Worldbuilding General

Worldbuilding resources:

Questions to ask when designing a culture:
http://www.frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir's_Ethnographical_Questionnaire/questionnaire.htm

Map resource:
http://www.fantasticmaps.com

Basic worldbuilding info
http://writing-world.com/

Military number limitations:
http://www.writing-world.com/sf/hordes.shtml

Population and city/town/village distribution information:
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

Real world texts on religion and supernatural beliefs:
sacred-texts.com

Please add any resources you've found helpful in the past. We're currently lacking in the map-making and languages departments, to name a few.

About a week ago I shared some bits about my magic system. Essentially it boiled down to magic being powered by souls; meaning human and animal sacrifices were needed for the most powerful stuff.
At the time, I was planning on using this in a Viking-esque world, but I recently changed it to take place in a Phoenician-centric world. There's an emphasis on exploration and I intend to have the PCs be on a ship, but instead of being vikings they'll focus on Odyssey-style adventures during trade/exploration missions.

So far my NOT-Assyrians and NOT-Greeks are just carbon copies, so I'd love some help fleshing them out and adding more.

The three main cultures I've got are based on the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Assyrians respectively.
The NOT-Phoenicians are part of a trade empire. Originally a single powerful city-state, they now have a string of well defended trade cities throughout the world. They act as a bank/postal service/transport for most of the known world.
They have the best ships and will trade anything with anyone, so long as they can conduct their business relatively unmolested.

Anyway, this is a backdrop for the mcguffin hunt. Scattered across the world are an unknown number of magical springs, located where the living world and afterlife meet. This is where new souls enter the world and the dead pass on.
If a living creature enters a pool, they absorb a huge amount of power and become demi-gods, but the pool loses its power.

The gods in my setting are people who have entered one of these springs and subsequently increased their power even further by mass magical rituals.
Few people know this to be true, but the PCs are going to be people hired by someone who does. Their job, though they won't know it at first, is to find these springs.

Thoughts? Ideas to make it work?

>>44674909
Some of these lines got mixed around in editing. Sorry about that.

what's a weapon that's specifically good for women (besides the naginata)?

>>44675161
Crossbow
Blow darts
One-handed warhammer/pick (which have smaller heads than modern fiction would lead you to believe. Stamina is an issue, but you'd have to train to use it regardless so it's a good choice)
Spear variants

did the guy that made that prehistoric/neanderthal setting update any more since a few weeks back? calling you out, i'm curious to see what else you've come up with

>>44675161
Well, not the longbow as most fantasy games would have you believe. Longbows/warbows require a lot of skill, training, and upper body strength, particularly if you're going to be using it an attritive battle setting.

Spears are probably the best, as a spear is the weapon you can get the best effect out of with the least training. Classic weapon, good for all ages and sexes. Any other simple polearm works too.

Also, like >>44675253 said, crossbows and guns are great as well, work equally well for men and women.

Does anyone have good sources for the price of slaves in the ancient world?
The sources I've found vary wildly. One says the cost might be around $180 in modern US dollars, but another says it was often upwards of $8000 for unskilled workers and $23000+ for a skilled one.

>>44674120
>tfw you cook up a neat sci-fi Dark Souls/Bloodborne setting idea with some people on /bbg/ and /tg/ is already fucking making one

It was centred around a galactic empire that had discovered alien magitech that needed prayer and sacrifice to operate. The rapidly expanding empire couldn't keep up with the sacrifice the machinery needed, artificial sacrifices didn't work for long and also the ghosts of the sacrificed were growing more in number every day.

The empire collapsed, the wondrous machinery ceased to work and civilization fell apart. You'd be someone from the outer rim traveling to the heart of the empire with salvaged alien magitech. You'd go from world to world, going through abandoned space stations and barren moons.

You'd start out not knowing about the magitech. Every kill you make would power your weapons and armour and such, but you wouldn't know that. Bosses would act as massive sacrifices to power the tech to open up new areas and stuff. You'd begin experiencing more and more supernatural stuff, the ghosts of the sacrificed, eventually learning how the technology actually worked.

Weapons would each have a melee and gun component. Your weapon has an energy meter, gun spamming lowers that meter and the lower it is, the lower your melee is. Guns don't do enough damage to kill, they're more for bringing down defenses, melee is what kills enemies.

We were talking about this as a videogame of course, it was /vg/. You'd have teleporter hubs to get from place to place, maybe a ship as a hub world. They were alien magitech, and your blood powered them, so you're bonded to them. When you died, the teleporter could bring you back through space/time fuckery, that wasn't fully developed.

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I'm attempting to make a game taking heavy inspiration from the technical designs of Miyazaki particularly the steel-engraved intro sequence from Laputa.

I'll try and summarise my current ideas

>Floating cities are created as mobile superstructures to bring 'civilisation' to an otherwise barbaric land (considered barbaric by the city dwellers)
>Late Utopia on the edge of breaking apart as cities grow exponentially in power and greed
>Airship technology all over the place powered by predominantly turbines, windmills and a fantasy power source mined from deep underground. unsure about the power source so open to better suggestions, ideally not 'a wizard did it'
>6 Major cities that move from place to place. Used to be 7 but one crashed and is now considered a no-go zone due to the radiation
>Intense rivalry between these cities despite being officially a collective. Nearly full blown war between two (Punic Wars)
>Empire is falling apart from within as its upper class are devolving to hedonism an its lower class are becoming increasingly disenfranchised.
>Lower class sedition is increasing

Basically super advanced tech Roman Empire analog is nearing its end.

Ideas and suggestions welcome.

'd like to try and find a different time period to avoid any steampunk trappings associated with flying ships but if it fits it fits

Pic is a WIP map i've drawn up to get the general idea

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>>44674909

Physical Gods is interesting, and the fact that they then mess with natural order really needs to be addressed. I expect to see a lot of od-tyrants up to no good and fighting each other for the world and devour each other.

So basically you have a much more extreme and more morally black version of Highlander happening in the background.

So do the PCs have a ship or do they have someone who ferries them around?

If you want more room for them set the adventure on an archipelago that they have been told contains a spring that an employer needs found, this the players go around this chain of islands charting them out until they find the spring.

Assyrians were really no a naval people as far as my knowledge goes, but they have great beards.

What about other races is this all humans?

>>44675161
Any weapon? What do you mean by "specifically good for women"?

>>44674120
I'd swear for a minute that the OP image is the work of Uncle Ghastly, of the old tentacled epics webcomic. The elf slave looks like his style.

>>44676710
If you're using Miyazaki as an influence, go with magical technology. Anti-gravity crystals, rocks that give the user the equivalent of telekinesis, that sort of thing.

>>44676710

My advice is put a lot of Zeppelins in as the main thing that these cities use. Zepplins are classy blimps.

Onto your main question.

Maybe these cities are powered by a strange anomaly that people built around, like some floating mountains, people settled them and eventually figured out how to use combustion to propel the city, so the cities have a fixed height that doesn't change as much but have a large degree of movement still.

Or you can have that the city worships a wind, that they trapped to power it. Or possibly they once fabricated these wind gods. Or perhaps human sacrifice. I honestly find the the idea of floating landmasses above the world fine, and cities just carved out things.

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Rate this setting

>>44676734
If I were to venture a guess, the poster meant weapons that are effective without a high strength requirements and which are therefore optimized to be used by humans with two X chromosomes who statistically develop less muscular mass due to biological factors.

threads on this board die much too quickly and i don't understand why that is when it's usually so slow

bump the thread if you're able to save it from the far pages

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>>44677049
bretty gud

please help me come up with a magical realm scenario where a player is forced to essentially discard their footwear and give a footjob to a phallic plant for ______.

What would be the effects on a world where the rainy season is every season?

>>44677056
Knives. Big ass knives.

>>44676824
It's actually by Shabazik; you can find her/his/its work on deviantart.

>>44676719
I haven't worked out the particulars yet, but Highlander is a pretty good analogy for how the gods work. Magic itself is powered by souls, like I said. Weaker powers merely "exhaust" the user's spirit, but more powerful magics, throwing fireballs and such, requires souls to be permanently burned (for lack of a better word).
Part of the reason the demi-gods are so powerful is that they effectively become soul-sponges. They absorb the souls of those who die around them, which gives them a huge advantage with magic since normal sorcerers typically have to use up any soul power (needs a better name) of sacrifices they make immediately or the power is lost. The demi-gods don't have that problem.
Eventually they get so powerful they don't need a physical body any more and become "real" gods.

At least, that's how it works now. It's still subject to change. The idea developed originally as a fluffy way to work XP. In one of my older settings, anyone with proper training would steal bits of the souls of those they kill. I find it works better for a small number of people, however.
I also had the idea that they demi-gods simply get a one-time huge boost to their "soul" and simply gain such an affinity for death that they become naturally skilled sorcerers. If I go with this, the BBEG will be someone who went into a "used" spring. He survived, but became the soul sponge thing.
I'm still working it all out. Ideally the springs are one-use-only (but may become active again after several hundred years, or something). Animals can get the same power up, but the unnatural nature of the springs means living beings nearby get a terrible sense of wrongness and foreboding.

sorry about long post, got one more

>>44677124

The plant secretes special chemicals that protects the feet when walking through the spore and algae infested waters of the swamp; without this protection the algae will infect and devour the foot in a few days time.

Alternatively, the plant secretes pheromones that attract a large swarm of fish to the person walking, which they do on purpose to help catch a certain illusive specimen.

I've never understood footfags, but I won't leave you hanging.

>>44677197
Meant to link to >>44676770, not >>44676824.

Anyway:
>>44676719
Good idea about the archipelago. My current plan is to have the owner of the ship be the person looking for the spring and have the PCs be the crew (or the officers, at least). Their employer is a minor noble (I'm thinking nobles and sorcery will be pretty much synonymous) with an understandable lust for more power. He's "in charge," but is a total city boy and leaves pretty much all the decisions to the crew. He's also been doing this for awhile and this is his 10th or 11th expedition, though the first time he's come in person. I'm trying to find the right balance of "desperate to find a spring" and "on the verge of giving up."

My NOT-Assyrians are also not big on naval affairs, but they outsource that to my NOT-Phoenicians anyway. A big part of my NPs' success comes from their ability to play major powers against each other.
That each city is pretty much independent means major local powers don't take them too seriously as a threat.

I'm going with an all human setting, though I've been toying with the idea of having one demi-god use water from a second spring he found to give his army an alchemical power up in the vein of uruk-hai.

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>>44676824
>>44676935
I could nip the idea from The Edge Chronicles and have a rock that when heated, floats or rocks that just naturally floats when something is done to it.

I'd like to imply that the cities are very much man-made and its people conquered most of the world. But now due to a myriad of internal problems this empire is falling apart. Maybe a huge secret kept underwraps that the rocks are starting to be less efficient and inevitably the cities will eventually crash to the ground or something more insidious like city dwellers becoming increasingly corrupt from overindulgence while the important things go to hell.

>>44677417
Now this is important, the players will either share this water after killing their employer for it, or might want that power afterward.

Something needs to guard this spring, something that the players might have to reason with, side with or whatnot.

The point is this spring is powerful and having it can upset the whole thing.

So what will be the reward for the players splitting the spring or the players fighting over it?

Also can the players take their bosses' soul and is their boss going to become the BBEG?

So I am curious about caste systems and how they would play out in a younger civilization where the upper castes have magic, the lower castes do not, and everything else scale depending on where they are within the caste system. Also some mid caste levels would be enchanted with magic from a higher caste for the purpose of trades and skilled labor. What is a good reference or necessary information pertaining to castes. Also what is a good governing system for roman or mideival era caste systems?


Additionally I am trying to figure out the best way to have a group with great power aside from the civilizations government or a central religion. Possibly a group of secret keepers who are seperate from the government completely, or a sleeper group which controls the government of this nation and others around the world.

>>44677476
That's perfectly fine, maybe the rocks themselves they built around were the fuel that they are burning up in a chemical reaction they don't even know about.

Additionally when they start to run out of actual fuel for the levitation, the remaining stone becomes unstable and starts to crumble apart as the deposits of what is actually powering the place are gone and all that is left is a stone which turns to dust and gives off radiation. So essentially fallout right there.

Don't try to use real chemistry here, strange properties for unknown materials is fine. This is fantasy as long as you don't take the real Periodic table and mutilate it to sound right you are a-okay!

