographics.

>What real world "time period" does your setting most align to?

The 1980s. I like to describe it as "magic and jet fighters." There's a lot of the 80s high fantasy vibe going on, coupled with some good ol' Cold War geopolitics.

>Do you pick "time period" when you start worldbuilding, or later on?
I generally don't. Usually I get a flash of inspiration as a single image, and based on what it contains, like what people are wearing, the tools they're using, and the stuff in the background, I start connecting the dots on what tech level the world is at. Real-world history frequently provides guidance on how things fit together, but I generally don't pick a specific time period to base things off of.

>How close should any setting align to a real world "setting"?
I think my answer to the previous question was leading into this. I tend to find fictional settings that are "Real-World Except X" less compelling than something that tries to stand on its own. Borrowing elements is fine, but if you're starting with a part of the real world and just twisting it, it's not as interesting.

>Why does Modern Fantasy get so little love?
Good question. I think it's because there's an inverse relationship between the tech level of a setting and the traditional trappings of fantasy. Magic and monsters become less believable as the science of a world advances because science is how we humans have steadily gained mastery of our own world and filled in the gaps those concepts once occupied. Lightning was once the wrath of the gods, but now is just a discharge of electricity caused by particles in the air becoming excited. When the people of a setting are sufficiently advanced, it starts begging the questions of, "Why are these things still there? Why are they still fantastical in-universe? Why are they unexplained?" Figuring out how these concepts from one end of our history coexist with those from the other end is often difficult.

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>Because fantasy is fantasy. What you are probably looking for is fantasy, of which there is plenty.

>Because fantasy is about myth and history. What you are probably looking for is urban fantasy, of which there is plenty.
Urban fantasy is (from my impressions at least) set in the real world with the fantasy elements being delegated to the "secret world" trope or just being unique occurances in the setting.
I think the modern fantasy that OP is asking for is if you take a standard fantasy setting, which is typically set in the medieval era, and advance the technology and culture to be similar to our modern world. The big difference and draw of course, being that the modern fantasy world will have those fantastical elements interwoven into the society and tech, which is always missing from urban fantasy.

Running my first original campaign and I'm trying to come up with a setting. I wrote this to give myself and the players a general idea of the setting and to build interest, but rereading it I'm kind of dissatisfied with my writing. What do you guys think? Where am I going wrong, and what can I improve?
>pastebin.com/SGdfB1cy
Thanks.

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It's fine. This one would be, Veeky Forums shitposting aside, one of the few instances where something like an Adventurer's Guild would make sense - I would still give it a different name. It's rather an archaeological institution.

When making a Sci-Fi setting, which subgenre do you most like to base your universe in?

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Epics.

Alright, thanks. I've always been pretty bad at names, I'll put some more thought into.

Ok so...
>Humans use AR patterned rifles and US produced guns
>Elves use HK G36 and SIG SG550 rifles and German produced guns
>Dwarves use Steyr AUGs and Austrian produced guys
>ORKZ use South American produced guns
>Canine races use AK patterned rifles and Warsaw Pact guns
>Catgirls use SMGs and bullpups
>Mindflayers imagine guns that shoot real bullets

>calculating farmland needed to sustain medieval megacities
Oh boy. I'm sure my players will be thrilled to know this thrilling information.

Those megacities are also going to need a purpose. Towns form as a place to trade between villages, later on they become places to centralize production. You're gonna need to find a way to justify the size, assuming these dwarf real medieval cities.

I know. My autism wouldn't let me sleep if everything didn't have a reason, even if it sometimes is just "magic".

I've asked this a few times but never got a reply, I'm genuinely interested so I'll ask again.

Do any of you cats actually get use out of my library:
>mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ

I should check these threads more often. Thanks for that, gotta download a shitton of books later.

owo what's this?

Someone came into /omg/ looking for advice on how to run an alchemist in Planescape and I was utterly gobsmacked that they'd dashed right past the obvious (salts of angel's tears, etc.) into asking about complex ritual information about alchemists, which, frankly, I wouldn't even think would serve as good flavor given how laborious and idiosyncratic the actual practice of alchemy as a ceremonial magick actually is, hence renewed interest in what y'all get out of the library, if anything.

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>my library
>Random Magic Resources/Possible Inspiration:
>mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ

I dunno who first added it to the OP list, and I'm glad at the exposure, but given how hard I and many authors in the library disagree with some of the premises of darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html I'm a little surprised it's there.

