/wbg/ Worldbuilding General

How much attention do you pay to shipping, trade routes, ports, etc?

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How's my geology/plate tectonics/topography?

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>>46973989
I guess I should actually include that layer if I'm asking for feedback.

>>46973989
>>46974058
Pretty good.

>dat nightmarishly vast northern sea
10/10, would drown in.

>>46973989
>>46974058
How'd you do it? Been messing with plate tectonics for my world and having issues with it.

>>46973989
>>46974058
This is why my world is a plane, not a planet.
No earthquakes means underground strongholds and ancient dungeons are everywhere.

>>46974437
If you dig down far enough, do you reach space or the underworld?

>>46974458
The material plane is a bubble.
The deeper you dig, the hotter it gets. You eventually reach an area of pure Primal Fire and Earth, aka magma.

>>46974588
Explaining further; it's a sphere of Primal Fire, surrounded by a shell of Primal Earth, covered with Primal Water, with Primal Air sealing it off from the Void.

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I've run into some trouble coming to terms with the origins of my various races in setting. I set a challenge for myself that I absolutely must have every playable race within the core Player's Handbook for D&D 5e, and it's only now coming to bite me in the ass. The tl;dr is as follows:

>Humans evolved on the planet as evolution dictates.
>The fey saw humans in their late tribal days, got jealous, and created the elves to surpass them.
>The gnomes are a type of fairy, and a number of them crossed over to the mortal world years ago, telling the courts to fuck off.
>Aasimar, tieflings, and genasi are all varieties of planetouched, and are literally transplants from the Planescape verse, their bloodlines getting all mixed in with this world. They're pretty rare, but standard fare. (Distant spawn of fiends/celestials/certain elementals.)
>Nobody knows where the orcs came from, but that's sort of part of their deal. (Probably used to be humans. They can mate with elves because elves were made in humans' image.)
>Dragonborn happen when a humanoid male knocks up a female dragon, then she reverts to dragon form and lays a clutch of eggs. Half-dragons are when a polymorphed male dragon knocks up a humanoid female. They're rarer, but identical.
>Not playable, but giants existed long, long ago. They're all gone now, since something happened to them and then they invaded the Land of Fairy, which promptly hunted them to annihilation. It's been so long nobody even knows what they originally looked like.

The problem comes up when I try to figure out origins for Halflings and Dwarves. I feel like I could figure out one if I figure out the other, since I've tied multiple races origins together, but I haven't found anything that I like. I'm hoping for something that isn't "the gods created them", because the nature of the setting is far removed from normal D&D gods.

>>46974788
Could just make them Human subspecies.
I'd give references, but it'd just sound like /pol/.

>>46974861
I'm such a stickler, that there's a very specific problem with that. You may hate me for this pure autism.

There's no half-human-half-dwarf, and therefor they cannot interbreed, thus not a subspecies. (If orcs and humans can and dwarves can't, I have to draw a line.)

I'm tempted to have Stout Halflings Half-Halfling, Half-Dwarf, though.

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>>46974423
I had a rough idea of the shapes of the continents that I wanted before I began tectonics, they were the first things that I did. I did those through almost random combinations of the products of random shape generators then parallels with the real world, alternate worlds, country borders, etc. Once I had this out I started dividing the world up with lines into plates that I think would work. This took a LOT of fiddling and consulting of real tectonic maps and others. When coming up with the plates what I focused on was

1. Having a mix of continental and oceanic plates (ended up 3 oceanic, 8 continental).
2. Having the boundaries where the plates met up be able to form coherent plate relations, so no janky interlocking, etc.
3. Get a rough idea of what I at least wanted as far as major tectonics went with relation to the topography. Here it was having a long multi-plate spanning mountain range caused by a convergence zone (along with some other things). I stole that outright from the Americas-Pacific and stuck it between the polar continent and the 3 along the middle there. As you might be able to tell, I tried to draw parallels with the real world as often as I could. Like all fiction, it helps with realism and works out well if it's not stupidly obvious.
4. Then there was a refinement of the land shapes with this in mind (e.g. making that whole southerly coast much flatter like the western Americas.)
5. Then refining the plate directional movement defining magnitude and direction. Plate movement actually works with axes of rotation and complicated geometry that I'm not smart enough so I tried to focus on doing this in a way that created realistic (or at least with the appearance of realism) plate boundaries (convergent, divergent, transform), noting what each one is.
6.From here the tectonics is done but I did one more land refinement and went on to topography. It's based around tectonics as well as a few other things tucked away in my head.