>>44677631
could also fit that around how the romans had lead-tainted water which screwed around with a lot of things

>>44677631
I like the naturaly floating mountain idea maybe city 7 began o mine their mountain too much in their greed (because smaller mined fragments still floated creatin air barges) and the city fell to the ground for reasons unknown.

Building 360degrees around a mountain that magically floats already would be pretty awesome. Basically like asteroid cities but with a fixed gravity in one direction.

>>44677531
>something needs to guard this spring
Hmm. Good point.
An early draft called for a secret cabal of semi-immortal shamans who act as living grim reapers. Their job was to guide dead souls to springs.
I had planned on the demi-gods and sorcerers wiping them out since they would obviously be opposed to each other (and they'd be easy for sorcerers to find, since they'd be surrounded by souls), but bringing them back might work for the guardian thing. I originally scrapped them since they'd have used a different kind of magic which involved borrowing power from spirits (as in, elementals and daemons and such, not dead people), but had trouble making it work with the existing magic system.

I'm a little worried about planning too far ahead. There are definitely going to be rival groups also looking for springs, and I'm going to try keeping the truth about how they work a secret from the players as long as possible.
If I do bring back the shamans, I may offer the players a chance to join their ranks.

Ooo, I just had a thought. Maybe the shamans have the ability to place souls into objects. They do this as a means for hiding the souls while they transport them to the springs, but if sorcerers found out about the ability they'd see it as the power to create batteries to power magic. That would explain why they're at least nearly-extinct. But it would also make them the only ones able to make (and use?) magic items.
That would be pretty good incentive to the players to not use the spring, right?

I dunno. Getting a super power up would probably be too tempting to most PCs.

The best ending for that quest is, as you sort-of-suggest, having their boss get the power up and becoming the BBEG. Maybe he uses the spring and the players have to learn shaman-magic to fight him or get revenge?

Or maybe a monster would be best. I don't have dragons as of yet.
Maybe reality realized how fucked the world gets when the springs get used up and created dragons as protectors?

Azuria is a post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery fantasy campaign that takes place in a world whose sea-level rose long ago to cover 99% of the world. What caused such a catastrophe is unknown, for most records of the time before have been lost to the sea. The people of the surface has been wiped out, and only those who have adapted to life underwater thrive among the ruins of the past.

Keywords:
Underwater, ruins, naked, wampum, Lovecraft, Little Mermaid, human sacrifice, magic, Sorcery!, crabmen, fishmen, mutants, invertebrates, alchemy, Abyss, Barsoom, Atlantis, slavery, sleeping gods, lurking doom, blood, rot, colours.

Question: What kinds of interesting locations could a party encounter under the ocean?

>>44677814
Underwater radiation soaked nuclear reactors gon critical could make for an interesting place. All sea life nearby would be radiation rich producing valuable trade goods, but a.location no one wants anything to do with because of the negative effects on the body.

Underwater casino city/den of sharks area for some bandits.

Coral reef that has grown over the remains of Not-Tokyo(throw in tentacles here)

Undersea ring of fire as a place of safety for mutants.

>>44677765

So now there can be lots of drama as this technology fails and this empire collapses and falls out of the sky and potentially can be nearly wiped out if they fail to evacuate.

But it also sets up a nice location the 7th City that fell from the sky, imagine a city turned to corridors of misshapen glass and steel by the impactm sideways it lays crashed into the earth in a dead crater filled with strange sickening dust and skeletons that reanimated.

Boom that's a location.

>>44677963
Interesting ideas, but it's not post-apocalyptic in a modern era sense. An apocalyptic event occured on a fantasy world, and it drowned. Modern things like those never existed.

>>44677790
There we go, golems. An army of golems ever waiting protect the circle of life and death from being thrown into havoc.

What are the consequences for the spring?

As in all babies are born stillborn miles around when it is lost or perhaps people don't die when they should and instead suffer in agony.

On the plus side that old guy is going live longer.

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>>44677970
Nice idea! I think that along with some other major problems could be the reason. Civil unrest? A rivalry between two cities being focussed on over quality of life? While deeply disappointing, Bioshock Infinite's Rapture had some stuff I could pinch societal wise I guess?

>>44678049
I'm not sure how well golems would fit into the setting. Who made them and what makes them move? It doesn't really fit the kind of magic that already exists. But it's still a solid idea.
Maybe something like the gnomes from Return to Oz?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjfMRBY16RI


>As in all babies are born stillborn miles around
Yes, actually; the last time I brought this setting up that was the first symptom I listed. But people still die, the area around the spring just gets haunted, for lack of a better word. Dead bodies may come back as ghouls and, if bodies are burned instead, terrible luck and deadly accidents become more and more common. Crops do poorly, bad weather and earthquakes get more common, many people go crazy, birds reenact Alfred Hitchcock movies as other animals follow suit.

The backstory is going to have several instances of prominent cities going to ruin in a generation or two with little (supposed) explanation.

Using a spring is a terrible, terrible thing.

>>44678024
Ah. Then some other ideas. First two are related. Think about a city that tried to adapt as a whole. Maybe powerful barriermagic to become the city in the buble under the sea, or maybe a natural undersea cave with an air bubble.

Think about what happened to cause water levels to raise. Or side effects there in. Maybe a volcano has preserved a city of old, but new life has began to recently grow over it.

All water would have transitioned to salt water, but variations in density and salt content in some places may make underwater rivers possible.

The northen and southern iceburg and ice archipelago would be interesting.

Turtles' back island would be good but is overdone.

Driftwood shipyard could add some interesting dungeon like elements.

Depending on magics available, negative effects on the aquatic ecosystem could be interresting. Ex. Skeletons dont need to breath so a shallow necromancer skeleton graveyard could be fin, but their limited movement may make them easy targets.

Acid or poison magic could make some locations scarier.

>>44678203

And the lower class doesn't want have night of the living dead plus losing their faces. Not to mention to probable loss of sections of the ship means spiraling civil war.

Some ideas for ya.

Ruling Class: Mages
Upper Class: Engineers, Officers
Middle Class : Soldiers, Tradesmen , Clerks, Supervisors
Lower Class : Laborers, Farmers
Bondage Classes : Criminals and Slaves

The big question is making the cities alive, in the sense they have and order to work.
And where the cogs will break down.

I gave a good scenario.


.>>44678271

Golems are made of rocks that can hold souls, boom like adra from Pillars of Eternity.

They can be crystal beings made by using the spring in a responsible matter and servants of the Gods of Life and Death who generally like the system they have in place not being broken.

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So, something I've been thinking about for awhile - what about a villain, who isn't very powerful, pretty stupid, can't fight very well, has no magic artifact, no dark and terrible majicks, doesn't traffike wit daeymns and basically just sits around drinking with his thugs/friends all day - but is absurdly lucky? Not even actively evil per say, just stealing cars and breaking stuff because he's bored as hell, he knows there won't be any consequences, and it sounded fun.

Like Deus Ex fuckin' omnibus levels of lucky. Like the universe is going out of it's way to accommodate him. Someone tries to shoot him? Bird flies by at the exact second and takes the bullet. There's a bomb? He was standing at just the right angle for the shrapnel/blast to barely hurt him. He drives his car off a bridge? Door flies off the hinge and he wakes up on the shore a few hours later with a headache. If he's starving in the desert, a snack machine will fall out of a UPS plane passing by.

On one hand I think it'd be sorta cool to have a bad guy who's motivation for being a bad guy is "I dunno, looked fun" and is at his core just some dude having a divine-intervention based power trip, but I get the feeling it'd get really obnoxious or sound like some kind of bad self-insert.

>>44678534
That is the kind of character that I normmally put into play as a minor reoccuring annoyance. Though I will mention that their ability to survive is absurd and fun to ay out, but when I write them they tend to have no luck against the rpers. Basically team rocket. They always crawl back. But dont really add anything.

>>44678371
>Think about a city that tried to adapt as a whole. Maybe powerful barriermagic to become the city in the buble under the sea, or maybe a natural undersea cave with an air bubble.
I was originally just going to have everyone being amphibious and have a swim speed. Thinking on it now, maybe not all should, particularly humans. Bubble cities could be interesting, but how do I circumvent the inability to breathe water, so players who are humans can party with non-humans? Enchantments, potions?

>Think about what happened to cause water levels to raise.
It's currently left open to the actual reason, but the one I keep in my head it happened when the Kraken woke up, rose up, drowned the world, and died.

>The northen and southern iceburg and ice archipelago would be interesting.
This could be a thing, populated by selkies who use enchanted ice?

>Turtles' back island would be good but is overdone.
Maybe not an island, maybe just a city or town?

>Driftwood shipyard could add some interesting dungeon like elements.
Hmm, possibly. I don't think many rigs stay afloat very long. Sunken shipyards sure.

>Skeletons
Necromancy is definitely a thing, and there's plenty of skeletons around after the end of the world.

>Acid or poison magic could make some locations scarier.
Considering the Abyssal Plain is covered in a thick layer of ooze, that could be terrifying, a desert of ooze.

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Okay, so I'm the guy with the idea of WW3 moves humankind into a Migrant Fleet.

I got the basics of the Migrant Fleet down(name of fleet pending; don't want people to think I ripped off mass effect):

>Around two hundred to three hundred ships, all varying in size
>Ten or so main Civilian habitats, all of them around the size of New York/San Francisco. They're basically O'Neil Cylinders built into starships.
>Around two or so dozen, smaller habitats. Size of small cities or large towns.
>All of the agriculture and industry have their own dedicated ships, numbering in the hundreds.
>a small military fleet dedicated to the defense of the rest of the fleet. Since we live on starships, we specialize in space combat. We have a "knack for it"; with our combat pilots being rather renowned and our space marines legendary.
>One ship is very important. This is The Lighthouse(name pending). It is the main communication center for the whole fleet, and it acts as a navigational beacon and navigation data archive for every ship in the fleet, state owned and privately owned.
>Since we almost killed ourselves back on earth a few centuries back, we are deathly afraid of anyone finding out where the fleet is going or what the access code is to the beacon.
>Every human pilot knows the com channel and how to decrypt it by heart, and are instructed to never let a non-human, be they friend or foe, gain any knowledge of the code through action or in-action. Failing to do so is punishable by death.

Now, the humans are trying to find their own star system to live in, but where ever they go, it's either territory belonging or claimed to belong to other galactic civilizations or it's not suitable for them. So they go around the galaxy, following up on potential leads for new worlds and mining gas giants and asteroids along the way. As such, we've become known for being very mercantile.

Would you like to know more?

>>44679582
So is this for a book or a game? What would PCs be doing if it for a game?

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>>44678493
I think i'll lean towards tech over magic - less so living dead but instead an insidious illness that strikes those that have to work with the rapidly degrading material similar to the way matchstick makers suffered with little compensation.

Class wise its pretty much as you put but replacing Mages with a ruling Nobility. I dont really want magic and spells to be a thing other than hand-waving the flying tech derivatives.

>>44677782
I'm thinking that the stone itself is mined from the surface, requiring mining villages that are closely guarded by a ruling, floating city. They have governance of a large area and move to gather a yearly tithe from areas

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>>44679636
I was planning for an anthology of books, but I can use it for games too.

One campaign I had in mind was the players are merchants selling their wares in various star systems.

Another was them as Space marines sent to help other galactic civilizations in need as a part of a sort of Peace Keeping initiative the fleet's government is doing in order to improve relations with other civilizations.

Or, someone could have found out The Lighthouse's beacon signature. Oh no.

One main theme I want to spell out is sort of not being respected. As soon as we're thrust into the galactic community, we're either coddled like primitives/children("awww, poor humans we've set up a charity fund for you here you want some help with your life?") or hated and feared("They destroyed their planet, ours are next! We should've let them nuke themselves!").

But over time, we become more and more respected. I just gotta think of some galactic terror that can give humans the chance to help. Maybe some upcoming empire or a cold war finally turning hot?

>>44679718

So instead if something improper goes with the reaction the dust is created and everything goes south.

Mining operations add a layer of strategic thought to the world map, as territories would be fought over to get this resource to hurt rivals.

So these cities need have some sort of spark which divides them and the empire just falls apart.

The reality is an empire of these cities, I would think would be impossible since, the amount of power projection as well as population can lead to separatism easily.

