/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Previous Thread: /wbg/ discord:
discord.gg/ArcSegv

On designing cultures:
frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir's_Ethnographical_Questionnaire

Mapmaking tutorials:
cartographersguild.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48
www.inkarnate.com

Random Magic Resources/Possible Inspiration:
darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html
buddhas-online.com/mudras.html
sacred-texts.com/index.htm
mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ

Conlanging:
zompist.com/resources/

Sci-fi related links:
futurewarstories.blogspot.ca/
projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
military-sf.com/

Fantasy world tools:
fantasynamegenerators.com/
donjon.bin.sh/
watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Historical diaries:
eyewitnesstohistory.com/index.html

A collection of worldbuilding resources:
kennethjorgensen.com/worldbuilding/resources

List of books for historians:
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/

Compilation of medieval bestiaries:
bestiary.ca/

Middle ages worldbuilding tools:
www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm
qzil.com/kingdom/
lucidphoenix.com/dnd/demo/kingdom.asp
mathemagician.net/Town.html

Thread Questions:
>How often do mass migrations occur in your setting?
>What are some examples of mass migrations?
>What are their causes?

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Other urls found in this thread:

weirdrussia.com/2014/06/08/fantastic-art-of-vsevolod-ivanov/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies
twitter.com/AnonBabble

I've increasingly become aware that inspiring art for how I want my setting to look may not actual exist. So far, I've mostly only really found Chaos Dwarves and various Egyptian undead or beastfolk.

What are you looking for exactly?

So what is the lore behind that image?
I know its supposed to be proto-slavic pagan romanticism but what exactly is going on? What's the meaning?

>proto-slavic
not slavic, germanic. Pretty sure it's supposed to be the Aryans leaving their homeland and becoming nomads, eventually settling in India millennia later. It's just the best migration picture I could find

Okay, I need help with naming conventions for a DnD setting. Boiled down to the basics, the setting has five gods representing each Neutral alignment on the chart.

So, the celestial beings working for good will be angels, and the infernal beings working for evil will be demons, that's the low-hanging fruit. But what about law and chaos? In PF the names for those would be Inevitables and Proteans respectively, but those don't have quite the ring to it. Any ideas?

Lawful
>Ordinators
>Abiders
>Static
Chaotic
>Disordinators
>Eriseans
>Everchanging
>Discordians
just a few ideas

>How often do mass migrations occur in your setting?
It happens but it's not like it is on some set schedule or anything.
>What are some examples of mass migrations?
The most recent one was by a nomadic tribe of not!Mongols who moved in from the northwest via a temporary land bridge and took over about 1/3 of the not!Rome of the setting.
>What are their causes?
Their shaman had a vision that their destinies lay in the East and they set off. Found a land bridge, took about a year to cross due to bad weather and then came flooding south and east. Overwhelmed a lot of the defenses since the west had been pacified for at least 3 centuries by this point.

weirdrussia.com/2014/06/08/fantastic-art-of-vsevolod-ivanov/

In Russia such themes are called 'дoлбocлaвиe' /dolboslavie/, a mock term made out of 'дoлбoёб' /dolboeb/ (a moron) and 'пpaвocлaвиe' /pravoslavie/ (Eastern Orthodoxy). It's used to ridicule neopagans.

Neopagans in Russia are considered imbeciles, partly because they're mostly aggressive, dumb and asinine.

>it (Dolboslavie) is only very remotely related to the real historical Slavic culture and pagan religion, since it is comprised of New Age, witless tolkienism and neo-fascism

With that said, if I manage to ignore the connotations (which is almost impossible because I'm Russian), the artwork is pretty and imaginative.

I'm messing with high fantasy tropes in Age of Antiquity/pre-Dark Age inspirations. I'm looking at Dwarves as a Phoenician style sea trade empire with some other Mesopotamia influences, a mix of the traditional Elven fanciful style with late Roman Empire, things like that. Some is easier to find, Egyptian crocodilemen and Arabian Nights fantasy are pretty common.

I'm also been debating which to focus on as a setting power: tribal humans that turn into lizardmen, or a Skeksis-Garthim like eastern foreign power of raven birdpeople and beetlefolk.

