/wbg/ Worldbuilding General

>>49264467
>How (if at all) do you handle flags, banners, insignias, or any other form of representative icons in your world?
Haven't gotten that far. Should work on it.

>How often are your world's cultures similar to real-world cultures in similar areas (i.e. desert civ #928 = persia)
Let's face it, its almost a copy of real culture locations, sans the Middle East where Fance should be and Germany to the north.

>What territorial disputes are present in your world?
The Sobeki have been raiding from the south, fringe remnants of the Shariq believe the New Great Empire are usurpers of their rightful lands, and both of them wish to reclaim the cities captured by the Probus Imperium.

>How (if at all) do you handle flags, banners, insignias, or any other form of representative icons in your world?
I don't, i just have described the banner of a big state named the "European State" and is just a flowing stream of light blue water in a deep blue background.


>How often are your world's cultures similar to real-world cultures in similar areas (i.e. desert civ #928 = persia)
It's an scifi setting with cultures that are most of the time descendents of the cultures of our time, some of them are mixed up like the portuguese and spanish cultures of South America, the European State is just a big empire lead by latin and some slavic cultures. The americans and oriental cultures have no presence in this world (or at least people don't know where they are settled).

>What territorial disputes are present in your world?
My setting is set in an overpopulated city in a world that has a very low population. The city is in total anarchy, and is sieged by the European State that wants to control it's population and it's trade. The empire probably has many territorial disputes with other more "backward" societies, but i'm just focused in the city.

Has any of you guys succeded at building a world and making it "famous", at least with nerds or in a financial way

>>49267485
Best I ever managed was the 5e conversion for Zelda. Even then...

>>49267552
Nice, but i'm talking about creating a world from zero. Zelda is already famous.

>>49267485
I have no hopes of that ever happening. Fantasy settings are too dime a dozen now. Only hope I'd have is spinning one of my more niche settings into something.

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>>49268270

While it's foolish to dream of being the next gurm I think it's entirely feasible for some to get published and have some degree of notoriety and fame.

Finished the starting template of the main continent, and for how much work this took I'm liable to just have the western continent (within sailing distance from that far south-west tip) be referred to offhand and vaguely. Features and states and such will change but I needed to establish a basic sense of locations and themes since I'm working very much from a history/international affairs kind of mindset. That SW island is liable to be moved somewhere since I didn't like it all verdant and green.

Also wrestling with the level of fantasy in the world and demi-humans. As of right now only planned ones are Hwagari, rowdy satyrfolk (Greek style not furry). Otherwise Raoxshanids will be a central part of the story/writing and are modeled on various Iranian folks.
Niravahnam is Classical India with Rajput rohayat, four states south of it are supposed to be indigenous south-east asian.
Ghozarid is a Mughal or Saka/Kushan style "recent Raoxshanid rulers of Niravahnam".
Labakkar are Balouchi.
Blue "-u' endings are the Harbanu, this world's term for bedouin.
Raqqarids are settled and ostensibly civilized Harbanu.
Aggawar is Harbanized blacks (Hashaba), Ahbaz and those other states in the SE are Hashaba.
Mahazgan are caucasoid berbers.
The Ikkani are the teal colored cities, with Nakkar being the hegemon a'la Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Makhenai are greeks, either a mixture of heroic warrior-aristocratic Mycenaean and some poleis or entirely homeric.
Lahiyya are three kingdoms (plus the Ishuna) who I'm still a little iffy on but I saw as kind of Trojan/Hittite in aesthetic and that sort of "Oriental European" if it makes sense. Or kind of Greco-Persian I guess. Ishuna being anatolian/thracian hillfolk.

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>>49268710
Kaljani are the 'far' nomads, though I'm not sure quite how to distinguish them from the Rruvasa just yet. Perhaps the Kaljani are less pastoral horse nomads and more marsh/foodland Slavs. I'm not sure I really dig the aesthetic of centaurs so I couldn't see them being another 'beastfolk' like the Hwagari. Could be satyrfolk that weren't pushed/migrated to that NW forested highlands.

Arazala paradoxically is also rather "oriental european" or Greco-Persian in the sense of having the Byzantine/Late Roman theme. May recast the Lahiyya region as something else to preserve that vibe for Arazala, but not sure what could dwell in the interior lands sandwhiched between "persia" and "greeks". Every one of their neighbors to the North-east are 'germanic'. Initially the collective demonym is Drytha but I like Drausja as an option, hitherto used for a kingdom. The bordered Drythan states are all reasonably civilized squatters that took over Arazalid territory and are useful as buffers against the restive and uncivilized Drythan peoples.

I could also switch Arazala's theme. Only real reason I went with them is I love the late roman aesthetic. Idea pops in mind of Arazala, nixed down to that center river area, being a kind of Spanish Carthage or sort of Andalusian Spain: Ikkani traders arrive and set up colonies, the locals are small agile and hot-blooded fiercely independent Iberians or small agile and hot-blooded fiercely independent Italians(samnites), expand the Mahazgan horn until it's not quite as close as Gibraltar but maybe Sicily to North-Africa close. Ikkani are mercantile folk that don't like to fight so they hire locals, Drythans from the north and Mahazgani to do it for them.

Means the not-carthage lacks a rome to oppose it, but that's not the end of the world. Pardon my brainstorming.

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>>49264467
Oh fuck yes, I was about to make this thread myself since I've been waiting for one for so long.

I posted the map of the world I've been building a while back, and got some pretty good advice on how to make it better. I've done some alterations, and it looks a lot better now that I've implemented everyone's suggestions.

I was in the middle of slapping some icons to represent the different holdings ( of which there are a ton) when I realized three things:

> I should make the icons relative to the general size / power of the holding, which requires a quick stat building on each holding
>I need to separate the country into regions to apply static bonuses / penalties (currently using that Game of Thrones RPG for making the holdings, since it seems like a cool way to get some overview stats for the holdings)
>I need a road system, or at least a giant Roman empire / kings road type of thing that goes across the country.

Any ideas how to make a road look organic, or where one would fit on the map?

Also, out of curiosity, how big does the whole place look to you all? Like comparing it to countries or continents - does it look France sized or Australia sized?

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>>49269069

Looked at other fantasy political maps and realized my shit is too big and blobby still even though I was worried I was going over the top with the number of polities.

THE
RIDE
NEVER
ENDS

>>49269289

Nice mappe.

I'd say France sized. For roads, while the Romans were ingenious with their design and hard-working I'd think that roads would follow the riverine model of "path of least resistance". Unless going around a forest would add too much time, they'll be more likely to go around woods or isolated mountains. Chains they will have to pass through.

Also I'd think when a river is plentifully available you won't really need a road as much. So you wouldn't have a road literally going parallel to a river.

>>49269289
>>49264467

Also, to answer those questions:

>I'm struggling with that myself. I'm thinking of buying that inkwell coat of arms generator to pump out a bunch of sigils and banners for all the holdings. I just need a program with a lot of elements that doesn't look like a family reunion bull shit machine.

>I've gone out of my way to try and avoid making the culture "not X or fantasy Y." I've tried to blend different mythologies and cultural aspects, but tried to build it complete from the history I made up.

> As far as I've gotten, the campaign is pretty isolated, with their only recent interactions being with their neighbors, who are more like weird cousins than foreign peoples. They've bickered extensively over borders, and the lords of Mormaal have been known to hire armies from the neighboring country to try and hide their involvement in raids and such.

>>49268270
>tfw have literally spent literal years working on a unique setting
>tfw have put autistic detail into religions, cultures, economies, history, etc.
>tfw have developed like a dozen languages
>tfw expected to become rich and famous with my magnum opus
>tfw realize it's basically pointless except maybe as a fun hobby, as fantasy settings are common as dogshit now and most people aren't giant anthropology nerds
>tfw i have no face

>>49269289
Think of the terrain for the roads. Difficult to navigate terrain will have windy roads because it's easier to go around something than it is to remove it. Plains and flat, easy terrain will probably be straighter and more well kept. Roads should also be near an easy source of water and kindling imo, particularly if they're going to be well travelled.

Smaller than Australia, but not crazy small. I feel like I could walk between most adjacent settlements if I dedicated a day or most of a day to it.

> Tfw want to make a fantasy setting
> Can't make anything but generic and kitchen-sinky settings
Is it better if I try to avoid cliches and common tropes?

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>>49269385
thanks m8. I'm trying to make the road run through all the regions and by the big trade cities and such, but I feel like the river is a pretty convenient way to travel down to the capital.

And I'll admit that I'm constantly waffling on the size from day to day. One day I think its small, another day I'm like its fucking huge.

>>49269484
Gotcha, winding around shit. and I think one of the size issues is that the icons represent entire holdings, not towns, and forests and rivers are just symbolic of the big ones.

Which then goes on to show that there is a fuck huge forest and fuck huge mountain range that would cover over half of the actually inhabited part of the country, so the civilized part seems smaller than it really is.

>>49269543
That's what I'd recommend. A big part of what makes things like Earthsea and Avatar so engrossing is that they don't play by the same rules as "standard" fantasy. But I wouldn't recommend "NO CLICHES, NO EUROPE, FINAL DESTINATION ONLY"; more like "take a couple things that you see over and over, and make a fantasy world that doesn't use those".

Like, a big thing in my setting is
>equatorial setting
>no medieval stagnation
>very little metal

Or for something like Avatar:
>Chinese-inspired setting
>magic based around physical action and technique rather than intellect
>spirits are common and fairly accessible, not all-powerful

So maybe find a non-European culture and start there. How about Mali?

Here's something I found interesting: in Europe, the people with power were the wealthy and learned, so magic in European traditions is typically associated with learning and academia. In pre-Islamic Mali, the people with power were the craftsmen, so magic is associated with craft. You don't cast spells, you create fantastical objects.

Something like that, just as a jumping-off point. Maybe you could even combine that with a steampunk/dungeonpunk vibe, where craft-wizards have advanced to making mythic machinery.

>>49269601

What I suggest is what I did on my map with setting down a specific scale marker. Have it on a layer separate so you can move it around to take imprecise measurements. And before settling on the scale, determine a RL reference for how large you want/need it to be.

With my scale of 500-600 miles previously the very top of the image was 60 degees north and the very bottom equatorial. That had each 1 inch mark in photoshop be 69 miles, and a 10" on the 100 scale being 690 miles.

So then using this https://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm which measures as the crow flies you can get a feel for RL ranges. Case in point:

Northern France (just next to Belgium on the coast) to Southern France (SW or so of Monaco) is 570 miles. Tip of Brittany to the tip of Alsace-Lorraine bulge is 581 miles. So if your scale is France sized you'd aim for the total width or total height being comparable.

By comparison, Brisbane to Perth is 2255 miles. Melborne to northernmost tip of queensland is 1871 miles. To compare, Rome to Baghdad is about 1850 miles, new Delhi to Lebanon is 2400 miles.

Then consider travel overland (river/water makes it extremely fast and convenient) for meaningful interaction.It seems that the average march distance for soldiers not on break-neck pace is about 20 miles a day. Horses seem to be 30-40 on average.

So crossing france's width or length is about 28 days. If you were to march entirely overland from Rome to Baghdad it would be 92 days.

>>49269887
Damn anon, that's really impressive, I'll try and give that a shot, thanks.

>>49269543
Or alternatively:
>open Hexographer
>use an RNG to make really weird random generation parameters
>use the result as your starting point (you can tweak it later)

>>49270102
I have yet to use a map, to be honest. I don't feel it's an especially important part of my worldbuilding, but then again, I've never tried it, so eh.

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>>49270023

Appreciate it. At the end of the day I think we worry too much about climate/realism when popular fantasy doesn't really give two shits about it so long as everything is within reasonable layout. Even then Hyboria had silly mountains and nobody minds. Just do the rough ballparking for your own sanity's sake more than for accuracy's.

Also if it's taking place within a france dimensions then it limits your possible climates unless the world is much smaller than ours or more magical. At 570 miles it's short of 10 degrees latitude. So France is about 51 north to 43 north. You can manage a mediterranean climate and a northern european climate, but not say a desert climate and a northern european climate. Unless the desert is Mongolia Gobi desert style which is the result of being high latitude and wind-stuff. Which is rather complicating.

The one thing I did for wind that I am satisfied with is a transparent layer with curving arrows to reference the coriolis effect's wind patterns. See pic but look closely for the faded transparent arrow. Basically:
-Northern Hemisphere is Clockwise, south is counterlcockwise BUT
-North of 27-30 degree north the wind pattern is more from the south to the north curving eastward.
-South of that point but north of equator the wind pattern is more from the north to the south curving westward.

Wind coming from/near water will bring moisture. Wind coming from land will bring less if any. Mountains have that whole wet side (the side getting the wind) and dry side (the side opposite the wind). But if the mountains aren't Himalaya sized they can end up encouraging more rainfall further afield past the rain-shadow on the dry side. That was what I came across when I was trying to figure out the Monsoon dynamics - the ghats running down the western side of India (next post)

>>49270217

I think I'm mistaken on the Ghats. Was going to say while they cause a rain shadow behind them they raise the land height behind them. But I think the more important thing is the Himalayas creating a barrier to monsoonal winds which cause the massive downpouring.

And the monsoon is the seasonal reversing of wind-patterns. Happens almost everywhere, just more famous and noticable for Southeast Asia

>>49270201
>I don't feel it's an especially important part of my worldbuilding
Oh, mon ami. Lemme bust the door wide open for you. The map can be EVERYTHING. Geography has a massive influence on culture.