>>44674120
Have an idea for an AltHist scenario with Japan emerging as a major space power on Earth.
>Japan succeeds in expansion of Asia, America is too isolated to interfere
>Germans go communist instead of facist, join forces with the commie Russians
>Germany convinces Italy to go communist, Italy joins the Axis
>Russia attacks the Japanese and instigates the Chinese/Korean Revolutions
>Italy/German begin assault of France/Britain
>Britian/France hold out against Germany/Italy, eventually causing the German army to collapse. The Italians fall soon afterwards
>The Japanese don't openly engage the Russians and the British/French launch nukes on major Russian cities, signaling the end of the war.
>Germany is in ruins, Russia is irradiated, Britian and France are damaged for many years, America is still isolationist, and Japan is poised to take over the global economy
>Land on the moon in early 50s, established a moon base by the 21st century, have sent men to Mars by the 22nd

What does /tg/ think? Stupid? Unrealistic? Both?

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>>44679854
Well one factor i'm considering is that they were previously united by a sort of manifest destiny philosophy combined with whatever it was that let the Romans or English maintain their empires for so long. Point is is that its reached its breaking point and is now on the top of a steep decline.

The spark could be civil unrest, petty squabbles in the nobility that trickles down into gross mismanagement or even war, deliberate sabotage by a tired people from all sides or something different.

>>44680128
It's solid. Just develop the powers on the surface who have a stake in their decline.

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I've made a few threads about it still and I'm still trying to figure it out;

How can I have animal people races and half human half animal people, or is it better to sort of have one or the other? What if the half human half animals didn't actually look like animals but supposedly have animal bloodlines; meaning they have names and personality traits befitting animals even thought they look totally human? (lionhearts- people who are brave and strong, most men have beards in a 'mane' sort of style. Rattooth- people who have smallish pointed faces and are sneaky/cowardly, etc)

I ask because I want to add a few animal people, including awesome donkey dudes, but I want to make it so it isn't shitty.

>>44676710
I have a similar setting and what I did is the mineral underground is some kind of exotic machinery deposited by an ancient civilization that either left, or was destroyed. The machinery is a functioning gravity mirror - it works by redirecting the flow of gravity, so the gravity of Earth cause things to be pushed away instead of pulled in. By turning this mirror on and off quickly you get levitation. So the cities have to be built on a base that is connected to this gravity mirror tech, which is "falling up", and everything else is built on top of that, so the base needs to be heavy enough not to be pushed down by what's on top of it (if my basic understanding of physics is correct). And you don't have to make it look like an actual mirror, that's just the metaphor for how it works.

It's still handwavy, but it feels little better than saying it's just magic.I stole the concept from a book called Influx by Daniel Suarez. Actually a fun book, all about what would happen if the gravity mirror was invented (among other things).

I'm going to be hosting a fallout campaign soon so I've written done the factions and setting of the campaign.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xEzLMwVGbn_MLeX8fhp6p6qWQNzIa0bPLCVJ6zJkddA/edit

>>44680645
Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to add. The gravity mirror still requires energy to be turned on - so you have to have some kind of furnace, windmill, or steam engine which can create electricity to power the mirror. Disabling any of those would bring down the city. You can tweak it so the mirror requires heat instead of electricity, you can make it require a lot or a little, whatever.

>>44680874
Oh, and another thing to add based on your original question. I like this because if you have a limited umber of mirrors, or need a large amount of energy to power the mirror, you can avoid having a lot of small ships flying around if you don't want those. You could say that you need a really big city to generate the energy to power the mirror. Or, you could say that the people powering it don't fully understand the technology, only that they need to generate heat/make a turbine go around to power it, so you can have it be an otherwise medievalesque world.

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I've been wondering about this question for fucking AGES and I've already asked /sci/, but maybe /tg/ can help as well?


How would a SUPERCONTINENT effect biodiversity? (Both plants and animals) I'm assuming there would be LESS with the exception being organisms living on isolated islands or perhaps archipelagos, etc..

How would the WEATHER by effected by a supercontinent?

And finally, what about the Ocean? What would the biodiversity be like inside the supercontinents SUPER ocean?

Any and all help, ideas and actual scientific responses would be appreciated- This is something that's been bugging the shit out of me for fucking ages.

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>>44677814
Colossal, kilometers-long whales have evolved. There's a town inside a whale's stomach.

Sprawling underwater merfolk kingdoms.

"Riding" large sharklike creatures, or more like, hooking onto them to get somewhere faster.

Guns made out of giant pistol shrimp, that fire supersonic jets of water at short distance.

Wizards have huge nudibranch familiars (look them up, their amazing).

The possibilities are endless.

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So I'm rebuilding Wuxia from the ground up. None of that "monk" shit. Weapons optional. Dim Mak and qi blasts obligatory. What other essentials should a Wuxia include?

Hi teegee, I've been doing some worldbuilding for a campaign I'll be running for d&d just to flesh it out and eventually write it into a solid book all things going well.
One hurdle I'm running into is aerial combat with flying creatures. I've got "fighter" and "bomber" archtypes down, what do I do for troop carrying or deployment?
Keep in mind that this world has magic available to it, though it is expensive and dangerous to use. Along the lines of nuclear deployment.

>>44681146
How do you feel abut magical bubble cities maintained by a corrupt wizardking? If you want to breathe, you swear fealty.

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>>44681301
You could have several creatures flying in formation, carrying a troop platform. That doesn't really feel as nice but it's a possibility.

I'm not sure what kind of creatures you have, but you could have something like the Combine dropship from HL2. Any big creature could be fitted with a troop container like that.

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>>44681409
Sounds cool to me.

>>44681417
>>44681417
For the meantime, I'm going with anything you can find in the D&D franchise for flying.

Small expensive elite squads are easy for me to transport and figure out, it's transporting battalions of mooks that's that problem.

I'm trying to avoid airships at all costs however.

Giant animals carrying cargo containers sounds like the way to go.

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I'm looking for a way to do mechs in a fantasy world, in a way that can involve handwavy technology, but still feels causally coherent in a medievalesque world. Escaflowne type shit, but smaller.

Right now I have it that the mechs are a race of giants who have been made to be braindead, but a pilot can basically go on their back and synch up with their mind, thus controlling them, more like an Evangelion style biomech. This works for now, but I was hoping someone had something better or cooler.

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>>44681534
Hmm, yeah. My way to go would be some kind of large, docile skywhale or some kind of jellyfish thing that floats with a huge air bladder in the higher atmosphere.

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>>44681685

>>44681685
I remember those books!
What about something like a drop pod? Only, you fire the troops out of a cannon?
Issues of having the pod dig too deep could be a problem though.

>>44681776
Yeah, drop pod would work, but you'd still need something to slow it down before it hits the ground. If you have magic to do that that's fine, but then I don't know why you wouldn't just have magic to fly the pod all the way from the starting point to the destination.

>>44682047
Magic is expensive/unpredictable/requires what is effectively magical uranium to function.
Having creatures do 99% of the work reduces the cost significantly I guess.

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>>44681409
Otherwise yousa people gonna die?

So I was thinking of aliens coming to earth type scenario.... How dumb is this...

Two distinct aliens land on earth in Roman era. These aliens have a mutually symbiotic relationship. Cannot live without one another. One of the alien groups is in decline because of disease or genetics or something. The other proposes to establish a new symbiotic relationship with humans. Some beneficial side effects could be shorter, yet fuller lives through the introduction of magic for humns who agree.

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>>44682167
Ok, but you still need something to slow the pods down if you want them to land on the ground at anything other than terminal velocity. I suppose you could have some kind of parachute, but it might depend on how big the pod is (I'm not a physics guy).

>>44681162
Well, light-body technique for starters. Precognition regarding hostile intent. Don't forget improvised weaponry- oversized and undersized.

>>44682283
Applied Magic™ to vessels to slowfall.

>>44682253
>Be me, Roman era
>Probably be dead by 35 from dysentery
>alien offers me demigod powers but you'll probably die soon
>Ok

Where does it go from there?

>>44677547
India has a caste system that's well documented, with people from all castes living together and interacting in the same villages. Jobs are divided between castes, the lowest caste is considered untouchable, there have been big caste wars etc.

>>44677049
Make it less of a straight line border and instead more natural barriers. Like the end of a forest, or a river.

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I'm trying to think of as many magical schools and off-shoots as possible within reason.

Basically Major Schools = Publicly recognized and well recognized by the academic community, Minor = Offshoots, specialist studies, or things that aren't taken as seriously

Any ideas? What I've got so far is pretty shit.

>>44682390
Ok...
Here's what I'm trying to tell you. You've stated three worldbuilding items:

1. Large numbers of troops are deployed via drop pods.
2. Every use of magic is very dangerous and risks "nuclear deployment" (I assume this means a nuclear explosion).
3. Every use of magic requires rare resources.

If you need to be using magic on something that is happening often, as stated in item 1, you are running into the problem of risking a nuclear explosion as stated in 2, and if the rare resource needs to be in each disposable drop pod, you are running into the problem of wasting it every time you need to move troops, as stated in 3.

I'm not trying to tell you how to build your world... if you want drop pods, go for it. I'm just saying that by the rules you've stated, it doesn't seem extremely causally consistent from here, unless you have a non-magic way to move troops, like drop pod parachutes, or containers tied to flying animals, or something like that.

>>44677547
I was going to suggest the pope/Catholic church until I read "other than religion" as that's the obvious one.

Adding on to what you said about secret keepers, you could have a group that hordes technology and suppresses any technological innovation. This is a little more implausbile as it's very hard to keep technology from spreading like that, but it might be just plausible enough for a fantasy world, at least for a short period of in-world time. This group could basically loan out pieces of technology to various factions that curry their favour, and if they try to steal it, use their super-advanced tech to wipe them out. It would require the tech group to have a huge lead on everyone else though.

I mentioned it in an earlier post, there is a book called Influx where they do exactly this. A rogue branch of the US government designed to monitor new technology starts hording it and becoming extremely powerful. The other reference for a group like this is the anime Last Exile, which takes place on a supermassive habitation ship floating in space, and there is a neutral overseer group that is more technologically advanced is supposed to act as a moderating influence against internal wars that would be severe enough to damage or destroy the habitation ship, but it eventually becomes corrupt.

>>44682779
Large numbers of troops as of yet do not have a logistical solution.

Small squads of troops can be carried on gryphon or eagleback as required.
These are your typical small elite squads.
As for mooks? I don't know how to transport huge squads outside of "Magic" or enormous squadrons of eagles/gryphons.

As stated, magic has the issue of going chernobyl, and likewise requires rare resources to use.

I'm trying to get some kind of way to get huge boarding actions on floating islands without resorting to "lolairships"

>>44677547
>>44682899
Another way to go would be to have some kind of oracle, like the Oracle of Delphi, that had a proven track record of predicting events, and existed outside the normal religious structure. Currying favour with the oracle would give you access to information that you could use to defeat opposing states, making it very valuable and the oracle very powerful. You could also put limits on what the oracle could say, like perhaps, the oracle can't say when any particular person dies, or anything like that. But it could be like a perfect military intelligence machine.

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>>44682779
Have attached worldbuilding questionnaire so you can see a bit more into my world I guess.
Feel free to comment, critique or contribute.
I'm sort of hitting a writer's block.
> http://pastebin.com/6t6rva2Y

>>44677547
I believe the Tevinter in Dragon Age have a similar idea with mages being in the upper class. You could look into that, though I'm not sure if it really explores the idea deeply.

>>44681609
You could have something like, angels that have come to earth have been captured and enslaved and their souls/bodies are used to power these mechs. That still involves magic/divinity though.

In Escaflowne they used dragon heart crystals to power the mechs, but don't really explain how the mechs function mechanically.

If you have access, to advanced ancient tech, you could have the mechs be dug up and then clad in period armor for looks.

>>44682613
I would consider dividing arcane into two schools.

One for perception magic, possibly a minor school. Scrying, premonition, anything to do with seeing or hearing things far away spacially or temporally. Also, seeing different ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum (seeing heat/infrared, seeing the earths electromagnetic field, radio waves if those exist in the world, whatever), seeing through illusions, seeing through walls, etc.Advanced smell for tracking things.

Then, the other would be the rest of the stuff in arcane. Studying raw magic energies, maybe somewhat closer to how we see physics - very fundamental stuff that has application to other schools, but is still it's own pursuit.

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>>44677814
Place of interest: a ship graveyard that stretches as far as the eye can see. They say that a mighty naval battle took place here, long ago before the oceans raised. A wizard has cast an air bubble around the area. Adventurers can venture on foot among these relics of the past.
Good part: Loots everywhere.
Bad part: The soldiers who crewed these battleships are reanimated as undead. All of them. Maybe the wizard behind the air bubble spell contaminated the land with residual energy? Fucking wizards.
Plot hook: One ship in the area is a huge royal convoy at the center of the naval conflict. It transported an artifact of some kind, they say. Those who tried to recover it just added more reanimated skeletons to the pile.