>>46975055
To incorporate Halflings and Dwarves into my setting, I had to make them evolve from the other Beastman races in seclusion.
It worked out to have only pure-blood Halflings and Dwarves, with Humans being able to breed with everything.

>>46975079
Nice, and thank you for the explanation. What did you use to draw all of this?

How should my seasons work if I want to keep the standard summer/fall/winter/spring but don't have a world that is a sphere without resorting to it's magic?

>>46976460
If you don't want to tie it to the emotional state of a weather goddess like the Greeks did, it'll probably be due to the big glowing light/heat source in the sky.
What is your setting's sun?

>>46977083
It's a literal big glowing orb that replaced a deity that got btfo

>>46977187
If it's actively heating the world, have it slowly travel away from and closer to the world.
Obviously; winter is when it's farthest, and summer is when it's closest. Spring and Fall are mirrors of eachother, getting progressively warmer or progressively colder.

>>46977187
>>46977233
Alternatively, the sun could slowly dim and brighten with time, staying at the same distance.

>>46977267
>>46977233
Wouldn't both of these appear relatively the same to observers on the ground?

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Can anyone rate my map?

It grows, slowly.

>>46980129
Tell me about the lands

>>46980129
I'm no expert, I think you've got too many mountains that have weird circular shape. I don't think this is how mountains usually are.

Also, Enlightened Land is would be dry as hell with all this mountains between it and water.

>A detailed account of adventures of Rolan the Plunderer, his travels across sea and land seeking treasure and slaying beasts, as well as of men and women he met and their strange customs, by his loyal man-at-arms Invar

Does this sound like a medieval book?

>>46977233
>>46977267
Thanks I'll probably do something like these

>>46977411
The sun dimming sounds pretty noticeable

What advantages and disadvantages do regular bowmen have versus crossbowmen?

>>46982186
It really depends on what bows and crossbows we are talking about. I think longbows would out range crossbows as well as having a higher rate of fire, with the mayor downside being the time it takes the train the archers compared to just arming peasants with crossbows

>>46982186
Bows have high strenght requirement. Probably would burn through stamina if such is a thing in your system.

Crosbows are slow to fire, but not as tasking.

>>46982572
Name a bow that isn't a longbow, really do it not every bow in existence was made by an Englishman or that matter a Welshman either.

Threadly request for someone with programming and geography skills to develop a random hex map generator. Computer games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress do it, and it would be nice to have something similar for role-playing games.

Perhaps an automated version of this:
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-fantasy-sandbox.html

I'd pay money for it.

>>46982186
From what I remember

Regular bowmen advantages
>higher rate of fire
>better range
>better accuracy over distance

Regular bowmen disadvantages
>Years of training
>Bow and string suffer in wet weather
>Years of training
>Most can't fire prone
>Years of training
>Powerful bows need powerful arms and specialized materials
>Years of training

Crossbowmen advantages
>easy to train
>metal bows stand up to weather
>good enough punching power in close range
>can shoot prone
>repeating crossbows
>kinda like a medieval ak47

Crossbowmen disadvantages
>can cost more per unit
>some need both hands and 1 foot to draw
>shorter range
>lower firing rate in general
>may need metal components
>bulkier and heavier
>shorter range

>>46983452
Weren't crossbows of possessing superior range?

>>46973899
>How much attention do you pay to shipping, trade routes, ports, etc?

Just about to start, really. I needed to make a rough map first then fill in climate, geography, fauna and flora and the factions therein.

Now I'm planning to map out the trade routes. I've already decided to have 2 major port cities for trade(one neutral) with one empire essentially blockaded by another through a gulf to the eastern ocean. This forces the empire to hire neutral ships or disguise their ships for carrying goods and passengers.

Since I want economy to be a major thing in the setting I've spent a lot of time pondering how trade would occur between 2 competing and warring empires and those stuck in between them. I settled on a saber rattling fencewar with occasional flareups in their neutral zone. Neutral region are essentially free trade areas where their merchants compete. Lots of maneuvering, manipulation and power struggles can be set up.

I've tagged the eastern empire as going full bore on economics and basically tries to cock block the middle empire's trade whenever it can. It also tries to make its own merchants more influential in its territory by imposing high taxes on foreign merchants and goods but regular taxes on consignments to citizens. Roads are built for faster travel and transport. They conquered a major port city for easier access to salt and its premier trade port. They also have a banking system with foreign affiliates/branches to facilitate large scale transactions across borders. Merchants also need a license and such to operate within it's borders. Actually, almost everything needs some sort of license and certification. I should probably make a list of that.