The Egyptians lived by a steady, consistent river, and imagined steady, consistent gods. The Mesopotamians lived between two wild, unpredictable rivers and imagined wild, unpredictable gods.

China invented the steam engine before the English, but the English needed to make refinements to the steam engine to pump water out of their coal mines; Chinese coal was much easier to mine, so they never had to do that. Yadda yadda yadda England curbstomps China.

Less than 25% of the landmass of Japan is habitable, which is why fully 1/5 of their population lives in their largest city. The city has been morphed by needing to accommodate these crowds so you get bullet trains and massive fast food restaurants and multi-story schools.

The high, weaving mountains of West Virginia made travel from town to town very difficult, leading to extremely small, isolated towns and even individual families.

The Himalayas create a barrier which forces rain back out over the Indian ocean, creating the monsoon season. This lead to a massive trade network in the area, resulting in a spread of ideas and now Indonesia is predominantly Muslim.

The Inca Empire was built along the Andes, which meant that wheeled vehicles wouldn't have been much help; instead, their long-range communication was built around people running long distances, and thus carrying messages conveyed by a series of knotted ropes, which were easier to carry over those long distances.

I could go on.

>inb4 my examples are ridiculously oversimplified

Start with the geography. It's a huge deal in building a culture.

>>49270447
Yeah, yeah, I know all that. Just, with fantasy, you don't need to necessarily worry about all that because magic. Or, if you do, you can add what you want for flavor and leave the other bits out. I just never bothered to get into that sort of thing.

I'm starting to think I can make any setting besides a generic scifi or fantasy setting. Everything else turns out cool and unique and they just kinda end up...boring. Or overly complicated, in the case of any scifi setting I've tried to make.

>>49270608
>I'm starting to think I can make any setting besides a generic scifi or fantasy setting.
Explain what you mean by that.

>>49269543
Don't be afraid of using cliches and common tropes where necessary. Look at something like Berserk as an example - on paper, Medieval Europe, kings and demons and elves and ogres and etc. It's the stuff taken from elsewhere (in Berserk's case, the bonus cultural blindness of it being written by a Jap, as well as all the Hellraiser everywhere) and melded with the traditional tropes that makes it interesting.

>>49270217
>>49269887
So cursory glance put my country in the 1 - 1.2 million square mile range (with the major population centers i.e. not the great frontier and discounting the cliffs area being just slightly bigger than france at 750,000 miles). It would allow for a large distance to travel and some climate change between the sugarcane coast and the great frontier, but still being most temperate / European climate.

>>49270969

I'm not familiar with the square miles since I dunno how to do it for irregular terrain but that sounds good by me. I forgot though that you can look at other parts of the world climatically than just the European land you're basing it on. Like LA to Seattle is about 950 miles, or about Tangiers Morocco to Paris. So at a minimum of around 17 degrees or so you can have northern european climate and desert, or temperate rainforest seattle and desert LA. Higher latitudes make it even easier to achieve that - Switzerland and Austria are closer to the Maghreb than Paris but I naturally think of Paris as warmer (not mediterranean, but not cool alpine).

Likewise Boston is Dfa Humid continental warm summer climate yet is 450 or so miles from southern Virginia which is cfa humid subtropical climate.

keep this bumped for tomorrow lads

So in the near-future apoc setting I'm working on, I have mutant feral humans known a Morlocs. I'm trying to come up with names that soldiers would call various versions of them. I've got a few things, like Trogs, Brutes, Reavers, and such. Any ideas for others to use?

>>49270650
Well, I have an urban fantasy setting, a weird post-apocalyptic kinda horror kinda superheroic setting, a kinda anime fantasy setting vaguely based around the zodiac, I have a sci-fantasy setting I haven't written down yet, and I couldda sworn I had a different post-apoc setting sitting around somewhere, that I all like. They don't feel boring - they're not anywhere close to finished because I hop projects every once in a while so I don't burn out, but they're cool, to me.

Sci-fi settings always end up too big and complicated or I focus too much on the details - ends up with me tossing it out the window. With fantasy settings, I guess I just try to add in too much stuff. I know I can make separate settings to chop things up so it won't so kitchen sink-ish, but I dunno. I never do.

>>49271365
What do they do? Since their mutants, do their appearances vary? What're their habits, how do they hunt, stuff like that. Helps in the nicknaming process.

Need a big ol' space theme park map for a ravnica style moon, with themes similar to Disney/Nuka world, to fill with a bunch of zombie mutants

>>49271433
The basis is in the near-future, humanity finds a new power source, leading to a golden age. Unfortunately, they abuse this new energy, which causes massive overloads in the network of power plants using it. The Morlocs are humans that survived the meltdowns and were altered by exposure. Most became pale, gangly, and malformed, but the effects very. Most remain in the ruins of the old cities, hiding in the sewers and rubble, feeding on anything they can find, even each other. Occasionally, powerful and cunning Morlocs are able to bully and subjugate lesser ones, becoming Morloc Kings.

>>49271617
Ghouls, meatheads, rats, roaches, scabs. That's all I got off the top of my head.

>>49271703
Thanks.

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How's this for a world map?

The setting is a combination of Venus Wars, Maschinen Krieger, Dragon's Heaven (particularly the art style) and a sort of post-AlphaCenturi world with players taking the roll of mercenary pilots. Basically mechs, tanks and large vehicles everywhere in this case to counteract the harsh and unpredictable environment of the planet.

Initial colonisation of the planet was a difficult affair and what started as differing colony companies has evolved over around 1000 years (not sure about time would this seem reasonable?) into distinct civilisations and countries that are now in a state of constant bickering conflict.

Despite the sudden changes of temperature, airspeed, rain acidity etc native life does exist there but has found ways to adapt itself for example, most trees have almost chameleon-like leaves that can change to accommodate sudden weather differences and incredibly deep roots to anchor themselves in strong winds, seed dispersal is normally air-based so a common hazard is being caught in a seed storm and having engines clogged so because of this, flight and aircraft is mostly low altitude.

Technology wise its all over the place with a general mixture of the super advanced colonial tech and haphazard knockoffs built with what could be best described as archaic understanding (a basic AI might produce its quantum calculations via reels of punchcards and tape.)

The incredibly efficient and engines, high tech energy weapons and autonomous AI over time these wonders have been lost, devolved into icons, destroyed and forgotten or simply normalised to the point of banality (travelling nomads while being considered backwards would always carry with them an advanced solar-collector-water-purifier combo devices)

Also how do you like your mechs to be controlled - standing up hardwired into a nervous system or sitting down pulling at levers like a tank. A combination of both?

What other features should I flesh out?

>>49273130
>1000 years

aside from the other things, think about where we were on earth 1000 years ago, and how the advancement of technology grows faster the more advanced we grow

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>>49270447
>Oh, mon ami. Lemme bust the door wide open for you. The map can be EVERYTHING.
NEVER start with geography. Ever. Make the interesting parts that people care about first—bend the map to suit the world, later. Forcing your world to conform to a randomly generated geography is pretty much the worst idea I have ever heard.

Anyway: what do people think of Fountain?

>>49273594
>Anyway: what do people think of Fountain?
let me know where I can find it and I'll let you know

>>49273627
Oh, sure. The blog's here: https://mavichist.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/official-release-with-documentation/ with a link to the github page, and a few other images below.

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>>49264467

>>49274235
Wait, we had a discord? I wonder how it compares to the reddit one.

>>49273594
what the hell is this? it looks pretty cool.

>>49275104
Fountain. As linked here:>>49273635. Developed by some impressively autistic Redditor. Seems better than the other stuff I've seen, but it's very barebones.

I still prefer just using a pencil and paper.

>>49275132
reddit's worldbuilding community has extreme autism in general, really. it's the mix a single-minded regard for "realism" and absolutely no artistic direction whatsoever

>>49275324
This is what I have usually found. They've gotten much better recently, thank God, but they're still fixated on moving from cause to effect. They also think originality is valuable in itself.

It is very useful for figuring out what not to do, but I also use it as a place to develop my setting without players potentially seeing it on here. And, unlike us, Redditors get irrelevant but nice shit done (like Fountain).

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Brief reminder that Inkarnate isn't that bad.

>>49275387
Hexographer is better than Inkarnate, and it's a fucking hexmap builder.

>>49275369
I mean if I want competence I'll look towards the OSR grognard enclave, honestly

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>>49275387
And a second brief reminder to do everything in pencil first.

>>49275410
it looks better in pencil even though you didn't even try

>>49275402
I didn't know there was one. What's their main failing, if Reddit's is realism and ours is realpolitik?

>>49275424
it's impossible to have a discussion with them since everything is moderated by a combination of google+ and long-winded blog posts

>>49275410
>>49275421
This—it'd look much better if you scanned the drawing and used that. Much quicker and easier, too. Or even if you just took a closer picture.

That's my main problem with these tools—they're all just worse than drawing it yourself.
>>49275451
Oh, the Tumblr/forum problem. I was assuming you meant the OSR general here, actually.

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>wbg

Hohoho it's been a while!

Anyone else making some near future sci-fi settings? I love discussing questions and themes, especially if it's sci-fi set exclusively in a human environment or just our solar system.

Currently writing Chapter two of my supposed life's work piece set in the 3500s, where the factions of a broken and directionless Solar System seek answers to what lies beyond an induced wormhole out beyond Pluto, a remement of the time when Earth was still the great power in the System, before the secession of the other planets.

I'm pretty happy with my setting, but if anyone wants to just chat in general about theirs then let's go.

>>49269289
>>49264467


Open to suggestions and discussion about culture too.

How do you guys make your banners and sigils? I was looking at the inkwell coat of arms generator, but not sure if I want to shell out 20 bucks for it.

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I'm writing a sci-fi world for fun and I drew some inspiration from 40k. But does a faction of humanity who despises all alien life and is genetically modified to be slightly buffer than average humans sound too much like the imperium of man/space marines?

>>49275489
Forget modern rectangles, that's a fairly recent idea.
I like to go back to squares or different proportioned rectangles. If I want something novel try a diamond or circular design.

If you mean purely designs:
>Paint
>If not good enough, Photoshop
>If not poor enough, Gimpshop

You don't need a website to design your banners for you anon, get creative

>>49275482
Well, what are your themes? What's each thing do, and how does it relate to them (assuming you're not just hammering themes into everything)?
>>49275522
You have no idea how much of 40k sounds too much like something. As long as you use your spacenazis in an interesting way, it doesn't matter that they're spacenazis.
>>49275489
I have never found anything. The best there is is getting some drawfag to shit out your banners, and that's a once in a blue moon thing. I just gave up and don't use them myself. Because >>49275539 is right (but I am lazy).

>>49275522
I think it depends on the amount of g-moding we're talking about.
Xenophobic human factions aren't exclusively 40k, and as long as you avoid the gothic looks and Roman-esc designs you should be fine.

It would be nice if there were other factions of humans too though, like g-mod purists of some more xenophilic ones.

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>>49273189
Ok so maybe not 1000 years, what about 100?. Enough to devolve from advancement into mess while still retaining bits of history.

Basically I'd like to suggest that things went:
>Planet gets colonised by various groups but its environment prevents quick establishment
>The colonies start bickering, unable to leave and rapidly realising they made a mistake
>Big planetary colony war puts the final nail in any sense of unity there and wipes out a good percentage of the population
>Remaining surviving groups leave each other alone and establish themselves best they can over a few generations, eventually becoming civilisations and factions of their own as they readopt and reintegrate the colony technology for long-term and alternate use.

>>49269427
>tfw expected to become rich and famous with my magnum opus
Found the problem.

If you want to be rich and famous, you either make something of legit worth or you pander like fuck.

>>49275566
There are other factions, the other one beings one which sees the value of all life, not just that of humans and seeks to protect them. I'm trying to portray neither side as the "good" side though.

>>49275482
What does lie beyond the wormhole?

>>49273130
>>49275693
A few hundred years is enough for differing cultures, but you don't have to limit yourself. There's plenty of ways to increase the time, like the cliched "we lost contact with Earth" or battletech style repeated nuclear wars, and much more if you want. You might want to go down the route of "weird, quasi-bronze age people with mecha and railguns", or you might not, but you can do either.

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>>49275731
The lore of the world revolves largely around AI, and it was Earthen development of superpowered AI that caused the secession war. (Among other factors)

Once the secession war was won, the AIs were all banished from the solar system, to an Earthlike planet (But much larger) they had discovered elsewhere in the galaxy. The wormhole was the pinnacle of Earthen science at the time, and achieved through their super AIs, hence the AIs exile was somewhat ironic.

Since then science has stagnated thanks to both economics and religion. However, the AIs which were banished are assumed to have continued their research and now possess godlike powers of matter and time dilation, FTL, gravity tech, and supreme sub-atomics.

This isn't really /tg/ at this point, as while this entire idea began as a game for me it's progressed to essentially being a narrative for a story I'm trying to write.

Also in reply to your first comment (Both were me), how are you portraying spacenazis as good? 40k barely gets away with it and only through HFY. What's your method?

>>49275891
>This isn't really /tg/ at this point
A lot of this thread isn't really /tg/ at this point.

>>49275891
So do the AI want to kick humanity's ass or what?