"Method of Science, Aim of Religion" and all that.

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What's their language sort of based on? I try to have different cultures have somewhat identifiable phonology in names, like how you can tell a word is latin/greek/germanic/chinese/indian/arabic, you should try to give names of people and places some sort of character that makes them distinct. Doesn't mean you flesh out the language, but it certainly helps things look consistent.

Some languages have really big vowel clusters like you have, some don't have any. The Al- makes it sound a little Arabic. In that case, you want to avoid clusters of two or more vowels, and even 2-clusters in most semitic languages are actually vowel+semivowel, so you'd probably get something like Almaysha. Check this out for more info:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_phonology#Phonotactics

Damn this is awesome. Thank you so much.

I haven't gotten into conlanging whatsoever yet, but I have indeed been using arabic translations to inspire what little naming I've done for the region so far. I'm impressed you deduced that.
Almaeisha is arabic for "living", which I decided on based on their region's cultural views on death and the dead.
I'm also trying to give different regions, with their people and places different "sounds", so thanks for the reference. Now that I know Wikipedia has in-depth phonotactics articles like that I'll be sure to use stuff like that for other regions as well.

How do I build a proper "Sword & Planet" setting? Can I just rip off He-Man and change some names around?

>"Sword & Planet" setting?
Isn't that just "dude runs around being a badass with a sword on a planet that isn't Earth"?
Because if so, that's pretty open-ended.

Inkarnate question I havent been able to find the answer to. I'm probably just bad at googling

If I add custom brushes or objects for a map, and then remove them while working on another map, is the first map with the previous objects now affected?

Thread Questions:
>What real world "time period" does your setting most align to?
I have 4 core settings: one is timeless, one would be something more akin to middle ages/renaissance (development depending on region), one is more-or-less modern, and one that is roughly 50-75 years into the future. They're all tangentially related.
>Do you pick "time period" when you start worldbuilding, or later on?
Usually speaking I allow time period to show up organically. Sometimes the starting point (such as a piece of technology, or an interesting mythology hook) will inform it pretty quickly. Other times it's later in developing the setting. Albeit, time period are more of a fuzzy thing for me. More in the realm of not being able to quite peg down the actual year it is.
>How close should any setting align to a real world "setting"?
That all depends on the story one is trying to tell. I like to keep my worldbuilding to worlds at closest as not-quite-like ours. It lets me keep real world politics and trends out of my stories unless that is the point. At which point it is still rare and handled differently.

Hard Mode
>Why does Modern Fantasy get so little love?
An association (baseless or not) with teenage girls. That's it. That's why.

Your post is bad and you should feel bad. 2 and 3 are especially disastrous to consider. And 4 just means you're unimaginative.

Most fantasy settings are barely about myth or history. Sure, they draw their table dressings from it but it isn't where they get the meal.

That depends entirely on location, though, and what sort of other political or cultural differences that the fantasy aspect has brought in. It is definitely something very important to consider, and I suppose that it is less prevalent because you have to apply more effort to building a world that works and is still fun enough for whatever your players are into.

The point you bring up about tech level and fantasy elements usually being inverse is interesting. Along the point of the development of the sciences making old beliefs less believable that is a reasonable explanation. But I think you can also pull that the other way. Even if we know how lightning works it doesn't mean you can't have an entity with the power to control it. Whether they are always controlling it or not isn't as important as being able to involve the fantastical element.

Obviously, if you put fantasy in a modern setting it changes everything up, so why they are still there can probably be reasoned similarly as to why anything has survived to modern time. Mostly dumb luck. Albeit, most of those things are likely less fantastical in-universe. Things that are mundane aren't always well understood, even as we invest time in learning about them. I do suppose it is fair that in most cases taking the time to bring fantasy up to modern history is not worth the effort for most creators. Far from impossible, though.

Well, Urban Fantasy sometimes has those interwoven, but you are pretty spot on that the general impression is that it is still a separate world. The stories tend to just have the fantasy elements made modern but they don't adjust the modern for the fantasy elements. It is kinda disappointing that such settings aren't more common. There are a lot of interesting stories to tell.

It can really be something as simple as "The Administration" or as obtuse as "The Alexandria Recovery, Exploration, and Artifact Retrieval Administration" Which gets turned into TAREARA or, more colloquially, The AREA due to people streamlining things for convenience.