>>44674201
thank you (since no one did)

>>44683449
Oh, and, I'm not sure if you've covered it, but the magical ability to "see" the history of objects you touch. There's a word for that but I'm not sure what it is. It could go in perception magic, or be it's own thing.

Also I'm not sure if you've covered it, but shamanic magic, which has to do with putting your consciousness into that of animals.

>>44683495
I was considering making seeing history a subset of Arcane, but I'm starting to think that splitting it up and making a subset just for perception like you suggested would probably be better. Thanks.

>>44683528
No problem. Actually I suppose the shamanic thing would just be under psychic now that I think about it.

Also, is there a reason there's no necromancy? That seems like a big one.

>>44683562
Necromancy is kind of thrown in with the Binding school. The way I had it worked out in my head, "proper" Necromancy is the binding or command of a soul, where as raising the body is considered a highly perverted form of magical construct, sort of like a really macabre golem.

And on that note, I just realized I forgot the bit about magical constructs and the displacement of stored energy in proportion to time and physical expenditure.

>>44683611
Ah yeah, that makes a lot of sense.


Some other random ideas you have probably already covered.

Controlling the weather - this is probably already covered by celestial.

Shapeshifting - probably in biomancy.

Enchanting? The practice of binding magic from various other schools into physical objects. It could be considered it's own unique skillset.

>>44683667
Enchanting. I knew I was forgetting something else.

Should that be thrown in with the magical construct making or be separate?

>>44683727
I would definitely say it's related - maybe two sub-branches of the same school. Enchanting is more concerned with sealing and long-term storage of magic, contruct-making more with the magic of movement and animation? To use programming as an analogy, maybe enchanting is closer to cryptography where you are trying to seal it in such a way as the magic can't be easily broken or stolen by other mages, where as contstructs are more like AI where your magic is involved with making sure the thing actually moves and functions correctly in complex environments, and more skilled magic allows you to make smarter constructs. I'm not sure if that works with your world but it's the first thing that comes to mind.

>>44683727
You should check out the magic system in Ars Magicka. It's rather interesting and breaks down the different branches of magic well.

I honestly wish I'd thought of it.

>>44683821
That should be Ars Magica. Derp.

>>44683808
That's actually exactly how I had constructs working. The level of complexity and power is directly connected to the amount of magical energy and complexity of ritual used.

>>44683821
Alright that sounds helpful, thanks.

>>44683495
Psychometry! It's an interesting type of magic, specialized and not too overpowered.

>>44683935
That's the one.

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So speaking of magic I am currently working on my own magic system too. While this is larger a game concept I want to tie it into the lore.

Basically there are three kinds of spells; Hexes, Charms, and Ritual spells. Hexes are used primarily in fighting or hurting and cursing people, Charms are used for all number of useful utility effects though they are typically short lasting or weak and then Rituals are the most powerful but take a long time and usually have more subtle or enchanting-style effects.

Basically I'm justifying it in game terms as Hexes get stronger with Intelligence, Charms with Wisdom and Ritual Spells with Charisma. Can anyone help think of reasons why?

>>44684121
>Hexes
So being that they're based on combat, it makes sense that a higher level of intelligence would lead to greater tactical understanding - knowing how to maximize the effects, bypass protections, and best apply the spell in an offensive fashion

>Charms
So charms are more utility based. Alright, it makes sense that a higher degree of common sense and practical awareness would, in a similar sense to the above, allow the caster to maximize the potential.

>Charisma
Well, f the ritual requires a complex incantation or active communication with otherworldly agents, the ability to speak clearly and with proper diction would be vital to success, wouldn't it?

>>44684179

That was what I was going for when I made the categories and tied in the stats. So I guess that was pretty easy then! Though I'd also like alternate interpretations.

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>>44681609
White Knight Chronicles is literally this. Ancient war weapons from a bygone age powered by "not demons" that inhabit them that the user makes a pact with.

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Working on a magical girl setting, using the fundamentals of Princess as a base. I've been pondering something while spending most of tonight not sleeping.

The head honcho of the magical girl group (an NPC; the woman who gives them missions and financial support while they fight the dorkness) has told the girls that normals don't need to know about magic, dark creatures or the darkspawn any more than they really have to know to keep them from panicking. However, I have alluded one or two times that the higher ups in the national guard and the executive branch know something about Princessing, and know enough not to get in the way.

What is the potential for keeping secrets between, say, the head princess and the feds? What kind of agreement would they come to, and what kind of strange, not-necessarily-dark-turn-y things could come form it? How far does the partnership go back? Do they hide each others secrets?

Just to be clear: it's not *that* dark yet, plotting wise. Lighthearted so far, but I want to get more investigative, and involve more shadow-y things happening the history of the world around the girls. Create a sense that this has been going on for a while, wasn't always peachy.

More just me asking this because I have insomnia and I appreciate soundboards. If I sound like a jackass, here is a semi-related picture to enjoy instead of entertaining dumb questions (it's a ghostie for the haunting session coming up next week).

>>44684810
Alright, if the feds know about magic and they know about darkspawn to some extent or another, it stands to reason they would have attempted to research or capture something that could pose a potential threat. However, such research, especially if done without fully grasping the severity of the situation, could lead to some kind of experiment/capture attempt gone horribly wrong, al la the film adaptation of The Mist, but with less demon rape and violent death. In that sort of situation, it'd be important that the situation was handled quickly and quietly, perhaps by a specialist group?

>>44684395
White Knight Chronicles is also unmitigated shit, more's the pity.

>>44684395
Ah interesting, thank you. Hadn't heard of that.

>>44684810
You could have it as a Commissioner Gordon scenario, where there are only a couple of contacts between the two organizations, and it's kept entirely off the books. The government tacitly support the Princesses just by pretending they don't exist, and see them a useful tool for doing potentially illegal or rule-bending tasks in a way that gives the feds plausible deniability.

>>44681609
>>that disempowered girl
sadness.

>>44685571
Hitomi was actually quite a cool character, despite being an outsider with no guymelef of her own. She did quite a lot in the story. If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking out Escaflowne. The latter half is mostly bad but the first half is good.

Being an old bastard, sometimes I forget the younger folks haven't seen some of these late 90's/early 00's animes.

>>44685620
>She did quite a lot in the story.
She was literally shaping the fate of the world. Even if she did not realize it most of the time. Yeah, Escaflowne had a lot of cool moments, scenes and ideas. The "evil empire" was one of the coolest "evil" empires I've ever seen. And the "romantic kiss on a bridge" scene was pretty damn brilliant. Also the mech fights were cool, even if they kinda fucked things by not explaining what the evil supermechs could do and what not. Shame it all went just a little too stupid towards the end.

>>44686211
Yeah I agree, one of my fav series. Though there is a distinction to be drawn between a character being important to the plot and things happening to them, and a character affecting the plot through agency. Regardless, Hitomi was never really a disempowered character. Dilandau was also a great tragic villain.

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>>44686442
I found Dilandau's final "resolution" rather... awkward.
"Don't kill him! He... is my long lost sister!" was just something very, VERY hard to take seriously.
Regardless, the show was good, one that I actually enjoyed rewatching even recently, despite the fact that I've largely grew out of anime. I think some surprisingly complex characters and themes plus Kanno's fantastic soundtrack were the main reason. Though I have to admit - I could really, REALLY do without the annoying cat thing.

>>44680948
A bit late to the question, but it's an interesting one, so I'll tackle it.
Well, assuming the biodiversity would be dramatically lower seems like a flawed premise. Compare biodiversity across Western Europe, Central Asia, and South-East Asia. Now consider all three are one giant landmass. The diversity is still massive.
The main thing about one supercontinent is that a considerably larger portion of the land would have highly continental climate. This means a considerably larger portion of the world would be much like Russia and Central Asia. Moisture would be generally a problem deeper into the continent: so you would have a lot of dry, steppe like and desert areas.

>>44686558
Oh god, the cat thing...

>>44686668
Yeah. Pretty much the embodiment of what I call "anime bullshit" these days. So fucking needless. I get that it comes with the genre and the format in general, and I hate to be that old man wiggling is cane shouting something incoherent about being too old and mature for this stuff, but it just annoys me.
It's like a fucking Jar-Jar Binks of the show.

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Picked this up here a while back. OP wanted some mapping, this is a handy summary graphic. Hope you builders find it useful, I certainly did, especially once I started putting worlds on silver standard instead of gold standard.

>>44686772
That's really helpful, thank you for sharing

>>44686830
Keep in mind though that the picture is deliberately quite exaggerated. The rain shadow thing really becomes prominent on larger landmasses. It also does not take into account where the wind is coming from aside from the effect of Corrialis force.
You might be interested in a bit more detailed climate cookbook. http://web.archive.org/web/20130619132254/http://jc.tech-galaxy.com/bricka/climate_cookbook.html

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>>44686772
This anon here, I forgot to ask a question.

Has anyone ever made monster hunting and wildlife work in a system (any system, really, I'm at a loss here)? I've gotten a decent grasp of mapping using pic above, but I find the world feels underpopulated and empty outside of cities and towns.

So far, I've had limited success by modeling food after Nethack to keep it from being a plain "Chore." The main catch was that the resistances can pile up quickly. Maybe something more similar to Dungeon Meshi next time?

>Capatcha: all images with steak.
Stop reading my mind please.

>>44686905
I'm not sure what you asking. What system? You mean like a system that would automatically monitor things like widelife-distribution and population? Like something that helps you keep track of which animals live where and in what numbers - keep track of herd migrations, species competetions etc...?
Is that what you are asking for?

If yes, then that is a bit of a tall order, really. I don't really know of any such tabletop system. I guess some of those rather hardcore survival games like Ringworld may have something similar in place, I don't know.

>>44674201
you're a rather nice person

>>44686981
No biggie, I'll keep at it and report back.

I'm thinking more on a micro scale so far. We have a player that effectively made a retired Laius, and I'm trying to think of a way to keep nutrition interesting, especially since the character is a good cook.

Wildlife, population, et al. is probably too much to handle in a D&D game (what we're currently running). I didn't think of these things, myself, but now that you mention them, I think Monster Hunter or a Dwarf Fortress-esque might be a good starting point for world building, assuming I'm working from scratch rather than in the confines of D&D or Rogue Trader.

To the ecology books with me, thanks Anon!

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>>44686692

Cats are an anime tradition that will never die.

Incidentally, came across this while looking for a Mary Sue test yesterday:

http://www.springhole.net/writing/index.html

going by desustorage it seems like it's been posted from time-to-time but mostly for the mary sue thing.

>>44687138
>Cats are an anime tradition that will never die.
I don't mind cat-girls as a trope so much (though I'd never use them myself). My problem was specifically with the really, REALLY obnoxious cat companion character (forgot her name) who sticks around through out most of the show while adding exactly nothing but a Jar-Jar Binks level of "comedy" into the story.

The Mary Sue test seems fun. I don't think I personally ever had an issue with Mary Sue characters (though I do have problem with character writing in general).

>>44687138
Reading through the Mary Sue test, why the fuck does it actually use the xe/xir pronoun? Is that ironic or is that actually meant seriously?

>>44687250
It came from a time when xe/xir wasn't associated with gibbering tumblr retards.

>>44687271
Which was when exactly? I don't know about any time, or any context in which xe/xir would not be anything else than a retarded gibberish of people who have serious identity issues.

Use of those pronouns is by definition saying "I'm an insane person that cannot deal with convention of gender dichotomy", there is no other meaning to it.

>>44687312
>I don't know about any time, or any context in which xe/xir would not be anything else than a retarded gibberish of people who have serious identity issues.

People are still mad about teenagers in the current year?

>>44687338
The fact that certain pathological phenomena has been embraced by teenage demographics (which by the way is not even true of this particular thing) does not make less pathological.
Again, when was xe/xir actually anything else than gibberish for third-gen feminism influenced morons. Because I've clearly missed some rather interesting era here.

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>>44680928
I've been writing a bit more in summary

The Cities and the ore

>There is a naturally occurring ore that when intensely heated under pressure releases a lot of energy and floats
>Cities are created by building around a chiseled sphere of ore kept under constant heat and pressure to maintain its flight capabilities.
>The cities requires fueling material from the ground to maintain the heat and pressure. While used in incredibly efficient reactors, the fuel requirement has been growing over time.
>Unknown to the majority of the city residents, the cities rocks is gradually crumbling into fine, radioactive dust
>Its thought that this process of decay and cooling is occurring in every major city giving them a finite flight time.
>Predictions are difficult to give as to how long each city has left of its flight but it is certainly getting harder
>Energy has now had to be siphoned off from sectors to boost flight time and war between cities is seeming more viable for mine territory and resources.

