/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

>>50064473

http://www.hexographer.com/ - i've used this once for a Nation Wars game, and it was alright for that, but how does it hold up in more gritty PC-driven games? Do the hexes throw players off?

>>50061267
>Would it be more reasonable for humans in a space opera setting to have mixed together into one race?
>Or would they split apart even further for fear of individual cultures being forgotten? (Black people want their own planet, Japs fuck off and live on ships, etc)
Both are possible and equally interesting.

>>50065155

Peter F Hamilton had 'ethnic streaming' colonies being a way for a pressure-cooker overpopulated earth to avoid colonies forming nations and nationalism when a FTL drive was developed. It's partially 'usa republican beliefs about dem race-mixin' not being dem good idea' but also partially that earth in his setting is a fucked up, overpopulated hellhole for a lot of people and anything that reduces the psychological stress on colonists is a good thing and contributes to planets 'succeeding' (aka developing strong economies) which is the goal of space exploration/colonization. The point of his books, also, is that the focus on economic success/expansionism is effectively holding back that human civilization in terms of technical/scientific development and social development, and the main character uses a deus ex machina alien artifact to attempt to fix it at the end of the series.

>>50065155
>>Would it be more reasonable for humans in a space opera setting to have mixed together into one race?
I don't think it's reasonable to expect a complete nivelization of various human ethnical and racial groups under any circumstances. In fact, with extending the amount of "ground" we would have to live in would probably encourage further separation and development of entirely new cultural groups and identities. Also, also, on a purely aesthetical level, I just find it far more compelling.

That said, I would focus on different cultures rather than different races. I would not assume that blacks would found their own planets, mongols their own etc... but rather that people of similar beliefs (that is similar ideology and culture, which happens to usually overlap - to a big degree with ethnical background) to end up pursuing their own colonies and their own places to live in. So say: western religious conservatives (who largely happen to be usually fairly wealthy and white) deciding to persue their own new-new-England style vision and fuck off to colonize their own planet, while the lowest social strata, which - let's face it - in America is more predominantly black or hispanic - staying back and perhaps developing their own different culture.
Meanwhile cultures like Chinese or Japanese, or even Russians really have very little, or flat-out no interest in multiculturalism and it's pretty naive to assume they'll suddenly develop that ambitions in the future.
Keeping the ethnical and cultural differences in humanity even into the future allows you a lot of space to play around more. Conservative/Capitalist empire of China among the stars, Hindu worlds, space-Amishs, the federation of united Slav's formed by exiled former Russian Slavic supremacist etc... all can be a lot of fun. Just don't stick to race exclusively: consider religion, culture, subculture, ideologies, more abstract ideas of identity like nationality: culture in general.

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Posting this, only a small update this time, I added the short chapter 6 to explain the existence of nations.

As a bonus I'll post a map of my world in a subsequent post.

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>>50065542
And here's a map of my world. Note that the names in the text is different from the names on the map, that is to reflect natural change over time, and the rise and fall of kingdoms.

>>50065542
>he actually went through with it
I wish I was as autistic as you.

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>not spooky edition
There's always next year I guess


>Does your setting have undead?

>What kinds are present? Zombies, skeletons, ghosts, wraiths, liches?

>How do you kill each type?

>How are the different types of undead created?

>>50065555

That's a really pretty map. The place-names being similar in some cases to historical place-name-generation is nice too. What's the plot you're going to run in it/running in it?

So I'm in the process of building my first setting, nothing too fancy so far just a Demi-HRE with an Empress Elect running the show and smaller kingdoms that contribute a tithe to the whole.

To explain the relative flavor each little mini-nation I've come up with a tithe system based on the concept of "Blood, Sweat and Tears" If a nation chooses blood they supply troops. If they choose Sweat they produce arms and other goods but I'm stuck on what to choose for Tears.

It needs to be something traumatic enough that most nations would avoid it but those that do as a result see neither their manpower nor economy drained to feed the greater empire. Any ideas?

>>50065555
You fucked up the "Serpent's Tounge". Also that right rectangular landmass looks weird as shit, whether or not it's realistic.

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>>50065563
>not writing a study bible for your world's mythology
No but seriously, it's very rewarding to write this. Especially since I can put notes into the text itself I can make some more subtle movements in the prose easier to explain. I'm honestly surprised how good it's turning out, with interesting characters blending the human characteristics of Greek mythology and the more all-powerful qualities of the Abrahamic God, and adding in even more "new-agey" stuff as well. After a certain point it almost writes itself. It's really fun writing mythological explanations for things, like fire being destructive, the existence of different peoples, the movement of the sun, existence of the stars, and the existence of matter itself. An interesting addition that I did not mention is that because of the way I set it up, the entire world is literally made of the God himself.

A couple of things I don't (explicitly) mention in the text is how I mirror a lot of stuff from real mythology. Like the creation and subsequent rebellion of helpers of Gods.

It probably helps that I've studied Greek Mythology and read the Bible though.

>>50065586
Thanks. I just enjoy world-building for the joy of it. I want to create an expansive and interesting world. Creating a religious document is pretty important to that, if we look at our own history. This means I can reference it in other works.

Posting a colour image of the coat of arms used in the map just to have this not just be a wall of text.

>>50065623
That shield looks like the kind of panties traps are always wearing.

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>>50065621
It's rectangular because cartographers from the past usually just extrapolated how the shoreline would look, instead leaving the interior blank, like in this old map of America.

And yes, I hadn't noticed that misspelling. But hey, let's chalk it up to one of those cartographer "copyright" marks.

>>50065641
Stop going through with things it's making me feel bad.