>>46983452
>metal bows stand up to weather
Maybe firing into the wind, but as a weapon they're more complex which makes them more intolerant to adverse conditions. Like Agincourt, the Genoese Crossbowmen of France couldn't make any impact because the weather ruined their crossbows versus the English archers who simply unstrung and covered their bows during the weather, and strung them for battle.

>>46984024
>this is what longbowfags actually believe

>>46984099
Why not, they also believe the French mutilated the hands of archers

>>46983903
Can't say I ever remember reading anything like that. As far as I can remember it was the ease of use that made crossbows standout more as a weapon than anything else.

>>46980437
What about orographic rain? Shouldn't that keep them nice and moist?

>>46984571
I think orographic rain is on the sea side, no?

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Talking about trade, do you think it would make more sense to move Reesa-Basadae to West bank of the river? This is the sort of thing that will bug me until I make sense of it.

Pink lines are trade routes.

>>46984618
Oh, right. I completely forgot. My bad.

>>46984732
Water needs to come from somewhere to become rain, that's just simple logic.

Also, the hell is with your rivers in the Enlightened Land? Where are they flowing from where, I can't make sense out of it.

A regiment of all female light cavalry, numbering less than 1,000 women. Seen by the men as more or less as a joke, formed by the queen as a way for orphaned girls to not have to live a life of prostitution or thievery and a way to meet a future husband. Believable, or no?

>>46984897
Aye, probably. But what's the population and time period?

One thousand is a lot in medieval times. A sizable fraction of an entire realm's army, in fact.

>>46984897
Sinecure is a thing. I imagine there'd be a better way to employ orphaned girls if empress can afford to pay their salary, but sure, why not.

>>46984947
Its less than a thousand, more than 500. The country's current population is relatively average compared to it's neighbor's with a population of roughly 4 million.

>>46985017
Alright then, it sounds reasonable. Provided you have the resources to sustain these fighting women.

What do they do when not at war? What comforts and necessities are they entitled to?

Who will provide these necessities?

What is a good name to invasive ecosystem that follows bad guys everywhere and makes land uninhabitable for good guys? Since Blight is already taken.

>>46985121
What kind of ecosystem is it? Are we talking fire and brimstone or like creeping fungus or something else?

>>46984897
So, in stead of prostitution and slavery they're out getting raped and killed by the enemy? That Queen must be loaded too. Imagine the cost of horses and materiel a 1,000 omen would need. Why not just set them up with a business?

>>46985259
The later. Less fungus and more like red, slimy poisonous plants, that grow through everything, chock normal green plants, poison water sources.

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>>46985317
creep
bloodweed
red rot
stranglers
plagueleaf

I dunno, just spitballing

>>46985549
That's an interesting pick. What's this?

>>46985569
War of the worlds has a creeping red weed that comes with the martians
it was literally like the 3rd pic on google images

>>46985627
Yeah, right, it had this. I don't remember war of the world. Alien capsule unscrewed itself and then everyone died from common cold. This is how I remember it.

>>46985879
Also Tom Cruise was there

>>46985960
The movie didn't have unscrewing scene, I think.

>>46985988
I wouldn't be surprised, it's been a minute since ive been through any version of wotw

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I want to do a bad guy faction of space vampires/pic related/war boys that have prolonged their lives unnaturally by living near black holes so that time passes slower for them than other races.

They believe their purpose is to outlast all other life in the galaxy and to become the crows picking at the corpse of civilization. They recycle the dead into a food source and are trying to construct an infinite entropy engine to essentially heat-death localized parts of space.

Any critiques? I feel like it might be too much rolled into one faction, but I really like the idea of apocalyptic death cults on a huge scale.

>>46986270
>and are trying to construct an infinite entropy engine to essentially heat-death localized parts of space.
I don't get it. What exactly are they hoping to achieve by it?

R8 and H8 folks

The closest thing my setting has to a deity is more of a beyond-your-comprehension-lovecraftian-yada-yada-yada being then a god. Those few who know of her existence call her the Hungering Mother. She exists as a body that lies intertwined with our world, cradling the ancient places lost or forgotten by humans. The ruins of deceased civilizations, disused maintenance tunnels in an otherwise thriving city's sewer system, and ghost towns are all her domain. Anywhere forgotten long enough she will eventually swallow whole, leaving nothing but a bricked up doorway where a room used to be, or a barren plain where once was an abandoned settlement. She envelops these places, and they begin to glue together in her metaphorical stomach, forming impossible architecture and unsettling landscapes. Although they are no longer of our world, these places maintain a connection to it. Certain people can see where one used to be, and travel to and from the hungering mothers body itself, ofttimes using the cobbled landscape as a sort of transportation. Walk through a place where an abandoned storage unit once was, end up where that storage unit got glued to a mayan temple, and walk back out a door through the temple into the jungle it came from. She will eventually eat the whole world, the land within her becoming a better and better mimicry of reality until she has consumed everything and will give birth to a whole new world. Hence the name the Hungering Mother.