I mean, it's lazy but you can. As questions, I will follow on with wanting to know what you are attempting to accomplish with the setting. Do you want an individual with a magic transformation sword fighting off generic evil folks? Are you trying to make a more reasonably developed world that happens to have advanced technology but still relies on melee weapons? Are you just trying to do a one-off with some friends and think Master of the Universe would be fun to play but don't just want to play MOTU?

This is my first time on Veeky Forums, can I please get some advice on this map I’m making?

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>those boot sneakers

god that bugs the shit out of me every time I see this piece. like make red hightops, fine. make boots, that's OK too, but some fucking inbetween shit that is neither but a little like both? fucking maddening.

why do your rivers split. yes it happens, but every fucking river? no. it's rare and generally temporary and has no place on a fantasy map ever.

Where is anyone going from Iar-Alo there needs to be aroad? Why is Coresh there?

The tal-* names all stand out, I mean why isn't kingpeak tal-peak and bleeding gulf tal-mensturation? They only named their cities and just used non-Tal for everything around them?

Too many islands, too many random roads to nowhere, you put in the roads and cities instead of looking at where towns would develop, which would grow and how they would be connected.

Iar-empire uses the same naming convention as tar-*. What are the fucking odds, really?

If you're going to pencil and then ink get a fucking eraser or pay more attention. While you're at it double line the continents so the continent edge is distinct from the rivers like the three that simuletenously leave Lakehome lake? The only thing you're missing is a sea-to-sea rive... oh wait, Iar-Rowen connects to Iar-kelo so southbay and the eastern ocean... fucking lovely.

I'm sure I could go on but I think you really need to go back to square one and after fixing your backwards ass rivers actually think about where settlements would turn into towns, and where those would grow and why.

4/10 not entirely hopeless

>What real world "time period" does your setting most align to?
The 70s. 2070s. I call it, "depressing future as written by a retard with no knowledge of geopolitics, feasible technological progression, or really any idea of how things work." It's supposed to be set in our world, so I think this isn't really appropriate for the question desu.

Appreciate the advice

>Aesthetics died as we entered the 1900s.

Yeah, the general pattern of a river is that rather than split they actually Coalesce, smaller rivers become tributaries feeding the larger.Then when it meets a larger, slower-moving body of water it typically fractures into a delta as all the fast-moving sediment builds up as it hits the larger body.

Deltas are not always there though. Rarely, if the river moves particularly quickly or for some other reason (typically geological) it doesn't pick up a lot of sediment, a delta won't form. Like in the St. Lawrence River in Canada.

What would you say the simple rule is for deltas? If the terrain is rugged or just not flat it'll not form a delta (or a barely visible delta from up high) while if it enters a broad flat plains before the ocean it'll be a delta?

I am always biased to have big thicc deltas in desert and tropical locales but less so in temperate.

/wbg/ is a cruel but ultimately helpful mistress.

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The super basics:
1.) If the landscape the river travels through is often extremely rocky, it won't pick up sediment and form a delta.
2.) If the body of water the river enters has little current, wave, or tidal activity, a delta will likely form, since it can't wash out the sediment fast enough. While plains don't directly contribute to a delta, deltas often are more dramatic in a plane, because they can make a lot of little sediment islands and shit.
3.) If there IS a big difference between high and low tide, the river forms an Estuary instead of a delta. Estuaries are sort of halfway between a river and an Ocean. They're brackish and are to a greater or lesser extent susceptible to tidal action. The Mississippi delta is a weird exception mostly due to how ungodly huge it is. Lake Pontchartrain next to New Orleans is actually an Estuary whcih formed by the Delta over a thousand years ago, which empties into a Lagoon, Lake Borgne, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

Alrighty, cool. Appreciate the straightforward rules to keep in mind

So, to contrast some of Depending on the geological make up, cultural and industrial purposes, or any number of other things, rivers could commonly split in your setting. So long as you provide sufficient reasoning behind it. While tributaries feeding into rivers is more common, distributaries are a thing, some more permanent than others. Two Oceans Creek in Wyoming is an interesting example of a river splitting for natural reasons.

So yeah, for Earth as we know it, they are uncommon. River Bifurcation and Distributary rivers are worth reading up on. If that is something you want to keep in your setting, just make sure that you have an explanation for it so that you can keep the frequent splitting reasonably believable.

Additionally, I would also argue the point that "too many islands" is unsupported. Some of the islands being highly conveniently located might be a more reasonable criticism, but not their number.