>>50065663
Worldbuilding is more rewarding when you actually put pen to paper instead of just exploring it in your head, I promise.

>>50065555
>imperial republic
Do you have the political knowledge of a 5 year old?

>>50065680
I hope not, explain to me how that is stupid.

>>50065696
republic:
noun
a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
empire
empire
an extensive group of states or countries ruled over by a single monarch, an oligarchy, or a sovereign state.
Two vastly incompatible forms of government, there is a reason the Romans didn't have Republican Emperors.

>>50065719
Oh don't be a pedantic cock. Rome reffered to itself as an Imperial republic both during and after the rise of the Caesars

>>50065719
Well first off there's this:
>>50065721

But then there's the issue of definition. "Empire" has had different definitions through history, the one I'm using here is a collection of nations and ethnic groups ruled as one, in this instance in the form of a republic.

In short, I'm using the word "empire" not to denote political system, but ethnic diversity, like a lot of nations through history has done. I was considering using federation instead, but that word has a more "modern" feel to it, since it implies democracy.

My republic could be an elitist one, thus a form of oligarchy, which would fit your narrow definitions. Furthermore, even within your definitions you can probably see that you could construct sovereign states that would fit that moniker.

In short, part two, empires need not be ruled by monarchs, thus a republic can be an empire.

>>50065721
A pedantic cock would be someone investigating mountain ridges for realism; I have but acknowledged the abysmal error made.
And no, the Romans never referred to themselves as Imperial republicans, being the people to have invented and experienced both of these forms of government.
>>50065755
An autocrat is required to rule an empire; he becomes the emperor, and democratic conduct is rare in an empire. An oligarchy is just as autocratic and tyrannical, implying that the reigns of power are held in the few hands of the elite, and not the masses.

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>>50065782
>An autocrat is required to rule an empire
I wholeheartedly disagree.

>democratic conduct is rare in an empire
Again I disagree

>An oligarchy is just as autocratic and tyrannical, implying that the reigns of power are held in the few hands of the elite, and not the masses.
Republics can be oligarchical to an extent. It's more of a sliding spectrum.

To be frank with you I don't think your definitions are too narrow to be accurate over any significant period of time. I appreciate your input though, but I'm sticking with the name, and I'm sticking with my (in my opinion) better, more widely-held, and more accurate definitions of these things.

>>50065801
>To be frank with you I don't think your definitions are too narrow to be accurate over any significant period of time.
And that should be DO think, sorry.

>>50065782

>the romans invented empires

Fucking what.

>the romans invented the oligarchic republic

What x 2

>republics are democracies, like rome

So you're trolling, then. Nicely done, my man.

>>50065719
1. In what way are those two incompatible?

2. Are you going to tell me that "National Socialism" is impossible, too?

>>50065801

To be fair, the idea of an 'empire' and a 'republic' are fairly different. Generally the type of leadership determines the term. The conquering or ruling of disparate areas/identities is only tangentially related.

That doesn't mean you can't use the term 'imperial republic', though. It just implies a weird merger of the two systems of government, which you're implied is what you were aiming for.

>>50065840

Well, 'national socialism' is a codeword for 'racist military dictatorship' in the modern sense. Like how communism is a codeword for 'oligarchic centrally-controlled dictatorship from a revolutionary origin, as seen through the lens of terrified capitalist propaganda'.

>>50065782
lol yeah wtf is up with all this "British Empire" thing I mean the British were a democracy???
>>50065865
So are you saying it's impossible?

>>50065623
>Especially since I can put notes into the text itself I can make some more subtle movements in the prose easier to explain.
Yeah, perspective and historical ambiguity are my personal favorite aspect of worldbuilding as well. I guess I'm really inspired by Borges and his stories like the Tlon, I generally like to write pseudo-historical documents where I pretend the "historical text" itself was then translated and noted by some future historian or scholar, adding notations that comment on it from a historian perspective, which allows me to add additional levels of depth or exposition to the problem.
I have to translate some of my writings one day...

>>50065879
Yeah look at all the democracy their colonies had

>>50065999
I wanted to write a story which appeared to be a fairly standard heroic legend, but which told the REAL story in the editing/reinterpretation/censorship that had gone into it, but I was too lazy.
>>50066015
Well done anon, you get a sweet for being so clever.

>>50065680
>Do you have the political knowledge of a 5 year old?
Dude, do you not know the fact that Rome had a senate alongside of it's emperor? Or that the British Empire had the house of commons and parliament?
You never heard of Estate monrarchy and constitutional monarchies?
Is this a troll?

>>50066026
>I wanted to write a story which appeared to be a fairly standard heroic legend, but which told the REAL story in the editing/reinterpretation/censorship that had gone into it, but I was too lazy.
Yep, that is probably the best way to approach world-building.
This, and telling real stories through the "distorted" lense of mythology are my two favorite aspects of the exercise. My two personal "masterworks" (e.g. the only works I'm somewhat proud off) is a sort of a rather standard mythological schlock about how humans were elevated to be equals with gods, only to eventually anger them and be casted back on earth to live shitty lives: a fairly common "fall of man" type of myth, but I'm pretty proud of it because if you actually read between the lines, you can find out it's a mythological retelling of the actual (a semi-plausbile sci-fi style) events that took place in very early history of my world and resulted in an actual fall of a highly advanced civilization. I also wrote like five different versions of the myth, two of them rather radically different from the rest, to represent how the mythology changes, diffuses into different cultures, how mythology lives it's own life through oral culture.