>>46986270
So, they're shunting energy out of a localized area and putting it where?

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>>46986308
Their whole thing is they want to end all life in the galaxy so they can feed off the dead and rebuild the galaxy in their image. Essentially they see themselves as vultures just waiting for everyone else to die, and are building the entropy engine to give them a little push.

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>>46986599
Honestly I hadn't thought that far ahead, I just needed a doomsday weapon that would work on such a large scale.

also I think Infinite Entropy Engine sounds really cool

>>46986599
>Evil space race
>Where does the energy go
Death rays of course.

>>46986584
10/10, can visualize and get spooked by

>>46986901
From the point of view of hard science, how exactly are you going to induce heat death on a localized area. Not only work doesn't work like this, but unless you cut it off from the rest of the universe, it's not a closed system and it will replenish its energy eventually.

>>46986933
>also I think Infinite Entropy Engine sounds really cool

It's catchy but it's descriptive of what the universe already does.

>>46986972
>Death rays of course.

But that's like a giant neon sign for similar tech level civs to fuck their shit up.

>>46987082
Who will fuck your shit up if you have a death ray powered by the heat death of the universe?

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>>46987009
it doesn't have to be true 100% heat death, It just has to suck out energy faster than it gets replaced, generating a spike in entropy locally. All the energy coming in would be low level radiation that would be difficult to harness for any useful purpose anyways.

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>>46987112
Anthony Fremont.

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>>46987082
Fair enough.It seems like sizing it down might be the best option. Just turn it into a giant energy vacuum and call it a sun eater?

the name is the most important part of any superweapon

>>46984729
Goddamn, those rivers are gigantic. Making them smaller would make sense. Towns often grow at river crossings or bridges, and they may expand to both sides of the river.

>>46987380
The known world was supposed to be pretty small, but I lost all sense of scale. And my hands keep shaking.

>>46987366
The problem I guess I have with the concept is that you have what seems to be a Level 2 civilization going to Level 3. The power available to these civs is so high that your initial premise seems too trivial for a race that advanced. Maybe if they were creating their own universe to escape this one or created a pocket universe and are preying on that it'd be more interesting,

Another problem is that if you're referring to time dilation then they aren't living longer near a black hole but living slower. Everyone else is advancing their tech in real time and likely already have solutions prepared.

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>>46987185
>>46986901
I approve of this. Be careful to aVOID spunky adventurers though.

>>46980407

What is there to say? Each land is not necessarily a full nation but is sort of grouped together based on racial and cultural lines. This setting contains mostly humans but they have deeply differing cultures and some mystical or unusual racial traits. A single land may be made up of one empire, or it may be made up of many tribes and bushman, or it may be made up of collectivist city states and so on. It's a bit like TES provinces in a way.

>>46980437

Maybe, for the most part I did that because I wanted to show Salvation as a very mountainous landscape. It's supposed to be a bit like the Himalayas, inhabited mainly by enlightened spiritual monkey men. But obviously I'm not very good at art so it came out looking a little weird.

lifesaving bump

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How can I make in-settings politics feel both interesting, realistic, and fitting for the game/setting?

Things like succession wars for medieval fantasy, struggles of dynasties for empires, the coalitions and land disputes of tribes and bronze age people, etc?

>>46991369
Make their conflicts as petty and disgusting as possible. None of the participants should be the "good" choice, though one might be a "lesser evil".

>>46991977

That seems needlessly edgy and misanthropic.

>>46992069
Real life is needlessly edgy and misanthropic, particularly medieval politics.

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>>46991369

There's essentially two ways to handle fictional politics. You can either be Game of Thrones or you can be Episode I. Guess which one you WANT to be.

If you're doing it like Episode I, you'll have a lot of established political figures and, well, establishments who deal with big things in the setting, but which lack any real connection to the overall story or its outcomes. The politics are there, and inform certain parts of the story, maybe affect a key plot point or two, but in terms of their impact on the characters, they serve more as something that's just... there.

If you're going the Game of Thrones route, then the characters and politics are intimately entwined. The characters are actually the ones affecting the political landscape. Not all the characters have to be, say, senators or other officials or the like, but those that are ought to have a say in who gets what, when, and why. And, most importantly, all the other characters must actually be affected by the political shifts. If the king is assassinated, the realm ought to suffer the consequences; if one tribe steals another's goats, they ought to strike back with some revenge raids; if a new tax is levied on dragon dildos, there ought to be riots.