The discovery of alien life came with the colonization of a far off star system, note worthy for it's huge gas giant. The main motivation for the "space nazis" is to preserve the human identity in a place where intelligent life exists, and can pose a threat to the way of life of the humans living there. Anything that is a danger to their humanity must be dealt with because what is a person without that which makes them human?
plus they're good when compared against the humans who believe all life is valuable and fight for it at the cost of pretty much betraying the entire human race and themselves by going much further with body modification and going as far as to fight alongside the aliens.
I guess my reasoning is a slightly more sane version of HFY.

>>49276101
Nah, my AIs are philosophical mainly. Although of course variation exists.

I like the sound of your Spacenazis, and their lack of a zealous nature will further help distance them from the 40k Empire.

>>49276101
You mostly sound like a nationalist. Not a bad thing unless we're getting political, but it definitely comes out to anyone who might be looking at your work (if you're worried about that).

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How do we feel about the Stellaris method of faction design?

>>49269427

Everyone has that fantasy of making it big but don't let it motivate or guide you. Unless you're aiming to pander and even then I'd say there is no guarantee of -what- to pander to unless you do young adult with a female lead. Even then there's a shit-load of books in that domain but it's one with the greatest chance for 30 minutes of fame.

>>49275539

Google images for suitable heraldric animals or whatever, too.

https://www.google.com/search?q=boar+heraldry&num=100&espv=2&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS704US704&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLj-PGhIXPAhWDFx4KHXr-DYAQ_AUICCgB&biw=1920&bih=960 boom shitloads of boars.

bird heraldry, bear heraldry, dolphin heraldry, eagle heraldry, dropbear heraldry, ectera.

>>49276355
From a political and cultural standpoint it's far too simplified to be of use. From a worldbuilding standpoint it's far too structured to provide anything ""artistic"".

>>49276479

Best I could see it used for is a kind of codebook quick approximation for your respective states.

"X is this"
"Y is that"

Not referred to in literature but rather used as a codebook reference

>>49276507
I guess, but I'm not sure that's a major concern. If you need to quickly reference those things, you probably don't actually need to reference them at all.

>>49275755
I like the idea of 'quasi bronze age' but maybe a bit further ahead time wise.

I hadn't really considered 'earth' at all in the setting further than a distant memory or origin story. Possible origin reasonings

>An exodus from an unlivable earth and they never had any intention on going back
>The colony was just one of a myriad of splinter colonies sent to different regions of space and wound up on a planet that prevented any subspace communication with other groups by chance (wind, weather and environment making signals impossible at the time)
>An initial civil war between colonists that lived out of the ships and those that went native

Others? I don't think a nuclear war would be something that could be returnable from but some other kind of weapon ruining things?

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>How (if at all) do you handle flags, banners, insignias, or any other form of representative icons in your world?
If need arises, I design them.
>How often are your world's cultures similar to real-world cultures in similar areas (i.e. desert civ #928 = persia)
Sometimes I guess. West is rather similar to 1930s America/Europe. Desw empire might be bit similar to India with the castes and reincarnation and whatnot.
>What territorial disputes are present in your world?
In the East Desw have seized large regions over past millenia, which has caused lot of upset, but no one has really military strength to take them on. The west went through many wars recently, so some border disputes remain, although it is relatively peaceful time.

>>49273130
I really like the world map.

>>49267485
Probably no one here.
And personally, I don't care. I do it for fun, and perhaps I'll use it for my traditional games, video game or comic. With just a setting you are not getting anywhere.

>>49276355
Works for videogame, but might not be necessary for a traditional game / setting.

>>49269427
>tfw expected to become rich and famous with my magnum opus
You should never expect that with anything. World is a fickle thing.

>>49275522
Depends lot how you depict them. I am not very familiar with the setting, but there are those heavy religious influences, stagnation and whatnot.

>>49268710
Mind me asking what tools you used to make the map or was it totally from scratch?

>>49276374
Now i wonder if i can incorporate that into the inkwell stuff.

How do you guys keep your cultures from being just Scotts elves or Romans in space?

>>49274235
>>49274327
https://discord.gg/uUHyP

Question time!

Remember that you can skip questions you've answered before or which aren't relevant to your setting.

What's something considered stereotypically masculine? Stereotypically feminine?

How are boy children and girl children raised differently?

How tall is considered "tall" for a human?

What's a natural feature or historical landmark many people would like to see in their lifetime?

What is one of the most popular books/plays/movies/holograms/whatever in your setting? What's it about? What makes it popular?

Is there a new money/old money divide? How do they view each other?

What's a technology in your world that could theoretically exist in ours but doesn't? What's a technology in your world that couldn't possibly exist in ours?

What's a common old wives' tale or folk cure?

What's a staple of a peasant's diet? What's a delicacy of the rich?

How do farmers irrigate their crops?

Are there constellations? Moons? Other unique celestial features?

What proportion of the population is religious?

How much does the average dirt farmer know about magic?

What are some fuel or power sources other than muscle/animal power?

What's a plant you see in almost every town or on every street corner? Why?

Are there festivals or carnivals? What are they like?

>>49279821
This seems dead as fuck.
>>49279827
We don't need more answerspams.

>>49279846
Well what do we need?

>>49279846
>This seems dead as fuck.

Well now how could we possibly change that?

>>49279879
Discussion about worlds and worldbuilding.
>>49279883
Death spirals can only be beaten by big events. One person, even two or three people, can't beat the spiral.

>>49275482
>Anyone else making some near future sci-fi settings?
I am, but mine is set in only the next few decades, and closer to sci-fantasy than pure sci-fi.

>>49279911
>Discussion about worlds and worldbuilding.
And a questionnaire does not count because...

>>49280000
There is no discussion involved. People just shit out their answers and leave.

>>49280000
Because 2-6 people spewing answers at you isn't discussion?

>>49280010
>>49280022
That hasn't been my experience at all, though. I like reading through other people's answers, and I've found a lot of interesting things worth discussing further in the past.

I've tried to design the questions to be things the creator probably hasn't thought about yet. The point is to force them to think about the little nooks and crannies of their universe rather than just looking at everything in faint detail from on high, which is a big part of what makes an engrossing fictional universe.

It's fun and often provides a jumping-off point for further conversation. I'm not talking in hypotheticals here, I'm saying what's happened in past threads.

>>49280000
Nice quads. And i like questionaires - its a chance to attract interest and initiate discussion about your world, or give ideas for development if you dont have answers

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>>49277486

Follow this guide.
-Skip the water portion besides doing the blue layer and clouds, but skip the terrain of the ocean until you are 110% done with the map's lands. As in, you are almost done with the map in total. I've edited the physicality of the map more times than I can count.
-Skip river guide, follow this one instead that I will link next

>>49280144
> I'm saying what's happened in past threads.
Not these threads. We have an archive. You can check. I'll eat my own hat if even 5% of answer sprawls in the last several threads even received a reply, let alone one that lead to anything.

>>49279883
>>49279846
Worldbuilding General has been slow/dead for a couple of weeks. I figure a lot of the posters are students and fall semester just started.

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>>49280188

Follow this river tutorial or my abridged version on this album: http://imgur.com/a/7mwR8

Color overlays are just layer shenanigans, I will explain them if you need me to.

>>49280144
>That hasn't been my experience at all, though.
You have a unique experience.

I understand the point of the questions, they just aren't good for a discussion.
>I'm saying what's happened in past threads.
That hasn't been my experience at all, though.
>>49280222
That'd explain it. Interestingly, we seem to have had less answerspam than usual, too.

>>49273594

That's just how you roll, mate.
Doesn't work for me, I feel more confident with drawing map first.

>>49280289
I'm not against maps first if that's what helps you get things down, especially if you change it as you need to. I'm against making a map (or worse, generating it) and then rigidly working out cause --> effect from the geology, as if it will make the world feel more realistic, and not simply haphazard, and soulless. In other words, if your civilisations are determined by geography, you are doing something very wrong.

If you are using the above method, then either your world is worse than it could be, or you use more effort than you need to.

Besides which, your argument applies to the first guy.

>>49280270
>You have a unique experience.
He does. That said, I think these "answerspams" as you called it are still the most beneficial aspect of these threads, because without them, you just have a dead thread altogether. At least this way people can actually think about their worlds and have to articulate some aspects of their worldbuilding, which is beneficial at least for them. They don't detract anything from the thread, really.

Worldbuilding threads have been generally a cursed item on this board. They never worked very well. When there weren't these questions, people would just post walls of text about their worlds with just as little recognition or replies as the answersheets, except without them at least being challenged during their production.

Discussions of creativity is inherently a problem on /tg/. I don't know if this is a problem of people not actually creating material warranting discussion, a problem of people not being willing to discuss other people's work, or merely a problem of format, but it never worked well: sustained discussion almost never emerges, questionaries or no questionaries. If it does, it's usually between two or three people on a very specific subject of little interest to the rest of the thread and often either off-topic, or dies with as much as one of them leaving the thread.

So complaining about people who at least challenge people to think about their own creation from an angle they may have not considered in threads where nobody seems to be willing to think about other people's creations to begin with seems disingenuous and pointless.

>>49280270
>we seem to have had less answerspam than usual, too.
I really like asking questions but I've been busy with work and other stuff the last couple weeks. That's at least part of it. I also took a break because they were getting pretty /pol/.

I also almost always find a few interesting things in answerspams, so--and I've tried and failed to come up with a way to say this that doesn't sound douchey and self-aggrandizing--I guess I'm sort of a catalyst on turning it into discussion.

>>49280448
>They don't detract anything from the thread, really.
It did for me. Cluttering up the thread meant that other discussion got drowned out. That might just have been my experience.
>people would just post walls of text about their worlds
Those were definitely as bad, yes.

I think there is a problem with the questions which is similar to the problem of people not usually discussing. People focus on parts of their world which are boring. To get to the interesting parts of your world, you often need to understand dates and people and things no one but you cares about—the dreaded infodump. The interesting thing about Dune's world is not the imperial history of political maneuvers, for example, it is the examination of religion and culture and hero-worship. You can't normally get that from a single post. I am saying this as someone who is obsessed with fantasy realpolitik.

Questions often (not always) encourage this, by focusing on aspects that aren't actually a big deal to your world, just its dressing.
>>49280520
Maybe, but I've posted in these threads for a lot longer than the past couple of weeks. If we had more people like you it would be worthwhile, but we don't.

>>49280448
>>49280520

See the problem is that while asking
How does your setting X
Can be challenging to people and get them thinking about their own creation. It also only really promotes answers along the lines of.
My setting's X is like this.

That doesn't promote anything. Because it's given no reason to care about their setting's X. They've given their answer, it's their answers, alright good.

Discussion needs conflict, differing opinions. You have to ask questions that get people comparing their settings. How they handle aspects of worldbuilding. Who does X better (for their X needs) and why? Being able to actually argue for your X is going to result in you fleshing it out more, making it actually matter in some way. And people can see the differing views and make their own opinions, take away things they like, and talk about things they don't.

There's a reason edition wars fucking always get replies. Doesn't even matter what game we're fighting over. It's because people have differing opinions. And they're all getting pissed about it.

We don't get pissed. Nobody cares about how others approach things. Nobody's been given a reason to care. So we sit. We stew. We stagnate.

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Brain controlled mechs or lever controlled mechs. Both? Semi AI controlled like Dragons Heaven?

How might an ejection system work? I'm toying with the idea that emergency ejection is the single worst thing to have to happen since there's a small chance (with the wired ones) that you'll be braindead or at least in a coma for a week.

Should they shoot up into the air on rockets or just be forced out of a hatch unceremoniously like a tank?

>>49280822
What's the general tech level we talking about here and how big are the mechs? What's the actual chance (tied to size of mech and pilot) that any damage that would render a mech combat incapable wouldn't also just kill the pilot (the more space is a concerned on the construction the more this will probably matter)?

>>49280677
>If we had more people like you it would be worthwhile,
Aww.
>but we don't
Be part of the solution, anon.

>>49280710
>See the problem is that while asking
>How does your setting X
>Can be challenging to people and get them thinking about their own creation. It also only really promotes answers along the lines of.
>My setting's X is like this.
>That doesn't promote anything. Because it's given no reason to care about their setting's X.
I suppose so, but it's hard to have a discussion of a setting's details without knowing details about the setting. If you just broadly say "tell me about your setting", all you're going to get is an overview. If you just say "tell me some specific details about your setting", most people won't know where to start.

(This is where I'm getting away from "what I've concretely observed" and into "beautiful dream" territory:) Giving a standardized set of questions means that multiple people will be thinking about X in their setting; that's sort of necessary for discussion. If one person's talking about sewage systems and another person's talking about trade routes, the conversation is fractured. If both people are talking about the same thing, it makes it easier for people to contribute to one another. "Oh, I hadn't thought of that!" "That wouldn't work, actually, here's why." "Maybe my setting could use this, instead?"

I know I'm exaggerating now, though.

From a more pragmatic perspective: the thread's been teetering on the edge pretty much since it was made. Aren't questions better than nothing? Isn't skin-deep discussion better than no discussion whatsoever?

>>49280822
Like >>49280919 said, it depends on the tech level of the setting. Brain-control would certainly be possible even, say, 50 years in the future (to an extent, it's possible now) but it would be way more expensive and less reliable than standard lever-and-button controls for a good long time. And if you're going for an intentionally zeerust feel then definitely levers.

>>49279767
Instead of borrowing from one culture, I like to use pieces of two or three of wildly different cultures and time periods. And try looking at less-known or less-appreciated cultures, too. Instead of Romans, why not Incas or Achaemenids?

>>49280931
I think the problem is that we're just talking about things. Things are going to change and be fairly dependent on he setting itself. It's hard to discuss things because the answer will always be different and we'll never know as much as we'd need to for a proper answer.