The second is a sort of a heroic epic capturing story that was originally intended to be the root of the originally planned RPG campaign (which I eventually abandoned since it would require too much handholding and railroading and I found out sandbox-style adventures are more suited for my players and world style) I started world-building for. In that case, the intention is pretty much what you said: the real story being in the notes and comments and notes, which both expand on the world and tell their own history of cultural influences shaping the tale, rather than in the epic itself, which is rather intentionally very schematic and traditional.

>>50065879

>So are you saying it's impossible?

Depends which 'version' of the term you're talking about. There's a lot, most of them meaningless.

>>50066079
I'm currently deciding whether I want any patriarchal figures in my text. Sort of like Abraham, Moses, etc. or if I should skip that to avoid making the parallels to the Bible too obvious?

>>50066581
Well, there are two different types of patriarchal characters though they do tend to overlap in some way).
One is a masculine archetype. These tend to be gods and some types of heroes (hero here in the rather traditional sense): these are characters that simply represent the masculine principles in the world: examples could be Herculies, but also Zeus, Raa, Usirev (Osiris, if you want), Thor, Suza-no-ó.
The other type is a cultural hero. Unlike the characters above, cultural heroes exist for the purpose of giving culture (which is associated with order, and hence masculinity) legitimacy. They usually tend to be associated with some (fictional) "founding of a culture/nation/other type of identity) act. Often at the expense of angering someone or something - usually gods.
Example of these patriarchal figures would be Prometheus, Hór (Horus), Romulus, Gilgamesh or The Yellow Emperor. One could argue that religious prophets, especially in the Abrahamic tradition (Moses, Christ, Mohammed) fall into that cathegory as well, as they found and give legitimacies to certain state-establishing religion (here, I consider even the original catholic Church as essentially a state).

You might want to consider which one (or if both) you want to go and what is their specific purpose within the narrative. It's very difficult to imagine a plausible religous system that does not feature at least ONE such character (from either categories, but mostly from both), so I would definitely not avoid it entirely. But it's a question of the specificity of their role. A clear messiah (AKA Moses, Christ, Mohammed) might be a bit on the nose. But again, it's a question if your religion is based on messianism or not. Is your religion based around an idea of a "definitive" salvation idea? If yes, you are going to need a prophet of some sort one, so you won't be able to avoid it.
If not, you can partially avoid the idea by say, employing only the masculine hero type, not the cultural one.

>>50066823
>A clear messiah (AKA Moses, Christ, Mohammed)

Only Jesus claimed to be a Messiah
Mohammed was a prophet and never claimed to be anything else. Same with Moses

>>50067081
Messiah is one that brings the option of salvation to people. It does not if you are of divine substance (as Jesus is generally assumed to be) or merely a man blessed with the option to interpret divine guide to salvation through prophetic powers (as Moses and Mohammed did). All three of them are proper messianic figures.

>>50065155
>>Would it be more reasonable for humans in a space opera setting to have mixed together into one race?
People naturally form distinct tribes based on countless factors, but with culture, race and religion being the strongest ones. Strong ethno-racial and religious groups would naturally form tight-knit bonds in space, where trust is even more important than on the relatively-more-friendlier environment of a Terran planet.

There would be Chinese, Hindus, Nigerians, Russians, Christians, Muslims, Japanese and other strong-knit groups in space. Whether American and European whites survive their current multiculturalism craze to develop their own space societies remains to be seen.

>>50067124
Meant Messiah as per this definition:
>the promised deliverer of the Jewish nation prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.

>>50067177
Would have to say you're misguided.

Large scale space exploration and colonization would require infrastructure and cooperation of a unified planet.
We'd be seeing something akin to Trek before we ever got beyond our solar system.

I've been watching a lot of Britbong nature documentaries lately and honestly every video I've come away with a few bits and pieces I add into my world. David Attenborough ones are probably some of the better ones

>>50067303
>the promised deliverer of the Jewish nation prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.
Actually, that is precisely who Moses WAS to the Jewish people. But if we want to get to the nitty-gritty of the matter, the word Messiah is derived from Hebrew hamashiach, which means "the chosen one", implied "the one chosen by god". Within the context of Jewish sacred texts it refers both to the highest priest of the Jewish sacred hierarchy, or a king (one that is identified as appointed to his rule by - jewish - God, so not every king is recognized as Hamashiach - for an example, David and his successors were recognized as Melekh Hamasshiah - "King appointed by God", while say, king Nebuchadnezzar (or his son) famous from Isaiah's prophecy, were recognized as Melekh (king), but since their actions were not aligned to Jewish interests, they were not recognized as Hamashiah).

The modern spelling and modern understanding of the word comes Christian adoption of the word (in the greek Christian traditions, the word "khristos" is used as a literal translation of the word "Hamashiah"), and while derived from the original meaning of "chosen one" it gained the more specific meaning of "chosen (by god or divine provenience) to lead to salvation". It's in this meaning that we use it today in modern religionistics and psychology.

From a Christian perspective, of course Christ is the only "true" messiah, but others, including Prophet Muhammad, or say, Prophet Mani are still recognized as fake messiahs, as they do actually still promise salvation, just not a true one. So they do respect the word "Messiah" as an identificator of someone promising salvation, and not necessarily Christian.

Though from a theological perspective, you could make an argument that Christ is the only of the lot that offered salvation through his ACTIONS, while others, like Muhammad or Mani only offered salvation through their words, frequent and cute little Christian argument in favor of their own religion.

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Wouldn't a cyberpunk society have pure and traditional families with third wave feminism a dying and demonized philosophy? We're sorta cyberpunk already but going further Earth is about to become more traditional than it was decades ago.