TL;DR: If you want to make fictional politics interesting, give your audience interesting characters to engage in them.

>>46992203
>if a new tax is levied on dragon dildos, there ought to be riots.

kek

>>46974788
Dwarves
Rock/earth constructs made to do the dangerous work of mining magical regents by ??? (crazy wizards in general, elves would work well if you want the animosity there, giants if they had the mojo, Dragons could explain any dwarven gold lust and they would definitely be conceited enough to for the next bit of my explanation)

Either due to over design or finding a "spark" of life deep down, they develop independence and a need to improve themselves, with each new model trying to be made closer to their creators form (or surpassing them depending on what faction your listening to). Who in their logical mind just being a very advanced carbon construct.

By the time their creators took action it was to late, the constructs had grown far too numerous in their endless creation on new and better forms. There is great debate on who did it, but the final solution was to completely collapse the upper sections of the mines.

Que thousands of years later, and it turns out they were perfectly happy continuing their mining and self improvement, Many generations of such having resulted in the eating, drinking, breathing, and fucking dwarves that dug their way to the surface just x00 years ago.

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>>46980502
I think it could be a little more jumbled, like:

>A most detailed account of the adventures of Rolan the Plunderer, his travels across known and foreign seas and lands for treasure and challenge, as well as of men and women he met and their strange customs, by his loyal man-at-arms Invar.

>>46983086
hunnic bow

>>46984897
Considering how odd a monarch could be and enforce, it sounds believable.

I think they would be extinguished the second she lost her power, or even transformed into some kind of concubinage by the future ruler.

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>>46992491
>Invar is not too bright
>he often misinterprets cultural traditions, and any mention of Rolan the Plunderer's exploits are exaggerated
>he's also afraid of the dark, and often mistakes small woodland critters for horrifying monstrosities

>>46985317
blood weed

red kudzu

>>46986584
That's fucking cool.

I can see she having worshippers who wish to prove deserving of her new world. They may be based on the aztec legend of the Five Suns, that previous worlds died before the current one.

They may be right

If this is on Earth, aztec mythology may be based on her somehow.

>>46987366
Shunt the energy into the black holes, follow through with the hypothesis that the other side of every black hole is a new universe.

Your space vampires are killing this universe and birthing several new ones. Question is, do they know this? Do their victims find out and try to escape this way?

I hate coming up with names, /wbg/.

I'm almost done with the worldbuilding for one of my environments. I have fully written down and explained the general overview, its location on the map, who occupies it and how much of it they occupy and where in this environment they occupy, the topography, the hydrology, the flora, the fauna. I have a day and night speedpaint of this environment completely finished.

The last thing I have is to have ten starting landmarks, and for the first eight, that was pretty fun and easy. I can't come up with good names for the last two landmarks. Everything I come up with sucks. Once I come up with these names, I can be done developing this environment and put it on the shelf of, "completed as much as it can be."

To make this slightly less blog-worthy, how do you come up with names? What's your method?

>>46992795
I, being unoriginal, emulate history. As such, my civilizations are all misconstrued copies of real life, which means I use real world names.

For example, my NotGermanics use Germanic names or vaguely sounding germanic names(ICH ACH DIE UNG FLEM SOUNDS)

So you could do that. Or you could go full obsession and do as Tolkien did.

>>46992884
German is actually pretty innovative and odd for the Germanic family, going through a second consonant shift. You should look at Gothic or Old Norse for inspiration.

So I got my general horse types based off medieval European types, high end to low end being:

Warhorses
Destrier, Courser, Rouncey

Riding horses
Jennet, Palfrey, Rouncey, Sumpter

General purpose
Rouncy, Sumpter

Anything else to add?

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How would the more or less confirmed existence of an afterlife effect religion? As in the religions can't or don't really offer anything in that regard.

>>46994465
Personnally, I hold much disdain for the concept of a imperically proven higher being. It's not even a religion really, and takes all the wonder and, well, religious-ness out of belief.

This is why I dislike DnD.

What's a good name for elves?

I don't want to call my arabic/india elves elves.

Please help?

>>46994465
I copped out and said that "dying" just sends you back to the plane of psychic energy, where you just dream forever. Souls are just psychic elementals.
If someone gets rezzed, all they remember about being dead is [insert whatever afterlife they shaped their dream to be].