>It's used to ridicule neopagans.
Literally WE WUZ KANGS, kek

>How often do mass migrations occur in your setting?
Pretty frequently, at least in the last century or so
so.
>What are their causes?
Push factors include warfare, political, religious, or racial persecution, and economic insecurity, especially lack of land. The last one is a big one - civilized space is pretty full, so most interplanetary migrants go the new settler colonies with lots of land and little oversight. On the planetary, there's a lot of regional migration towards reclaimed lands and major cities.
>What are some examples of mass migrations?
The Imperial Federation's Ministry of Land Management is offering sweet deals to anyone willing to settle on newly discovered worlds in the Anean Gulf. Peasants get money and self-government, nobles get deals with state owned agricultural firms, and the Federation gets planets worth of new farmland to ease the food shortages in the core worlds.

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>How often do mass migrations occur in your setting?
Of my core 5 settings, rarely. 3 are highly stable. 1 is basically a nebulous weird-realm. That last might have them, but none of the races are detailed in a manner that would explicitly support that.
>What are some examples of mass migrations?
On the suggestion of what I would include if there were migrations would be seasonal migrations of the Elves. Albeit, this would likely only greatly impact the Pelagic ones.
>What are their causes?
Seasonal temperature shift, impacting agricultural activities and prey migrations.

More ideas for consideration.
For Lawful:
Arbiters
Judicators
For Chaotic:
Anarchs
Tumultians

I appreciate the notion that a culture with no known threats in a direction would have gained a rather sedentary and undefended region if they've had no active conflicts in that region for long enough. A nice touch.

Skeksis-Garthim. Especially if you up the bird aspects and have the beetlefolk be massive because the birdfolk slectively ate out all the weak ones. But yeah. With your description? Learn to art or invest in artists. But not in the shitty exploiting child artists way a lot of Veeky Forums suggests.

That's what I figured. I mean, I eventually had to, since I plan to use the setting with something commercial, but I was hoping for some inspiration while working towards that step.

I haven't fleshed out the birdfolk-beetlemen yet, so its pretty open right now. I originally just stuck in Skeksis/Arakkoa clones as an explanation as to why the current powers haven't expanded to the east of where they are, plus I love those guys. The most I came up for them so far is that their society puts a lot of emphasis on status, they worry about the pecking order. I ended up making the Skeksis-Garthim jump because it fills my love of beetle warriors/samurai, too. I'm thinking Persian influence for them, though. Lots of chainmail drapings attached straight to the beetles exoskeleton to cover joints and weakspots. I want to make it kinda symbiotic, so its not just the birds enslaved the beetles (I already have quite a bit of that in the setting), but more that the beetles willingly work as the underdogs to the birds.

I'll come up with names for them eventually.

Do you have armed forces that guard the realm's frontier from foreigners, barbarians, monsters and other enemies?

Is it a desirable job? Do they patrol outside the border? What history, structure, rules etc does it have?

Pic related is GOP unit from South Korea and they guard the North Korean border (DMZ). Reconnaissance as well. Apparently it's cold as fuck down there.

e.g. Night's Watch from ASOIAF

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Inspirationally speaking, go to the sources. See what you can find about Phoenicians and their sea traders, pick out details you like and create a visual reference library to then callback to your incarnation of dwarves. I would probably rifle through any historical imagery from museums you can muster, etc. and crop out things you want and make collage images. Same thing with elves meet Rome. The less complete sourcing you do the better, especially if you're trying to make it something you use commercially. But definitely don't limit yourself to a single individual source. Perhaps for your Phoenecian-Dwarves you also pull some aspects of Polynesian culture or boat making.

As you gain a resource of references of disparate things you like it will also make it much easier to get what you want out of commissioned pieces. And while I know some artists don't like that, they probably aren't who you would be getting to do work for you.

And regarding the bulk of your post, the large beetlefolk being subservient might not be wholly a case of subjugation. If you do decide to do that the birdfolk ate the smaller beetlefolk to extinction it could be seen by the beetles as benevolence that they didn't eat them, or perhaps they were in a losing war with the smaller beetlefolk. Lots of ways you can take it without making it boring mind control or slavery.

I really like what said and wholeheartedly agree. You could go with them being some sort of slaves, but if that kind of thing already exists in your world elsewhere, it would just feel boring to do it somewhere where its supposed to be special. Maybe try to have the birds and beetles occupy a symbiotic relationship? Something like birds are way better at finding food than beetles, so the beetles trade in protection for food. The birds are seen as above the beetles because they're the breadwinners, and since food = life, they're held in higher esteem.

Slavery and symbiotic relationships is weirdly a running theme in the setting I didn't entirely intend.

The Elves enslaved the Goblins and rely on them to keep their population up.

The humans used to enslave several races before the fall of their empire.