We need to question theme. Ask the whys, not the whats. Whys translate throughout settings even if the whats we're whying are drastically different. Pick up on the themes and ideas behind the frilly little details.

Like when's the last time someone asked about conflict? Broad terms I know, but that's part of the point. A setting's conflict (like this thread's, that we're current having quite the discussion on, no?) is pretty fucking important. Without it you have scenery porn at best, boring mundanity at worst.

You can ask tons of questions about a conflict in a setting, from the obvious what is it, to the why it matters, how it is going to drive the narrative, does it fucking involve snakes and why doesn't it involve snakes?

>>49280822
Oh you have robot's that's fucking great. Why do you have robots? You doing another played out galactic hyper war with your special brand of fighting things that are 10% cooler than just people shooting each other?

Or are your mechs there for a more interesting reason?
What's the chance a snake could accidentally find itself in the cockpit of one of these things?

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>>49280677
>Cluttering up the thread meant that other discussion got drowned out
It's more likely that your partner in discussion left just as there was a wave of answersheets coming and you connected the two falsely, because it's almost impossible to "drown out" a debate around here, there is no reason why more posts should suddenly cut a discussion short. Debates here are usually one-on-one or something like that, an a single poster signing out means the debate ends.
Which by the way leads me to another interesting problem of these threads: awkward life-span. Compared to say, storythreads which last up to a week an half, these threads die usually in about a day or two. Which means that when a discussion is cut because one of the posters leaves for half a day, it's very unlikely to be picked up again: by the time he checks in again, the thread is usually close to dying and it's unlikely the two will "meet" again and pick up where they left. Which is a shame, but unless there are some very mindful people keeping these regular, it probably can't be helped.

>>49280710
>How they handle aspects of worldbuilding.
Well, the problem is that they end up explaining how it works in their settings, which more often than not isn't what needs to be discussed.

In my personal experience, the most logical way to discuss worldbuilding is discuss it as a form of storytelling. As such, instead of "how does X work in mysettings?", the question should "what am I trying to TELL through my world-building?" Because that actually should lead you to something others might be more interested in, and more importantly, the follow-up debate is more or less about "How do we achieve succesfully telling X" and suddenly, the particularities of your world become relevant - they can be judged as functional tools rather than simple pieces of trivia.

The problem with that is that most people don't think of worldbuilding as a narrative medium to begin with.

>>49281036
>(like this thread's, that we're current having quite the discussion on, no?)
You just admitted that questions lead to discussion. I win!

>We need to question theme. Ask the whys, not the whats. Whys translate throughout settings even if the whats we're whying are drastically different. Pick up on the themes and ideas behind the frilly little details.
That's certainly a good point. My approach has been sort of top-down (finding little details that hint at the whole); what you're suggesting would be bottom-up.

If I do more questiondumps in the future (realistically, "when" I do questiondumps in the future, since I'm not exactly a social dynamo), I should focus on more probing questions that get more into the "why" of it all.

If I pare down my questionnaire from this thread based on that mindset, I think this is what's left:
>How are boy children and girl children raised differently?
>What is one of the most popular books/plays/movies/holograms/whatever in your setting? What's it about? What makes it popular?

Think that works better?

>>49280710
>You have to ask questions that get people comparing their settings. How they handle aspects of worldbuilding. Who does X better (for their X needs) and why?
This is the only thing that seems to generate discussion, yes. I think we've had more of that, but perhaps we just had less answerspam so it appeared we had more. Looking at the thread, pretty much everything that got replies was asking a question about worldbuilding.
>>49280931
>Be part of the solution, anon.
No. I'm part of the problem, like most people, because I find that stuff intensely boring.
>it's hard to have a discussion of a setting's details without knowing details about the setting.
Which is why >>49280710 is correct. No one discusses setting details unless someone asks for them to be discussed, and any other discussion is not about setting details. I would much rather discuss methods (and problems people have with their details) than wade through some random guy's details which ultimately are not what make his setting great.

Look at >>49280822. He is getting replies. Why? Because he asked a question about his details. This engages people and gets them to care—and think—about the ramifications of details. But look at >>49267171. He got no replies, because he was just telling us superficial details about his world.

I'm not sure that questions are better than nothing. It hid actual discussion for me.
>>49281036
This guy gets it.
>>49280822
You might want to contrast brain controlled mechs with lever operated mechs. There's many ways you could take it—old vs. new, or identity, or the drawbacks of jacking in vs. punching all the missile buttons.

You could use an honour system to prevent ejection, too. A kind of "fate worse than death", if you wanted to wire it into your cultures. I think braindeath works best for rocket ejection, however.

>>49281121
Fine you win. High five. Nobody's said a single thing about anything you've asked. At least you're looking to do better. There's your real victory.

>How are boy children and girl children raised differently?
>What is one of the most popular books/plays/movies/holograms/whatever in your setting? What's it about? What makes it popular?

See the issues I have here are 2 fold. 1) The answer to the first does your whole peak behind the curtain bit. Sure. Ok. But when has that sort of thing actually applied to the people in a story who matter? Be them book people or game people.

And 2) Literally the only time anyone will think of the later (and to an extent the former) will be to answer your question. It's just an obfuscated question about cultural values. That does nothing but add more kindling to the useless detail pile.

You're like one of those anime artists that just fucking slaps more belts and bobbins onto characters.

>>49281136
Damn it, stop agreeing so hard with me, I'm supposed to be stoking coals here.

>>49281087
You misunderstood me. I myself would ignore or simply not see posts jammed between answerspams, and so would not start or jump into discussions I otherwise would have. This is definitely because of answerspam, but it is also definitely my unique experience.
>instead of "how does X work in mysettings?", the question should "what am I trying to TELL through my world-building?"
I largely agree. What are you trying to explore (not tell: tell is too preachy), how are you trying to do that, how can you make these things interact in order to explore more things, &c. We could all sit around discussing themes and methods, but no one seems to want to start.

Worldbuilding isn't narrative, but it is whatever you think it is.
>>49281121
Sadly, only the discussion of the discussion of worlds. Although in truth I find that also interesting.

>Think that works better?
Bluntly, I think hinting at things isn't good enough. Being—blunt might be more effective.

Like, if you ask "how have other people explored childhood in their worlds" you're more likely to get thematic discussion than asking "how are your children raised", because there's more to exploring childhood than how children in your worlds are raised. And also because people will (for above reasons) focus on the unimportant, superficial details of such a thing.
>>49281267
>Fine you win. High five. Nobody's said a single thing about anything you've asked. At least you're looking to do better. There's your real victory.
I think he was joking, anon.
>Damn it, stop agreeing so hard with me
Okay.

>>49281267
Oh and to elaborate the hate.

The reason I'm calling all this shit meaningless detail tacked onto questions that could actually matter?

Because if you ever were to talk about these things to your readers or players one of 2 things is going to happen.

The subtly is going to go over most of their heads. Which yay you made 1% of the die hards happy, nobody else fucking cares.

Or you're just going to fucking explain the reasoning behind it defeating the entire fucking point of the exercise.

>>49281298
>I think he was joking, anon.
I'll fucking joke with you.

>>49281309
I'm adding to the metaphor. Because in a minute I'm going to have to go to work and start yelling at medical equipment instead of >>49281121


You need broad strokes before anyone cares about the detail. Or all you're going to get is people talking about how wonderfully you rendered every fucking pore. Look at how the paint rests on the canvas. So artistic it's fucking great. You clearly have no idea what a human head looks like, but fuck that skin is amazing. It feels like I can reach out and touch it, but I don't want to because fucking ewww.

>>49280188
>>49280224
Thanks alot man really appreciated, i think i'll be able to get the hang after a thorough readthrough and some practice, seriously grateful

>>49280188
If only ArcMap maps looked that good

>>49281267
>>49281309
>>49281375
When he is asking these questions I do not think he is necessarily aiming for people to "flesh out" their world, as much as aiming to get them to slyly reveal deeper parts of their world. For example, gender and interest (aesthetics?) as well as culture in general.

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>>49280822
>Brain controlled mechs or lever controlled mechs.
Neither. I prefer body-controlled mechs like in the Escaflowne series, where the pilot sits strapped into a sort of framework inside the cockpit so that his arm and leg movements directly control the arm and leg movements of the mech.

Consequently, ejection isn't really possible and even getting out in a hurry would be difficult.

Incidentally, I've been avoiding talking about my own setting since I've already talked about it quite a bit and I figured this thread I'd hang back and talk about other people's settings. But that doesn't seem to be happening very much.

>>49281136
>I would much rather discuss methods
Sure, let's do that.

How do you design trading systems?

Some of my key inspirations are the Silk Road (obviously), the Indian Ocean trade network, and the United States circa the Civil War. One of the big reasons I learned that the South lost the war is because so much of their output was cash crops like cotton and tobacco which weren't much use for feeding troops.

So I always start with food. Who's making more of it? Who's buying it? Why aren't the people buying it making their own, or maybe they are?

Then from there is of course the second step: what do they get in return? What's more valuable than food?

It helps me think about the countries' relationships: specifically, is it expendable or critical to their continuing function?

>>49281267
>But when has that sort of thing actually applied to the people in a story who matter?
People always tend to underestimate how much gender matters in society when they're on the winning side.

>>49281420
—i.e. it's not "meaningless shit tacked on to questions that actually matter" as much as "questions that actually matter dressed up as meaningless shit", which (IMO) simply results in confusion. Hit enter too early.

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>>49280919
Mechs are about 12 to 15ft, with the majority of designs being curved armour sections that deflect things when angled properly (shot traps aside) Spalling from penetrated armour require pilots to wear protective gear themselves. I'm trying to get a sort of 'we use these things because its how things are here' feel to things along with the idea that a lot of designs are ingrained in the cultures that produce them despite their flaws.

>>49281036
Hardsuits were a major part of the colonists unifying heritage as they were mandatory for exploring the planet and its chaotic environments. The chunkier and tougher the better hence why larger, slow vehicles are favoured. They eventually evolved from exploration gear to full blown military vehicles as conflict occurred and as such became staple cultural anchors over time much like the AK47 or Colt handgun. Now every country has its own designs and aesthetics but its something that isn't shrugged off.

There was no galactic hyper war or dramatic space opera, just some colonists stuck on a bad planet that took what they had and did the best they could. Generations later and those things stuck culturally

I suppose a snake could get into one of them and the pilot would be in for a real bad time on its discovery. Alternatively they might have found themselves a mascot.

>>49281136
>>49281428
I'm considering now that all controls might be viable given the cultural differences between cities. The tech for brain controlled things was always available from the colony tech but some might nations consider it taboo to use and dropped it entirely whereas others consider it the greatest honour and build whole designs around it.

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>>>/x/18110147

^ general thread on occultism and magick if any of you guys need it

bestiary.ca for any medieval beast inspiration

lordsandladies.org is good as a general overview of feudal society, although the 2 Feudal Society volumes by Marc Bloch are recommended (he only dealt with 10th-13th century western/central europe in that work, tho, and his other works are recommended, too)

gonna dump these 2 pdfs again

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>>49281537

>>49281433
>How do you design trading systems?
I meant more methods for developing themes, but this itself is also good.

With trade, I always use it as a device. So, at its most simple, I want there to be a big conflict between two counterpoint states: very good, one controls land trade, the other sea trade (and both are fighting for the other). Or I want there to be more focused conflict—there is now a key port in this place. And essentially the whole "big deal" in my setting is caused by the creation of its Silk Road.

Or, to use your example, I give some people rice to (help) justify a large but Bad War prone empire.

But usually it takes a back seat. For example, the Shotgun Kings are urged on to war—and given shotguns—because Big State 1 wants to take over Big State 2's trade. Which gives you questions of justice and means/ends and insignificance all by itself.

However, there is a lot more in there which ultimately isn't serving any purpose. I am just interested in that kind of thing, even though I know others aren't.
>>49281507
>The tech for brain controlled things was always available from the colony tech but some might nations consider it taboo to use and dropped it entirely whereas others consider it the greatest honour and build whole designs around it.
This is very interesting. Do you mind if I plunder it?

>>49281537
Thanks, anon.

>>49281428
Brain and body controlled. Pacific Rim and Gundam G up in this muthafucka.

And another thing.

>>49281267
>And 2) Literally the only time anyone will think of the later [sic] (and to an extent the former) will be to answer your question.
Then that's sort of an oversight, because pop culture can be a huge deal.

The Ku Klux Klan reformed in 1915 and flourished, in large part because of The Birth of a Nation. Supreme Court justices make references to 24 on the record. A lot of what we consider to be important works of literature (e.g. the plays of Shakespeare) started out as mass entertainment.

It shapes our opinions on myriad topics and the way we speak and even think. The fact that people rarely think about it in their settings bugs me. Obviously if all you've got is a vast land of mud farmers, then it's not going to come up, but if you've got a city, there's gonna be entertainment.

>>49281298
>and so would not start or jump into discussions I otherwise would have.
That is a thoroughly bizzare complaint to have. Dropping this subject though:
>Worldbuilding isn't narrative, but it is whatever you think it is.
Actually, no, and this kinda contributes to the problem. Worldbuilding IS narrative, in fact it's nothing else but that, and realizing that would actually solve a lot of problems, both things people struggle with in their own worlbuilding projects, and the problems that these threads are still having.