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>>46994592
nvm, I think I'm content with Elzan(plural/possesive 'Elzani')

>>46983148
I could make something like this, drop me an email at [email protected] (not gonna post my real contact info on 4chan)

I have a world setting with a variety of city states etc., I would like to share one below:

Bordering a vast desert of black sand and desert to the West, mountain ranges and a dormant volcano North, a South facing coast and Eastern flood plains, Lilineth is a large, sprawling city of sandstone buildings inhabited by a culturally curious group of people. The volcanic soil and the wide river going through the eastern outskirts makes it suitable for growing incense, citrus and spices. Lilineth has often served as an oceanic trading hub. It will typically be very hot for the majority of the year, particularly inland. Sandstorms often blow from the west, resulting in the building of a large bulwark to block sand entering into too much of the city outskirts, however the poorer citizens continue to build slums outside the bulwark, exposing them to roaming bandits, petty crime and rogue necromancers.

(1/2)

>>46995320
The people of Lilineth are often following bizarre trends set by outfits the High Priest will wear, currently an assortment of absurdly large hats. The black western sand is used to pigment cosmetics which forms a sizeable portion of Lilineth’s exports. Spices, wine and other foods form the remainder, grown primarily in the North and Eastern outskirts. The High Priest of Lilineth serves as a figurehead for the powerful Magmatic Church, which has legal and judicial authority over the city and its bounds. Day to day management falls upon an Elder Council, although the High Priest will often serve as an ‘elected’ monarch. The Grand Magmatic Temple is the largest single building by height and floor in the city. The Elder Council and the High Priest will both reside here and rule from here. Religious congregations occur inside, and the Priestly Knights train here, who’s sworn duty is to protect the priest. The large courtyards around the building are host to various carts, merchants and stores, forming the centre of the city proper, protected by several stages of wall. The city and church are stemmed in centuries of fear and admiration for necromancy - the prominence of necromancy lead many to fear what would happen to them after death, thus the church formed initially as a way to send people to a final death - using necromancy to combat necromancers and other renegade wizards. As such, a very refined form of necromancy is taught to most of the Priestly Knights, and only the highest within the church learn more advanced, and subsequently dark, forms of the art.

(2/2)

Happy to hear feedback.

>>46994465
>How would the more or less confirmed existence of an afterlife effect religion? As in the religions can't or don't really offer anything in that regard.

I'm having trouble with that wording. As in the religions don't have anything to do with the reality of an actual afterlife?

I'd say very little will change. You only have to look at science vs. religion debate to see how much people will cling on to their beliefs.

>>46995365
I guess I'm just confused as to how teaching the knights and priests necromancy-lite is going to help combat legit necromancers

>>46995858
The best way to stop an Undead is knowing how to control it.
Knowing what a Necromancer is able to throw at you is helpful, too.

>>46995858
Something along the lines of >>46995885

If you ever read the Abhorsen series, their concept of necromancy meant that it could be either good or bad - that is, bringing someone back from death in servitude, or sending them through death so that they cannot be resurrected in spirit or in physical form. Other things included bringing back people to speak of their memories before they died etc. Think of it like a classic fight fire with fire/backburning situation. To put out a fire you have to understand the cause of the fire and how fire behaves, otherwise you risk making it worse.

Unsaid in the post because it's long enough as it is, but the naming of the city comes from a necromancer repelling an undead army, and establishing the church in necromancy, so I suppose for them it also has cultural and historical significance.

>>46995885
>>46995945
Fair enough, I was thinking in terms of your classic spooky skeletons necromancy

>>46995945
Series sounds interesting though, might have to give it a look

>>46996041
I highly recommend the book series desu, I wish they'd have been more popular, then maybe we could have gotten a movie out of it or something. They are by Garth Nix, if you can find them at a library or something maybe.

How viable is it for a small island nation to use what is essentially adventurer - soldiers to steal shit from dungeons in enemy land? Not really fighting a war but a bit like on land privateering. It's a gimmick i want to introduce to my players, basically if they fuck around too long on a dungeon a group of these guys may come in and swoop the treasure and such.

>>46996655
>mercenaries from one nation go into another to loot valuables from what could be considered untapped national property
This was a thing in a certain skeleton-centric novel series, where uncouth Adventurers could be hired to do something similar. If the victim nation found out, there'd be reason to declare war.

>>46994465
Real life religion is all about claiming things nobody saw and promising things they can't prove. Afterlife thus will be excluded.

I think it's interesting to think how existence of classical myth tier gods could affect religion. Powerful wizards in the sky do not preclude you from worshipping even more powerful imaginary deity. Could gods themselves be religious?

>>46996779
I have a character in my setting who's strong enough to be considered a God, but still worships the same God as their kin.