The Sobki and the Gnoll nomads have a symbiotic relationship of trade and supply.

The Dwarves are heavily invested in trade among themselves and all the other powers.

I always wonder why north korea is colder than south korea even though its closer to the heat belt than south.

Maybe its all the mountains.

Had an idea for a setting and wanted to post it for some feedback.

Humans start exploring the stars. Which goes slowly seeing as how the only method of going faster than light is still very, very slow on the interstellar scale. But the resource crunch back on Earth demands either moving to a new world (economically infeasible) or bringing resources back from space, so the Megacorporations that run these space programs to feed the Earth's resource need also become Earth's de facto governments over time.

Eventually though, our explorers find a world that teems with life. And on it they find a strange alien artifact: A Gate. A gate that allows anyone stepping through it to find themselves on ANOTHER ALIEN WORLD. In fact, it can lead to several worlds. Some more advanced than even Earth! The humans haul the thing back to Earth and set up an entire facility on our homeworld to coordinate a massive new age of exploration into an unknown galaxy.

>tl;dr Stargate + Planescape + K6BD
I am considering how exactly this system will work. I'm leaning towards "webs" of connections necessitating a lot of stop-overs, and some gates being connected to more than others, thus causing trade routes and fast lanes. What do you guys think?

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I’ve spent the last 5 minutes trying to figure out what you are trying to say because I can’t make rational sense out if it.

It is a reasonable well run idea. But I can’t say I’ve personally seen it used for the notion of a new Age of Colonization/Expansion rife with trading companies. That at least feels novel. Albeit I just want to kno what the impact of moving said device to Earth has had on its travel uses. Like, if it is a webway, does Earth even have a good access point to it? If it is like Stargate and “addresses” are needed, what hppens when you change your address? Is that hard coded in the device or with the central transit stuff. How do the other races feel about humans now being involved?

I guess at least it has some cylinders pumping so it isn’t bad. So long as you don’t make it bad from here.

I had the idea for a "forgotten history" in my setting in which there is hardly anybody who knows of it, and any written documents surrounding the event is written in a language nobody can ready any more.

It describes the migration of a tribe known as "the Wanderers" who have been on the run for as long as they could remember, away from a vicious and savage horde. They eventually arrived to the setting's continent, where they meet various civilizations. Some took them in, some rejected them. In every case, the horde would destroy the civilization that the Wanderers came to, and the Wanderers would have already fled, also taking up as many refugees as they can along the way. The horde is eventually destroyed when its aging chieftain was slain by the Wanderers' aging chieftain. After the horde's dispersion, the surviving members of the tribe settled on the continent, eventually spreading their language and customs across it. However, over the course of many centuries these people have forgotten this event, and their languages and cultures had evolved into distinct peoples.

During his wars to unify one of the major Human culture groups, the first king of a now world power chartered a knightly order to defend the borders between his kingdom and the various Human and Orcish clans and petty kingdoms to the Southeast. Over time this order built a massive line of forts along the border which is now considered almost impenetrable. 600 years later, despite the kingdom now being completely stable and many in the nobility wish to expand into new fiefs beyond the wall, the order refuses to allow exploration beyond it so as to maintain the organization's existence (and also stop the king from getting the second half of a powerful artifact).

the artist is a slavic pagan who believes slavs came from space and had a golden age where centaurs existed, people rode bears, etc.

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I'm sensing a MYFAROG expansion

Thanks guys. I think for Law I'm going with Ordinators and with Chaos I'm going with Eriseans

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You know Korea is in the norther hemisphere, right?
Which means the south is closer to the equator than the north, so if something is further south it's generally warmer than something that's further north.

So, I am toying around with some setting ideas, nothing too concrete aside from vague outlines and aesthetics, but well, my main thing is that I'd like to do more then just worldbuild but actually use the setting one day for a game. Any advice on how best to facilitate that?

How does this forgotten history shape the current populqtion of the continent? Because that is pretty much the only thing important abot forgotten history.

As you are building your setting make sure to include plot hooks of various types (old bottled evils, ancient artifacts of substantial value, certain special resources that are fought over, diverse three-dimensional cultures conflicting myths/history/beliefs/goals that can be minor all the way to world changing, etc.) and weave them into the setting. Worry less about building a campaign until you have a core foundation to draw from. Then double down on the aspects you think your play group will go after. Dungeon crawling murderhobos? Up the number of dungeons in the world but tie them together with some historic world building to keep them feeling like part of the world. Players into social politics? Develop in greater detail the great trading powers and the history (and claims for rulership) of the regional monarchs/etc., but don’t forget to also involve more distant royal lines and misunderstood trading partners from distant lands, so that you can have more things to pull from - but also be flexible with because it could just be standard colonial idiocy not understanding a local culture they are encroaching on and not that they are violent savages hoarding some trade goods.

