/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

>>49859831

Whats a good name for a race of machines that facilitates the peaceful coexistence of spacefaring races? Protecting developing worlds from external influence until they are able to reach space under their own power, serving as a neutral military peacekeeping fleet to curb open spacewar, letting less developed races use their FTL-Gate system to get around and forming the hub of galactic trade. Old enough that even the oldest organic civilization currently around doesn't know who built them.

Right now the best I have is the 'Intercessors', but I feel like I can do better.

>>49859831
>https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/
Because it's a great way to learn what not to ever do. There's also some genuinely okay stuff there.

>the OSR general
Some anon said they were very good at worldbuilding; given their subject matter, I can believe it.

>historical threads on /tg/ & "inspiration" threads
History threads shunt a bunch of /tg/ targeted inspiration directly into your face. Character art threads, location art threads, and anything else-art threads are also pretty good. A picture paints a thousand words &c.

>/his/
Another source of /tg/ plunderable information.

>libgen.io
A decently varied source of free books. Carries both academic and purely fictional works.

This is decent info, damnit!

>>49859998

Depends, do they communicate? If so, they have their own name for themselves and you should use that. Calling them anything else would be as silly as other races calling humans The Murderers or something, especially so when we keep saying "No no, it's 'Human'".

>>49860040
If they're only active as an outside force, there's no reason to give them their own name.

>>49859998
Arbitrators, The Panoply, Caretakers, Guardians, Cultivators

>>49860040

Yes, but 'what they call themselves' largely isn't a useful idea in-setting. You can't communicate with the aliens without complicated translation software (provided and maintained by the machine race, coincidently). Not because their words are hard to pronounce, but because you don't talk by biolumanescent pulses on the ends of your 6 upper tendrils. The name for them has to be human translateable, or you just make up a nonsense name for them as an officially recognized placeholder.

If humans are any indication, most names will translate directly to something such as 'the people'. Which will get confusing if you are dealing with more than one alien race at a time.

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>when other anons come up with the same original names as you and you don't use any english words at all in naming

>>49859998
I like READS- Resource Extraction, Allocation, and Distribution System.

If a bunch of physically diverse races all had human brains, would they manage to not genocide eachother?

They'd have unique talents from both their physical traits and their slight mental differences that would make collaboration between certain races extremely beneficial to societal development.

>>49860000
while it might be a good source of what not to do, linking to a reddit in the op is always a bad idea

>>49860151
>The name for them has to be human translateable, or you just make up a nonsense name for them as an officially recognized placeholder.
That's how I'm doing the auto-translating languages in my setting. I only know what a place is called in English, not what the Common equivalent of "Oldtown" is.

>>49860151

Sure it is. You wouldn't just go cruising around the universe applying names to sentient beings you come across. Like, those are "The Fluffy Ones" and those are "The Ones with Shells". It doesn't make any real sense. Do all your sentient creatures use the names that some people arbitrarily called them? Or do they use their own names?

I mean, if you just call the alien race that originated in the Deneb star system "Denebians" then it makes sense to assign an arbitrary name to a race of machines.

>>49860457
>these people call themselves 'franks' which is cool we'll call them 'frances' which is basically the same
>these other people with the beer we can't really understand so let's just call them 'aleman'

What are the problems a land stuck in perpetual night would face?

I've already thought of food (they grow moon crops(better name pending)), lighting (they use a ton of whale oil and these are BIG whales) and telling the time (they use water clocks)

>>49859998
are you looking for an official name or a colloquial name?

i think 'peacekeepers' works fine for a nickname because it seems benign on the surface but it can be ominous as well.

Is anyone here actually well read in regards to alchemy or Kabbalah? I was the one who was asking about alchemy in the last thread so I was wondering if there was someone I could run some questions by.

>>49860843
I don't know much about it personally, but you can find some texts related to it here:

http://sacred-texts.com/jud/index.htm
They start about a third or half way down the page.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Do you employ any kind of historical or political allegory in your world?

I always find myself reading up interesting wars like the Hussite Wars or the Russian-North American Native conflicts and want to model stuff after them but I have trouble doing it in a way that does end up as being a carbon copy or clumsy allegory.

>>49860143

Panoply is a cool word. I might use that for a different race that I was previously calling the Tessellation.

>>49860232

Neat acronym.

>>49860821

I was looking for their official name. I also like the name Peacekeepers, but I feel like it has been used before. Same with Arbitrators. They are both cool, ominous names, which makes them too obvious/common.

>>49860604

Vitamin D deficiency, because no sunlight. They can grow special crows, but the landscape will still be less plant-dense. Wood will be expensive because trees will grow slower and wooded areas will not be as densely populated.

Animals that live there will by necessity have good nightvision. Anything that has poor nightvision can probably be assumed to have died off there over time.

Don't expect reptiles and other cold blooded animals to thrive, the cooler environment without the sun dooms them to constant hibernation and lethargy.

>>49860604

The main problem they would face is without a sun pouring down lots and lots of energy, they and the entire world they live on would freeze very, very quickly.

>>49860967
>has been used before
that's fair, though sometimes a solid but generic name is the best one for the job. but i agree that they may be somewhat overused in this case.

>>49860967
It is meant to be a heavily forested area, but I suppose I can add those to the "can survive by moonlight" excuse. It is meant to be an area created by a former BBEG as his base until he died.

I do imagine it being cold and there being lots of wolves though.
>>49861003
Okay I'll have to think about this one. It's not a huge section of the world though it'd be about the size of Germany.

I could use the new Lich king as kind of a keystone where he's using most of his magic energy to keep the land from freezing over. It's still cold as fuck but it's livable.

>>49861063
>It's not a huge section of the world though it'd be about the size of Germany.

Still, though. Winter is caused by the Earth's tilt. Even in winter we still get light, just less of it. If something that merely decreases the amount of light we get is responsible for huge portions of the world freezing over, imagine what no light would do. Maybe some prevailing winds or something would keep some parts of it on the outskirts habitable, but I don't know, I'm not really a meteorologist.