A few other minor things to bring up (though does bring up good things to think about, counterpoints are important for world building) - Not all roads lead to somewhere, whether that be they used to lead somewhere or some even ended their construction, etc.; if iar- and tar- are derived from a similar cultural origin it is entirely possible that the structure continued with both of them; the divergence of the river at Iar-Rowen (likely) or to Iar-Kelo (unlikely) could be canal work.

I would suggest looking at real world maps to get inspirations for things. Such as referencing real world waterways which have been industrialized (such as the Great Lakes Waterway or Panama Canal) as well as looking at areas with large clusters of islands (western Norway and various other parts of Scandinavia or most of South East Asia) so that you can structure them more naturally.

How do I create a setting with deep lore?

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Find a rabbit hole. Don't chase the rabbit. Find a few dozen more rabbit holes. Chase all the rabbits at once.

Your best example is to mimic human history, though. Get a big document of all the events that actually happened in your setting for a few thousand years. Then disregard what actually happened. Burn some of the entries. Retell other entries using different phrasing like a dozen or twenty times. Then figure out every time an area got conquered and replace large swathes of the history of that region with things that support the conquerors. Rinse and repeat until you have generated at least a dozen current primary cultures and at least as many secondary cultures who are all the results of these intermingling revisions in history. And then take anything that is over 50 years old, lock that lore in a box, and retell as much as you can from memory. Lose the key to the box.

You have now created a setting with deep lore.

Pulp, with bits and pieces of the others mixed in as needed

Wouldn't it be the opposite, unimaginative to have wizards in your setting but no consequences for them existing? The world should develop completely differently.

Yes. Fashion and architecture are long dead and the aesthetic damages of processed food and socioeconomic comfort will not be mended until transhumanism. There are only a few exceptions like North Korea which still care about their appearance.

>Are you trying to make a more reasonably developed world that happens to have advanced technology but still relies on melee weapons?

Mostly this one.

>An association (baseless or not) with teenage girls. That's it. That's why.
Actually true.

Helpful geographical criticisms aside, the map looks really nice, user. Bonus points for not being not!Europe. I also like the naming common naming conventions in regions like Tal-, Iar-, and Las-.
What's the Black Wall?

ignore the second part of this post, it was written in the morning where there is only a total absence of pleasure and abundance of existential dread

I need a name for my calendar, something Latin

Calendarius, Recordus Tempus, Tempus Mundis, Anno, Recordium, Memoriae, Reliquiarium, Recordus
Thats what I could come up with

>So yeah, for Earth as we know it, they are uncommon. River Bifurcation and Distributary rivers are worth reading up on. If that is something you want to keep in your setting, just make sure that you have an explanation for it so that you can keep the frequent splitting reasonably believable.

why fucking why do autists always defend river bifrucation? seriously if you actually studied up on it and decided for wb reasons you needed a bifrucation in one fucking place that would be fine but when some nigger draws a map with every fucking river splitting and splitting and splitting again and not one river being fed from tributaries it should be obvious that they are just fucking literally backwards wrong.

yet some fag always comes along and goes "but it's possible". there is a fucking difference from having every single river completely conceptiually wrong from the getgo and intentionally putting some rare phenomenon in for a valid reason

could we please fucking stop defending the mistake just because it sometimes actually occurs? could you maybe once NOT kneejerk point out that rivers acktchually do bifrucate when someone is trying to explain how almost all waterflows work? It's fucking maddening, even when you spend 3x as long typing out the codicil about "they do sometimes occur" and qualifying everything you say about "most" waterflows you still get some asstistic authole who has to go
>but they do bifrucate so it's OK to have a completely fucked up ass-backwards map in every way, it's fine

EVERY
FUCKING
TIME

flows off cliffs for one

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mine is c.e. or e.c

creation of empire
empire creation

so it's currently 1265 c.e.

sounds nice like Any Domino or Before Calendar

also you're using this right:
donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/calendar/

>What real world "time period" does your setting most align to?
Its a space opera, but its based around the period between the French Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848, with cyberpunk technology driving the "industrial revolution".
>Do you pick "time period" when you start worldbuilding, or later on?
"Time period" should come first. Its an enormous part of a setting's character, and informs pretty much every decision you make.
>How close should any setting align to a real world "setting"?
The important thing is that every makes sense within the context of the setting. You don't have to exactly recreate medieval Europe: its your setting, do whatever you want. Just make sure its feels right.

>Why does Modern Fantasy get so little love?
We live in the modern world and we know it intimately, so its harder to "fake". You have to know your shit really well or everything feels off.