Build it with people in mind.

To any of you have with sci-fi universes: what happened to Earth? Capital of a human empire, forgotten backwater, overpolluted and abandoned or something else?

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I don’t have any SF settings that actively leave Earth. Currently only extends to Lunar colonies. But for the most part Earth is still pretty stable. Earth got better in some regards of resource management. And accepted that the actual planetary carrying capacity - if we are environmentally responsible - is a lot higher than many people believe.

The single gate leads to multiple worlds? How do the people come back from the Gate, or are their other portals on the worlds it lets out on that lead back to it? If so, why hadn't those other advanced civilizations colonized the resource-rich world the original gate was found on?
It seems like humanity just stumbled into this webway that interconnected a vast intergalactic, inter-species trade sphere, or something similar. Like if a chunk of 1500's North America suddenly disconnected and relocated to the 1900's Mediterranean Sea. Humans are the native americans, and the other alien civs are the europeans.
Sure, could be interesting. Maybe the aliens don't curbstomp/swallow humanity into their civs because of tentative relations amongst the other alien species, so nobody can make a move without angering another faction. Thus humanity, despite being far behind in technology and culture, is able to intermingle with everyone else.

It's another universe set on a different planet but with humans.

Worldbuilding is overwhelming

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Then limit the area. Just because you call it "world-building" doesn't mean that you have to map every inch.

That's a really fucking good idea actually, thanks user.

Most of the human kingdoms are united under regional high kings chosen by the emperor, so it varies greatly from one side of the empire to the other. One noble house however was (in)famous for being exiled for taking their job a bit too seriously and would spend massive funds on fortifications and ended up violating a peace treaty with the elves as they would go "ah, our old enemies, they won't suspect us burning their wagons and slitting the throats of their merchants". Of course they were convinced they kept the empire safe even though it nearly sparked the second human-elf war.

Otherwise it's mostly token forces, nobody want to spend too much on patrolling the outskirts and only 3 out of the 7 high kings actually have an organized standing army, the rest relies on mercenaries, levies, militia and occasionally even offers slaves a chance to win their freedom should they do well in battle.

Also, if you get overwhelmed by something, step away and cleanse your palate before coming back to it. I have 5 different settings + a random idea bash I keep up with a friend to soundboard crazier ideas off.

Each gate has a number of symbols on or near it, denoting each world it is connected to (let’s say 1 to 7 but most hang around 2-4). Touching a symbol (or maybe just thinking hard on it) causes the gate’s wormhole to connect to that world. The system seems able to link multiple wormhole ends together to prevent crashing into someone coming from a different world.

Earth did not have a gate. The one we stole was a 7 symbol, so really fucking valuable. It’s system of gates was offline (galactic drift? Mass extinction?), and unconnected to the greater system. Earth was close enough to other gates for it to “jack in” to another network. There are normally...things...that prevent this, but reattaching a dead gate is apparently a loophole its Guardians or Creators or whatever don’t mind (as opposed to messing with Connected gates.

Phoneposting. Will be back soon. Rate?

Don't try and cover every little thing, just enough to let you start writing for your novel, start GMing for your people, or give your imagination a stable ground to run with

What's got me overwhelmed is that my map dimensions are so high in photoshop it makes anything super laggy. But I am a size queen that doesn't want to shrink the size down.

I'm almost done with geographics so it's not too big of an issue.

The people of the continent only share an ancestral language, culture, and religion. The same way how Europe share has the Indo-European language family, the historical priest, warrior, and peasant cast, and their old mythologies shared common stories such as a warrior slaying a dragon.

>he didn’t upgrade his PC to handle bigger maps
For shame.

Seems reasonable enough at least in broad strokes. The functionality of being really fudgy is not something ai like in a setting. The function feels like ruby slippers, which is not good for a broad, complex sci-fi. But the “galactic drift and now Earth is in range” bit is a pretty clever way to have it be forgotten but beneficial to humans.

Then I guess you know what you need to figure out: a naming scheme (full conlang noy required) that holds diversity but is also a shared root. Different descendant cultures would likely have differing things of value that they will focus on with names as names show importance. And then figure out what aspects of their shared history have formed into shared myths and fables. Have some cultures keeping different ones or retelling others which reflect their divergent values.