Third wave was destined to die from the very beginning simply by natural selection, except by philosophy rather than genes. You have generations of women who are abused and told to be sex objects by feminists, but a major part of that is because of modern technology and communication. The sexually liberated do not develop any meaningful skills or personality, and in the rare case that they do, men would rather marry and reproduce with someone who hasn't slept around. This will lead to mass suffering when millions of feminist women grow old and lose their primary skill, sex, and they might not even have to grow old before they effectively become useless due to robots and mtf transgenders being better sex objects than women, with the latter being a largely traditionalist demographic that isn't limited to objectification like robots. Even now we see men becoming gay or dropping out of the mating pool because they can't get a traditional wife and they don't want to marry a libertine. So, the people that reproduce and inherit society are the traditional families. They won't be wholly traditional, they will have far more utilitarian and post-modern beliefs than the old traditionalists, but they will operate on a traditional family system nonetheless.

I guess it's something controversial to touch on when it's not the focus of a universe but I always thought it was weird that cyberpunk often depicts men and women having equal roles.

>>50067912
Cyberpunk was an awful word choice here, more of just near-future with high technological advancement

>>50067753
Righto, you make your point.

I really shouldn't debate theology, it's not my area of expertise. Thanks for bein' patient with me.

>>50067912
First of all, that seems like a thinly veiled political and moral rant and I'm not sure if it suits a world-building threads in the first place.
Second of all, generally speaking, cyberpunk actually does not concern itself so much with direct speculative socio-political commentary (within the community where the term emerged, feminism is not yet very internalized and as such has not been viewed with much critical regard, mostly just as a general "women of the future probably won't be taking shit and will kick ass as much as men will" sentiment), and is more of an aesthetic or broadly philosophical notion.
Third, you are using the wave datation wrong: the vehement and drastic attack on traditional notions of family happened in the SECOND wave feminism, in the radical left wing intellectual circles of the 60's and 70's and third wave actually had to tone it down a lot. And since this shit has been around for half a century now, according to your logic it should be dying out already (two generations have passed, actually): yet we see it as strong, if not stronger than ever. It's pretty naive to assume that the sexually liberated anti-traditional-family people lack basic social skills or avoid reproducing what so ever. As much as I wish that was happening, reality seems to beg to differ. It leads to general weakening of social bonds and integrity, and breeds and fuels conflict, true, but the effect seems to be much more subtle and is also compensated by the increased safety and social viability that comes with dramatic increase of wealth and power in western societies, which is actually necessary for such ideological trend to remain viable in the first place.

Cyberpunk generally does not give two shits about such things in the first place. Again, it's not a political commentary: it's an aesthetic category based on essentially on the feelings and impressions about future people had in eighties, driven ad absurdum.

>>50067303
>Large scale space exploration and colonization would require infrastructure and cooperation of a unified planet.
That's what people said about any kind of space exploration, including low orbit. In practice those turned out to be ethno-national efforts, with only a tiny bit of cooperation on things like the ISS. China is 20% of the human population and India 16%; they could, if they chose, develop space exploration entirely on their own. It's what China is doing right now, actually, building their own space station and moon/mars effort. Parochial self-interest generally overcomes any lovey-dovey feelings of cooperation.

>>50067912

please don't sperg your tradishunul fumulies shit over the worldbuilding thread

sci fi has so many problems in that regard already

lots of very intelligent, imaginative people tell me they 'don't read sci fi' 'because of all the political shit'

>>50068562
>lots of very intelligent, imaginative people tell me they 'don't read sci fi' 'because of all the political shit'
Those people are definitely not intelligent, and probably not imaginative either. Those people are fucking morons.

>>50068616

Mhm. Heavy-handed political propaganda is considered some of the classics in sci-fi. If i'd read those first instead of Stross and Hamilton, i'd consider the genre suspect, too.

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Yo /tg/, homebrewing a campaign, and one of the components is mysterious and magical potions. I have a d100 pool of thrown and ingested potions. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just funny/fluff. Any ideas for some of these potions?

>>50068749
>Heavy-handed political propaganda is considered some of the classics in sci-fi.
Really? Because where I live, sci-fi is definitely not associated with anything like it, in fact it used to be a very popular genre mostly because it was one of the few forms of western media that slipped through the cracks of the old regime and was generally free of bullshit politics that littered most of the regime-controlled media.

I used to read a fuckton of classic sci-fi and I can't really think of any particularly strongly political work. Maybe Starship Troopers, but that book is so deeply steeped in irony and the author was such a weird fucking bastard that it's basically impossible to say if he serious, satirical, or just contrarian and controversial for the sake of it.

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>>50065571
>Does your setting have undead
Yes

>What kinds are present
Liches and their servants appearing as various forms of undead depending on the whims and taste of the lich in question.

Ghosts are their own class.

>How do you kill each type
The only type which can be killed fully are liches, and that is through destruction of the head, heart, and how ever many phylacteries they have stashed away.

The others require severing their connection with their lich.

Ghosts can only be exorcised.

>How are different types created?
Liches are the remnants of the Elven race. To become a lich, one must enter into an apprenticeship with an Elven patron as a necromancer helper. It generally requires hundreds of years of dedicated study and work, requiring the necromancer to artificially extend their life. While extremely rare for an Elf to take on an apprentice, it's not unheard of. A few operate on a system which makes them more akin to vampires.

The other undead are created mostly through the uwilling collection of specimens through raids on the warmer Northern shores. Necromancer apprentices are often planted in port towns to pave the way for these raids.

There's no surefire way to create a ghost, but it's generally agreed that someone must have suffered a great deal in life. They escape even the liches' understanding.