Technology
>City-tech is incredibly advanced but still grounded in Miyazaki backwards-ass world. Ground dwellers are 18th century interspersed with City-tech such as break action rifles, tanks and military airships
>Airships are the predominant mode of transport around the world, similarly powered to the cities and favoured by the military and civilian populace alike. A few ground dwellers have them in order to trade
>Cities are a hub of culture and arts, large gardens and markets all over the place.
>Robots with simple AI serve alongside a powerful military equipped with energy weapons, the troops recruited from the ground. They and a small population of elite people in power control and govern large regions from the cities.
>The cities can move to gather tithes from land based towns and villages, collecting the ore and harvest resources

Ok basis so far?

how would go about explaining divine magic without a pantheon of gods?

>>44690449
How would you go about explaining car insurance policies in a setting where cars or any similar vehicles don't exist?

The answer is: you would not. Divine magic is called divine because it comes from divine powers. Divine powers are gods.

Don't call your fucking magic "divine" and you'll be fine.

>>44686898
I'll add that to the resources post. Thanks!

>>44690545
that's not what I meant

Like there are clerics, and they say they use divine magic gifted to them by their gods, but their gods don't actually exist (different ones do, but not theirs)

how would one explain that

>>44691188
Well, in one of the M:tG Time Spiral (?) books there is an evil inquisition that violently suppresses magic use. Turns out they use White mana and their god(s?) don't exist.
So you could have "divine" magic just be regular magic, but when anyone tries to bring this up the users stick their fingers in their ears and go "NANANANANANANA, I'M NOT LISTENING"

>>44691188
easy - either have the non-existent gods they worship actually be an aspect of the existent ones, this fact unknown or suppressed to these clerics by their leaders.

But >>44690545 is right. Drop the word and the entire issue is cleared up since magic could be ascribed by anyone to whoever they believe is behind it

>>44691188
>how would one explain that
You explain that by them using regular magic and lying about where it came from, what else is there to explain?
Just keep in mind that if magic is a relatively common occurence in your world, clerics trying to mislead people into false beliefs by using magic don't make much sense - the people must already know magic (without gods) exist, so it's kinda difficult to comprehend what exactly is there supposed to work.

>>44692398

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S-seriously though guys.

Entire planet of salt flats with small mountainous islands of lush land filled with wildlife.

>>44684910
Yeah, it was cliche in heaps of ways and combat was kinda retarded, but I'm rarely one to shy away from giant robot knights fighting other giant robot knights.

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>>44693774
I have an exceptional big softspot for salt lakes and salt flats, and god knows I used the liberally in my settings, but basing an entire planet on it seems like a waste and asking for becoming really dull really fast. Maybe you can pull it off, but I personally would not have the confidence for that.

What's the best way to portray the world's past? Should I explain it to the players, give them a written version, or just not tell them and let the world's past be 'discovered' and let them get associated with it throughout the campaign.

>>44694183
I I've given my players a short write-up on what their characters should logically know given on their backstory in the past. In more improvised campaigns, I just ditched the writing and told them everything in person.

The main point however is that I give my players strictly what is logical for their characters to know (or to be more precise, what their characters THINK is true, as obviously, most of them have no access to any kind of objective historiography. Basically, I wrote them (based on an agreement on what kind of character they want to play) what they know about their family history, their birth place or the place they grew up, and then short versions of the most common stories they should have came across (handful myths, legends and stories that are told in their region).
That's basically that.

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>>44680948

Bumpin' because I still VERY MUCH want to know the answer to my question and not a one anon has touched it:
How does a supercontinent effect the biodiversity of the plants and animals living on it?
How does a supercontinent effect the WEATHER of the continent itself?
And what about the biodiversity of an OCEAN surrounding a supercontinent?

>>44686558
>The main thing about one supercontinent is that a considerably larger portion of the land would have highly continental climate. This means a considerably larger portion of the world would be much like Russia and Central Asia. Moisture would be generally a problem deeper into the continent: so you would have a lot of dry, steppe like and desert areas.

Thank you, I can use that.

>>44694166
>>44693774
what kind of crittters would you find in salt flats?

>>44695255
Generally speaking: none. That is kinda the problem with salt flats. They are virtually uninhabitable in the long run. Some salt lakes contain certain types of algae that are in return consumed by some birds (flamingo are famous), then you have a few sparse species of cacti on the verges, and what ever manages to randomly wander in from the surrounding landscapes for a while before getting the fuck out of there, because while salt flats don't kill you out-right, they are immensely deadly in the long run.

>>44694641
Just assemble the earth's landmass like a jigsaw puzzle, and that's more or less what you get.

>>44695362
What about some kind of predatory bug that dessicates its prey to get their tasty tasty water. Saltflat Stalker. Think trapdoor spider, only crustier. And big enough to grab a camel.

How do I into metaphysics for my world?

>>44695770

Only to the degree that it's necessary to explain the things your players will typically interact with.

It's very cute to have your cosmos begin with a set theory joke combined with a reference to Hinduism, but unless manipulating the set of sets that don't contain themselves is a vital part of the play experience, it's just navel-gazing.

Vice versa, if you have something in your setting called demons, it might be useful to expound on whether or not they come from a literal hell, and what relation that hell has to the physical reality the players presumably play in.

>>44695770
Like gods and stuff?

Everyone thinks the world is carried on the back of a giant turtle, but in reality it's a tortoise.

There are four heavenly realms, each one analogous to one of the following: Judeo-Christian heaven, Olympus, Valhalla, and whatever the Egyptians had. Every five hundred years the stars align and all four have access to the world. This sparks a war in heaven. Whichever version of heaven wins gains dominion of the planet for the next half millennium (their version of heaven stays in contact with the living world).
Sometimes deities from losing pantheons will either fail to return to their domain before contact is broken, or else choose to stay. Cut off from their own divine reality, they essentially become the demons of the current celestial regime as they must gain sustenance from cult worshipers.

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going to repost this here, since the thread didn't get much traction but I do want to talk about it.

>In the far future the world was given to AI's
>For reasons unknown, they all went insane one after another
>The near utopia they had created crumbled to dust and war
>Unknown generations have passed since then
>the megastructure sprawling across the planet is falling apart
>The only hope is to make a new AI that can usurp the mad rulers
>But the source code has been lost, and has to be retrieved from the minds of the mad ones
>The only way to do this is by diving into their personal VRs and recovering it by hand
>Each AI has its own reality, some even speculate the insanity was from resonating with parallel universes
>Death in the simulation isn't death in reality at least
>Although it breaks the minds defenses and allows ghosts in the machine to bleed into you

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In my setting demon's live in the sun and have a magical blast power sort of like a sunburn, but 10x worse at close range. Demons were once shapeless shogoth sort of things but they work backwards where when they get warmer they become more solid, hence the sun prison was built for them to force them to create huge amounts of heat to power nearby planets, essentially.

The only reason why I tell you this is to set up for my question; what should the demons be like? I'm trying to think of types and seven deadly sins is so overdone I don't want that.

>>44696873
Demon's based off the 7 Virtues.

I have an idea for an every-race-ever setting, kind of like the fantasy world in Gate and I need a good way of making that a reasonable thing.
My current plan is to have pretty much everything go back to the elves, similar to the mer in TES series. Elves were the first race and, like humans in the real world, developed numerous distinct ethnic groups as the millennia passed, resulting in high/wood/grey/dark/summer/winter/fall/spring/diet elves and drow-ish elves. Many of them created servant races to... serve them over the years. Dark elves created goblins, wood elves Awakened numerous animal species to create anthropomorphic species (that is, creatures that are basically dogs/cats/etc that have two hands, walk on two legs, and talk).
Orcs were a later development by a sub-sect of the dark elves who attempted to improve goblins.
High elves created several flavors of giant for reasons.

To get more exotic species I'm going to pull a Riftwar Saga/Codex Alera/Gate/Warcraft and have humans, dwarfs, and such arrive from other worlds/dimensions.

Species like satyrs, harpies, centaurs, and other monster races came about either when elves got kinky and started changing themselves, or tried to manage humans by splicing them with existing creatures.
Maybe both of these?

Tiefling-like creatures are descendants of humans who mated with demons.

There are at least two flavors of winged people. Flash Gordon-style hawkmen, who are former humans, and angels, another species to arrive from other worlds.
(or are hawkmen just human/angel hybrids with very diluted blood?)

Ideally this would be an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink sort of world, with different kingdoms and empires of individual races, collectives, conquered species, and so on all across the world.

I'm looking for additional species to add and any good origin stories for races people can come up with.

does anyone have any off-the-wall ideas about necromancy? particularly "good" (like good-aligned) necromancy?

i'm trying to make a faith-based magic system of sorts based around a religion with a heavy emphasis on death, sleep, and dreams. i've written a bunch of lore about the religion, but i'm having a bit of a brain block coming with a somewhat coherent magic system for it, besides that it's based in necromancy and dreaming.

>>44698335
I have a city where it is expected for the dead to be raised as soldier/servants of the people. The process is long and arduous, but works a lot like the wraithguard from 40k Eldar. Their deities have a solid domain in the afterlife and keep much better care of their followers after death than any other culture's deities do. In times of war the Old Faithful are returned to a semblance of life to defend the people; it's mostly a defensive thing, though, as I'm thinking of adding a range aspect. They can't get too far from their city or they fall apart -- something like that.

The worst punishment in the city is to be exiled and excommunicated, as you will die without joining your ancestors or be allowed to defend your homeland.

If you do something like that, dreaming could allow living people to interact with the dead. People would therefore live two lives. During the day they take part in city life, but as they dream they are part of a generations-spanning empire. The living are thought of as caretakers in a way.

In fact, I may use that myself.

>>44698335
Soul Echoes. Stitch them muscles of magic and call out to the echo of their soul still in their bones. Life is in the blood, and blood comes from the bones after all (marrow). You can get a weak resonance in mass necromancy, but they will be shambling piles of crap for the most part because they have no true reason to fight. If you know who the man/woman was, and they died with some conviction holding them to the world, you can bring out their echoes and let them walk again.

It's not resurrection through. They can't form new memories, and it's always temporary. Each time it is recast, the echo gets weaker, hence the name. Mind control has to be cast separately, and is often sidestepped by targeting battlefields and impersonating their commander in life.

It causes weird things, like they can't hold a conversation, but they can play a game of chess.

>>44698335
A corpse can only perform actions it new in life and even then it is exact in its movement like a recording. Because of this, the bodies of soldiers are highly prized simply for their previous martial skill, numb to the world but still capable of precise thrusts and parries.

The practice of renting out the bodies of deceased relatives is commonplace among citizens, for a small family fee the meticulously preserved remains of a much beloved performer can dance in the halls again before returning to their resting place.

>>44696628

I'm not sure what aspect you want to talk about but as a disclaimer I personally don't think humans will ever give anything to actual A.I.s based on our growing trend for integration. When we develop hardware/software useable for A.I. we will most likely inject a human mind into it instead of developing an actual A.I. from scratch.

That said, I find it hard to believe that the source code would be lost if they still have the ability to interface with the A.I.s system. Humans also don't really give two shits about utopia in the long run since we always crave more than what we have and there should be humans who have ventured far into space especially given the assistance of actual A.I. during this age. There will also certainly be holdouts, malcontents and generally people who don't like A.I. in principle and they would likely leave the planet to set up shop elseware. These would also likely have knowledge of the A.I. base architecture if only for reference on what-not-to-do.

I think it better that they would need to "dive into" the A.I.s to find and retrieve "malfunctioning" in order to understand what went wrong and how to fix it. A.I. being machine-based intelligences you would also need a premise that allows for "normal" humans to not get automatically identified and locked out or "killed". The Matrix setting went around it by saying that their V.R. was governed by rules that interfaced A.I. also need to follow so the blue pilled humans don't crash the system.

The act of "diving" and need to keep up with A.I. processing power may lead to humans uploading their mind to an A.I. substrate or creating a new A.I. of their own in order to be at par with the processing capability of their target. This opens the door to the danger of being "infected/corrupted" as they come into contact with the target or over extended periods of time.

char limit...