Someone cap this. It deserves to be saved for future generations.

Adding on to this: for every historical event you have, think up three or four different interpretations of it. Was the American civil war over slavery or states rights? Was Ivan the Terrible an insane tyrant or a shrewd reformer, or a combination of two? What caused the fall of the Roman Empire - barbarians? Christianity? Economic collapse? Child Emperors? Climate change? History isn't just a collection of facts, its an ongoing argument between different collections of "facts" that say different things. These arguments are often colored by the context of the historians themselves: for example, the 30 years war actually remember rather romantically by Germany for first century after it, and gained its disastrous connotations later in the 19th century, when German nationalists blamed it for stunting the development of the German nation".

thanks, the black wall is basically a Game of thrones's style wall. it keeps everyone on my map out of a continent that isn't shown

I really liked the post but I think you're overrating it. Here you go anyways.

Open your start menu and type "snipping tool" in the search bar. You too can now take pictures of your screen.

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So it's made of ice or something? Is it man-made?
What's so bad in the secret continent?

I didn't realise how bad the JPG-ification hurt that cap until I uploaded it, take a PNG that won't gouge your eyes out.

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I can see both just fine, I'll stick with the jpg

completely smooth, tall as fuck wall made of a black, unidentified material that cannot be cut. This material is also what the extremely long bridges that connect the bridge lands are made out of. The people beyond the wall built them, and then retreated and built the wall out of fear of the natives. of course, this happened way in the past and none of the current people remember what happened. just like game of thrones

I bring a tall as fuck+1' ladder

i want to create a fantasy setting where civilization is in decline. what are some good causes for the great kingdoms of the world to fall? anything besides your typical plague / magical cataclysm?

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y-you can't do that

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earth is heating up and all of your major cities are built near coastal zones. They start looking like Venice
and lovercraftian monsters from the deep start attacking

How do you justify a setting with laser guns, shields, holograms , and speeder bikes, but melee combat is the primary form of combat.

>Bitter political factionalism leads to internal warring
>A new religious craze is sweeping the land and causing great change in the culture
>Something monstrous is unearthed and threatens to consume the surface
>The people have lived comfortably and become weak, giving invaders a primary opportunity to invade
>Attempts at industrialization lead to disaster as the machinery isn't properly tested (mad magitek automatons, massive factory fires, etc.)
>The absolute ruler of the nation's batshit child has just taken power and their insane decrees have caused a civil war
>Alternatively, the absolute ruler of the nation's children are now squabbling over the monarchy and their claims to the throne have caused a civil war

How big and sudden of a decline are we talking about? Aftermath of a disaster, or the slow grinding as an entire civilisation just comes to a halt as systemtic problems reaching back decades or even centuries come to a head with maybe one final crisis to break the camels back?

birthrate decline because MGTOW
everything was one empire and fragmented because it was just too big to hold together or the heirs quibbled or whatever
temperature went up a few degrees and the once fertile land went to shit, everybody starves
ice age
some rando god tower of babels the place

shields are only penetrated by kinetic input under a certain threshold. read some dune you illeterate nigger.

youtube.com/watch?v=KYUolurihOQ

i suppose it doesn't matter. my idea is that it's been quite some time since whatever happened, and civilization is on the slow crawl back to prominence. lost knowledge, and mysterious ruins are dotted around the land

I like it, making a archipelago world that's quickly turning into water world.

extremely powerful yet lightweight armor that also increases speed and strength

Something like the Bronze Age Collapse?

youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q
youtube.com/watch?v=QMBM1qazAXE
youtube.com/watch?v=y-8uv4D7cOE
youtube.com/watch?v=3HaqpSPVhW8

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That would affect melee just as much as it affects ranged combat.

In that case, you ideally want something that doesn't just derail the old civilisations but stopped the survivors bouncing back sooner.

A clusterfuck of linked factors is good. Taking this example;
The base problem is that sea levels rise due to climate change. Many urban centres are coastal so this causes huge economic and societal damage. At the same time the amount of arable land shrinks and some low lying islands vanish entirely. Potentially, extreme weather and climate shifts cause crop failure, extinction of ocean life and hazardous sailing conditions in some areas which inhibits trade.