>>49861153
Maybe there's a barrier that keeps it from spreading to the rest of the world? As a way of preventing the BBEG's last "fuck you"?

I might rethink the whole thing though. It's not essential for the setting.

>>49860906
I appreciate the link, I'll check that out.

Question: In a setting like Fallout, if a Vault decided to start digging more to expand its living area, how could they dispose of the tons of rock? Assuming, of course, they don't want to open the vault door and dump it outside.

What's a cool name for an order of Paladin-Clerics? They belong to a religion centered around holy fire, kind of like Zoroastrianism mixed with Christianity.

My current name is 'Torchbearers' but that's already used by something so I want a different one, but with a similar meaning. Something involving light or fire...

>>49861354
Dig a hole and fill it with all the waste rock.

>>49861500

What's a paladin-cleric? Isn't a paladin already kind of like a fighter crossed with a cleric? So it would be like 1/4 fighter and 3/4 cleric?

>>49861516
Uhhh.

>>49861587
...Uhhh?

>>49861599
That would just generate more waste rock. It doesn't actually solve the problem.

>>49861563
Yeah, I just mean they are people who travel around hinterland/border areas delivering the word of the church and acting as a kind of religious quasi-police force. They're armed, but they're more like missionaries than crusaders or paladins, who are typically knightly warriors first and clergy second.

>>49861648
What if they dig the hole twice as deep as they need, and put the waste rock from the top half in the bottom half?

>>49861354
Macerate the rock into a powder, flavour it and mix it into the rationed food and have the vaultdwellers eat it over time

That or vaporise the dirt into nothing in a reactor of some kind

>>49861500

Candlekeepers.

Pilgrims of the Flame.

Ash Knights

Smoke Knights

The Brotherhood of Embers

>>49861650

Clerics are already decently capable fighters, so I'm not sure mixing them with paladins adds much to the equation.

Going back to your original question, why must it be associated with light or fire? Zoroastrians believe in a struggle of order and chaos, and that doing good deeds was necessary to keep chaos at bay.

Neither Christianity nor Zoroastrianism have any sort of concept of holy fires.

>>49861747

Vaporizing it would just mean you'd have to scrub it out of the air afterwards since vaults are designed as closed systems, and scrubbing tons of vaporized stone from the air seems counter intuitive. Same with eating it, you'd just muck up the recycling systems.

>>49861799
Dig to a point and hope there's some existing caves you can expand into below?

>>49861153
it would be possible for only one area of a planet to never be sunlit.
take iceland, it has sunless seasons, and it wouldn't be difficult to imagine a world with an orbit that just keeps it like that

>>49861842

This isn't minecraft.

Even if you did manage to find some caves, this is the Fallout universe. It would probably be filled with 10,000 deathclaws or something. And you'd still have to deal with all the tons of rocks you dig up in the mean time.

>>49861648
No, see, I thought that too. But you've got to think this through mathematically.

You've got a vault, let's say with n space. And you're pretty happy with it. But things are getting crowded, sanitation's nearly critical, and you need some new toilets. This requires T space, ON TOP of your old n. So you ultimately want space to equal n+T.

So you mine this space. This produces less than T rock, because in the process you've compressed/rearranged the rock enough to reduce it. We'll call this reduced rock volume "R". To recap, for now you've got you've got nT (the toilets are mined!) - R space (all that rock dust).

Now you see where this is going. We dig down a pit of R volume, JUST enough to fit R. And we fill it. Now you can cross out that nasty R, and you're left with a nice (not so!) little NT.

This can apply to pretty much anything -- water tanks, mess halls, bunks, whatever.

>>49860604
>What are the problems a land stuck in perpetual night would face?
Cold. That is really it: everything can be kinda worked around, but even in a very fantastic world, the most basic intuition will tell you that you need warmth to have life.
So really, the main question how do they avoid freezing, where do they get warmth from. Without warmth there is no motion, no metabolism, just stillness. Cold is death of life everywhere in the universe.
So the real creative challenge is figuring out how they live, what gives them the energy to do so? This can be explained by things like various geothermal sources, for an example. Or living underground, closer to planets core.

As for crops: Moon is not going to solve that. First of all: Moons won't reflect enough light: if they did, they would be as bright as Sun, meaning that you don't have perpetual night to begin with. By the way, how does your world have a moon but is still stuck in perpetual night? Is it not a planet? Is it a completely fantastic space where space physics don't apply, and things are driven by metaphysics or magic? If that is the case, then you don't have to worry about anything, because real-world logic is irrelevant.

But if it's a world with at least basic real-space-like properties, then the only explanation for a perpetual night would be tidally locked body. Which generally speaking happens almost only to moons.

>>49859998
>Whats a good name for a race of machines that facilitates the peaceful coexistence of spacefaring races?
I would assume that different races and different groups within those races would see them differently, so it would make sense for them to be called differently by them.

I think a race like this really ask for having a religious twist to them: I mean that is just begging for someone to say: well clearly they are basically just divine beings made by someone who cared about us.

So religiously charged nomeclature would make sense for religiously inclined people or common folk: The Powers that Be, The Archons, Deva. Yaksha.
For more rationally and scietifically oriented people: The Ancestral Race, The Guides, MaPro (Machine Protectors), The Serviteur, The Majordomo, The Caretakers. I also like this >>49860232 a lot: it does not make much sense as a common and coloquial name, but as scientifically "correct" designation it sounds very good and reasonable.

>>49861859
>and it wouldn't be difficult to imagine a world with an orbit that just keeps it like that
It would, actually. Because those sunless seasons are also contrapuncted by several months of constant sunshine. There is a difference between having long days and nights, and having perpetual night.
The ONLY way that can be explained is if axis is either completely fucked (e.g. the Axis heads in direction of the Sun, meaning that while the planet rotates, half of it is in perpetual sunlight, while the other half is in perpetual night), or if it's tidally locked to the Sun, like Moon is to Earth, but that generally speaking does not happen to planets.
In both cases, half of the planet would be scorched wasteland while the other would be a land of absolute, eternal frost. Not exactly the best living conditions.