In universe, the elves used to be protectors of the cycles of life. Some became obsessed the notion of death and of ghosts who spat in the face of this natural order. This was the beginning of necromancy. As more and more were pulled in, the two factions split. The normal elves began to die out, and the liches went South to study in solitude. Now, they're all islands in of themselves. No two elves have any feeling of racial connection with the other, and they jealously guard their secrets from one another. With an endless supply of undead minions and willing apprentices, they don't need each other.

>>50065571
>Does your setting have undead?
They feature frequently in myths and stories and folk beliefs, but they don't really exist in my world. Not in the traditional sense at least. The closest to undead (and presumably the source of many undead-related beliefs in my world) are the Old Ones, formerly humans who went through a process that made them nearly immortal, but did not prevent aging processes entirely. After few thousand years, they look very much how you would imagine an "undead": dried up husks reminding one of a mummy or a zombie (though without the festering or exposed internal organs), often deformed, with visible bones under thin, gray parchment-like skin, dull grey eyes deeply sunk into the skull, no or little hair.
Most of them are immobile, many blind, and generally entirely oblivious to the world that surrounds them. Those that had not gone flat out mad, or withdrew entirely into the depths of their own mind, still tend to care little about regular mortals and frequently show little signs of intelligence or consciousness.
But still, they are technically alive. Their hearts beat, their blood, though often thick as a jam still circulates. They still breathe, eat or drink, even though it may be only a few gulps of condensed water licked off a wet stone, few bites of raw meat of a poor critter they managed to grasp as it was running past them every couple of months.

>How do you kill them?
By smashing their skull or piercing their heart or lungs, by drowning them or burning them. They can recover from serious injuries, their immunity can deal with almost any infection and they can regenerate well beyond normal humans, although the process can take centuries and the regeneration is never "perfect" (they don't grow back lost limbs or anything like that, though they can recover from say, damaged liver).
But major damage to any vital organ is just as fatal to them as it is to humans.

Why the fuck is naming countries so hard? I'm trying to make a fairly huge world for a quest I'm planning on running in a few months, and having trouble coming up names for all the countries, duchies and cities

>>50069776
Would you happen to be arbitrarily naming them instead of using a basic language type and drawing up from there?

Thinking of an alt-hist setting to run a GURPS campaign in, does anyone have an idea for a world in which the Americans never invaded Japan and instead commenced Operation Downfall?

>>50068488
Mm. I'll believe it when I see it. And I said out of the solar system, not within it.

>>50070241
I try to use wiki pages like this one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place_names_in_the_United_Kingdom_and_Ireland
But it's still quite hard to think of places that don't sound either dumb or already exist as a famous place.
This is obviously just an example for the not!England country

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>>50070918
Maybe a brutally destructive war resembling the Korean war where Japan ends up divided?

>>50071280
Like as in southern Japan/Kyuushu gets taken by the Americans and the Kyoto area or so gets locked in a stalemate between the Americans and the Japanese?

>>50065571
Yes.

Zombies obviously exist but I don't like the terror they've become. I like that they're the embodiment of the fear of mortality, and I like the shambling sort, so my zombies aren't ravenous but pitiful and sad. Their moans are wails, and faces full of grief. Their arms are outstretched not to grasp, but to embrace. They reach out, begging for you who life, they want life again, they have not accepted death.

Skeletons on the other hand, are cruel things, always grinning as if there is some great joke that the dead are privy to at the expense of the living. They chatter in their hollow laughter as they butcher the living. They have eschewed all mortal needs, and are animated by foul power, and they relish it.

Ghosts are a plot hook all on their own. An untimely death, an omen, a spirit unable to be freed of this world by some foul deed or power. You don't fight ghosts, you help them rest. Ghosts you fight are wicked spirits like Specters and Wraiths.

Lichdom is a wicked rite gleaned from the Necromantic arts, or the Arts of the Dead for it was the dead that taught it to the first practitioners. By trapping your immortal soul, once gleans immortal power as the sacrifice of the withering of their physical body, unless they preserve themselves with a spell of Gentle Repose. This rite is a desperate one, for to do it is to damn oneself to oblivion.

>>50071321
It would probably end up akin to Germany as the Soviets were already gettin their own invasion ready. The Soviets might not have been as successful as with Germany though, as the US had a massive lead and was better positioned to take the more important parts of Japan.

It might have ended with the Soviets using their gains in Japan as leverage for more concessions in Germany. Something like, we give you our holdings in Japan in exchange for Bavaria.

>>50073232
That makes sense. What about the causalities it would inflict upon the American forces and the resulting Japanese guerrilla cells/resistance?

>>50068846
Yeah you're full of shit.

Brave New World? Foundation? Stranger in a Strange Land? Fucking Handmaid's Tale?

Hell, one of the big "movements" in sci-fi politics is based around the idea that awards -- and fame -- are given based on political leaning

>>50074053
Wow. You named three books. Whole three! One of which is not actually a sci-fi but motherfucking distopia, but still. Great.

Now let's think of authors (because list of works would be too long) that are NOT political and considered classics of the genre:
Stevenson, Wells, Chapek, Asimov, Kuttner, Clarke, Bradbury, Lem, Adams, Simons, Crichton, Herbert, Chiang, Dick, Aldiss, Egan, Gibson, Forward, Mieville. Those are just from the top of my head. And unless you are an idiot (which you apparently are), being anti-ideological does not necessarily mean being political, so add Strugatsky Brothers, actually also Huxley and even Orwell to the list.

So yeah. Who is full of shit again?

page 10 save rave

>>50065571

>Does your setting have undead?