Worldbuilding is an effort to communicate some message across. It's done in a somewhat different way than your usual linear narrative, but the core point is the same. And yes, you are TELLING. There is nothing preachy about that, really. You might speculate a bit, but in the end you are telling people what you had figured out during that speculation. Frankly, the whole explorative dimension to worldbuilding is VASTLY overrated and is really only a big factor hard sci-fi, but that is kinda besides the point here.

>We could all sit around discussing themes and methods, but no one seems to want to start.
Few people even realize that those things exist in their own work. Most people work fairly intuitively, often actually find the notion of understanding their own world-building as a means of expression (rather than say, "exploration") actually insulting. Or at least confusing.
The problem is, while there is nothing wrong with intuitive process of creation, intuitive understanding does not build basis for actual solid debate: and that is where these threads usually hit a dead end.
That, and the simple fact that it's just incredibly difficult to communicate ANYTHING across in world-building in general, especially on a limited space like this one in an interesting fashion. AND people don't care.
They just have heads full of half-done ideas and images and need to vent them. Overthinking them, or listening to others does not interest them.

>>49280822
>>49281507
Did you draw these anon?

>>49282438
I'd say it's narrative as in theme-- but not necessarily narrative as in plot. The D&D style of picaresque pulp fantasy lends itself to setting that does the former and doesn't do the latter, it's just that a lot of authors (and by extension their followers sometimes) tend to think that everything's irrelevant if it's not plot. Which isn't really an attitude conducive to roleplaying.

>>49283085
>I'd say it's narrative as in theme-- but not necessarily narrative as in plot.
Narrative does not necessarily imply plot. A story necessitates a plot, but a narrative is a broader term. It means the summary of the (meaningful) message to convey and the tools used to convey it.

I think most worlbuilders and modern fantasy authors in general have the opposite problem than you imply: there is generally a massive lack of good plotlines in most professional and amateur fantasy fiction, but that is somewhat secondary to this debate:

My point is, even if you don't realize it, your world-building is a way to communicate some sort of message or idea across to the (assumed) recipient. A bunch of ideas - sometimes more, sometimes less cohesive - actually, but you get the point.

I think a lack of awareness of this, and the lack of articulation of what you are trying to communicate really shoots both worldbuilding itself, and the threads about it in the leg.

>>49283064
Yes
>>49281601
Go for it, its just an idea afterall

Good to see that you are still active and working on your stuff, Hard Suit guy.

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So I'm trying to pin down potential holdings by placing dots on the map. My struggle is balancing that the dot represents not just a settlement but an entire holding, ranging anywhere from a lord and a few villages to a large area with 1 - 3 dozen villages/bannermen serving under them.

And they look close together on the map, but that's just how they would develop, geographically? Close to rivers and coastlines? I mean the whole place is about the size of france, spain, and portugal all smashed together, so there is plenty of space.

But what would fill all those blank spots? Untamed wilderness and such?

>>49285669
>But what would fill all those blank spots?
Farmland, for one. If you've ever sat in the window seat of a plane, you probably know that farms take up a LOT of space.

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I wish there was more art like this, showing the life stages for a fantasy creature. Anyone have others?

>How (if at all) do you handle flags, banners, insignias, or any other form of representative icons in your world?
I'm terrible at design, but one day I will design them, I promise
>How often are your world's cultures similar to real-world cultures in similar areas (i.e. desert civ #928 = persia)
I've got fantasy Mongolia and fantasy Greece/Rome. Also Fantasy England and fantasy Ireland, except Ireland is to the South and enslaved by Greece/Rome. Also, Western Europe and Fantasy Kievan Rus, except they are flipped from normal position thus it's Western Europe that borders Mongolia. And there's fantasy Byzantium that right in the middle of Mongolia.
>What territorial disputes are present in your world?
I didn't really make up any yet, most focusing on separatism and succession issue.

>>49282438
>That is a thoroughly bizzare
No.
>Worldbuilding IS narrative
No. It is a cohesive whole. It can only be understood with all of it in mind. It acts essentially in one moment in time, and never in more than one. There is no cause and effect in the world, so there is no narrative.

Obviously you can jump to different points in time for the world, but in each point, time does not pass. Like playing in the Horus Heresy or the 41st millennium—they are on a timeline, but the world is not a narrative.

>Worldbuilding is an effort to communicate some message across
It can be, but it should not be. Just as literature can be, but should not be, the effort to communicate some message. What is should be is the effort to explore some theme or other, ALSO keeping in mind the use to which you are putting your world (ex. for an RPG, story, vidya...). Telling simply is preachy—it's literally what preaching is. People have always considered exploration superior to preaching, ex. how everyone considers the Iliad superior to the Aeneid.

And it interests me that you talk about how people do not know, or want to talk about, themes &c. in worldbuilding, when we have in this thread multiple people all knowing and talking about them.
>>49283180
>Narrative does not necessarily imply plot
>Narrative, Noun: A spoken or written account of connected events; a story
>>49285669
>But what would fill all those blank spots?
Just less population dense farmland and forests.

>>49281997
Niggah don't fucking [sic] me. I'll cede you that in a real living world (fucking ours) that yes. That shit matters.

When's the last time you went into fucking detail with your players about a fucking stage show? Really delved fucking deep into it's cultural implications?

What's that? Fucking never?
Wooooooow.

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>>49283085
>I'd say it's narrative as in theme-- but not necessarily narrative as in plot.
Sure. Narrative does not necessitates plot. Narrative necessitates merely cohesive sum of meaningful informations that you are trying to communicate across.

>>49290583
>No.
I'd say something about how posts like this are completely redundant, but, well, I don't think it would lead to anything worthwhile anymore.

>It is a cohesive whole.
Yes, cohesiveness is along side relevance one of two conditions of a sum of information forming narrative.
>It can only be understood with all of it in mind.
First of all: no. Are you implying that I can't appreciate, say, the narrative of Tolkien's Middle Earth until I've read every single piece spoken about it? This is actually a completely unrelated and absurd statement.

>There is no cause and effect in the world, so there is no narrative.
First of all: again - no. The consistency that you are looking for in a world building is actually a matter of causal or pseudo-causal relationship between individual elements of the world. You enjoy consistency in world building because it gives you feeling that there is a tangible cause-and-effect model behind it. Inconsistencies of a world-building are generally viewed as flaws, because they break that illusion, throw the inner logic and cause-and-effect-relationships into question.
Also, again, narrative does not imply plot. Narrative of say, a lyrical poem does not imply plot and cause-and-effect relationship: merely associations and imagery without temporal juxtaposition.
A lot of good world-building can be likened to lyrical poetry, by the way.

>but in each point, time does not pass.
This is also entirely besides the point, actually pretty bizzare. Are you saying that the context of things before and after the particular point you are looking suddenly dissappears? Because it's still there. Most of the time you explore particular period through it's relationship to PREVIOUS events...
(cont)

>>49290583
>It can be, but it should not be.
Actually, it's ALL THAT IT EVER SHOULD BE. Thinking that you are actually making some kind of meaningful exploration is actually more often than not arrogant as FUCK because A) the odds are you have no understanding of the things you speculate about (there are very few people around here who, for an example, actually know enough about religion to actually make any kind of meaningful speculation or exploration of it in their world-building), B) in the end you still speculate first, and THEN TELL PEOPLE WHAT YOU FIGURED OUT, so this point is entirely moot. And finally C): Relevance is the name of the game, and figuring out how to make your world-building RELEVANT to the recipient is actually the most difficult and interesting problem of them all, one that the lack of response to most people describing their world clearly illustrates. The entire problem of people saying who-gives-a-fuck is a problem of HOW TO COMMUNICATE, not of what is being explored.

Exploration is worthless if you can't communicate it across: and the actual verbalization of the world-building, the actual process of putting it into comprehensible words and images is still TELLING PEOPLE. That is how you fucking get them fucking involved, moron.
Also, what the fuck is wrong with you if thing telling stories (and other narrative content) is preaching?! That is a SERIOUSLY fucked up perspective on world.

>People have always considered exploration superior to preaching,
HAHAHAHAHAHA I'm sorry but you are so god-damn clueless about what you are talking at this point it's not even fucking funny. Speculative fiction has ALWAYS been considered inferior to epic or classical fiction. A good psychological novel, or a mythological epic has always had more appeal and bigger critical acclaim than sci-fi or speculative fantasy and for good reasons. Dostojevskij is valued more than Clarke or Asimov.
It has always been like that too, for good reasons.

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Bump

> Go to bed with /wbg/ arguing
> Wake up with /wbg/ arguing
I preferred it when no one posted.

>>49264467
So what is everyone working on? Fantasy or sci-fi?

>>49264467

Homebrewed D&D 5th setting based on europe circa 1450, with ocean to the east and !asia to the west, recently in campaign introduced very primitive firearms (tons of damage for a non-magical weapon, but several rounds reload time)

>>How (if at all) do you handle flags, banners, insignias, or any other form of representative icons in your world?
I do my best to use rule of tincture for dummies on any coat of arms they encounter, and keep any insignia simple and stylised, mostly along the same lines as you'd expect to see on a genuine one

>>How often are your world's cultures similar to real-world cultures in similar areas (i.e. desert civ #928 = persia)
Bear in mind that for the most part, I improvised any cultures that would not have an immediate bearing on the campaign plot

Main setting during the campaign right now is in the Second Berinthian Empire, essentially HRE, the central and eastern provinces being somewhat german while most of the western half is an amalgamation of slavic an russian culture.
They are bordered by 2 merchant republics, Tharnissa at the north coast, Derimia at the south coast. They party has only had contact with Tharnissa, which are essentially venetians with coarse british accents.
To the north-east, there's the kingdom of Serethen, essentially militaristic, xenophobic french.
To the east, within the Middle Sea, lies the two nations of Eler, a peninsula, and Veler, an island chain, home to the Lerian culture, which are italian, specifically the split between northern and southern italians until unification.
South, beyond the kingdom of Bordul, home the generic dwarves, lies Thiria and Saldara, which are essentially different flavors of iberians.
Even further south lie Pernios and Thargos, essentially different flavors of greek.
In the uncharted north are the barbarian tribes,
Undefined, yet most likely to be similar to receive european-like cultures, are the kingdoms of Marivia, Nothur, Jevanna, and the Free Islands.

>>49293840
>So what is everyone working on? Fantasy or sci-fi?
Mixture of both: The world is essentially sci-fi based on some very soft premises, but the intention and ambition is to evoke atmosphere and general feeling of a fantastic, mythological narrative rather than speculative fiction.

In the small experimental campaigns we ran, my players never figured out what genre is the world supposed to be so far, and I actually like it that way. They don't know what to expect and what conventions are adhered to, which I think actually allows them to roleplay better.

>>49293879
That's pretty cool - how do you manage to make it subtle? Any examples?

>>49293840
I'm working on a near-future sci-fi setting where humanity discovers "magic", a new particle used as a new power source and advancement of technology. But overuse of this new source causes a chain reaction overload, tearing holes in reality, which demons from Hell start to pour through and invade. The setting takes place a few years after, with the majority of the earth devastated and what remains trying to fight off not only the infernal invaders, but also cults and rogue warlords taking advantage of the chaos, "angels" coming to fight the demons and using humanity as a meat shield, and a mutant scourge leftover from the initial reality tearing infecting and mutating those not killed at the ground zeros.

>>49285669
medieval? More forest. farmland. patchy forest. swamps where trees don't grow much. Otherwise, light forest.

Forest is the normal state of temperate land. it's not some clump you can find here and there. where there's no reason not to have forest, there's forest.

>>49293848

Almost forgot, further to the west, on the steppes beyond the borders the Second Berinthian Empire, the lands are ravaged by orcish nomads, essentially ersatz-mongols.

>What territorial disputes are present in your world?

Brewing tensions along the Berinthian/Serethen border, complicated the former triborder between those two and the elven kingdom of Thaliann now lies the independent High Conclave of Druids, as a result of the campaign.
There are murmurs of a revolt for independence in the western part of the empire, possibly led by Elector Duke Boleslaw of Corbric, due to the recent imperial electoral college electing the party's lawful evil employer, Duke Aldemar III von Therin, Elector Duke of Freiburg (acquired by coup via mass murder explosion), instead of Duke Karlomann von Darven, 5 year old grandson and sole heir of the previous Kaiser Konrad IV von Darven.
And of course, there's always the fear of an orcish horde coming from the west to conquer and/or pillage.

>>49281428
>Consequently, ejection isn't really possible and even getting out in a hurry would be difficult.
Theoretically, assuming the connections between cockpit and the mech as a whole are detachable (hardly outside the realm of possibility), you could simply eject the whole cockpit.

>>49293909
>how do you manage to make it subtle
Well, the way I do it relies on few basic notions:
1) the entire settings are inherently anachronistic. One thing my players picked up on because it's pretty obvious is that the story has some kind of post-apocalyptic dimension to it. The world is littered with remnants of clearly much more advanced and well-established civilization. Now the exact nature and technological level of this civilization are not clear, neither is the reason for their demise. But it's clear that humans have been around, on different technological levels, for quite a while.
This justifies some of the anachronisms I use: generally low-tech civilization with some occasional cases of more advanced elements, such as some oddly advanced metallurgy or presence of fairly advanced fire-arms). Since all of these technologies have been more-or-less salvaged, the inhabitants of the world (and the players too) aren't even sure HOW they work. The production of gunpoweder, for an example, is an activity restricted to special personnel - shammans and achemists of sort, who are believed to have magical powers, and who keep the process of it's creation a jealously protected secret. My players have no way of verifying of how is the damn thing really made and what makes it work: if it's the chemistry, or the magical formulae.