>>49861760
I'm not using RPG terminology here so the exact details of how those two classes would overlap in a D&D game is not my concern, I just called them that to concisely get the idea across in a post. In history clerics are typically sedentary members of the clergy who work inside a church and have no military training (or are even oathsworn pacifists or whatever), and paladin is a vague term for an elite knightly holy warrior who serves an emperor directly, like Charlemagne's paladins, and more generally a synomym for crusader, who are righteous men-at-arms who go to other countries and fight against pagans or Saracens. So this order is a mix between the two in that they are educated members of the clergy like a cleric is, but they travel around and have some military training like a paladin or crusader.

Fire is so closely associated with Zoroastrianism to the point that it is often mistakenly accused of being 'fire worship'. It's a symbol of Ahura Mazda and is central to a lot of their rituals, for example, the house blessing ritual that they'd do to cleanse a newly made house involved Zoroastrian priests lighting a holy fire and keeping it lit for a certain amount of time while reciting prayers. They have rules about what you can and can't put into a fire - certain things like hair and fingernails are considered unclean. They even have levels of fires and rules for how they are lit, including what materials you can use, how many priests must be present, etc.

You might want to read the wikipedia page at least before coming at me with something like that.

>>49862233

They have similar rituals for water, too. Are you going to ignore that part? In fact, they have rituals for four elements: water, earth, fire, and air. But hey, if you want to just pick bits and pieces from a religion to make your own fantasy religion, don't let me stop you. But to think that fire is some major theme of Zoroastrianism is silly; the four elements are only surrounded in such rituals because they comprise order, and order is the central most theme of Zoroastrianism.

>>49862233
>>49861760
Beyond that, the order is based around holy fire because that's what I thought was cool and that's what I wanted to have in my world so I'm not sure why that's an issue. It's honestly a pretty bog standard, milquetoast theme for a religious order.

>>49861750
These are good, thanks. I really like Candlekeepers particularly.

>>49861925
Yeah I think I'll abandon the idea. It raises too many questions.

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>>49862342
Man I think you might be overthinking this elevator pitch post I made about a pretty standard religious order.

You literally just told me Zoroastrianism has no concept of holy fire and now are trying to present yourself as a religious history expert? Ok, do you I guess.

This discussion is not productive and it's eating up thread posts so I'm gonna leave it here.

>>49862106
earth's axis is stationary, if the axis was locked to, say, always have the south pole be closer to the sun than the north, then you would get a kind of tidal lock lite that has only a pocket of the far north in perpetual darkness and only a reverse pocket of perpetual sunlight on the southern pole.

This would also prevent the changing of the seasons, but that's a small price to pay.

>>49862500

Not even the guy you're arguing with before, just telling you that you're wrong.

>>49862552
Wrong about what specifically? That Zoroastrianism uses fire as an important symbol?

Fungi/Coral/hostile planet names ideas

>Albion
>Eden
>Gethsemane
>Atlas
>Hesperides

Any other name suggestions?

Also I'm trying to write a sort of quote from those living there (kind of like Alpha Centauri I guess)

>“When our ancestors first sought refuge from their screaming yellow sun they found the land to be a most terrible of homes. Without choice and burdened with the hardships of air and pressure they found solace that they had with them the means to remove themselves from the environment and put to use the resources they had to hand. Sealing themselves away in what would eventually be the foundations of our Habitats they discovered that in time they could tame areas of the planet to their own means. Bless the Founders for in their determination humanity prevailed” – Io Parlum: Magister of History

Thoughts/Ideas?

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Tell me about your magic. Tell me about your wizards.

>>49862659

To be honest, it's kind of hard to even read that quote. You probably want to avoid purple prose wherever possible

>>49862552
Assuming you are this guy >>49862342.

Regarding the water and the other elements, and the central order vs. chaos theme, you are entirely correct about that and I never contested those points at all.

>Are you going to ignore that part?
Yes I am - I am not trying to create a mathematically perfect fusion of Catholicism here - I am cherrypicking elements from different religions I find interesting and trying to massage them into something new. If you actually just asked me to elaborate on the idea we could have avoided this whole weirdly hostile exchange.

The idea is that it's similar to Christiniaty in the there is a messiah figure who was killed by being burned rather than crucified, and by virtue of that fire has been adopted as a holy symbol, a force for purifying the body before the soul is sent to heaven. I'm also using the henotheistic structure of Zoroastrian deities, with angels as named demigods. So there are elements of each religion that I'm ignoring in an attempt to make some different.

>>49862791
*fusion of Catholicism and Zoroastrianism

>>49862487
>Yeah I think I'll abandon the idea. It raises too many questions.
Actually, the idea is really neat, but it's a question of how you integrate it into your world. Is your world generally based around realistic celestial body physics?

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/tg/ told me that if I create a wiki for my world that I'm completely autistic. Already have at about 50 pages of documentation on the geology/climatology.

How true is this?

>>49862791

I think, generally speaking, that creating things by saying "it's like X but without the Y, and also has some of A but with more B added on" is a poor way of creating. Ultimately you don't end up with something unique or fun, but with something that is a stitched up mess of something that used to be unique or fun. Ultimately players will be left with the feeling that they've seen it all before, because they have.

If you want to create something unique, you should do so in the context of your own game world rather than our own world. Like, how does magic work? Maybe this guy was a high level mage in a time before high level mages were common place. Maybe battle a dragon who roasted him alive, but he came out unscathed because of a protection from fire spell that only he knew at the time, leading to huge amounts of respect and awe and eventually religion. It also leads to interesting scenarios because as time goes on people will invent their own protection from fire spells and it will become common place, while those who have a mind to consider it start thinking maybe he wasn't some godlike figure after all, but just a man.

Just an example, but I hope you understand where I am coming from.

>>49862695
That art tho. That's actually a lot like what my wizards are like, desu.

My wizards know how to talk with the universe. This is really difficult and limited, but the more media you use to describe the magic, the more complex and powerful the effects. So everything goes into it, physical shape, sound, psychic shape, light, everything.