Not strictly speaking. Skeletons and zombies are possible via direct animation (not "re-animation") just taking individual bones and magically compiling them into the shape of a skeleton, like a puppeteer. Because there are so many moving pieces to account for, it takes a top-tier magic user to use one even at a rudimentary level (just holding a sword in one hand requires fine controls of hand bones/arm bones/shoulder bones, that's not even getting into bipedal movement).

If you think of real-world juggling as a parallel, 10 items at once is professional-level. Similar idea carries over for the 100+ bones required for a basic skeleton.

I want to create some fluff and reason for why my game world is the way it is. What method/s do you personally use to create an interesting timeline and history for your game world? As a new DM, I want to avoid 'because a wizard did it' as much as possible. Blah

>>50071273
>>50071273
I think you may be making too hard on yourself regarding dumb sounding names. It's perfectly fine for a place to have a dumb sounding name especially if it's a descriptive or ironic one like Hogs Hamlet for a village known for raising pigs or Perfumed Quarter for the part of the city that smells like shit.

The most important part to me is that there is a reason behind the name(or change in name) that reflects the places' nature, history or inhabitants. I have an elven colony village rename itself into something mundane like Southern Pass because it was afraid of imperial persecution following an elven rebellion it had no part in.

>>50071273

If the place isn't liable to be well known or come across by a reader then you should be fine.

I realized too late that Arazala is very close to Arzawa in bronze age Anatolia.

Considering it's a mark of distinction if people even know of the Hittites, let alone Mycenaean Greece, I'm fairly safe.

>>50074386

a) that guy isn't me

b) I wasn't asserting that every single fucking sci fi book is political propaganda, just that a lot of the older ones and many considered classics because the 'all freedom from US conservative values is a momentary aberration' hardcore conservative sci fi was super edgy and cool back in the 80s or whatever

c) that you think sci fi was used as a means to communicate free of censorship has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not some books are better than others

d) most of those authors wrote books that posited highly controlled societies where rebellion against tradition was scawy and stwange, meaning you're using some incredibly narrow definition of political in order to support your argument

e) that you think that people being turned off something by being given a bad example of it that someone deep into the genre is fanboying over is a sign of 'stupidity' means you are exactly one of those shitters who does that, and are doing your level best to ensure sci-fi stays a weird little niche populated by the socially awkward and the unwashed

>>50077277
Use the Dwarf Fortress history viewer and refluff. My world was entirely built off of refluffed random generation.

>>50065571
>>Does your setting have undead?

I am seriously waffling about it. The main reason for this is the nature of magic in the setting has no connection whatsoever on any morality or ideology and the economic and military potential of the necromantic arts.

If I do include it, it would boil down to 2 kinds: The first type would just be golem like constructs which use dead body parts as materials and second type being "true" undead by using the mind/soul of the deceased as part of the process and binding that to the construct. The second type should be way more expensive and difficult to do than the first but much more powerful and intelligent. I'd also put an additional penalty on actual undead eventually going crazy and uncontrollable after some time as their memories fade and they devolve into true monstrosities.

>>50079982
Yeah after a few names I just zoomed in tons on Google Maps and picked names from little villages that I liked.
You'd have to live close to them to know them, so it's fine.

>>50079653
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. For countries and historical lordships that's not really viable though, you can hardly call a country "Treeland" because there's a lot of trees

>>50073232
>It would probably end up akin to Germany as the Soviets were already gettin their own invasion ready. The Soviets might not have been as successful as with Germany though, as the US had a massive lead and was better positioned to take the more important parts of Japan.

I also wonder what capacity for amphibious invasion the Soviets had. That was something the US had a lot of experience with in WW2 (not to mention equipment).

>>50081740
>you can hardly call a country "Treeland" because there's a lot of trees

I bet you can:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-land

>>50082080
>mfw I didn't realise Iceland and Greenland (which both indicate that vikings had a sense of humour) were a thing
>NEWFOUNDLAND
jesus
>Zeeland
I'm Dutch I shoulda remembered this one at least

>>50074386
>Now let's think of authors that are NOT political and considered classics of the genre:
>fucking Wells
>fucking Bradbury
>"anti-ideological isn't political because it agrees with my political views so it can't be propaganda!"
Yeah, you're full of shit.

>>50081549

How do you think the real world works

random things happen, people refluff it. 'history makes sense' is something no-one with a history degree thinks

Can someone help decorate / populate a dungeon for me?

What should it look like, what features / traps should it have, and who should inhabit it (if any creatures).

Basically the idea is it's a grotto that a sea hag lives in by herself, and the idea is that it's full on reverse wizard tower and she's going to pay the adventurers to kick her deadbeat neckbeard son out (who lives at the very bottom).


No clue on how to detail it otherwise though. Any help?

>>50083661
Everyone should beware lest they touch the bewitched mountain dews, which entrance those it touches and lead them down a winding path of reclusion and eventual insanity.

>>50083661
Seahag right?

Bloated corpses that have washed up on the shores, a decaying carcass of some great leviathan that crawled inside to die and now is home to numerous scavenging crabs and birds, bits and pieces of shipwrecks that the Hag has fashioned into crude but serviceable furniture, piles of rotting fish that the hag periodically samples from both for potions and her supper, etc.

Basically, gross waterlogged stuff.

>>50083661
A nest of pirate goblins/kobolds/tiny race that capsized and got stuck, and were slowly dying out of starvation untill they see the players.

>Arr, ye brave men! Dare ye take on the mighty Tattersail crew? No? Then, tribute! We, the mighty tattersail crew, and I, captain nobeard, request the mage. We are very hungry and havn't eaten in weeks. Harr!