>>44700476
...

Personally, I would ditch the ghost thing as any circumstance that enables this should also enable the direct manipulation of "wetware" and kill the person.

I would recommend reading the Golden Oecumene books if you haven't already and there's this other book where a researcher is trapped inside multiple V.R. scenarios by an A.I. gone crazy the name of which I can't remember.

>>44700027
that "ocean" looks like more like a strait, to be honest. it's also slightly wider than the hasseroth "sea", and according to your scale, only 200-250 miles wide. the atlantic ocean is at least six times bigger at its more narrow points.

are all those numbers cities/towns + points of interest?

why is the east "unknowable"? it's not far enough away from your main continent for that, unless there's some kind of evil magic or monsters over there preventing exploration.

>>44700027
Looks solid to me. There are a few more mountains than I would have expected, but then again I've always been terrible at imagining scale (even when you helpfully provide a ruler, as you did).
I'm guessing you have a list of what ask the numbers mean somewhere?

Next thing would probably be to use the population guide in the second post to start adding people.

Judging by your post in guessing this is a roughly pre-medieval world? I'm not sure how that works affect the population rates, but shouldn't be to much of an issue.

Again, looks solid to me.

>>44698197

I like it, but where did humans come from in this origin story? Or is this kept a secret on purpose?

So if I have an aquatic campaign, and humans are the other playable race that can't breathe underwater naturally, will this be more of a problem than something interesting?

It gives me a reason as to why the human populations have kept to city-states built upon the ruins of former surface civilizations.

>>44701195
That I'm not entirely sure about. Their homeworld will probably be a humans only planet, and I believe it would be best for that world to have subsequently been destroyed or otherwise inaccessible. I'd kind of like them to have similar divisions to the elves (a la Tolkien) and have "high" humans in addition to regular ones, with a sort of "middle" human race of half breeds.

I'm still in the very early stages of worldbuilding, so I have lots of info I still need to fill in. Any ideas as to their origins would be helpful. These are some of the ideas I can think of:

>Like in Gate/Riftwar, a human empire opened a portal to this world to conquer it. Something went wrong and the portal broke, stranding a colony here.
>Or the reverse of the above, where one of the existing races created a portal and brought humans back for some reason (easier than making a new servitor race?)
>They're from an advanced culture that got wiped out by aliens (or destroyed their own planet). They arrived here via
>>A crashed colony ship, knowledge of advanced tech got lost.
>>A technology based portal. Only civilians made it through before the portal's source got destroyed.
>Humans on their homeworld had magics to travel to other worlds, based on galaxy-wide leylines or something, but the method only works briefly and only works every few hundred years. Humans established a colony on this world, but the next time the travel method was supposed to be available, nothing happened. No one knows why.


As you can see, I need better ideas.

I'm currently making a list of race groups and sub-races. So far the groupings are:
Elves
Men
Beasts (awakened, anthropomorphic animals)
Beastmen (humanlike creatures with animal features, everything from satyrs to centaurs)
Dwarves
Monsters (catch-all term for everything from trolls to ogres to hippogryphs; not necessarily intelligent species)
Goblinoids
Giants
Dragonic
Hybrids
Fae
Celestials ("good" divine creatures/spirits)
Infernals/demons

>>44701482
They'll need to have advanced technology or powerful, reliable magics. It would be like having a species that can't expose skin to the sun or breath without a filter.
Which, as Metro 2033 shows us, can work really well.

The only problem I see is if parties are made up of too many different species. It might get annoying for non-human PCs to have to cater to human needs, and human PCs would probably resent that need. On the other hand, it makes for an interesting party dynamic and forces them to rely on each other.

Humans could use some sort of edge to make up for the handicap, but there is nothing inherently game breaking about the idea. you may have to try different things and play around a bit.

>>44698528
>>44698551
>>44699039
these are cool ideas, thanks guys

>>44701697
Well it's very sword and sorcery in a way., i'm thinking cities maintained by the magic of corrupt sorcerer kings and queens, The edge humans would have is they control most of the dry places, and so have things and can make things in dry places.

>>44701614
>>44701195
>>44698197
I'd like to get other people's thoughts on something: having dragons literally be gods (maybe even THE gods of the setting).

When gods are in the realm of the gods they are immortal. So, after the inevitable War in Heaven (because I love me some wars in heaven), the winners exiled the losers to the mortal realm. To survive, the exiles created new bodies for themselves, ones so powerful they might as well still be immortal. These were the first dragons.
The original Dragons don't have defined sexes (are YOU going to argue with a dragon god if it says its a guy or girl? I know I wouldn't) and can reproduce in one of two ways: asexually or sexually.
If dragons reproduce alone, their offspring will be less powerful than they are, but those offspring will be bound to their creator's will (more or less).
Dragons can also pair off and create new dragons of the same level, who will be independent.

As the original dragons don't want competition, they stopped creating new dragons via hanky-panky as soon as this was discovered. But each generation of dragon is weaker and less perfect than the previous. So wyverns are other such creatures are related to dragons, but are many, many times removed from the true dragons. Many species are so far removed, in fact, that they are now of animal-like intelligence and cannot reproduce asexually anymore.


If I go with this, then I could have most species have similar origins. While the dragons were smart enough to create, well, dragon bodies, other gods might not have been so clever. The elven gods may have created the elves the same way the dragons did, but their bodies were weak enough that most, if not all, were eventually killed.

That would also explain elven magic. They have natural magical abilities, like being able to make a tree into a house just by "gardening" it a bit, just as the gods naturally have the ability to do and make stuff.

>>44702993
Also, I intended for humans to be the only ones with "arcane" type magic, and this would be a good reason why. True mortals taking the forces of the universe under their power is something totally anathema to the way the native races use magic. Everyone else just -does- stuff and don't really think of it as magic. Humans have to study and learn and experiment and so forth.

That would also answer another question: beastmen races (humanoids with animal features) will have to be descendants of elves who changed themselves for one reason or another, but in doing so they lost the strength/power to ever change back and became new species. And this was so long ago that few even suspect that centaurs are descended from elves, for example.

Let this thread live

>>44698197

Sounds cool. My first thought is that dwarves seem they would actually be good as an elvish servant species - someone to go in and do all the dangerous and dirty mining elves don't want to deal with. It could also be a source of friction between the two races, knowing elves were once the masters of the dwarves. Humans could be the result of interbreeding between dwarves and elves.

>>44705273
That just might work. I'm already pretty set on the humans being from another world, but dwarves being the first servant species sounds great. All the others would be copies. Heck, halflings and gnomes and such could have started as specialist variants of the base dwarves stock.

Thanks for the help.

What are some things to consider when making a sci-fi/galaxy scale universe where there are instances of actually plausible forms advanced technology?

Like, how would AI, nanomachines, biotechnology, and things like that actually play out in interstellar expansion? I think it would be a lot weirder than most sci-fi presents, but I don't have a lot of experience thinking about it so I'm not sure where to start.

>>44705446
Me again. In order for this setting to make any sense and be relatable, I want to have the Puritan peoples split from the Transcendentalists in some kind of pre-historic war. Puritans are peoples whose governmental constitutions have very strict rules against any kind of modification of the body.

What kind of event or war would split humanity into two groups like that? I know in reality it would probably just be an amicable, vague parting of ways, with Puritans being small isolationist groups like Amish or whatever, but for the sake of drama, how would you handle this?

>>44677056
a gun?

Bump for a productive thread

>>44700027
>neck
>sisters islands
>stones islands
Westeros/10

>>44702993
>>44703057
I like this a lot. The idea of bestial Dragon Gods is actually cool and I don't know if I've seen a popular universe really commit to it and do it well (I mean, there's Tiamat in D&D but that's only one, and it's not the most godly creature ever, more of just a big five-headed dragon).

I'm not sure if there's a question in there but I like the way your setting is going, keep it up.

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>>44707784
Continuing from this, this is always more what I imagine when I think bestial dragon gods. Would be cool to see this in a developed setting.

>>44707784
>>44707801
That's about the scale (pardon the pun) I had in mind for them as well. While they're killable on a technical level, since that's the whole point of them ending up in the mortal realm in the first place, they're so massively powerful that they'd have trouble even trying to off each other.

Now I'm trying to work the details of the genesis story and need to flesh out the other gods.

I still like the idea of elves having elf-like living gods as well, albeit ones much weaker than the dragons, but I can't decide which group should come first. Did the gods create the mortal realm and send down several of their lesser members to populate it, only for the dragons to show up later and wreck some shit, or did the soon-to-be dragon gods get exiled first and create the world as a domain to rule?

Maybe dropping the living god thing for everyone except the dragons would be for the best.

>I'm not sure if there's a question in there
Sorry about that; I tend to ramble and think through typing. Here's a clearer question regarding the magic system:
Should I go with something like Polynesian mana?
The more important and powerful a being is, the more mana/magic they have. The Dragon Gods, being few and freakishly powerful, are more or less made of mana. Higher ranking elves, who are so long lived they might as well be immortal, would also have high mana just because of their potential to make change during their long lives.
Servitor races, like dwarves or orcs, aren't meant be "big players" in their own right, so have lesser abilities; and so on down the line.
Humans, being from another world, wouldn't even be part of the system. Maybe their "arcane" magic sort of hijacks the mana-system, somehow?

With this, native creatures wouldn't really cast magic; they'd just sort of "do" magic. For example, an elf could make a sword of +1 orc slaying simply by making the blade with that purpose in mind. Or a satyr could put someone to sleep by playing a lute.

>>44707784
>>44708112
Also, I really appreciate the feedback and help. Are any of the settings already in this thread yours? Is there anything I can give you my two cents on?

>>44708112
>The more important and powerful a being is, the more mana/magic they have. The Dragon Gods, being few and freakishly powerful, are more or less made of mana. Higher ranking elves, who are so long lived they might as well be immortal, would also have high mana just because of their potential to make change during their long lives.
Does that mean that the dragon gods are high-percentage mana, low-percentage flesh and bones? Or is mana a more metaphysical concept which rises exponentially with a being's power?

What determines importance and power? The respect from other creatures? Size? Muscle mass?

Is mana akin to a rank in spellcasting, or is it a resource which needs replenishing after casting a spell?

>>44708154
Now that you ask the question, the less practical it seems for a game setting.

My idea was that mana is a person's potential to enact change equated into magical power. Yes, being strong and a great warrior would give you mana since you'd have the potential to end lives, but a king or emperor would have much more because a single decision of theirs could cause great calamity or prosperity for an entire nation.
Mana would be like cutting out the middleman. A powerful warrior could use their mana to empower their blade to strike right through an opponent's armour. They'd be able to kill that enemy anyway, but mana speeds up the inevitable. Someone very skilled in manipulating their mana could use it to create objects or do wondrous things of a roughly equivalent level of potential power.
An emperor with the authority over several million people, who is a threat to nearby nations and can therefore influence millions more, might be able to call up a hurricane because said hurricane could also potentially cause change to that same group of people.

I guess how much someone has would fluctuate greatly. A pauper looking out a window with a rock in his hand as a king passes underneath without a helmet on would, for a moment, have more mana than that king for example.

Sounds fun in theory, but I have no idea how I'd ever be able to keep track of that in a game.
Even using a video game type of mana/magicka pool wouldn't really be practical in a game. Isn't that why Vancian magic is so common in D&D and other tabletop RPGs?

Maybe I could keep track of it like fate points in Dark Heresy. Creatures with mana can spend those points to reroll misses or saves. The higher level they are, the more they'd have.
That could work as a simple dice pool, too. As they tire, they become less capable of doing stuff, so their pool goes down. But it'd refresh if they sleep and get a good rest.

Probably too convoluted, though.

>>44708154
>>44708287
Let me try that again. I'll attempt to be clearer this time.

>Is mana akin to a rank in spellcasting, or is it a resource
It would be a resource which needs replenishing. As characters level they'd get a larger amount of mana to use. Furthermore, they'd probably be able to take skills/feats/whatever to get more skilled in certain uses of mana, allowing them to more efficiently use their mana for those purposes.

Every mana-power would have a set cost, and pretty much any mana user would be able to use that power provided they have the right amount of mana. This is because it would be an instinctual thing.
But certain races would get bonuses to certain powers, and as I said before you'd be able to specialize and use your favorite powers easier than other people.

It would probably be best to just have them get a "your race has X amount of magic points" thing. Easier on everyone.