You keep the forgotten history in your personal Lore book and don’t explore it in setting. It’s just your reference point.

>Seems reasonable enough at least in broad strokes.
All the setting is at the moment is broad strokes, and I intend to refine, throw away, and refine again most of these ideas. At least once or twice each.

What specifically feels "ruby slippers" to you?

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what's up with odin's Irish-colored swastika?
Other than that, most of this looks like it would fit in some type of caveman-forgotten history game

To answer your questions, OP; I have two current settings.
In my Forlorn north campaign; Mammoths migrate south along with some men-folk to take advantage of the summer swamps.
There are other tribes of men that also migrate west to the icy shores and skirmish with walrus-men for fishing spots.

>Some example of mass migrations
Mainly with nomadic peoples like the native americans, they are in a constant state of migration, chasing the deer and other livestock no matter where it went (which is why it lead them to cross the land bridge between what is now Russia and North America.

Forced migrations can also take place due to a food shortage, or due to wars. destruction of environment.

What sort of climate effects would result from a continental landmass full of huge lakes and inland seas?

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One button touch or just thinking about a destination. It feels arbitrary, the sort of thing someone does in a story when they write themselves a hole they can’t write out of. Clicking your heels together and saying that there is no place like home is great for a fairytale. But having the interaction with what is basically a stargate or massive matter transporter being an accidental button press or just imagining really hard is not how I’d do a galaxy-spanning economic sci-fi drama or anything.

It is also your main storytelling conceit. So anything that harms suspension of disbelief around it will have ripples theough everything else. I hope that helps with what I was trying to say. Stargate works because dialing in was more complex. Transporters in ST and the like require skills to operate. You can make the first jump or two accidental, but it strains if you keep it that way.

I need help. I need to build a world and fast, running an adventure next week which I already have figured out.

I can't run any existing D&D settings (at least those I know of), but it can be presumed that it can facilitate all existing vanilla-D&Dish type stuff, and anything written in the PHB/DMG/MM

I didn't really explain myself here, but I'm basically looking for any techniques, suggestions or other wisdom regarding figuring out a believable setting fast

>>How often do mass migrations occur in your setting?
Not often. Humanity at most sends out colonists, but they're relatively small expeditions. Everything else that may be called a migration involves aliens.
>>What are some examples of mass migrations?
There are various nomad fleets in the Orion Arm, which is what humanity has managed to explore so far. Around thirty five billion aliens of both species wander through it, and most have established contact with humanity. Some have managed to settle. They say that there are other fleets, too, but they're either isolated, lost, or in raider space.
>>What are their causes?
Their homeworlds were obliterated in the War. 80% of their species obliterated in three hours, which would become 98% in the two weeks following it.

>an accidental button press or just imagining really hard is not how I’d do a galaxy-spanning economic sci-fi drama or anything
Well, there's the rub. I imagine travel in this galaxy to be dominated by hub-worlds that link multiple networks of wormhole gateways. There are only a handful of worlds any one gate can get to in one jump, so it can't be as complicated a system as dialing is in Stargate, where you can go anywhere so long as you know the address. A simple button press is sort of the simplest way to get that going.

But I do have another idea.

Okay, Gate is a misnomer. Gates are more like giant platform-like constructs ranging from a dozen to over 100 meters in diameter. There are clear geometric markings that show broadly where each wormhole appears. There is a central pillar or platform with controls built into it that allow manipulation of the wormholes (their creation, maintenance, and termination). Wormholes are held open for certain lengths of time, typically based on a schedule written up by whoever's running them (do they even HAVE a max time?), and are one-way to prevent issues. You step into the space marked 'WOMRHOLE' and you appear on a similar space on another platform perhaps thousands of light years away. You can only create a wormhole to another world in your network.

So...Stargate wormhole rules...but using gate systems that look more like those teleportation platforms from Steven Universe.

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If you are trying to world build around an adventure, we need more information on scope and stuff. Beyond that your most basic advisories are as follows:
Build in broad strokes the local area. Figure out your general climate, sapient races, fauna, flora. Descriptive details (are all buildings stone or log or something else, etc.) so that you can fill out and patch seems.

But anything more involved than that I would need more details to give good advice. Oh, also get good at improv and documenting ass pulls so that you can do callbacks and build world details on the fly.