>>50084064
I love it. Just the sort of funny little easter egg that doesn't detract from the rest of the campaign.

His Majesty's First Ship of the Line of the Royal Gob Navy; a race of (slighty) more intelligent Goblins from across the seas who have periodically tried to land and conquer whatever landmass the party is on, but always end up failing miserably due to their diminutive stature.

>"Avast ye scallywags! Fire a warnin' shot ta scare the 'lubbers white!"
>An undersized cannonball lands with a tiny sploosh a few feet from the enemy ship

>>50074386
>Thinks Mieville isn't political
>when he's a self-identified flaming communist
>and puts it in all his work

Most of those authors were political, you're just blind to your own political prejudices.

Okay lads, I've been designing a religion/mythology for quite a while now. Need advice on everything except formatting.

First of all. The entire universe is very similar to a nut or a fruit. It has a shell, that is, bedrock, it has flesh, that is, water, soil, sand, and everything else that is built upon bedrock. And it has seeds; The sky.

Sins exist. The greatest sin is fear, which manifests itself in submission and cowardice.

When a person dies, they ascend upwards. Keep the fact that the earth is "inside out" and the sky is the centre of the globe. THe sky is a big dark nothing, made up out of pure magic. The only things in it are heavenly bodies. Now, the sun is clearly the biggest of these. The sun is, in this mythology, a tunnel to the other side of the world, the path to the afterlife. It is where believers go to get cleansed of their sins, in heavenly fire. The less bad stuff they have done, the faster they go barelling through the tube that is the sun, and soon land on the other side, the afterlife, a place that has always existed, but not been inhabited untill the founder of the religion figured out how the world works.

Said founder was a warrior poet, a totally-not-Muhammad named Raz'az

>Which roughly translates to Godlike, or almost god, or more specifically, 'az means "As close as you can get without being it" and Raz meaning immortal, omnipotent, all of that shit.

Raz'az united the vast lands of the peninsula as one, and wrote the truth on the world as he went about conquering city state after city state, settling what rocky highlands and plains that was uninhabited before his soldiers marched over it. The religion in question is extremely rare outside of the peninsula, and its' worshippers are seen as barbarians at best, and are satirized as cannibal beasts at worst.

Said founders texts has all been written down, his philosophical musings and pseudoscientific investigations leading to be the holiest book in all of that religion. Cont

>>50083829
>>50083888
>>50084064
>>50084248
These are all perfect! Any ideas for an underwater kelp forest?

>>50083829
Do they also dine exclusively on Tuna Tenders?

>>50084458
Labyrinths are the order of the day. Have you seen kelp forests? You can't see shit.

The kelp could trap air between its boughs to make a path for the players. But it shifts to the wizards command, and the paths shift too.
You could have some terrible beast hunt the players from the waterlogged "walls", and the constant rush of water behind them should force the players onwards with every step. Bubbles of water could come roaring in when certain traps are triggered, bringing the lurking beast to hunt the players for a short while before returning to the kelp.

Make allusions to Predator and 'nam. Obviously you should have some Rambo-esque goblin-gone-native be the players' partially-deranged """guide""", giving advice in the form of frustratingly stupid riddles.

File: geocosmos.png (1MB, 1203x850px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1203x850px

>>50084448
The second holiest book is what most scholars think of as the greatest fiction ever to have been written, and is the journal of an anonymous author (Naming himself Sinner) that, according to himself, sailed across the great ocean in a dingy, circumnavigating the sky, and reaching the afterlife all alone. He describes it as a perfect place devoid of any suffering; For all whom inhabit it are good people. He also notes that there are innumerable statues, carved out of solid bedrock, dominating the skybox. He recognises the largest of them, a statue of Raz'az, and at the foot of this great statue, in the near end of the book, he meets Raz'az himself, and talks to him. Sadly, he is not allowed to stay in the afterlife (as he is as corrupted by life as all mortals) and is sent back, where he publishes his own edited journal, complete with dates and very livid descriptions of dozens of people he met, all saintly believers of the religion, purified by their voyage through the sun.

However, there are great people that do not worship the religion. They may not be cleansed of their sins, as the sin of being a heretic is too great. So, no matter what they did, they can not journey through the sun and be cleansed. Instead, they are usually flung into the windy abyss of the night, blue at day and black at night. However, the greatest heroes that did not follow the religion are martyred as stars in the night sky, burning in their own private purgatory, acting as a symbol of sacrifice and also hope. Most stars have names within the religion, with Sinner himself taking the role of the north star; The greatest pagan ever to have lived and ever to live. People tend not to attack warriors of the religion untill daybreak, due to a belief held by the warriors themselves that they are practically immortal untill the sun shines and they are able to ascend upwards.

r8/10

>>50084458

Why are the PCs there? What kind of kelp? Tropical, arctic, temperate waters? How did the PCs get there? What's the tone of the campaign like that takes them there? (horror, exploration, politics, war, grand prophecy, etc)

>>50084621
the water bubbles bring the beast to fight the players directly*, not hunt (which is what it does otherwise).

>>50080306
>>50082767
>>50084372
You people are dribbling spastic retards. It's actually terrifying to see this shit.
Can't tell the difference between AUTHOR having beliefs and HIS WORKS reflecting or not reflecting those beliefs (especially in, as the original post of this discussion suggested, "heavy handed" political agenda), can't tell the difference between political agenda and anti-totalitarianism, think that literally any story that talks about people is political - Jesus CHRIST you people are fucking cretins. If you think works of MOTHERFUCKING Bradbury are political, you are deluded to a point of being a fucking social menace.
If you think this is a genre heavily saturated with political beliefs, you must be driven MAD by any classical fiction in the world. You have absolutely no frame of reference here: god-fucking-dammit. And there is an entire fucking swarm of you fucking cocksuckers, god.