It's not enough to know magic, you have to be able to draw/sing/dance/hand sign it effectively. You've got to perform it. Not to mention meeting conditions for some magic such as time of day or state of mind. There's magic that's only possible if you're experiencing certain foods, or madly in love, or worshiping some specific thing.

So an excited old wizard surrounded by candles, wearing exotic robes and a stupid hat, holding a weird fuckin' dreidel staff and reading out of a book of magic isn't necessarily out of my canon. That's what it's all about.

>>49862970
You are completely autistic. But in a good way.

>>49862970
Worldbuilding is supposed to be autistic.

>>49862970

We're all autistic here, friend. You're in good company

>>49862695
Lower power ones usually work with empires to further their ambitions. High power ones don't give a shit and lock themselves in towers to study more magic. There's different kinds depending on the race or area. For example Wizards in the Arabian lands can control a spirit called a dijin using a special ring. Each Djin has a special power you can use (they're pretty much Stands but more independent). Dwarf "magic" all comes from their Gods, so cleric and wizard are the same thing to them. Some fighters and Knights can use magic to augment themselves too.

Interesting fact about my necromancy, you can't just resurrect a soldier you have defeated and turn him into your slave. See even the most mindless of zombie will keep doing what they have done in life. For example you resurrect a farmer he'll keep tilling even if there's nothing planted in his field. Same with a soldier, he'll fight what in life he saw as the enemy, usually you. If you are skilled enough you can convince them to fight a third enemy, but you need to be quite skilled.

There has been a case where one Necromancer was able to make friend fight friend, but he was very very powerful.
>>49862945
Not particularly, I think I can get away with it if I try really.

>>49862659
I love the name Gethsemane personally.

I made an attempt at minor edit of your post, so if you don't like it feel free to ignore.

>"When our ancestors first sought refuge from their screaming sun they found this land, and celebrated. But the land asserted itself, hardship after hardship, and revealed itself to be a cruel and terrible host. Their joy turned to bitterness. Without choice and burdened with the hostility the world's atmosphere, they found solace in a new plan. They had within them the means to isolate themselves from the harshness of the environment. With ingenuity they put to use their resources, sealing themselves away in what would be the foundations of our Habitats. They discovered that in time they could tame the hostile spirit of the world and bring it to heel. Bless the Founders, for in their determination Humanity prevailed.” – Io Parlum: Magister of History

>>49862695
The fundamentals of the world are built on early magic, possibly intrusions from other dimensions, or the world was the personal creation of ancient wizards. In the Wayward Ages, when the dimension was at a polar end of its cycle and thus having unstable fabrics, a large number of living things discovered their inner potential and detached their being from the physical plane to manipulate reality. It was in this era that the world and its physical laws were shaped, and the legacy of wizards lasts through the magical materials and beings they left behind. Human and animal brains were meshed into artificial husks that would later evolve to the races and monsters of the world, and peculiar elements would later shape the world's technology. Those wizards have long left the material realm behind after destroying their footsteps, and the new ones are much weaker, and primarily hedonistic autists. The apex of their modern foolishness was a rip in the fabric of reality that caused an unfortunate WW1 fleet to sail across dimensions and freeze to death, leaving godlike guns and bombs that became the delicacy staple of modern combat.

For the past few millennia, wizards have been relatively inconsequential, squabbling control of realms and artifacts built by greater men long ago. There are many rift travelers but few who can manipulate and build their own realms. The less powerful wizards travel the earth performing miracles.

Other "magic" does not involve the manipulation of reality, so wizards do not consider a thaumurge or a witch to be a magus.
Witchcraft is the communication between mortals and demons, these demons can essentially be thought of as post-physical wizards that can influence the world with mortal proxies.
Thaumaturgy is the application of artifacts left behind by wizards, primarily different fuels, crystals, metals, and oils. Thaumurges, or alchemists, use this for potions, weaponry, explosives, projectile magic, and construction.

>>49862695

Magic is an actual, physical location. The closer you're born to it the more magic you are infused with. It doesn't guarantee you'll be able to cast spells, but you'll almost certainly changed by it. Fantasy races and monsters arise from within its area of influence and expand outwards, while outside its area of influence large no-magic human kingdoms and empires have arisen who desperately try to hold their ground against whatever emerges.

>>49862970
>How true is this?
No, mental and neurological disorder that stuns your emotional intelligence and capability to relate to other people, drives you unable to deal with unexpected changes make you irrationally afraid of changing your routines makes you autistic.
This just means you found an odd hobby that you enjoy engorosing yourself in.

>>49862945
>>49863097
I really like the idea of a night world as well.

One possible solution is something similar to what Karl Schroeder does in his Virga series (it's a really great series that I recommend reading, Schroeder is one of my favourite worldbuilders), where light and warmth is provided by small scale localized 'fusion suns'. The Virga series takes place in a zero-g atmospheric balloon world the size of a moon and contained by some kind of graphene sphere shell.

If your setting is fantasy you could have a similar concept of miniature suns or great flames that are powered by magic and provide light over an area several miles across, enough to farm and provide life. But as soon as you travel out of range of the Great Flames it becomes an unforgiving icy wasteland, populated by undead or whatever.

>>49864038
>If your setting is fantasy you could have a similar concept of miniature suns or great flames that are powered by magic and provide light over an area several miles across, enough to farm and provide life. But as soon as you travel out of range of the Great Flames it becomes an unforgiving icy wasteland, populated by undead or whatever.

Interesting concept but I feel it takes away from the original idea of the land where it's a Transylvania style place.

I was planning a more Norse style area, maybe I'll use the concept for that instead.

Here's a question: is it possible to have what we'd consider to be a truly modern republic with medieval Europe level technology?

I know Rome was a republic at one point, but I'm not very familiar with how that actually worked so I'm not sure if it would count as a modern republic.

The US was founded when technology communication was pretty much at the same level as it was at in the middle ages, but they had guns. Are guns important for the development of a modern republic as an equalizing force?