>How often do mass migrations occur in your setting?
So far... Well for the human empire, once. Otherwise it's basically unheard off.
>What are some examples of mass migrations?
Basically a new continent was found and while other races decided to send explorers and elite forces the humans didn't really expect this to work out so they just found their most fanatical, people in massive debt, people about to be exiled or outright prisoners and slaves and said: "Go there, report back with good news in 10 years of a well established colony and you will be pardoned" Then in secret they were just sorta written off as dead, with only a few bureaucrats keeping "a tab open". Needless to say when you give the chance to all the zealots, corrupt officials, rapist, highwaymen, raiders and murderers in an empire bigger than the real roman empire, you got quite a lot of people.
>What are their causes?
The human empire as said didn't believe there would be much to be gained from the new lands compared to incorporating the last human kingdoms, still completely missing out didn't seem great either, on top of that they had had some issues with a lot of nobles taking issue with the continue wars against other human nations instead of going after the elves or in the other end of the empire the naga, which the emperor had signed peace treaties with to give him breathing room. This had let to a lot of scheming, disobeying/ignoring treaties and even a couple of small scale rebellions. So they just tried to eliminate two birds with one stone.

Well that gets a workable answer. Your destination may be a single “dropdown” selection, but you have to provide other parameters before some form of ignition process. This, presumably leads to it having established rules of location/size/duration. Possibly maximum volume of individual travel or holding delays on the distant end if the platform is full.

Is it self contained or is there a key-style device required for operation?

The system itself is self-contained, though there might be a powerful core device that can be removed, like a crystal key or heart or something. Taking that out would prevent your gate from working, either sending portals or receiving them. But a device so powerful it can create wormholes shouldn't be easy to unplug, and is both time-consuming and monstrously dangerous if improperly handled IE; can tear your planet a new space-time asshole.

I like the idea of a "drop-down menu" of sorts. In terms of parameters, anything that can fit the portal platform shape can travel using the wormholes (too big stuff just gets sheared where it don't fit), and the only limitation is how long the portal stays active, which can be controlled. Wormholes will not fully connect if no space is available, but both sides can see how many connections are trying to go through so someone is in charge of managing the pileup.

Finally sat down and wrote something at length. Read it and critique please, it's only about 3-4 pages.

Attached: gobi.pdf (PDF, 383K)

Ok before I even begin: I like the font. What is it? I will continue reading, but I am drunk, be warned.

Some of the most important migration events in my setting were actually part of the same chain of cultures displacing one another.
>Before migration not!Rome is expanding westward into Eklor's Peaks (the region human civilization likely first developed) and setting up frontier colonies
>Elves are living in their ancestral homeland of Sica
>Due to a long story, Sica becomes largely uninhabitable due to wild magic becoming incredibly prevalent
>Most Elves flee over the Sican Mountains, though some remain and develop into nomadic tribes
>Elves encounter Eklor's Peaks and invade out of desperation, marking one of the first major contacts between Humans and Elves
>Due to it only being a frontier region, Imperial forces are taken off guard and the Elves gain the upper hand
>Elves are brought to the negotiating table after a battle which left both armies in ruins
>Empire allows Elves to settle in Eklor's Peaks
>Treaty stipulates Elves and Imperial Humans are to be treated equally within the new semi-autonomous region
>Still eager to expel any threats, the Elves force the native, non Imperial population out
>Natives migrate West to Trendol, another Imperial frontier region
>Exodus into Trendol sparks ancient tensions between Humans and nomadic Orc clans in the region
>Several Orc clans migrate into the core lands of the Empire, contributing to its eventual downfall

I enjoyed the read. Unfortunately I have no real criticism.

The Gobi seem like interesting folks and I think it would be fun to live with them for a week. But the real question is: what are you going to do with them? How are you going to use all this information?

I need weird political ideologies for my setting. The more obscure the better!

Got completely stripped of sapient life (as with every other planet in the Terran Expanse) by the beings that would become gods thousands of years ago. Maybe it will be discovered by the new humanity at some point, but I haven't decided if so or what that would even entail.

I like it a lot, but how did they come to worship a sky god? The style of the document is also really neat.

Bump

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies

Messing around with what's listed you could come up with stuff or let it be a start point to where you're heading.

clerical fascism mixed with green liberalism could be cool. like a militant religious enviro-warrior government.

masculism + technocracy could be interesting as well... like a weird patriarchy focused on technological advancement, maybe some transhumanism mixed in. do females use tech to become more masculine? are leaders techno-augmented to resemble Greek gods? lots of potential there.

according to Acrobat
>IM FELL English

Samran are humanoids who are nine feet tall standing straight, generally large and muscular. They lay eggs, and whoever raises the newly hatched infant is imprinted upon as a parental figure to nearly-absolutely submit to. This means they tend to live in large family units on their home island of Carvara.