Economic devastation, population displacement and food shortages lead to general social unrest. Some kingdoms fall into anarchy, others go to war while their neighbours are weak to claim land and riches. The wars cause yet more loss of life, economic damage. Displaced peoples whose homes sank beneath the waves,external invaders or generals and nobles sensing opportunity attack the weakened kingdoms and fragment these once proud states into petty chiefdoms and warlordships with a tattered veneer of the old order. In a few decades you've gone from mighty empires to pirates lording it over the half-flooded ruins of once prosperous cities.

You don't actually have to have sea levels rise that far if enough important resources and cities are easily flooded. The initial problem can cascade into something devastating over a more extended period of time in order to utterly wreck things. Add some magic and monsters for flavour and you are set.

>>>/reddit/

It isn’t about there being no consequences for wizards existing. It is that claiming that having wizards would never allow you to reach modern times that is more problematic from my perspective. I think it is lazy to assume that wizards can’t exist in a modern setting, you just have to take the time to account for what changes would occur.

I’d say just use the conceit that cultural/technological motivators (such as wars, etc.) never occurred (there are all manner of possible reasons) to motivate the development of arms past swords, etc. but that other things (such as medicine, computers, etc.) did have cultural or economic motivators. Style it after MOTU as much as you like, but that way you aren’t confined to the structure of MOTU.

Here you go, just post this next time and spare yourself the effort of typing anything.

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It’s a fantasy setting, bruv. Making not!Earth isn’t always the goal. Please, exhibit some perspective. The post you are replying on literally says to make sure to support the reasoning. The same shit you have to do when drawing up realistic tributaries and other more common geographical features. Why you so mad that maybe a magic world doesn’t work like ours?

you need to think of the history of trade in your world. what was rare but now common, what was common but is now rare, what's always been rare, what's always been common. how the raw materials or finished goods are valued in various countries and organizations, and if one country covets what another has enough, there's your wars.

you could do this for almost any raw material, trade good or luxury item, or all of them. and there's your deep lore.

>Why you so mad that maybe a magic world doesn’t work like ours?

because when someone draws every single river as splitting it's not "because magic world" it's just because they're making a common mistake.

perspective would be not jumping to the defense of every river splitting user who ever drew a bad map.

Yes. And that common mistake was provided some constructive criticism that I think no one disagrees with at its core. But if you aren’t here to cultivate creative world building why be here? Just because you get really mad that rivers rarely split?

While it is a common mistake, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an opportunity to expand on someone’s toolbox. Makes it worth to look at fringe examples.

It is also highly interesting to see how those things create cultural influences. Like cyclic trade of certain items as purely ceremonial (and showing off) or all manner of other things. Raw materials are a great reference point to build cultures from.

I would differentiate this from lore, instead categorizing it as history. Also important, but not what people mean when they refer to deep lore.
History is certainly, more often than not, a great stepping stone for deep lore though.

SEETHING

I don't see anyone here defending bifurcating rivers or bad maps, you are very angry at -and arguing against- a preconcieved strawman.

Sup /wbg/,

What would you say are the chances that more than one sentient species would survive until a Neolithic age? Bronze? Iron? Assume they cannot reproduce with each other, have similar needs for food/shelter/water, and are within close proximity (less than two weeks walk).

>/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Oh, hey, I actually have something to show for once: Kobolds, I drew Kobolds a day or so ago.

I currently do two things with my Kobolds:
1. Female Dragons can lay special unfertilized eggs that will hatch into Kobolds. This is where most Dragons get their Kobolds in the first place, but a Kobold that manages to live to 100 years can mature into a Dragon (a 25-30 year old Kobold will become a Dragonborn/man, so from there it's a much easier time).
2. Kobolds take on the aspect of their chromatic brood mother: Black Kobolds are rat/mole-like, Red Kobolds are the most lizard-like, White Kobolds are fluffy and have antlers, Green Kobolds have long serpentine necks and a toothless beak, and Blue Kobolds are very whale/dolphin-like. The 'standard' Kobold is produced by the very rarely intelligent little brown dragon.

Attached: Kobolds.png (1100x1100, 44K)

I've got the seed of an idea for a new setting, but have no idea how to flesh it out and grow it to the point of it being a playable setting for my preferred tabletop rpg system. Any help?

> Massive space battle between two factions, may or may not include wormhole shenanigans. Regardless, enough survivors of both factions crash land onto a pre-civilization tier alien planet, and start X amount of colonies.
> Ideally the playable setting would be a couple generations past this point
> None of the original "factions" have the tech, or the means to communicate or travel back into space.

What kind of questions do I need to answer to build this out.