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>>49864038
>), where light and warmth is provided by small scale localized 'fusion suns'.
Not sure when Schroeder writes his fiction, but this idea has been already explored and presented in a story cold The Long Rain by Ray Bradbury back in the sixties (back when people still thought Venus is going to be a water-filled jungle planet), where they are used to fuel and heat up little "Sun Domes", places of respite on an endless-rain soaked Venus.
Personally, I do like the idea a bit more without explaining or rationalization though, as part of a logic-free mythological fantasy world, where it just makes sense that some land is bad and therefor sun never shines there, no further explanations necessary. Land of endless night and snow, where only great, strange fungi that resemble geothermal vents grow sparsely by borrowing their roots so deep to the ground they reach the hot veins in the heart of earth. It could be interesting to talk about some kind of ever-nocturnal Inuit people with pale, almost transluescent skin, who build their villages around geysires and places where ethernal fire breaks up from the ground, or just grew accustomed to the cold, dried up by the ever-freezing wind and resembling undead, even though their black blood still circulates, albeit ever so slowly.
Something like that could be plenty of fun to explore. Sometime I regret I decided to go for a fairly grounded approach to worldbuilding and can't fit crazy shit like that in anywhere. Well, I have my own weird quirks: buoyant organic islands composed of entangled roots of strange mangroove like trees and shit.

>>49864187
>Here's a question: is it possible to have what we'd consider to be a truly modern republic with medieval Europe level technology?
No. That assumes a lot of things, including efficiency of infrastructure, social security, mandatory education and social mobility that is simply impossible to achieve with medieval technology. Not to mention it would imply a whole bunch of fundamental philosophical discoveries and concepts that themselves have a history and root in gradual perception of the world with expansion of our understanding of the world that again, is unlikely or downright impossible with medieval society.

Modern style republic requires wide-spread literacy, deeply rooted secularism in perception of matters of state, notion of natural competition of ideas, free market, general notion of human equality, efficient mass media and many, many others.

Republics like Rome or Athenes worked on a very different way.

>>49864187
No, guns require far less training than melee and armor. It's much easier to stage a revolt when you can give the proletariat guns compared to fighting against highly trained and armored knights.

>>49864190
> has been already explored and presented in a story cold The Long Rain by Ray Bradbury
I wasn't aware of that, but I'm sure Schroeder was playing off it intentionally. The actual story is more about exploring the effects of zero-g and how civilizations would exist in that kind of environment - the suns are more just a necessary worldbuilding foundation stone, not a central feature. Cities are basically giant wheels that spin to provide gravity, which is also a well understood concept, but interesting in a low tech world. It has a quasi-steampunk vibe and all sorts of cool zero-g ship battles.

>Personally, I do like the idea a bit more without explaining or rationalization though
I agree with everything you just said lol. There's enough interesting potential in exploring a world with no light that a bit of handwaving is worth the payoff.

>>49864252
This is a very informative post, thank you.

Could you elaborate on a bit on how Rome/Athens were different from modern republics? I know voting rights were limited to land-owning men and that kind of thing but beyond that I'm not sure.

If your answer is "go read wikipedia you lazy ass," I will accept that.

>>49864187

There have been republics all throughout human history. Towns, even in medieval times, were often republics even if they ultimately answered to a lord. Pagan tribes often had elected chiefs. The Holy Roman Empire was a republic in the sense that the Emperor was elected by prince-electors.

If by "modern republic" you mean that all levels of the government were elected, then probably not. At best you might style it after the Holy Roman Empire where the emperor is elected from one of the counts, dukes, or kings. Perhaps on top of that you could add three separate councils: one consisting of archbishops, one consisting of prince-mayors, and one consisting of the landed nobility. Then, at least, you wont have the emperor being the ultimate law of the land as he still has to answer to the councils.

To add to this, the idea of a nation or country wasn't really much of a think until late in Europe's history. It used to be that lands were inhereted by nobility, and there was never really a concept of "the land of the French people" until pretty recently.

I don't think that in a notEurope setting you'd ever be able to do away with the idea of nobility, but at least you may be able to reign in their power somewhat.

Do you prefer settings based on IRL cultures or more original?

I have a continent I developed from scratch over the years but I wonder if it's possible to get so alien that players go "wtf?"

>>49859998
Klatuu Barada Nikto.

>>49864624
Personally, I prefer IRL cultures that have been modified.

One that's been really popular is Dwarfs modeled after the Greek City States.

>>49862695
All reality is made up of strings or threads, like the universe is a giant tapestry with infinite complexity and layers. Wizards (spellcasters in general but whatever) can tug, pull, weave, etc these strings to alter reality.

Too bad they're also connected to the strings they pull. Wizards are paranoid because they realize how utterly vulnerable the universe is to getting fucked by idiot spellcasters. One wrong gesture causes that min-control spell to set a room on fire, or reduce yourself into component chemicals while trying to cast a shield spell.

And then someone causes a snarl and suddenly you get time/space paradoxes erasing the royal line from history, or sinking the entire realm into the astral sea.

It's dangerous, is what I'm getting at.

What are some good audio/documentaries about castles and fortifications? Written works are really inefficient for me, my autism allows me to memorize very long (15min+) pieces of audio to reference at later times

>>49864811
I watched a series that was produced recently with Dan Jones who is a hot new popular historian. It's pretty good and looks at five or six different English castles and talkes about why they were built and what purpose they served.

Here's the link to one of them, I watched them all on Youtube so you should be able to find them in the suggested videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRygHKX1bqA

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How do these mountains look /wbg/? I mean placement, obviously these are mostly placeholders.

>>49866242
Too many narrow mountain ranges, desu senpai. Does your world have 20+ tectonic plates?

Especially on the middle continent, you should consolidate them into two or three north/south ranges instead of seven or eight.

>>49862695
My magic is highly stable and has a reliable input:output system. The elementary particles of the universe are different, and I've barely begun working on the metaphysics.

Spellcasting can be best described as using your self/will to shape magical energy into a desired effect. The differing spellcasting 'classes' have different ways of accessing their own magic, and there are a variety of ways to manifest your will. I'd explain more, but you'd be better off taking a class at WIZARD COLLEGE.

Also fuck Wizards. Most of them are nerds, and none of them give a fuck.

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>>49866304
Noted.

How does this one compare?