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I'm thinking of developing a homebrew magic system for a game that currently lacks real magic and will probably never have it. This gives it the problem that you have to work the magic around an otherwise mundane system. Do you have any ideas how I could tie my magic into this realistic representation of swords and fighting?

One of the magics is sacrificial. You give up important parts of your character, or whole character arcs (a mechanic of the game) in order to gain great gameplay or story benefit. The ideal scenario is a PC sacrificing something they genuinely held dear so that they may achieve a higher goal, or to survive a very tricky situation. For example, killing their daughter to save the king, or sacrificing their patriotism to gain enough strength to pull a burning beam off their wife. But I don't know how to represent the rate of exchange. I thought about leaving it to GM discretion, but that seems like a cop-out. Any ideas?

>>44708131
No problem, glad I could help. I've been thinking about an every-race-ever type setting as well recently so your posts caught my eye.

About the timing of the dragon gods coming - I definitely like having them come in after some stuff has been established, more drama that way. The real world had several mass extinctions and life still pulled through.

About the mana, yeah I think that's a good basis. Just reading on Wikipedia, it says that mana can be gained or lost through various actions (like sex and violence). Maybe humans work like some kind of mana magnet because of their foreign nature (like they have a negative charge to this world's positive charge), so by studying and meditating they can absorb mana of the world very slowly, over years. Hmm. Or maybe, as it says here mana exists both externally and internally, as an extension of the magnet idea, maybe humans can't have internal mana but are able to basically draw mana to "stick" to them, but it gets used up and has to be replenished in a different way than creatures with innate mana. Kind of like the idea of how certain races in 40k are Warp nulls (they have no presence in the Warp), humans could be null mana magnets who cannot have internal mana, but can pull it around them and use it indirectly. Less skill means less control over the change affected by the mana around you.

Lots of interesting things you can do with mana I think.

>>44705446
>>44705626
These two are me, but since posting those I've made some decent progress on it. It's kind of a vague question though so I will probably rephrase it either later in this thread on in a future thread with a more specific focus.

>>44708843
Burn Fate points maybe?

>>44708929
I've heard that term before. What's it about? The general hazy idea I have of it is that you get a bonus, but the way you get the points in the first place is by showcasing your character's flaws?

>>44708911
Just got to work. I'll have to get back to you later today

Can a human ethnicity have so little phenotype diversity that all of their women have the correct skin tone and facial structure to dye their hair white as a religious requirement? The facial structure is extremely rare in real life, and the religion wouldn't have taken hold if white hair wasn't viable on at least 9/10 of women as it's essentially a religion with fashion as one of its primary pillars.

>>44708971
In Dark Heresy, at least, Fate Points are basically sanctioned mulligans. You get a few at the start of the campaign.

>>44705788
yes, guns were already suggested, very good.

>>44709110
Can you elaborate on the connection between facial structure and dyed white hair? Is that a real life thing or part of the setting?

>>44709256
With round/soft facial structures or tan/dark skin, white hair will never work and ends up looking trashy instead of uniform (forgot to mention that there are civilian uniforms in this society)

The goal is for them to look serious and uniformed, it's a communist/fascist society where everyone is expected to work, receive military training, and comply to strict social rules. For the color to be taken seriously they would need to have somewhat masculine/"intimidating" features like a strongly chiseled jaw, defined brow, and shallow cheeks. The key would be everyone having clearly defined jawlines however that's rare in women and humans are of course diverse

>>44709349
Oh... so it's just your personal aesthetic thing. I find that an odd thing to get stuck on for worldbuilding, but if it was a huge thing for my world I would just have them be cloned as the kind of gymnastics you'd have to do otherwise probably wouldn't be worth it.

Can someone please point me to resources in regards to
* Vietnamese/Japanese/Korean table manners
* Slavery in Mesopotamia and Rome
* Monastic life during the early middle ages
* Sufi meditation
* US Marine Corps training protocols
?

Thanks in advance.
>>44675161
>what's a weapon that's specifically good for women (besides the naginata)?
Throwing Knives.
Stilettos.
Armored boots (look into Savate), since the strength difference is not quite as bad for the lower body AND kicking is an easy way (well, not, but effective once you're good) to GTFO a fight before someone starts grappling you. Which should always be the aim anyways because only idiots and posers try to "win" a melee engagement rather than fucking off as quickly as they can.
Ampules with noxious substances to hurl at attackers.

>>44683100
>I believe the Tevinter in Dragon Age have a similar idea with mages being in the upper class. You could look into that, though I'm not sure if it really explores the idea deeply.
Nothing in Dragon Age or indeed most semi-recent Bioware games is ever well-explored.

There is a functioning wishing well. Every time something is wished, a monster spawns at the bottom of the pit and the wisher must fight it. The guards of the wishing well know this, but do not intervene. There is a magic circle around the room which prevents the escape of evil things, and prevents the entrance of evil things

What should spawn? I'm considering demons and fiendish animals

>>44711064
manifestation of the wisher's greatest sin

>>44711064
Giant headless worm made out of shadow. It coils itself around the well to make it look as if it just gets darker in the distance. But then it unravels and whips its body around the wisher and drags them down into the bottom of the well.

I've never played a Metal Gear Solid game, but I understand it draws a lot of inspiration from David Bowie, something I've also wanted to use as inspiration for various aspects of my own setting among other iconic musicians. I'm afraid of being attacked by fans if it does get popular and being accused of ripping off MGS despite hardly knowing a thing about it. He was just as much an idol to me as he probably is to Kojima

what's a good backstory for a small elf that likes to get mounted by her horse?

>>44711588
1. it will not get popular
2. who gives a shit
3. saying it's inspired by MGS *alone* would be a selling point, not a turn-off.

>>44711022
Heh, yeah true.

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>>44711588
>worrying about your homebrew getting popular
lol

Anyway, here's the David Bowie pic if it helps.

>>44705446
Using robots and AI would make space travel considerably easier. At the very least, not needing life support (or as much) cuts spaceship construction costs more than you can imagine.

I'd suggest playing some Kernan Space Program to get a good, if rough, idea how objects move on a solar system wide scale, or some Universe Sandbox to get an idea for stellar distances.
Both are eye-opening.

>>44711625
My setting on elves is that because they are long lived they start developing quirks

>Fae creatures that are perhaps the weakest of the immortal races. Elves are greatly proficient in magic and are much faster and dexterous than humans though weaker. Since immortal races include dragons, celestials, and high-ranking undead though they are called the weakest of them they are certainly not weak and are usually much higher than the mortal races. They are very cultural and artistic in nature and made many works that leave mortal races, especially humans, in awe. They look down on the mortal races, but seem to have friendly relationships with humanity (who also usually looks down on most races). Their method of reproduction tends to be intimate and passionate and they tend not to harm their partners elvish or not. If the elf does pursue a partner of mortal stock they usually take into account the lifespan of both parties and pursue them when they are very young. Though some human families become appalled at this practice, but if the elf in question was the elven queen and the family were a starving family that would’ve put their daughter into prostitution anyway. Their society tends to seem perfect at a glance with no visible crime or discord unless in times of war against other races. However it is not so for though it is not usually visible political intrigue, corruption, and assassination happens frequently amongst their race. Take the aforementioned elf queen. Because she cannot die of old age she will remain the elf queen until she steps down or she dies from unexpected causes. So if any descendents or relatives believe they ought to be the next in line for the throne something has to be done. Luckily for the 5 year old wife of the queen most political plans of the elves are very slow and patient and thus she will be 50 by the time the assassination occurs.

so elven Cathrine the great is very likely

What's a cool real-world culture to model a space empire after?

Not allowed:
Greeks
Romans
Medieval England, France, or Holy Roman Empire

>>44712384
Sikhs
Hillbillies
Maori
Bavaria under Ludwig II

>>44712384
Polish Commonwealth
Kievan Rus
Veliki Novgorod Republic
Ancient Sumeria
Congo as it was with all the warlords (it's still got warlords, but less so)
Benin
Indonesia
Philippines
>>44712416
Not hillbillies. They've been done to death.

>>44712416
>>44712546
This is the good shit I was hoping for, thank you.

What are some names used for celestial/psychic dimensions in fiction? Something like 'the Warp' in WH40k, but home to myriad unknowable God-like beings instead of just chaos gods, so the name shouldn't be quite as sinister.

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>>44712384
Carthage, or other such Mediterranean commercial powers that relied on mercenary armies. Just with space instead of water

>>44713979
You actually see pretty much no space-British Empires. Definitely not 19th century. It's weird.

>>44711306
I want people to be able to use the well with a calculated risk.

>>remove disease is only a level 2 spell, we'd only have to fight one huge monstrous centipede
>>everyone from the street shows up with tanglefoot bags and crossbows

In recent times I have become obsessed with the absolute lower levels of the hive. And I mean so low that it's demographic is 100% uneducated human tribes living in the sewers and hunting for rats with spears made from tubes.
They pray to the machine spirit and keep the sewers running, because if they were to break down their homes would get flooded.
The tribes of one pump sometimes wage war on the tribes of another pump gain control over it, mainly because the first tribe thinks that the second tribe operates the pumps all wrong.

>>44714106
You could always add coils according to the level of wish. The more coils the worm has, the further it can bring you down; and when you reach the bottom of the well, you're gone. It could attack multiple people at once by dint of having multiple heads/generally being made of fuckery.

>>44712384
British Empire

I want my planet to have a cold equator and warm poles. Astronomically, how would this be possible?
This is out of my normal field of knowledge, but some ideas I've had -
It could orbit a body emitting a smaller amount of light like a brown dwarf while receiving light from stars from other directions
It could be caught in the gravity between two nearly identical stars
It could have so many moons of small size that for most of the year partial eclipses shade the equatorial regions.
Anyone with science knowledge able to weigh in?

>>44714804
Its axis could be tilted at 90°

>>44713931
>The Channel
>Starsea
>Heaven
>Elysium
>Olymp
>The Hallowway
Just off the top of my head

>>44714804
None of your suggestions make even remote sense. As >>44714851 said, you could have a planet that somehow got it's axis tilted. This could happen via MAJOR collision with a different celestial body.
That would mess up things a lot though. I'm trying to imagine what it would do...

>>44680948
>>44694641
What I know about Pangaea's is that you're going to have a fuck massive desert on the inside because it's so massive not much moisture can blow in land. And because the world has one fuck off huge ocean, that means stupidly massive storms and waves can build up, so the continent's coastlines are going to be incredibly heavily bombarded, unless there's islands to break up storms.

>>44705446
>>44705626
Religious beliefs could easily cause a rift like that. As I understand it, Muslim doctrine bans "self mutilation" of the body since it's a gifts from and representation of Allah. Even tattoos and piercings aren't allowed, so cybernetics would be right out.
Since that particular faith is rapidly growing, you could plausibly have a future sect of Muslims be the core of the Puritan group.

Also, something to keep in mind if you do anything close to realistic space combat:
The defender is at an impossibly huge disadvantage.
Unlike a traditional siege, where "one man on the wall is worth ten on the ground," defense on a planetary or system-wide scale would require hugely superior numbers to be anything close to effective.
It's a big ass sky.
Ships traveling at sub-light speeds will take months or years to get from one planet in a system to another, largely because they're not all lined up perfectly.
Just look at Earth (92.96M mi from Sun) and Mars (141.6M mi from Sun). If they're both on the same side they can be as close as 48.64M miles (in itself a ridiculous distance we can't really comprehend). But if they're on opposite sides that's at most 234.56M miles. AND you wouldn't be going in a straight line, especially if the sun is between them. You have to aim to be where the other planet will be when you finally get there (which makes the Pythagorean theorem look simple, btw).

1/2

>>44718181
Now imagine having to defend Earth and a colony on mars. Not only are whatever forces you have at each planet going to be fighting it out alone (no way you can get reinforcements in time), but you'd need hundreds of ships or defense satellites just to see the complete sky.
And if you fail to spot the enemy until they're in orbit (which is quite likely, since ships are tiny and it's hard to spot them even with their being so hot), it'll take hours to get a large group of ships together to fight them.
Attacking with 10 ships against a defense force of 200 would still give you the advantage, since you'd be fighting 1 or 2 ships at a time. If the attacker knows what he's doing, local number superiority is in the bag, unless the defenders have an unfeasible number of defense vessels.

And that's not even getting into how bullshit space combat would be. Missiles and guns, at the ranges required, would be prohibitively expensive AND useless because the other ship could dodge or shoot them well before they go boom.
Realistic space combat would be two ships firing lasers (as in REAL lasers, which amounts to well directed heat) trying to burn through all-but-burn-proof shielding.