>>46996788
And is that God confirmed real?

>>46996897
None of the worshipped Gods are real. Faith-based casters are all healers, so you'd have to be a heartless bastard to try to convince them their God doesn't exist.

Sup /wbg/. I have a question;

I have a Space Western setting that I want to flesh out. What are a few points that need to be established before I can really start in on the meat and bones of the campaign?

>>46996979
When you say "Space Western", it makes me think "Firefly" and I never liked Firefly because I never found it believable. So I think you need to do a better job at explaining why are you having frontier antics in space to such a degree it looks like Western.

>>46996979
>Technology Level
As in; are they still using ballistics and rockets, or are they using FTL drives and energy weapons? Is losing a limb still a big deal?
>Scale
One solar system, a star system, a galaxy, or an observable universe?
>Lifeforms
Humans, Humans + blue Humans with head tentacles, or Humans + non-Bipedal Vertebrates.

Anybody know the difference between Animism and Shamanism? I need it for worldbuilding purposes.

Been trying to build an wuxia style world and that aside from how to implement "not-korea", if at all still gives me problems.

>>46997140
I think Shamanism is about getting high and Animism is about worshipping nature while sober.

But I don't see why should you stick with rigid classification. Just come up with your own primitive faiths. Although I think if your faith involves both getting high and commuting with bears at the same time, you might run out of practitioners soon.

Trying to make a map of the continent my setting's going to be based on, but I'm having trouble working out the outline of it.
Everything I draw seems to come out too square or just, geometric if you know what I mean, I just can't seem to get the natural looking coastlines some maps on here have.
Any pointers?

File: jezelf_tut_map01.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>46997285

>>46997285
Make them oval or round or pear-shaped and than start biting off pieces of coastline until it's ugly as sin.

>>46997140
hahaha ------> >>46997158

Animism is the worship of the physical world, as understood to connect with the spiritual world/realm.
Shamanism is the worship and rituals associated with contacting and sharing in the spiritual world/realm.

>>46984769
I, for some reason, remembered that orographic rainfall would happen on the inland side of the mountains.
Plus, I'm not the one who made the map.

>>46992688
Most people, even those who worship her are unaware of her true nature. They are typically cults who sacrifice people in backwoods Louisiana in a vain attempt to feed what they see as a nature god (think true detective). They are occasionally graced by a living part of her, essential a cell, that comes to accept the sacrifice, Typically manifesting as treefolk. I like the idea of her having inspired old word religions though.

What version of photoshop would you guys recommend for a beginner to mapmaking?

>>46997784
Just use inkarnate instead. I mean, it's not as flexible since you draw from pre-existing set of objects and shit (They still don't have hill brush, damn it), but it's hell of convenient to just sketch your map.

>>46997798
I find Inkarnate too limiting, and tricky to use.

>>46997798
inkarnate looks like absolute ass unless you are a graphic wizard

even hexographer is better

>>46997599
I wondered something: how do archeology finds anything if she's affecting the world? Places like Nan Madol for example. You mention ghost cities, but there are many places older and more forgotten than that.

I also think the catacombs of Paris, Rome and such places aren't as huge as they once were...

Finally, what about her followers? Are they as forgotten as the places she swallows? Does she consumes marginals and pariahs to populate her world?

I ask this because I have a god of forgotten places AND people
>If you forgot or lost
>The Maruxo remembered and discovered
>Torn clothes, quiet voices
>The never loved, the rebellious sons

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I've been thinking about the exports of my countries and I've ran into a problem.

I've been thinking about wood. Trees, to be exact.
The problem is, can I just use real life trees, such as linden, ash and elm in my world?
Or should I, instead, create completely new species of trees?

Pic not related.

>>46997784
Handmade and originality is the way to go. Don't get on that Inkarnate train, even if you can't produce anything better than that.

If you got a wooden leg and a patch over your eye, just go for the most seeded field. It's probably going to be CS6. That's also what I use. CS6 is the newest and last CS version. The current ones are CC versions. Complete crap.

>>47000160
I would go with normal trees, but add few more if your setting has magic. For example not!spruce with magic is viable

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I can proudly say that Uncreative Milquetoast-World is officially in hiatus! I looked into the map and decided that it wasn't good enough.

I do have idea how to port most parts of previous setting into new one so some stuff is not getting thrown out. More or less there is going to be more magical shenanigans, but it is still going to stay low magic.

Pic somewhat related

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A perfectly average cheeseburger is presented to a perfectly average denizen of your setting. How do they react?

>>47000684
They keep it in the food banks, or maybe in their travel packs. When they're hungry, they unwrap it. Then they eat it.