>>49866455
Better. Some plateaus or volcanoes might be cool.

>>49866700
Where do you think are the best locations? My gut says western coast for volcanoes, eastern plateau on map-edge.

>>49860843
If you're still here, I'd claim some degree of knowledge on those so I'd like the challenge of helping you if I can.

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>>49862695
My magic is a highly sensitive topic in any case. Mages can spawn their respective element by simply willing it, both consciously and subconsciously. Even the most basic mages could knock the air out of your lungs, drain all water from your body, or set you on fire by a simple look.

To balance this out, several systems are in place to prevent abuse:
> Must be rich as fuck to afford the initial training
> Must spend years training mind and body before learning ANY magic
> All Knowledge of magic is kept under lock-and-key for mage eyes only
> If at any point in the learning process the subject shows signs of mental instability, execute them.
> If any magical tomes (completed or not) are found outside of major libraries, execute the offender and all those related
> Destroy the tome as well
> If an already established mage shows signs of instability, execute him

That's to name only a few.
Mages are far and few between as a result, but remain very prominent in world affairs none the less. They serve as government officials as kings or council members. They can be found as guards or historians. There have even been records of mercenary mages, wandering the lands of the worlds helping were they may.

>>49863122
I like how you call gods and demi-gods "wizards"

Is it wrong to answer questions with "nobody knows'?

>>49868300
There are several kinds of knowledge in fiction.
1) What is "known" in-setting. This will differ from culture group to culture group and even town to town.
2) What is "known" by the reader/player. This is revealed by their interaction with the characters and world, as well as through whatever information they get outside of the setting.
3) What is known by you, the creator.

Note the lack of quotation marks around the known in case 3. Not only can there by a difference between what is "known" in those three cases, but there SHOULD be a difference.

Yes, people in-setting are allowed to not know some things. Readers/players are allowed to not know things as well. But should you, the creator not know something? Sure. I personally prefer to know everything I can about my settings, but it's impossible to know absolutely everything. But there's a difference between not knowing and leaving things blank for later. Fucking Tolkien did that.

Also, a tabletop RPG gives you an amazing opportunity. You can leave things blank and let your players go and try to figure that shit out. And you can figure it out as you go!
Necessity is the mother of invention.

Go with your gut, anon.

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>>49862695
Magic is generally extinct. The only people who could outright use magic were the elves, who abused that power in an attempt to attain godhood and promptly fucked everything up. Their kingdom was doomed with the exception of 3 who became twisted elder gods then disappeared for thousands and thousands of years. They broke magic for everybody.

Magic instead is only inherent to nature, minimally at that, so the magic of the setting is more like alchemy.

>>49868300
It's fine, when used sparingly, but most of the time it shouldn't be put in so few words. In-universe people will have ideas, theories, wild guesses, tall-tales, parables, dogma, faith, etc to answer their questions. All of these may just be long-winded ways of simply saying 'nobody knows', but few will just admit it outright.

>>49866455
>>49866700
Also, what would be a clean-looking way to depict a plateau?

>>49862695
You can be an elementalist where you can manipulate elements with skill. This is magic endorsed by not-Christianity as it said to come from the creator himself. Unfortunately most of the knowledge is lost in the recent cataclysm and only earth magic going relatively strong, but still not very strong outside the place of power. Mages who hang around the Emerald College in this place of power are all sneering elitists with disdain for ungifted and disliked by people outside as well.

And sometimes spirits would single out someone and give them magic powers based on spirit's personality. Spirits might be benevolent or not and usually put conditions on people on how they can and can't use their powers. This is not endorsed by not-Christianity at all.

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>>49868300
>Is it wrong to answer questions with "nobody knows'?
Because, as cheesy as this might sound, you should never have anything if you fiction unless you have a reason to have it in. The origin of a certain element can be unknowable to your players, even to all inhabitants of your world, but YOU the creator should always know why did you put it in.
And the answer to "why is this here" does not have to be a causal one necessarily. It can be metaphysical, symbolic, it can exist for purely narrative purpose. You can have strange and inexplicable and surreal aspects of your world, but even surreal and strange has FUNCTION in fiction, it exists to serve some form of narrative purpose and intention. Whenever it is to challenge the audience by facing them with fear of the limit of their understanding, or to teach them how fickle our knowledge of history and principles and laws that govern the world are, to simply induce fear, or awe, or just laughs at times: it must have a FUNCTION for you within the world.
You should never throw in random shit because, you should always have a plan of sorts with what you are doing.

Because ultimately it's always all about relevance. If there is something in the world, but nobody can tell you why it's there, then it becomes irrelevant.

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>>49862695
>Tell me about your magic.

Sure, I drew this a while ago, but reiteration is good:

Mana permeates all realities: it's produced by the souls of all living things, from Moss, Frogs, Trees and Bogs- anything alive is producing Mana. Mana however, can only be manipulated by sapient beings; the conscious manipulation of mana is what is known as "magic".

Magic is organized into THREE schools of magic that are based on "where you get your mana from".

-Arcanism is the conscious sole manipulation of your own mana without any outside interference. Arcanism is the most traditional "wizard" and makes alchemy & enchantment possible, but at it's purest it produces and weaves sound, light, & energy.

-Naturalism is the symbiotic manipulation of both your own mana and the mana surrounding you. Naturalists are extremely diverse and varied in practice due to how fluid and adaptable this method is, but in a vacuum they manipulate earth, water, air, or fire.

-Divinism is the most detracted form of magic use as it's the manipulation of another beings mana, specifically; the mana doled out by divine beings with enormous souls. What a Divinist works is purely dependent on what their proprietor spirit/deity/demon provides for them; Divinists typically have no mana to call their own.

>>49861925
Im working on this right now actually, though Im cheating and saying the Night is in essence a magical event. It blocks the visible light of the sun, but the seasons still exist and the moon still shines. This coupled with strange new organisms that thrive in the eternal night help smooth things out. Though, there's a lot of weird shit in the setting such as Vast underground chambers trapped in an eternal magical Day(though the light grows dimmer during the 'night') Caused by the bodies of ancient powerful mages that struck a deal with gods that turned them into effectively giant bald sunlamps. While the surface is plagued by 'dungeons' living macro-organisms that spread pestilence and darkness and give birth to horrid monsters.