Andaran came to Carvara and colonized it, and started to use the Samran as troops to shore up their power, eventually becoming mainstays of the military. Carvara's colonial population has since established their independence, and as a consequence the Samran were bred by the Andaran royal family (which runs basically the entire Empire) to shore up its power, leading to an explosion in their non-Carvaran population.

Today, the Samran are generally located in Carvara, Andaran, or Andaran's other former colonies (Andaran being an empire on the wane, in large part). Intellectually, they have a difficult time with learning but are very good at putting together well-understood information; it's a chore to teach them mathematics, but once they learn they can solve problems very quickly. This gives them a reputation as dumb brutes, but that oversimplifies things.

This race is sort of meant to be my setting's ogres. The world is near future - ballpark it at 2050-2100 tech/culture. Does it seem like an interesting take on the general concept of the orc/ogre/troll/etc?

(Carvara/Andaran/Samran not really final names but I don't want to just say "colony" "empire" and "ogres" over and over.)

How autistic do you get with conlanging?

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>masculism + technocracy could be interesting as well... like a weird patriarchy focused on technological advancement, maybe some transhumanism mixed in. do females use tech to become more masculine? are leaders techno-augmented to resemble Greek gods? lots of potential there.
Basically the Ixians from Dune. All male. All clone. Their females were transformed into birthing pods. Until they rebelled.

>he actually reads the fat man’s masturbation material

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>he shitposts in order to start arguments in civil threads
Maximum disdain.

I play my forgotten "empires" and protogens as a joke. Everyone and their mother thinks that they were super advanced, wars being fought over coloured rocks and buildings because they were placed everywhere across the world.

Turns out, they were just dumb stone age barbarians who's shamans had mass enchanted rock mobile phones. There wasn't even a fall, people just gradually broke their phones and everyone else got by and forgot their dumb little cave holes.

I love this.

Alternatively, the Fallen Empire was incredibly advanced...for its time. Sure it's got all these impressive ruins and lost tech/magic we can't replicate, but that's mostly because they blunt-forced their way through a problem modern civs were clever enough to side-step, or we just don't have the blueprints so they seem mysterious. Really, the Ancient Fallen Empire of Glorious Artifacts We Must Steal pretty much capped out at 5th level spellcasting, and they probably only knew half the spells modern people do.

Okay, so:

>Science Fiction/Fantasy
>Humans from Earth discover alien "Gate" on first real colony
>Take it home, hook that shit up
>Connect to entire galaxy of trade empires and warring factions
>Human Gate is OP-plznerf status, plus interstellar diplomacy means Humans are backwards, but have breathing space to "grow up"

Couple races out there, at least the top dogs:

>The Grays
Highly advanced Technocrats and World-Traders. Xenophobic, but hide it so they can play the other species against each other.
>The Bugs
Highly industrious insectoids. Can assimilate other species, love to colonize, currently restrained by Truce. Very religious.
>The "Elves"
Psionic human-like aliens. Most advanced technologically and psionically, tend to be compared to Norse Gods in behavior and personality.
>The Reptiles
An interstellar mob. The Reptiles are expansionist, aggressive, and warlike. Honor code exempts them from being honorable to non-Reptiles.
>The Machines
Borderline Ascended Robot Gods. Hate everyone. Existential threat to all life.

What I got so far. Any suggestions? Criticisms?

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I thus far have aggressively avoided having to do it. Given that the core setting I have built for actual game running is near-modern in a not-quite-ours Earth.

I am pretty afraid of getting into it because I don't know how far I'll fit into that rabbit hole.

That is pretty entertaining. But probably one of the more "historically" plausible cases of a precursor society. Looking back historically about how most everything was pretty much how it is now but with slightly different fashions and more diseases.

Tell me how to get into it. I need to make at least one language.

>not slavic, germanic
Nice try. Ivanov painted romanticized Proto-Slavs.

>the Aryans
This term -- when it was still used to refer to anything other than the Indo-Iranian language family -- just meant Proto-Indo-European. This was even the case when the Nazis were using it, which was one of the reasons they didn't use the term nearly as much as you think they did.

>leaving their homeland and becoming nomads, eventually settling in India millennia later
This would make them Proto-Indo-Europeans, or at best Proto-Indo-Iranians.