And don't bother trying to mine the edge of the solar system, or even trying to put picket ships out there. The solar system ends about 9 billion miles from the sun, which is the radius of the solar "sphere," meaning the surface area of the outer edge of the solar system is about 1.02×10 to the 21st power.

Hell, even the asteroid belt is boring. There are billions of the things, but they're, on average, as far from each other as Earth is from the Moon, and since they're, on average, about a mile across, you'd need a damn good telescope to see one if you were standing on its closest neighbor.

Space is big.

Use FTL.

Throw in some space opera.

Or bring a library to read while you wait for shit to happen.

2/2

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>>44714804
pic related
You probably want to find a different thing to call equator though if it's in a constant eclipse

Do you add amazons in your stories?

How are them?

>>44718501
Amazons, as in what, the forest? Large, strong women? A matriarchal jungle society? I have all of them, but not explicitly tied together. The strong women, though it's not exclusively women, are big due to generations of eugenics.

I've been working on a rather complex setting. The core idea being an idea of magic being like programing to alter physics. Different methods of magic have different things they can and can't do...
Here's the notes I have on it so far. As you can see, I'm going heavy on 'bottom-up' design.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hg6X8LMMSM3BtiitH8czo4HRxAp_S1wtLP0XD1whT1E/edit
Yes, I'm also aware my notes are a clusterfuck.

>>44712384
The Dutch Empire!

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>>44712384

Share with me something weird and whimsical of your world. I don't care about economics, or geography, or the intricately complex metaphysics. Most players won't. It's the interesting things that will stick with them, so share something interesting.

>>44712384
Sassanid Persia
Tang Dynasty

>>44720357

Ok.

In one nation, called 'The Land of Falling Stars' (also called Shohou), the emperors are always immortal. This is because their Terrestrial priests purify everything before the Emperor touches or eats it, even fanning the air around him with minor enchanted fans to purify the air. This makes him immortal but it does not keep his youth; so the emperors always become extremely senile.

Then, they usually die due to some small accident or mishap, and then a law is enacted. One emperor died when falling out of a window and impaling himself on a fence, so fences were outlawed. So people in the land use fast growing short reed-like plants around their property for privacy instead. This is where their cultural term for 'Bumbling Emperors' comes from, and many emperors are more remembered for the stupid way they died then their actual reign.

>>44721724
That is awesome, how did such a tradition begin?
Do emperors have others do decrees for them as well? Are they puppets or more?

>>44712384
Umayyad Caliphate/any of the caliphates before the Sacking of Baghdad and the establishment of Altaic empires in the Islamic world.

>>44721800

The tradition began simply out of a mix of power and politics and religion. Terrestialism, the dominant religion in the nation, essentially believes that the purer something is makes it more and more holy. This method of immortality is simply the result of all that effort and wealth spent on purifying everything, but it is extremely cost and labor intensive as you might imagine. The priests travel everywhere in the nation to find the purest rice paddies to harvest the cleanest rice plant and then plant in the Imperial Gardens where the Emperor will only eat the single most whitest grain of rice that entire plant creates. So its a method of immortality that essentially anyone COULD do but only one person really does because of all those requirements.

The Emperors are not really puppets until they become that old and senile. Usually their eldest sons would rule under them, though none of them would be crowned the true emperor until their dad dies. But once again its kind of like none of them really want to because currently they get all the power and none of the responsibility or getting browbeat by the Terrestial priests. That is of course until the Emperor dies to some stupid accident and is replaced by another.

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>>44720357
>Share with me something weird and whimsical of your world.

Minotaur's are credited with the inventing the dog breed colloquially known as the "pug".

Minotaurian culture has an obsession with labyrinths and mazes and this obsession eventually found it's way into dog breeding culture.
The official name for "pug" in Minotaurian translates roughly into "maze hound" due to the labyrinth-like wrinkled patterns that was specifically bred into the dog's face.

>>44722107
I see, so purity would be a big deal to these people. There should be a shitload of bathouses if that's the case. Cleanliness next to godliness means those who do dirty work can be seen as necessary evils too.

>>44722133
I like it. Pugs should also have a keeness for labyrinths, snorting and snuffling as they bumble through them with a party behind. God forbid if you solve a pug's labyrinth.

>>44722172

Yes, and that's also why all bathhouses have multiple required exits and entrances because another one of those Emperors died in a fire that started in one of them. That sort of thing.

>>44722281
Would bleach be a thing that exists?

>>44710995
Throwing knives are meme-tier weapons.

>>44722305

Maybe, why? Ancient people tended to use things like piss left out to become ammonia, or just sunlight as that is pretty antibacterial.

>>44722511
Bleach is evocative for it's puritfying aspects and it's smell. It cleans and even purifies colour. Just maybe something interesting to add.

I'm inspired. Maybe a little TOO inspired by things I want to represent in various aspects of my grand setting, things I want to reference in vague and subtle ways without being shameless, low-hanging fruit pop culture references for fucking idiots. There are just so many of my favorite things I want to include, but I'm afraid of it becoming too much to manage and have make sense in a way that all flows with each other.

Project i'm working on is a sort of bastardized crusader fantasy. Most everything revolves around a single known continent, with climes ranging from near-steppe with touches of sand and moisture to outright uninhabitable.

Basically the idea behind it is that the world fundementally moves in cycles. After the Alman, the Not!Elven precursors to humanity, threw out the First Powers (or the first real 'god' beings, save for their own creators, which don't posess an understanding of consiousness or sentience as we understand it), they put them all in a separate demiplane known as the Godsrealm, locked underneath thirteen arcane seals, and stole their power. As such, two things: Gods are Mortal, and Gods don't have complete control over what aspects they control. If a God dies, usually his power is split between his victors: Especially with older Mortal Gods, this is usually much higher then who ends up defeating them and taking their mantle, preferring numbers rather than strength.

This also plays into magic: One's life-force is used as a conduit for magic directly. Using too much at once causes you to expend it instead, eventually becoming more and more inhuman and shell-like as time goes on, known as Ashen. Magic is also a finite resource, drawn from reality itself as a sort of ethereal energy, and it doesn't regenerate, so the entire world is slowly but surely dying of heat death as the gods bicker and bicker over fewer and fewer resources.

Besides a large desert and a series of rocky crags known as The Scars serving as a barrier between going straight across, most of the continent is also placed on the ruins of other fallen ancient civilizations; forgotten and buried with few, if no, knowledge of how exactly they fell.

(1/2)

Here's the catch: Most all the seals are built as collections of knowledge. They aren't simply arcane spells; as with many things, the use of magic requires a price, be it the souls of the unborn, several thousand years off of the universal sell-by date, dark magic taken from live subjects causing them to turn Ashen, or the life/sanity of those around them, including themselves. In this case, it's the knowledge and history of an entire past civilization, wiped off the earth in exchange for an arcane bond forged in a pact with the few gods willing to actually give a fuck about the Godsrealm and how pissed they'll be when they get back. To destroy a seal isn't just to restore that knowledge, be it magical or otherwise: It's also a way that men become a step closer to how they destroy themselves, toying with powers they hardly understand.

Magic here isn't really 'tied' to the world like it is in other settings; rather, it's a sort of force generated and created by the world, it's 'lifeblood', per se, which it has a limited amount of, binding it together. Once it's out, matter can't hold itself together anymore; the processes that cycle souls break down, and the gods fail to become gods. Essentially, reality collapses. It's between this or having the world destroyed forcibly by gods far more powerful then themselves, all the while humanity wars over petty conflicts amongst various religious orders, city-states, trading republics, and other-such heresy.

Currently working on religions and cultures, but the most prominent is the Six Prophets, a religion based around a central city that worships the sun and practices a form of blood pyromancy.

I'm planning it as part of a larger setting, several years in the works. Sad part is, i'm out of ideas for races other then 'Human' or 'Giant'.

And now for the question: How would you frame religion in terms of deities and their powers/influences on the world, /tg/?
(2/2)

I always liked the idea of making two worlds that are connected to each other. Like in Negima. I was think having a final BBEG like the mage of beginning. Just an idea for a campaign with this setting, since there is alot of room for almost anything. How would you hint that there are two worlds connected with out being super obvious to the players.

I am building a sci fi setting for a Traveller campaign. Some general features of it:
-No aliens, humans are the only sentient lifeform
-No inhabitable Earth-like planets, all planets were terraformed to be colonized
-No one remembers/cares about Earth
-Widespread integration with augmentation/cybernetics/AIs
-Self-aware AIs are full citizens in most parts of the galaxy

I need help fleshing out some parts of it, so any questions/clarification/criticism would be helpful

>>44726317
>I need help fleshing out some parts of it

What parts? Is there a general unified theme you're going for or do you want settings per region like in Battletech?

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What do you guys think about tonics/potions for immortality in fantasy settings? I mean, a fantasy world centered around that, with that theme I mean. Mostly, immortality and human improvement is a matter of sci fi, but what if something like that, with corrupt government officials and everything trying to actually become immortal for a longer period while leaving the townsfolk to rot?

Some kind of ancient megacity, with the townguard payed by the nobles, the people dying off in the streets to different pestilences and the immortals living above, in high castles or fortresses, roman-like palaces.

Gang warfare, mercenaries, everyone trying to get this magic stuff. Liquid, solid, mineral, natural, whatever

>>44727998
So the average hiveworld in 40k?

Them juvenant treatments, man.

>>44728246
Don't know much about that kind of 40K stuff, is it a lot like that?

Necromunda for example?

>>44728315
Pretty much. Hives are incredibly old, incredibly huge cities. The nobles tend to live at the top, the Spire, while quality of life decreases the further down you get.
Life for the average hiver is shit. SHIIIIIIIT. They tend to work factories owned by the nobles for 15 hour work days and get fed reprocessed dead people (the so-called corpse rations; there's a bit of a debate whether this actually means they're made of people, or if living off them just makes you wish you were a corpse).

Nobles live in luxury, often for hundreds of years. If you're rich enough you can afford advanced "juvenant" treatments. Plenty of octogenarians look like they're thirty, for example.

The planetary governor is pretty much allowed to run the planet as they see fit, as long as they keep Emperor worship as the state religion, hand over all pyshic people who are born to the wider Imperium, and pay a tithe to the Imperium. Said tithe can be goods, resources, and/or soldiers.

If you guys wanted to do a ruin-based or whatever adventure to get treasure, what would you make that treasure to be, besides gold?

We're talking about ancient/medieval setting here.

I mean, in Mordheim bands are looking for wyrdstone. What could people be looking for, or what could be their goals to explore the ruins?

I want players to be part of a band that does that, but I want their objective to be exciting, not just "getting gold and loot". There could also be other bands looking for the same, so they fight for resources

>>44728872

A crown or some other royal foppery that magically enforces kingship upon the wearer. You are made king of the territory of the kingdom that made the crown. The effect can be anything from summoning ancient armies to mind magicking everyone to thinking you are king.

I'd make it a homunculus dutch wife you need to fuck and call it Kingmaker

Murder mystery: /tg/ and /x/ are agents trying to find out which board will die tonight.

>>44729432
Well, as much as I like your magical realm, anon, I cannot do that

>>44727498
Settings per region. There are 8 nations that cover most of the colonized systems in the galaxy and while I have most of their details worked out (military, politics, economy, ect...) I'm overall just worried that the world may not make sense to other people.

>>44728872
My current campaign is basically a not!bloodborne setting, where players have to make expeditions to "the country" for various reasons:
Players being mercenaries, they go for the cash right ?
Well, not really. So far we've got:
>a peasant that got into the country to get stronger by fighting monsters in order to VIVA LA REVOLUTION the country. deceased
>Best roleplayer plays a rogue, so the cash must flow
>Last player played a gunner, who slowly turned into wizard before deciding he wanted to gather eldritch powers to ascend and rule the world. Since the new employers wants magical secrets and trinkets, he must betray them/ more like each one think he's using the other.
>New player want to explore old things related to his lignage who originally came from the country

Where could one read about spy mythology, lingo and intelligence agency organization?

>>44731924
mmm, this one is way too hard for me, but I know that some good games about this, maybe it'll help ?
Try watching vids about Invisible Inc for example, IDK

>>44732885
>mmm, this one is way too hard for me, but I know that some good games about this, maybe it'll help ?
Would certainly help.
>Try watching vids about Invisible Inc for example, IDK
Okay.

>>44701800
Go Pirates of Dark Water and have them use some symbiotic translucent fish they latch onto their faces.