>>49862695
Comes in two flavors, either powered by what amounts to fantasy Heroin distilled from various compounds found in monsters or is 'divine' in that it comes from the tears of blood shed by giant glowing semi-divine humanoids trapped in eternal slumber as they hold back the darkness of the outside world. One will turn you into a monster the other one only works by hurting yourself to release the stored power.

>>49862695
Divine magic is the words of God spoke in the holy tongue. God is a grand liar, it's words delusion.

Arcane magic is taking the syntax of Gods words, and forcing your own lies.

So, does anyone do a 'lore bible'? For example right now Im working out the overarching history to where a story takes place and the major powers within it as well conventions of the setting and how day to day life is carried about in the wake of past events.

>>49873190

If you are doing a campaign, that sort of thing is fine as long as you don't make it required reading or force infodumps on your players. As a GM, you have to improvise a lot. The better you understand your setting, the more equipped you are to improvise on the fly because the setting is more cohesive in your head. You may have to explain some of this lore when it comes up, but as long as your lore is accessible and not this labrinthyn mess where the players have to hear three stories before they can get tot he one that acually explains the answer to their question, you should be good.

For a book setting? Go for it. Much like an RPG, you should never be including ALL of what makes your world tick in full view of the reader, because it largely doesn't matter. But if you have thought it through, the fact that it all meshes together will come through even if you never actually sit down and tell them everything you came up with.

>>49873338
That's mostly what it is there for. eventually this will be a hack of the Kartharsys system but for now its to get my ass ready for NanoWrimo and create a coherent enough setting that I can refer back on. And also to help get me back in the habit of handwriting stuff as its been way to long since I've sat down and just wrote out info like this.

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Alright, so I'm working on a map type object for my current world building project.

Items of interest include
The desert moon is home to the 2nd sapient race of the setting, and acts as the day night cycle for the earth like planetoid.
Atmospheres collect about planets due to the will of the planet as all things have will no matter how diffuse these wills might be. Imparting will upon the aether is how magic works.
Atmospheres get turbulent the weaker that will becomes (farther from the magic source (the sun), smaller celestial object, smashing into and fighting against another planetary body's will, etc).
Landfall occurred somewhere around 200 years ago, the goal being for it to be long enough ago for sky ships to not have been a thing when it happened, but soon enough that it was still in the minds of people when said ships came about.
Sky ships are magi-flying boats not space ships, tech level is less coal more magic 18th-19th century or so.
Purple planet is all about those acute toxins and eternal night as flat earth is hogging all it's sky. It has bio-luminescent fungal forests down wind of the center, and a giant cricket "god" the size of several buses welded together.
Ice planet is far away, it's kind of shitty and nobody really knows much about it. I'll throw the not-pluto fucker farther down once I work on this more.
The sun might be God, it is sometimes called the aether source, and is also responsible for what passes for gravity.
That said I've still got a lot to go, anyone have any thoughts, maybe a suggestion or two?

So I'm writing up an underwater campaign world and i've run into a problem. I didn't like my draft of a crustacean-folk race that is mean't to replace the archetype of the dwarf of the playable races.

These folk are divided into two groups, a Crab-folk, and a Lobster-folk. I have a pretty good idea of what I want th Crabfolk to be like, but I didn't like what the Lobsterfolk were, which were these weird psychic things. How it was implemented encroached too much on the Sea Elves design.

Any ideas on what Lobsterfolk could be?

>>49874982
You know the idea of how a lobster can't die naturally (which isn't true but anyway)? Make them a race of ageless beings that are secretive mystics who know things that man was not meant to and sometimes prevent people from doing things because they don't know what they're messin' with.

>>49875051
The weird seclusive guru shtick is sort of taken up by the Clampeople, who cannot move from their shells and create strange mystical pearls that are the focus of many magics. A weird gooey humanoid center within the shell.

>>49875106
What are the crab people like?

>>49875526

Look like crab, talk like people.

>>49875564
how do they taste?

>>49875526
They're incredibly protective and secret over their own to the point of xenophobia, outside of their lands they can be slow to trust others but once a bond is made it's thicker than blood. They live chiefly near hydro-thermal vents, collecting the minerals from there. Their druids are geologically minded, expanding and creating more vents and harnessing the minerals that are dissolved in them through alchemical processes.

>>49875575
Like Chicken
of the sea.

>>49875612
Maybe the lobsters can be Nomadic? Nature loving wanderers as opposed the the crabs quasi-industrial stance?

>>49875689
Well from what ive read about lobsters, they tend to scavenge and they're assholes to one another. So maybe these weird scavenger horders who live in caves, adorn themselves and their homes with knicknacks, and don't trust any of their own kind to the point of interactions with one another is couched in double meanings of suspicions and threats.

>>49875689

They should definitely be lead by a Ghenghis Khan lobster who is intent on leading his lobster hordes to conquer the whole sea.

>>49875725
Sounds good to me.

>>49875051
Actually, by contrast I can better imagine lobster people acting like roving barbarians that propagate so aggressively and only die when proactively murdered, so that the only thing keeping their population stable is them killing each other constantly.

>>49873703
I like it!

>>49875849
Interesting. Maybe he could combine it with this >>49875725

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>>49875689
>>49875725
>>49875734
>>49875849
>aggressive, adventurer-fodder lobster people
>presumably much larger than normal lobsters
You're asking for a "For the Greater Good!" cannibalistic genocide. I had the same issue with my Pig Orcs tasting like bacon; they almost got completely wiped out.

>>49875926
It would be difficult to cook, as 99% of the world is underwater with only three known dry "bubble" cities that are all human dominated.

>>49876010
You steam lobsters. Seems very easy to do with geothermal heat and an excess of water.

>>49876010
volcanic vents, clamagic?

>>49876010

>fire magic just boils an area of water

It could totally work.

>>49876051
>>49876053

I'm just going to hope my players don't want to eat lobster. Especially lobster that talks to you.