This is more or less true to life. Ancient empires like Rome or Qin China are impressive because of their intellectual and societal sophistication, not their technology. They didn't even have stirrups for gods sake.

Which is more interesting?

>The Gods created the world
>Nobody knows how the world was created

And as for the gods, which is more interesting?
>The Gods have existed forever and created the world and the races
>The Gods live in their own planes and just created the races
>The Gods are just powerful beings that have always existed but created nothing
>The Gods used to be mortal but ascended to godhood through immense power and immortality

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>Which is more interesting?
Trick question. Both are true.

Severed from a small sphere of Human colonized star systems by a strange event that destroyed every wormhole connection to the Solar System during WW3, while leaving connections between the other systems intact. Decades of rapidly deteriorating climate conditions after a massive release of methane clathrates into the atmosphere had led to widespread famine, revolutions and war, which culminated in the use of chemical weapons, cyberwarfare and bioengineered plagues targeting specific ethnic groups. The last know moments were a global nuclear exchange, and minutes later, all wormhole links to Earth unraveled due to an unknown reason.

The remaining few hundreds of millions of people scattered across lifeless balls of rock spinning around a couple dozen stars are left to wonder whether the Solar System's wormhole connections failed due to a powerful new weapon deployed by some nation state, a physics reason like a time-travel paradox, some alien dickery, or a miraculous act of God. Star nations of the heavily balkanized Human sphere debate in the following years whether a wormhole link should be re-established to the homeworld (a STL journey that would take decades from Alpha Centauri, the closest colony), or if it would be best to stay the hell away and simply expand further into the stars. This fundamental difference between pro-Earthers and pro-expansionists leads to military tension and brings nations on the brink of war. Furthermore, fragmented eschatological religions disagree on whether they are the Chosen Ones saved from death and destruction on Earth, or cursed to wander the void while worthy Humans get to live in an Earthly paradise after the Apocalypse.

Satellites and radio telescopes pointed towards Earth see or hear no direct evidence of civilization, only the occasional automated emergency message. Models by scientists, generals and AIs show that billions on Earth would have likely survived, along with millions in colonies on Mars and beyond.

This, you can have mythical, intelligent design in your cosmology and universal origin story.
It only becomes cool though when nobody knows for sure what happens, and the different religions are just various interpretations and theories.

>How often do mass migrations occur in your setting?
>What are some examples of mass migrations?
>What are their causes?

Desert people move with great sand worms, since they live in their tunnels, and eat their poop. This is a constant movement. When the worm moves too close to the surface, and the tunnel is weak and collapses, its a huge crisis. The surface is not friendly to humans during the night, and outright genocidal during the day.

I wish more crazy people could draw

Julian Evolov?

I guess I should say, which is more interesting to you?

Slow down there Paul Muad'dib

I don't know what you are talking about, its oc doughnut steel.
It also has not-angels noble paladin harpies, and not-gollum kleptomaniac zombie that stole the McGuffin.

>You keep the forgotten history in your personal Lore book and don’t explore it in setting. It’s just your reference point.
Yes, I have a rough idea of how things came to be but I don't have any detailed explanations for them. They aren't story/setting essential but it does help create a foundation for everything else I incorporate.

I definitely love the idea of "misunderstood" histories. There's the idea of writing things as matter of fact, then writing things as matter of opinion of your contemporary people. Then there's also writing in both.

>Blah blah gods
I can't really get behind any of those ideas simply because there's no foundation for thematic storytelling applied to them. I have a bit of "Nobody knows how the world was created" because the creation of the world is not really vital to my story so I don't really try to develop a genesis.

What lives on the surface?

During night, a lot of shit. During the day, only fantasy turtles and other armored back dudes. There are some coral-like plants there though, that produce water, and in them some limited life. Worms eat these.

Yup, it's IM FELL.

I just enjoy autistic worldbuilding. I originally got into it for making settings for my campaigns, now I just do it because it's fun.

I intentionally leave out some details when writing, but it's conceivably because rain causes floods and fertility, and the fact that the stars and heavenly bodies have been associated with divinity across almost all human cultures.

Sort of autistic I guess. I do root words, have my IPA set up, sentence structure form, word construction rules, conjugation for verbs, placement of adjectives, lack of certain features, affixation of single vowels for a number of purposes, separate singular and plural conjugation, etc.

For the actual word construction process I use a combination of root words, common developments of it (The list of animal, abstract, person, tool, etc.) and hopefully soon-ish just being able to make up new words on the go once I reach ~500-700 root words.

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