It looks a lot like red war food. Preserved, packaged, neat and box-like. Best not to think what it's made of. There's probably hundreds of thousands of them, deep underground, in some forgotten trench or some lonely silo.

Tastes better than a provibar, so there's that.

>>47000684
Two things have good best before dates, cheese and rye bread. Bland cheese or bread is kinda boring so it is common to make sandwiches. And there is one better thing than normal cheese sandwich, a heated one! So cheese hamburgers wouldn't be super strange thing to be.

>>46998413
>how do archeology finds anything if she's affecting the world?
I've been thinking about this, and have decided that I would have to create an alternate history where we where much more advanced in the past then we believe, but she ate most of the evidence, leaving us with the incomplete picture we have now. Additionally, the cycle of consumption and rebirth is a very slow one, not all lost places are instantly taken by her. I sort of like the slowness of the process because it lets me use the same setting in many diverse ages. A modern age with something around 20% of the original world consumed vs. a borderline apocalyptic one with something like 90%. While she is very subtle in the former scenario, in the latter it would be very difficult to not notice.


>Finally, what about her followers? Are they as forgotten as the places she swallows? Does she consumes marginals and pariahs to populate her world?
Yes yes and yes again. The homeless, the mentally ill, children lost at birth, or sometimes dudes who just get lost in the woods for too long, can all gain the gift of seeing the places she has taken, and most will pay homage to her in some way or another if not outright worship. Think neverwhere if you have read it.

I dont know if this is the best place to post it but do you guys have issues coming up with plot for your games? I don't really have issues with the worldbuilding but I can't come up with how to realize the ideas I have for the story.

>>47000684
They marvel at whiteness of the bread and the intriguing blandness of the meat.

>>47002922
Not really, I have only done low magic settings so quest lines and plot revolts somewhere between vanillavanilla and crusader kings

>>46983903
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J__NRSNv45g

Tell me about your fallen civilizations, /wbg/

>>47006945

Well, for a change of pace I've been thinking of making a soft sci-fi setting/story. Its background is that by 2100 humans will send out various generation, sleeper and seeder ships until FTL is discovered. Not all the ships sent out before were recovered. Actual story would be set about twenty thousand years in the future, about five thousand years after the collapse of the human space empire for yet unknown reasons and the apparent disappearance of the race. Humans and some other empire building alien races have become the stuff of myth and legend to the newer races who seek out their ruins for advanced tech and/or general curiosity. Lately some human artifacts and ships are being discovered that predate the terran empire. Some of them have ancient humans still alive inside. I want to make a setting where humans are among those picking through the remains of their descendant's supertech civilization. Like a post Time Of Strife without as much grimderp I guess.

The "Great Terran Empire" would have occupied a decent chunk of the galaxy and subjugated many races. They would have built massive constructs(mechs, ships), traveling worlds and really advanced science, pulp-tier stuff for the heck of it. I don't know how they disappeared yet nor if I really want to give a reason.

File: puerta de kalenden completo.png (2MB, 1598x1388px) Image search: [Google]

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Hi friends, I'm a bit bored lately and I may partially recycle a light-hearthed setting that I first created when I was a teenager to worldbuild a little. Actually, I think that I posted parts of it here in /tg/ before, years ago.

Here I made this picture that explains pretty much everything superficially. I love the setting a lot thanks to the good memories I have, so I can't judge it properly. I would be very thankful to have some opinions from unrelated people about what is too retarded and what sounds interesting enough to be saved. Maybe I will use it in some roleplaying session soon, but that's not really important: I worldbuild for fun.

Actually, I have to go now, but I know well that this threads are slow and I should be back to awnser to the opinions in a couple of hours. I really hope I didn't fuck up with the colors making everything unreadable.

>>46974615
That's just a planet yo.

>>47007197
That is exactly the Age of Strife, I mean its really cool but you could just do the Age of Strife which is a story that has so little info on it that you could really do anything

File: planimetria-della-citta.jpg (41KB, 550x391px) Image search: [Google]

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>>47002671
Actually, alternate history may not be necessary. When one considers how much has been lost, all the archaeological perishable materials we can only infer about, the mystery about the origin of etruscans, indo-europeans and sea peoples, perhaps Atlantis being real, possible wooden aqueducts on celtic lands.

Blame her for the mysteries and gaps that already exist, mayas/atlantis/lost legions/etc, and insinuate that there will be no great discoveries like Troy or pharaoh tombs in the future, because we pretty much found out everything she hasn't consumed yet.

I pretty much had Neverwhere in my head for this, yeah.