>>49876087
Eating tasty food that once had a will of its own fulfills a domination fantasy. You have to expect them to try it, especially if you enforce rules on eating/rations.

Is explaining most of my world and how it works via GODS LMAO an okay thing to do?

>>49859831

I want to include some references to the past exploits of a starship captain that is a tactical genius, but the problem is that I'm not a tactical genius.

What are some good creative ways that a lower tech starship (nothing more powerful than nukes and a fast way of getting them there) could defeat a ship of a more advanced (but not enormously more advanced, plasma shooters and stuff) spacefaring race?

So far the best I have been able to come up with is burying a bunch of nukes in a moon and, at the right time, using them to blow huge chunks of rock and clouds of debris into the path of a fast traveling ship, giving them nowhere to evade and causing massive structural damage when they plow through it.

>>49873703
Looks cool.

>>49877486
Predicting the path an enemy ship will take to pursue them and laying inert missiles like mines in that path.

Use of multiple successive slingshot maneuvers in a complex Jovian moon system to ambush an enemy, sending missiles at them from multiple angles simultaneously at unexpected velocity, leaving them no room to evade.

Evading a pursuing enemy ship by diving suicidally close to a flare star and piloting it safely through the prominences. (This is more an 'incredible piloting skill' than 'incredible tactical skill', but w/e.)

Ambushing an enemy vessel by blowing a hole in the ice crust of a gas giant's water-moon and hiding in the subsurface ocean, then having an allied ship lure the enemy by the hole in the crust, breaching the surface and attacking it like an old-fashioned ballistic missile submarine.

Ambushing yet another ship by faking an enemy distress signal and luring it in to point-blank range.

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>>49875864
>>49877496
Thanks, I've fiddled with a few things, but most of my current setting progress is the fluff and rule document side of things. Also in hopes of getting a few extra bites I'mma rattle off some more info nuggets.

The aedda live on the desert moon, and are a blend of Bedouin and fennecs. My goal with them was to hold a token cute anime beast race to their physiology. Basically their pseudo hand forepaws are fucking garbage, and actually developed more to weave the aether than for tool use. As a result their tech level is pathetic, they lack a written language, and all of this is coupled with a very short lifespan.
They were known to humans before they were properly discovered with the invention of sky ships. As powerful sandstorms occasionally threw a few bodies over the edge. Though the idea that the aedda were the dominate race up there was quite the surprise.

All this talk of lobsters is also relevant, taking a little inspiration from nausicaa the earth like's seas contain some of those good old fashion never aging always growing lobsters. Basically gods at this point in a loose and vague sense of the word. May have been responsible for the land-fall.

The aether isn't proper space, it's more of a less dense fluid, on it's own it's very cold making heavy winter gear a must for traveling.

Group organisations - Which of these seem interesting and why? how could I expand these?

>Major houses and clan based groups working on behalf of countries (carrying out tasks that these would find politically questionable so as to prevent all out war)
>Trade guilds hiring out small independent groups for protection/attacks on other guilds
>City/Habitat based groups attacking other habitats for small scale land grabs

I've got something a little different for thread denizens. I'm working on a screenplay, a cyberpunk heist thing (very influenced by shadowrun), and the main character is a hacker, learning to navigate the fully immersive VR of the matrix. What I'd like to figure out, is how to show that this guy is hacking a device or whatever, with as little explanation as to the mechanics as possible (no one wants to listen to someone monologue-explain whats happening), but still able to build suspense. I find a lot of settings use some sort of metaknowledge, either in how the rules work or the protagonist explaining what's happening, and I want this to be as action-focused as possible.

I know it's not exactly /tg/, but you guys are good at this.

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How would you guys feel with a setting that is mostly one huge city with different parts, and wilderness all around it.

Everything is extremely dangerous, and there are a few towns and small encampments near the city, connected by ancient roads, but it's really dangerous to go outside.

People in the city live like shit (maybe have the city divided between factions?), and people in the 'wilderness' have a much better time regarding food and freedom, but they have to deal with raiders/monsters/animals/fucked up stuff every day, or maybe not for a month, but then you're killed in your sleep by undead nightmares.

The wilderness would be mostly forests, but also wastelands and swamps and everything. There MAY be other cities really far away, but up until now, nobody has established contact.

It could be post apocalyptic in a sense, before this the world was 'normal' and then one day, something went wrong. The different factions of the city could've been nations from before.

It's fantasy by the way.

What do you think? Rough idea, needs more work

>>49878841
Malifaux with less sand?

>>49878841

I had an idea for a similar setting. Basically, the city is humanity's last stand, with high level wizards maintaining a ward against evil over the entire place, and if it is interrupted then humanity gets fucked for the last time.

I think a lot of fun could be had in such a setting. Exploring ruins beyond the safety of the city, preventing factions from ruining the last, uncovering plots to sabotage defenses from within, and so on.

>>49878918
Is Malifaux good? Sell me it.

>>49877942
What's with the broken-off bits of the center continent?

>>49878918
What do you mean?

>>49878841
Sounds like Ravnica from M:tG. It's still a broad enough concept that you could do original stuff with it though.

>>49877942
>>49873703
You say that air is held on by the will of the continental plates; is there a reason that the plates want there to be air around them, or is that one of the great mysteries of the setting?

Can lewd female-female contact be safely integrated to a culture without instantly coming across as magical realm?

Specifically, females kiss friends and family as a greeting or hug type thing, while men shake hands. Young women commonly have sexual relations but it is not considered sex or love nor is it very taboo, just something that the culture collectively agrees to keep under the radar without questions asked.

It makes perfect sense within the culture and the deceptive high-strung attitude of the people but I don't want it to be blatant or weird, just something subtly implied.

>>49882356
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C1y_-5VIL4

>>49882356
The real question is why are you including it?

If the origin of the cultural oddity is because you like it then, no there's not really a way for it to come across as not magical realmy.

If it isn't, you'll get strange looks maybe and people will probably think it's there because magical realm but you'll know it's not, so do whatever man. Either way people will think it of you.