Furthermore - World and all of the storylines I make up for it involve very little supernatural/distinctly fantastic to begin with. Magic, myths, the fantastical workings of the story are largely spoken about, happening on the fringes of the world and the stories, while the campaigns themselves mostly focus on more mundane, personal or political plotlines.

They mostly hear about fantastic things. About curses, man-eating dragons and ghouls, machines that fly with no wings, half-human-half-plant-people living on islands far to the south, about people from the moon visiting earth, potions that make humans turn into beasts etc... (cont.)

>>49294157
In reality, roughly third of these strange tales they hear is utter bullshit (there are no dragons or vampires in the world), one third is distorted reports on real things (the half-human-half plant things are people genetically modified and infected by a symbiotic fungy), some of it is 100% true, but all of it is part of the background stories that under most conditions, cannot be verified or dismissed from the character's perspective.

For the most part, the players deal with "realistic" bullshit, the kind theoretically (to the best of my knowledge and research) could deal with if he was a 17th century Armenian or Turk or something (which is where I drew most of my inspiration for the actual culture, technology and society).
Every now and then though, I throw something that clearly could not exist in our real world. A living, talking mummy that has clearly no right to be still alive. An actual mermaid. Things clearly moving around on the moon. A giant.

Again, these things are there - the players have to accept things that realistically should not be possible exist in front of their eyes - again in return validating or at least making plausible all the other weird shit they have been just hearing about.

But again it's in no option of the players to verify the true nature of these phenomena. Is the moon really "just" a rock in the space and the obvious changes to it's structure are some kinds of machines moving around, or is it as many claim, an actual god hovering just few hundred kilometers above the surface of earth as many of the priest claim?

I have explanations for all of these things ready and on hand, but honestly: I don't think giving them to the players would ever really benefit the game. Unless the players go to an EXTREME length to try and find sources of answers within the world (which is one of the most difficult tasks they could ever attempt, because the true answers are really hidden deep), they will be kept at in darkness.

>>49264467
>How (if at all) do you handle flags, banners, insignias, or any other form of representative icons in your world?
I haven't done a lot of work on that. What little I have done, I prefer to use odd shaped flags and banners. I really like the shape of the A & B ICS (International Code of Signals) flags with their reverse double half pennant shape
>How often are your world's cultures similar to real-world cultures in similar areas (i.e. desert civ #928 = persia)
I try to not directly follow irl culture. That being said, I do take inspiration from them. This is mostly reflected in religions and cuisine though. I have a city on the edge of a desert. It is most definitely Arabic inspired, and they trade in spices. Areas near water trade in seafood and if its salt water, salt.
>What territorial disputes are present in your world?
Aside from the wondering tribes trying to raid small towns, and the bestial races sometimes doing the same, war is very uncommon due to previously mentioned blocking of war transportation. If someone wanted to wage war, they would have to do so by land, and they would have to go through effectively lawless regions where all the people that society can't deal with and the people who can't deal with society.

>>49293958
I also keep wanting to work on my fantasy setting, even though I know no one cares about that one.

>>49293958
Wishing no insult, but I think I've heard this premise just about one thousand times. Down to Doom and I think one episode of American Dad... What is it about this premise that seems so damn attractive to people?

>>49296866
Its a combination of it being a break from the standard zombie/alien/robot apocalypse that are much more prominent, and its heavy metal as fuck.

>>49296994
I don't think I've ever seen anyone here in worldbuilding presenting his world including a zombie apocalypse. I'm entirely sure I've heard this exact premise however at least six or seven times this year alone.
I just have trouble understanding what is so appealing about it.

>>49297098
Most likely it was me in various threads, working on it. I come here when I have aspects that need to be fleshed out or filled in.

>>49297121
I don't think so, because I've seen multiple different variations on it. It's possible that you have been part some of these, but this idea has been thrown around A LOT.
Pretty sure it was a premise of multiple short stories posted on Storythreads as well...

>>49297098
I have. My zombie apoc just involved fairy dickery and people turning into trees due to a horrific and slow acting plague.

>>49297156
Well, I know nothing about the short story threads, since I don't follow those, but seeing as my inspiration is DOOM and Hellgate: London, its obviously not an original idea. Guess people just like it.

>49264467
>How (if at all) do you handle flags, banners, insignias, or any other form of representative icons in your world?
I've been worldbuilding for a novel (or more likely a collection of short stories), so I hadn't really given much thought to what the flags looked like. Damn you to hell, OP, you've guaranteed I'll waste a week fucking around in photoshop making flags nobody will ever see.

>How often are your world's cultures similar to real-world cultures in similar areas (i.e. desert civ #928 = persia)
To an extent. I try to avoid directly copying a culture, but I definitely draw on the general motifs associated with real world regions. Like, you won't find not!China or not!Japen in my Asia-equivalent continent, but you will find a bunch of slanty-eyed people, silk, opium, and tea there.

>What territorial disputes are present in your world?
The Meridial League, being a loose confederacy of rival city-states is prone to internecine war. Mostly you see conflict between the wealthy trading hubs on the coast and the inland cities that control most of the agricultural lands. The coastal cities want enough territory to be self-sufficient, while the inland cities want access to trade with the outside world without having a middle man taking all the profits.

Also, the Kingdom of Nordenmark has spent the last few decades engaged in an off-and-on campaign of conquest against its southern neighbors, Cozovia and Sivoria.

>>49297314
Incidentally fuck it, I haven't talked about it in a while.

Year 5 - The Plague
The first outbreak of what is now known as forest blight erupts through Umbral Hold. The first symptom of the plague is a rash which appears as if bark is growing under the skin. Much to the royal herbalist's guild shock this is exactly what is happening. Panic quickly follows. One month later the hold is found pacified. Its inhabitants meandering about their daily tasks. They are still able to converse, and still consider Prince Arvid their rightful liege. Regardless the city is quarantined

Year 5.5 -
Attempts to deforest the encroaching woods around Umbral Hold as a means to combat the spread of forest blight begin. They are met with extreme violence from the population, who lash out as if possessed by inhuman forces

The hold's gates are barred and it is razed by the order of the Crimson Rose

Year 6- The Wood Fellers
To combat the forest blight before the Rose must bear its thorny embers the wood fellers are founded. While they have since come to operate both in the Duchy of Agrious and the True Kingdom of Agrious, they are not allowed in the Duchy's capital, or near its operating druidic circles as it is feared they act as spies for the Usurper Arvid. Claims denied by the order

Year 9 - Elves
After reports of an elvish body being displayed in Fircrest for the price of 1 copper oz. The royal road wardens are dispatched and much to the disbelief of Prince Arvid rightful heir to the realm's court confirm the body to be inhuman in origin.
However it does not by any stretch of the imagination match the folklore description of elves as long slender creatures. It appears childlike, its eyes black as pitch, teeth sharp like a predator, and its form distorted as if it walked on 4's.
Chirping much like birds at one another, singing tormenting songs to those that wander into their domain. their chirping has not been deciphered, there are doubts as to it being a language at all

>almost finished homebrew
>want to have friends that get together and roleplay every week on campus in it
>no friends

quitgame.jpg

>>49264467
Need help figuring out the culture for an undead-ish race. The basic concept is that they're symbiotes that attach themselves to the spinal column of a corpse, puppeteering it around and using it as a shell. While attached to the corpse, they secrete a fluid that slows decay, allowing one to remain in near-perfect condition for decades. They are feared and condemned by humanity, due to the fact that someone using your dead cousin as a meat-shell is fucking creepy. What sort of culture might these beings possess?

>>49297740
That actually raises a number of questions.
First of all: how often do they change their hosts? Can they infest non-humans (or non-humanoids) too? How does their host body last? Can they move around when not-infesting-a-body? If they can, what do they look like, what are their options to manipulate their surroundings (apendages, hands etc...)?
How far do we speak in terms of perserving their bodies too? How functional does the body have to be? Does it still need to eat, drink, sleep, avoid damage? How do they get their hosts? Do they prey on their victims, kill them themselves etc...?

I've played around with the exact same idea some time ago. The kicker was that while the race was despised and hated by most humans because of their creepy lifestyle, they were actually very gentle and scholarly race that - if it wasn't for them infesting dead bodies and being all gross - would make for pretty great neighbors and allies.

At any rate, their culture should reflect their own attitude towards the bodies they infect and about the part of their life that they spend non-infecting bodies.
There is some interesting potential about internal conflicts within the culture(s) of this species about moral guidelines for infecting hosts.

>>49297857
Non-human hosts are possible, with the obvious body mass considerations (something like a medium-sized dog would be fine, but a terrier would be out of the question) but they are infrequent, due to dogs and the like having massive difficulties speaking the common tounge and not having thumbs. Host transfers are possible, but not common, as doing so requires decoupling from the host body, an arduous process that takes hours. The host bodies at least have to have musculature on the parts of the body intended to be used by the patron.

They don't normally kill a body explicitly for the purpose of riding it, preferring to use bodies that died from other means. The preferred method of death is from disease or poison, as this leaves a relatively unharmed corpse.

>>49298024
It seems to me that it would make a lot of sense for creatures like that to take advantage of the multitude of body-types which can be useful for different things. Possessing a fucking tiger if want to hunt might not be a bad idea, which could lead to a system where certain individuals or even casts infest specific creatures for specialized purposes.

The matter of find a host body still seems like the major concern. So the body has to be functional? How did this race come to being? Did they evolve? If so, how did they keep finding bodies in sufficiently good state to host on consistently? That has to be a bit of a problem, especially since logically, other sentient races will probably take issues with them borrowing bodies of their loved ones?

And the matter of sustainance still concerns me too. Do the host bodies need to sleep? Eat? if not, do the parasite need to eat, sleep? Where does the energy to allow them move around come from? Magic?

>>49298108
They still need to process food, although this occurs directly within the symbiote rather then in the host body. I imagine they evolved from a remora-like creature, albeit one that discovered they could manage the sharks much more effectively by attaching to their spine and sending electric charges through it. The creatures are able to operate outside of the host, although their first priority during this time is to find another one, killing if necessary. Their reproductive cycle involves implanting an egg into a host body, so their population can never be greater than the number of spare bodies.

>>49298259
>Their reproductive cycle involves implanting an egg into a host body, so their population can never be greater than the number of spare bodies.
That seems like a really, really good way to die out pretty quickly.

Anyway: the disposable nature of hosts would suggest a greatly different culture of body for such race. A body is merely a vessel, one that can be pretty easily switched for a different one if the need or opportunity arises. Their material culture should probably reflect that too. There might be some really interesting things to tell about them "adjusting" or "decorating" their dead host bodies (I assume they don't feel pain of the host body, or at least not as intensely as a host would right?) to some creative (if macabre) imagery.
Actually: it really needs to be established how much neural connection with their host they have: do they process informations from his senses?

The process of acquiring new bodies seems like the most interesting thing to flash out. Religions and philosophical or moral movements with their own views of the appropriate conditions necessary to claim one's body for himself, even a hygiene culture about which bodies (which species, conditions of death etc...) are deemed taboo or acceptable to infect. Again the cast-like system in which some families may specialize on certain species for special needs (such as hunters possessing bodies of eficient predators) could be introduced. What if they posses a large bird?

Death cult is another thing that can be exceptionally interesting, because to these creatures, death of another creature is literally a blessing, especially non-violent death. A Mexico-like festivities dedicated to death could be invented and introduced.
Moving around tracking outbursts of diseases to have access to suitable bodies and semi-nomadic life also seems like an option.

There is a LOT to play around with this, really.

>>49298445
Hmm. The only way I can think of easily collecting host bodies would be a group of bodyless parasites taking down a herd animal, then one of them riding it and somehow convincing the rest of the herd to walk into a trap, at which point the rest of the bodyless kill and ride them.

I'm also toying with the idea of having the parasites adopt some of the instincts of the animal they first possess (e.g. a herd animal would know which predators are a threat, what's good to eat, etc.) but that might be stupid.

I've always pictured them as seeing through the eyes of the host, but I don't know if that could even be possible with a corpse.

>>49298577
>I've always pictured them as seeing through the eyes of the host, but I don't know if that could even be possible with a corpse.
Well, strictly scientifically speaking, there is a LOT of issues with the biochemistry of the body. I mean: the body must have most of it's metabolical processes still working: even if the parasite takes over as the neural center, which basically means they would have to actively look and infest bodies either while they are still alive, or in the moment of neuronal death of the brain, but while the rest of the body still works. Or explaining how they can jumpstart the metabolism of the body again. In that case though, the parasite would basically become a new brain and could take control of the neuronal network, feeling, percieving as what the body does.
Then again, you can just handwave all of that. But the question of how much they feel of their host is important. I mean: senses like touch NEED to be maintained because otherwise, damage-avoidance and fine motorics would not be possible. I mean, they would break their legs after few steps most likely. Unless you - of course - handwave that too...

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How much should I world build for a game that mainly takes place in one region, specific in one city and the immediate area outside of it? By worldbuilding I mean not defining the culture of the city and it's history, but more fleshing out the world outside of the city.

On one hand, the city is supposed to have an odd alien culture compared to the rest of the region it's in enclaved in, so exploring what the world outside the region is like may drive this theme in by giving the players something to compare and contrast.

On the other hand, I'm worried if I spend too much on it, it may motivate the players to leave the city and check outside something in the world. This would go against the idea of the campaign.

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Is it possible or believable for residential heating and electricity to be invented before firearms?

What would be the maintenance requirements of a city built into a mountain, like in this pic? Apologies for the quality. If it's not clear, the purple is on top of a flat created on the top of the mountain surrounded by the edges left during construction. The windows are built directly into the side of the mountain, and the city lay inside. The terrace is just a small open-air ledge carved into the mountain. Its creation is no issue in my setting, only its maintenance.

>>49299405
There are two questions actually to consider here:
How much should you world-build, and how much of the world-building should you reveal to your players. Because the two are separate problems.

My guts tells me: world-build as much as you can. If you don't mind spending the cognitive effort on stuff that you might not put in use in near future: having the knowledge and awareness of what lies outside of the city can only come in handy. It does wonders for flashing out the world - dropping consistent references when need be can go a long way to make your settings feel immersive and fleshed out.

But again: it's mostly a question of how much you are willing to spend time and effort on it.

>>49300115
>Is it possible or believable for residential heating and electricity to be invented before firearms

You can make up some bullshit about how the altered rules of chemistry in your world do not allow for gunpowder existence or something. Otherwise though, it seems pretty illogical: the amount of understanding of physics, chemistry and engineering required to run something as "basic" as a dynamo or a basic steam machine, both pretty much required to know how to build boilers and infrastructure necessary for heating and electricity would probably figure out sooner or later than combustion or steam pressure can be used to make guns.

>Its creation is no issue in my setting, only its maintenance.
If you can explain the creation, then the maintenance is not going to be such an issue. Carving a city into a rock is an incredibly difficult feat that would require insane amounts of work or fairly advanced technology. Once it's carved, aside from probably being somewhat impractical, maintaining it should not be such an issue. Cave-ins and structural soundness would be a bigger concern, I guess.

>>49300201
>If you can explain the creation, then the maintenance is not going to be such an issue.
God of Architecture made it and fucked off, bunch of regular people (of a yet undetermined but much less than modern level of technology) moved in. So the people themselves didn't have the knowhow or capabilty of building it, they just have to take care of it and their own living situation, providing heat, light, etc.

>>49300343
My immediate question would be: where do they get fuel and food? They live inside/on a top of a mountain...

Why does nearly every setting seem to be Bronze Age in terms of infastructure, Renaissance in terms of technology, and Post-Westphallian in terms of political theory?

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>>49300369
I think there could be farms outside the city, depending on the climate (I was planning on it being approximately Norwayish), plus some animal life in the nearby miles. They aren't blocked off from the ground, there are stairs and early elevators between floors, all the way to the bottom. For fuel, well, they're surrounded by rock, so I guess they could make a coal mine nearby? I'd have to look more into location patterns of coal to see if I could make it sensible.

Pic related is a better depiction of what I mean, though much more advanced.

>>49300505
So first of all: Norway is an incredibly beautiful and scenic land, but a TERRIBLE place for farming, which is one of the reasons why that place has been basically the middle ages until 20th century - their population density was INSANELY low due to the land being unable to sustain them. It's most lived off pastures, which require mobility and MASSIVE tracks of land to feed relatively small population, or fishing.
Now if you add already poor farming lands to high altitude of a mountain range, you are not going to be able to feed a population of that town.
Actually, high altitude farming efficient enough to feed entire cities on mountains has been done, specifically in Andes by the Inks and related cultures - you might want to look into that. They mostly owned that to the fact that they were in very humid and warm climate and also, potatoes. They STILL needed a massive infrastructure to supply food from the less mountaineous regions to the high altitude ones though.

Hunting cannot support a settled society, by the way. You literally have to keep on your feed consistently to travel with the animal herds and still you can barely feed a tribe for hundred square kilometers per season.

As for coal, you could do that but to support an entire city, you need a fairly large mining operation. Then again, if you have heating and electricity, that might not be SUCH an issue. Just consider that it might have a serious environmental impact.

>>49300673
Thanks for all the help. I'm going to consider moving the mountain to a warm climate, but either way you've made me realize some things I can do with the setting that I hadn't before.

>>49300809
>I can do with the setting that I hadn't before.
Yeah. I think it could be a pretty neat idea: high-altitude cultures and cities are always fun (seriously read up on the Incs if you had not yet) and so are giant underground complexes.

>>49300115
>Is it possible or believable for residential heating and electricity to be invented before firearms?
Theoretically possible. Nuclear reactors can occur without human intervention and most generators are just "move a magnet near a bunch of wire". If a group of people lived near natural formations with just the right set of conditions and managed to figure out (roughly) what was going on, they might figure out the basics of heating and electricity before they figure out they can put a projectile in a narrow tube and generate a small explosion behind it with a combustible powder.

The biggest maintenance problem that comes to mind depends on the rate of precipitation and geologic activity, but that might take millennia to be an issue. Unless they're digging new caves, rock formations natural or otherwise can last a very long time (depending on the type of rock).

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>>49300673
>tfw potatoes are the easiest way to explain how any civilization manages to feed themselves

>>49301100
Don't go there. Seriously, that is a path of no return.

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>>49301113
It's too late. My Dwarves subsist on potatoes, glowing mushrooms that provide UV light, and a fresh-air fungus.

>>49301170
I meant debating how potatoes affect population density. Because seriously, that does not end well on this board.

>>49298731
Man, all I wanted to do was write a weird fantasy race....

>>49301321
>Man, all I wanted to do was write a weird fantasy race....
Again, none of that stuff should really bother you. It's up to you to determine the inner logic of your world. Biochemistry and metabolism may or may not be a relevant factor in your own world. It's unlikely than anyone but you will be really prodding that much into the matter: it's entirely up to you to determine the creative and formal restraints of the fiction that you are building.

I still think the race could be hell of a lot fun. In fact I might return to it and use it myself. The aspects of the culture such as disposability of the bodies, or the natural inclination towards the cult of death, the macabre imagery, especially combined with a paradoxically peaceful and schollarly nature as I envision them originally all make up for for a hell of a lot interesting material that even with some inconsitencies or logical issues beats all elves, dwarves, gnomes and orks a thousand times.

>>49301377
Well, considering my other race is a bunch of psychokinetic bug people who eat color, I think it's fair to say that physics isn't really an issue.
Thanks for the help thinking this race through.

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>>49301377
>It's up to you to determine the inner logic of your world. Biochemistry and metabolism may or may not be a relevant factor in your own world
>tfw I've been mulling over the nano-molecules that act as the building blocks for my world's reality

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Ghosts in my setting are not the typical ghost. They're more like phantoms in Dark Souls; for example, Tarkus was once a famous knight, he put his sign down, now he's there forever, able to help out those who come after you while you continued on to find his corpse.

I wrote an essay from the perspective of someone researching ghosts and tries to explain how ghosts do their ghost thing, which I intend to feed to players whenever they are curious about ghosts (whether it's their own curiosity or whether they are put on some ghostbusting quest), but I'm not sure if I conveyed it the way people would understand easily because I have a bad habit of saying what I think is a solid rigid idea when it's just complete nonsense to someone else. Could someone proof read this for me and identify at what point if any do I stop making sense? Comments and criticism is welcomed.

https://my.mixtape.moe/jyyucf.txt

>>49300378
>Bronze Age in terms of infastructure
Because a lack of well-patrolled roads means plenty of encounters with baddies/monsters while travelling.

>Renaissance in terms of technology
Because the general perception is that things like gothic plate armor were medieval. This one is generally an honest mistake driven by media.

>Post-Westphallian in terms of political theory
Because everyone doing the worldbuilding grew up in a modern nation-state, in a world with nothing but modern nation-states, and it's damned hard to understand how a truly feudal political order worked when that's your frame of reference. The idea that a country wasn't really distinct from its ruler's estate, or that national borders could be redrawn by something like inheritance or marriage seems utterly alien.

While it's certainly not perfect, I'd say that medieval worldbuilding would benefit greatly from people playing at least a little Crusader Kings 2.

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>>49301184
I don't know about population, but I can assure you that without potatoes, the density of the average American would drop a bit.

>>49301706
>The woman quickly turned her aim to the Woodsman and shot him in the face. He stomped on it until it was a disfigured mess. She left her husband's corpse next to the Woodsman's body, and left the forest with the buck.
What did the Woodsman stomp on here? "Woodman's body" implies that the woman's bolt appeared to kill him, so how did he do so after being shot in the face?

>The Woodsman enters the forest two years after the first encounter I described, a day after the second, and decades before the fourth
wait, but
>Forty years later, a hooligan enters the forest.
Was this a different forty years?

Otherwise I understood it pretty clearly.

>>49301995
Your first comment referred to a typo. I meant to say that the woman stomped the woodsman into a bloody pulp. This is to show that the ghost can be killed, but he would come back. As for the second comment, there are four events. The first, two years before the living Woodsman enters the woods. The second is the day before. The third is when the Woodsman sheds his mortality and becomes the ghost by entering the woods. The fourth event, the hooligan, happens forty years/four decades after the Woodsman enters the woods. Switching between "forty years" and "decades" is just trying to vary my vocabulary to keep people from reading the same word over and over again, becoming conscious of it. That's very immersion breaking if the words aren't being played with, so I tried to avoid it.

Thanks for giving it a look.

>>49302213
I'm more referring to "before" versus "later." The way it's written at first, I understood the chronology to be
>man enters forest
two years pass
>woman enters forest
one day passes
>woodsman enters forest
forty years pass
>hooligan enters forest

So those are the four events you are referring to in the penultimate paragraph. But then you say
>decades before the fourth
This phrasing either implies that there is a fifth event that happens before the fourth, or it's just referring to the first event, which would be redundant given that the sentence already mentions it, and also gives minor whiplash since each other event in that sentence is described going forward. Also, it's actually more immersion breaking if you try to force synonyms, it's usually pretty transparent. If I were you, I would rewrite the sentence as
>The Woodsman enters the forest two years after the first encounter I described, a day after the second, and forty years after the third.
as long as I'm understanding the chronology correctly.

I'm sure this is not what you were seeking advice on but it's important to cut down on confusion, especially given that you said you would be using this in a live setting.

>stopped working on world for a year
>get the urge and starts working on it again
>get upset that no one will ever play it

I remember why I stopped.

>>49302401
You don't seem to be grasping it correctly, which is exactly what my issue with my writing is, because I don't want to clarify all this with my players at the table for however long it takes to be on the same page.

When I wrote "decades before the forth," I was hoping to imply that the Hooligan enters the forty years after the Woodsman enters, to show that the ghost exists both before and after the mortal becomes the ghost. To deconstruct the sentence as I was writing it,
>The Woodsman enters the forest (third event, neutral point in chronology) two years after the (first event), the day after the (second event), and forty years before (fourth event).
It would be more chronologically consistent to repeat what I had written in a tl;dr format;
>(first event), two years later (second event), the next day (third event), forty years later (forth event).
But I felt that was even more confusing than what I had went with.

I'm bad at conveying thoughts.

>>49302500
oh god do i know that feel

>>49302679
>I was hoping to imply that the Hooligan enters the forty years after the Woodsman enters, to show that the ghost exists both before and after the mortal becomes the ghost.
Okay, I see where your ordering is coming from now. That idea comes across well enough when you describe it directly, I got it then, but the switching of the chronologies muddles your intentions. I think if you want to make it more clear, then you should use the same order in the sentence that you do in the paragraphs. In this case, the best method would be to put the Woodsman's paragraph first, then the rest, and keep the sentence as is. Your minor repetition is only bothering you because you wrote it and you're intimately familiar with the idea (a feeling I'm familiar with), players/readers are being introduced and keeping things simple helps get them immersed.

>>49264467
I find it's fun to just create a single town, and whatever towns/cities the players are from, and then let the world quantum collapse from there.

>>49301792
>While it's certainly not perfect, I'd say that medieval worldbuilding would benefit greatly from people playing at least a little Crusader Kings 2.

having well over 600 hours already, mostly as luxembourg out of patriotism, i can definitely say play this game has helped me a lot with the cartogrpahic and cultural elements of >>49293848
and
>>49293979

so yeah

>>49301170
My Dwarves, or at least the western branches of the race, know of and often eat a vegetable that's clearly a member of the potatoe family. None of the other races have shown an interest in it, and even if they had the Dwarves wouldn't tell them.

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The planet I have is defined by the fact that its weather is difficult to predict and its general environments are semi-hostile normally. For example, I've thought about having some areas as an entire cactus-like plant forest or a land based coral reef.

What weird environments could be there?

So weird ecologies gogogo

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>>49306145
>What weird environments could be there?
My personal favorites:

Salt flat and salt lakes, especially in high altitude. Look into Atacama Salt flat in Andes.

Karst regions - sinkholes, blueholes and blackholes, limestone pavements, massive caves, underwater lakes and rivers.
Check out Black Hole of Andros for some really bizzare types of ecosystems that can emerge in such regions.

Hotsprings and hotspots, and geothermal process-formed landscape in general: terrace pools, mudpots, geysers, acidic lates, surface sulphur crystals formations.
Again, check out for things like geothermal algae mats for inspiration for weird life-forms.
Bonus point of them being in a cold region.

Any kind of high-altitude regions: Andes, Himalaya, great Mongolian Steppes, Patagonia, that shit is fucking awesome.

More fantastic stuff:
Fungy forests.
Just see/read Naushicaa for that matter.

Surface Crystal forests.
The "forest" here being a bit of a misnomer, I'm speaking just about a major surface crystal desposits. They can range from being few centimeter to to several meters in height. Make them non-transparent though and DEFINITELY avoid them glowing though.
Metalic crystals like Crystaline coper are absolutely fucking best, probably mixed with shit like sulphur or salt.

Algae and weird, floating mangroove like plat-based floating islands drifting along the water currents.

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>Modern campaign novel actually
>No worldbuilding to be done
>that unscratched itch

>>49306508
How do you base your world off of a novel? Do you just read through it religiously until you can basically recite any given snippet of lore from memory?

>>49307535
I mean I'm not actually /tg/ related, that I'm building a setting for a novel I'm writing.

niggers where the discord at? both links in thread are dead.

i just need 1 or 2 anons to circlejerk with me while the rest of the people come back, we can keep it alive.

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I have been thinking of making a sort of "map-mode" style world map for games and such with photoshop layers. These are just screen shots of the early version from photshop

Diplomatic mapmode

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>>49309489
Demographics and goverment, for now it is just a text but my next map mode will be about demographics. Every administrative district will have colours representing the majority ethnicity and culture and the minorities. At this point i'll start to flesh out the different elven, human, orcish etc cultures

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>>49309528
Administrative regions, duchies and the like. Ankli Protekynn doesn't have any solid ones, since the old ducal system was smashed recently and things haven't settled yet

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Did a cutaway to better show how I think the majority of hardsuits are controlled. There's a lot of variation but 'pilot sitting with hands in advanced controllers' is the default

>>49285669

Some holdings would be in those empty plains, not just on the periphery in the far north. Imagine there being smaller rivers or tributaries that aren't listed on the map.

>>49311668
That's definitely a "blow the hatch and hope you climb out in time" kind of set up.

>>49314130
I'm thinking the main entrance/exit is from the back

Can you put weird aliens (in the sense of having come from the stars, having bizarre physical forms unsuited to the planet (the atmosphere doesn't have enough of something they need to survive - they can do so, but it's the equivalent of a human living somewhere with low oxygen - alien psychology and physiology, and an inability to verbally speak (instead using telepathy)) into a Fantasy setting without it just seeming stupid/ridiculous/out-of-place?

>>49316371
Not really, no. At least not into classic fantasy. It's simply a contradiction in basic premises of the genres: one is a product of a rational, scientific speculation and essentially scientific understanding of the world, the other is essentially a an attempt to re-create pre-scientific, intuitive, mythological way of seeing the world.

In a fantasy world, people coming from the skies are nothing actually out-of-place. We see stories like that in thousands of mythological or folklore tales. Gods, angels, strange tribes living on the moon and crossing to human world through the light reflected on the surface of the pond have always been part of our mythological thinking.

But when you suddenly start explaining how those people are products of scientifically and rationally explained process like low gravity etc... coming from different planets... in a world where dragons and magic exist and which implies abandoning all of our materialist and scientifical understanding of the world...?

That never bodes well. At best, it will be cheezy as fuck. It may be "fun" but people will find it immensely difficult to take it seriously and develop strong sense of immersion and interest in the setup, even if they won't know what is it that is trowing them off.

>>49314130
Nah that looks like a blow the hatch to let the blood drain and maybe a corpse plops out kind of set up. Like how often outside of a hard suit decapitation or leg blow out is a pilot not also dead?

>>49316371
Isn't that what most aberrations in DnD are?

>>49316530
Well I should specify that it isn't elaborated on, how they can't into the atmosphere, and I avoid scientific terms. The basic idea is that they came from the stars, ended up on this island and used magic to set themselves up as gods over primitive humans (it's a roughly bronze-age setting, with one key thing being that magic exists but humans can't naturally use it (but can with techniques and magical devices that haven't been developed at this point in the history of the setting)). The nature of the world makes life a struggle for these beings, however, and every generation of them is a bit smaller, a bit weaker, a bit more sickly, a bit less long-lived - the idea is that the world has much less of a sort of mystical energy necessary for their survival than their lost home (it has that life-energy - the wind and sea carry it, and all living things on the planet likewise have it in them in small amounts - but just not nearly enough).

They have a sort of gnostic view of the world, and for that matter the physical in general including their own bodies, as a prison from which they must escape. They're also sort of vampires and demand mass annual blood sacrifice for basically dietary purposes (they draw the mystical life-force they need from the blood of sacrificial victims).

>>49316826
The question is whenever it makes sense to call such being "aliens" then. I mean we have stories like that all across fantasy. You can call them god-people, angels, raksha, whatever you want. Notion of someone coming from skies isn't uncommon in fantasy. What is weird is to call them "Aliens", a term fairly specifically identified with the notion of extraterrestrial life (which is LOADED with presumptions about the scientific nature of life, and the scientific understanding of what being "terrestrial" (being native to the PLANET of Earth, which itself implies scientific understanding what "planets" are and the nature of celestial bodies) and what "life" implies (again scientific understanding of life as essentially a metabolic process shaped through evolution by environment etc...)

I don't see any problem with the idea of strange invaders from somewhere far (maybe from the "stars") asserting themselves as gods.
But I think the very moment you associate them with the idea of "Aliens" in the modern sense of the word, you are opening a can of worms.

>>49317264
Well it's basically because they're weird as fuck both physically and psychologically, look nothing like humans or any earth thing, and don't have any vocal apparati. Think aberrations or maybe lovecraft.

>>49317348
I don't actually refer to them as "aliens" in-setting. The people they rule over just call them "Heavenly Ones" or "Star Gods". Others call them "Star Demons".

>>49317348
Ever read the descriptions of angels in books of Apocalypse or the Book or Revelations? Ever read the desciption of Tiamat from Enuma Elish?
Being odd-worldly and strange is hardly a new thing to mythology, and by extension, fantasy.

Again: I don't know or care that much what they look like, I don't think the specific matter.
The thing that matters is the context and associations that you present them in. The association with "Aliens" in the classical meaning of "extra-terrestrial life" from sci-fi aesthetics is going to result in a chain of implications and understandings that will not sit well with a traditional fantasy setup, regardless of whenever they are Lovecraftian horrors or little grey men... If you avoid your reader/player/observer actually making that association, then there is hardly any problem though.

It's about the narrative logic of what you are saying. With every element you bring to your world, you further imply some form of it's inner logic. Since you can't establish every aspect of the inner logic individually, you will inevitably fall on pre-conceptions that people have from similar works (that is why, for an example, you generally don't need to explain what you mean by "Magic" and what it's presence implies about your world, because everybody who has read a fantasy book in their life will already fill that shit in themselves).

However, if you manage to to provide elements that imply or associate logic inconsistent with the rest of the things you implied previously, it's going to be confusing at best.

Should i make the churches of my setting know that all of their gods aren't real and those who are real aren't real yet they all still uphold the traditional stories for political power in their land or should i just make them proper zealots who believe the old lies of a merchant who claimed the god's being real and pitting gullible people against each other to get a pretty penny out of these cults, eventually after the merchant's death the churches becoming larger and more powerful and becoming real in the eyes and minds of the people.

>>49317479
Thanks. I guess I was worrying over nothing. That's a big relief since I really like them.

>Ever read the descriptions of angels in books of Apocalypse or the Book or Revelations? Ever read the desciption of Tiamat from Enuma Elish?

Yeah, but I guess it just didn't click for some reason, since I started detailing the physical aspects during this brief period where I was thinking of trying to go sci-fi (before that, they were originally just going to be hairless, black-eyed humanoids with silvery skin and blue blood).

>>49317642
You are a complete idiot who does not understand the first thing about how religion works. I think the old jokes about fedora-wearing atheist are in fact rarely appropriate here.

>>49317745
Now that's a really bad thing to call yourself.

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>>49317642
>run-on sentence
>fedora-tipping content

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>>49264467
I'm thinking of doing this Dragonstar setting in where the Dragon Empire winds up meeting up against the United Nations type of thing. I've haven't written a lot of it down.

>>49317642
sounds pretty epic bro heres a relevant video i think this guy would be the perfect iconic protagonist for your epic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlxfDvSyPKA

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>new player noticed literally every reference I made in my setting

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>>49317642
>and those who are real aren't real
What?

>>49311668
Red Ribbon Army?

Or Nausicaa?

Or just that one french cartoonist whose name escapes me but who has the best art style in the world?

I started worldbuilding for a quest, and now I can't run quests.

What do I do with my world?

>>49323660
Same thing we all do. Just sit on it not doing anything until you get bored and make a new one to keep it company.

>>49323417
Yeah Moebius and Makoto Kobayashi are a big influence style wise

>>49323911
Moebius, thank you for the name. Jesus christ his stuff is gorgeous. what do you use to get that style?

>>49323660
go to /qst/. I've been there for a few days before I got bored, but it seems traffic's okay enough for good quests.

>>49324100
I use Paint Tool SAI

I'm looking into various forms of rule for my "Ancient" setting, the most common ones will be monarchy and diarchy. However, I'm also having various democratic city states modeled on Greece. The "twist" being that the office is lethal. That is, in an effort to prevent corruption and just using the office for the benefit of the self after you're done ruling, you commit honorable suicide or cowardly get executed.

This would obviously only apply to the highest office (or perhaps the highest few), so you don't cull your entire leadership every election. Besides this, you're eligible for one re-election. Emergency leaders would be exempt as well. (think the original Roman Dictator) The idea being that you truly give your life for the state. Any ideas? Or is this just too silly/edgy.

>>49324546
Sounds like your not!Greece is practicing something similar to what Eunuchs were used for.

>>49324546
>Or is this just too silly/edgy
It's a bit difficult to see happening. Most human's will to survive is pretty fucking strong and most people won't willingly put themselves in situations they won't be walking out of.

It would make more sense if you had multiple races and one/some of the non-humans practiced this. It would give you a way to illustrate just how strange they are compared to humanity.

>>49324546
Also, your not!Greece would rarely, if ever, have a good ruler. At most, they'd have a rotating figure-head for whatever group controls policy in the background. The "secret society" group would be the people truly qualified to rule, but unwilling to accept the office that guarantees an early death.
You're effectively killing off experienced advisers, with a new leader starting from scratch.

>>49324546
Historically, the closest equivalent I can think was the Akkadians (or was it Babylonians?) having a belief that a solar eclipse was a very bad omen and would signify that the king would die. So when a solar eclipse was coming soon (which they could predict, having already developed quite advanced understanding of astronomy), they'd place a substitute king on the throne, who would rule until the danger was over. Of course, since the prophesy said the king would die, if the substitute hadn't died during the eclipse they'd kill him immediately afterwards, to ensure the prophetized death of a king had come to pass and the true king would be safe.

One time the actual king did go and die during the eclipse, so they figured the substitute might as well keep ruling and made him the new king for good.

>>49324546
Only if you have the decline of the culture start with a nihilist who takes the throne and lives out a hedonistic dream, wrecking the coffers and taking the state down with him.

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>>49301100

>>49301940
Actually the density of the average American would increase. Aside from the lungs (which are spongy and full of air), fat is the least dense of all body tissues.

/pedantic

>>49301100
Except the irish. Wait are they civilized?

>>49327537
The only way they were able to feed themselves in the first place were potatoes. That's why the famine nearly killed them all.

>>49301100

Why is the potato such a wonderfood. I mean yeah today's day and age where we have a surplus of calories it's a liability but jesus, aside of risk of blight by overreliance the potato kicks the shit out of wheat and rice.

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>>49327628

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Role_in_world_food_supply

>Potato per 100g is a measly 17 carbs
>Wheat is 80
>Corn is 74
>Rice is 77

wait what the shit. What the hell do potatos do then? They have marked less energy too - 322 to the 1300-1500 of rice/corn/wheat. Is it the high sugar/starch?

>>49327663
They're easy to grow, have an abundant yield, and can grow in even the absolute worst soil as long as it isn't too hot and dry.

>>49264467
>breaking the Rule of Tincture
absolutely_disgusting.jpg

>>49325357
>>49325393
>>49325412
>>49325883
Thanks for the advice. Anyone perhaps know of other interesting forms of government/resources to look into them?

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>>49327723
That's true; wheat can be kind of temperamental, corn is very labor-intensive because it's been domesticated for so long and can't survive without a lot of help, and rice is the most water-hungry staple grain out there. Potatoes are pretty bro-tier in comparison.

>>49327605
That's was the point hidden behind outdated racism? You're correct. Have a clover.

>>49327764
There was a celtic practice believed associated with the bog corpse dubbed 'Lindow man' One theory interprets that he had been a noble or leader and after a failed harvest was 'thrice slain' his body clubbed, throttled and stabbed ritualistically for his supposed failure to fulfill the ceremonial agreement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindow_Man

>>49327663
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Role_in_world_food_supply
consider that it's for raw foods, and that the potato sample contains about 6x as much water in the sample.

>>49327663
>What the hell do potatos do then?
what >>49327723 said, plus they also contain a large array of other vitamins & nutrients. In theory, if one occasionally supplements their diet with some kind of protein, like fish, a person cold survive on a diet consisting only of potatoes, it will be about a dull as dirt, but it can sustain them.

>>49327723
are their any other foodstuffs that have similar advantages to the potato? Mostly being easy to grow and can produce large yields in small fields? I need to know this for reasons.

>>49327848
A lot of the anti-Irish American racism is due to them swarming over here during the famine, much like the Mexicans are currently doing illegally.

>>49329122
Oh, I thought it had to do with what they did to the native americans.

>>49327723
You can grow potatoes without watering them once. They turn out really small and much more flavorful than usual, apparently.