You people are idiots. Beyond any fucking measure. Now fuck off.

>>50084680

Protip; If the entire world disagrees with your definition, someone talking about what general normal people consider to be political might not be talking about what you consider to be political.

>>50084748
Not entire fucking word: three cretins who are talking out of their assess because we are after all on a site saturated with idiots.

You people think fucking Orwell is heavy handed political agenda. For fuck sake: the guy was a radical left fucking winger. NOW TELL ME, WHERE IN 1984 DOES HIS RADICALLY SOCIALIST BELIEFS GET HAMFISTED INTO THE READERS FUCKING HEAD. TELL ME.

TELL ME WHAT POLITICAL AGENDA DOES FUCKING BRADBURY HAVE.
Tell me where in fucking Perdido Street Station does Mieville's alleged communism surface.
You shitstains are so fucking sheltered, so fucking disconnected from any reality it's just fucking sad. Have you actually read a single ACTUALLY politically fucking charged fucking book in your fucking lives?
No, you fucking haven't.

>>50084784

I'm the original complainant about this. I said people didn't like it because it felt like political propaganda rather than a storyline. Not that they didn't like it because the googled the author and read about the author's political beliefs and then saw that in the fictional book.

It's great that you've classified 'political' with all these speshul modifiers that don't apply to the actual dictionary definition of the word, but where exactly is that relevant to anything i'm talking about? Some writers and sub-genres of sci-fi are less concerned with an extreme view of reality that has political ramifications, notably space opera, some of the 'alien exploration' styled ones too. Those are notably different in tone and content and _structure_ to many of the books i'm calling political, and what others have described as political.

Get out of your fucking ivory tower of autism and accept that people don't have to use your fucking definitions to describe things they are seeing and preferences they have.

>>50084680
I understand the difference. I still disagree with you.

The key point here is the difference between "contains politics"/"reflective of politics" and "saturated with politics". Ezra Pound, despite being a fascist, usually doesn't saturate anything with his politics. Don Quixote reflects some political views, but is largely unconcerned with it. The Iliad more strongly deals with the political, but even then sidelines it a great deal.

But sci-fi (being a popular genre with various shit writers) often has people saturating their works with politics. Some people find this distasteful, I personally think it's a bit pointless.

So here you are, trying to tell me 1984 isn't reflective of Orwell's political beliefs, and Fahrenheit 451 isn't reflective of Bradbury's. I would call them saturated, too.

Do you understand why I think you're full of shit?

Also stop getting made just because everyone disagrees with you.
>>50084784
>You people think fucking Orwell is heavy handed political agenda. For fuck sake: the guy was a radical left fucking winger. NOW TELL ME, WHERE IN 1984 DOES HIS RADICALLY SOCIALIST BELIEFS GET HAMFISTED INTO THE READERS FUCKING HEAD. TELL ME.
Literally the entirety of the novel. Have you read it?

Being anti-totalitarianism WAS his political beliefs. It's pretty core to democratic socialism. Honestly I think your confusion with this stems from political illiteracy.

>TELL ME WHAT POLITICAL AGENDA DOES FUCKING BRADBURY HAVE.
Suppression of information, power of the government, flaws in the idea of duty to your nation &c.; I'm not going to claim 451 was meant to be simply about censorship -- he himself said it wasn't -- but it is about the importance of ideological discussion. This is political.

I'm beginning to think you would call "What is to be Done" unpolitical.

>>50084878
>I understand the difference.
No, you CLEARLY don't.

>But sci-fi (being a popular genre with various shit writers) often has people saturating their works with politics.
NO, IT FUCKING DOES NOT. You do not fucking know what it means to be saturated with political beliefs.

>I would call them saturated, too.
BECAUSE YOU ARE AN IDIOT. TELL ME THE POLITICAL FUCKING AGENDA IN THOSE BOOKS.

>Literally the entirety of the novel. Have you read it?
Not only I did. I did read most of his works, including his actually POLITICAL works, even his political and social non-fiction and essays. I also do know the book he literally, unapologetically and shamelessly ripped off, because 1984 is not even his fucking idea, it's literally just a more modernized retelling of a book written twenty years before, a book written ironically enough by former propagandist and one of the most celebrated and venerated COMMUNIST authors of pre-Stalinistic Revolutionary Russia.

>Being anti-totalitarianism WAS his political beliefs.
It's not a political belief you fucking idiot, it's common FUCKING SENSE. That is the fucking fucking FUCKING point of the book: what he says is true whenever you lean left or right: he talk about inherent, absolute evil of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is not political belief - it's a method of terror. No way around it. It's like claiming terrorism is a fucking political belief: it's not, it's a twisted way to achieve your fucking goal, regardless of what your actual political stances are. It's not about the fucking goals you aim for, the ideal you believe you should achieve: it's methods you employ while achieving it. THAT IS what fucking Zamyatin wrote about, and what Orwell modernized and presented in 1984.
And if you can't fucking tell the difference between criticism of TOTALITY and cricism of any possible individual political belief, YOU ARE, AS I SAID: DUMB TO A POINT OF BEING AN ACTUAL MENACE TO THE SOCIETY.

>>50085294
Post yfw this guy is obviously just baiting at this point

The most important and popular works in Sci-Fi are saturated with politics.

>>50085294
>It's not a political belief you fucking idiot, it's common FUCKING SENSE
Say that to Hobbes, one of the most important and greatest legal scholars ever.

>>50085294
>Anti-totalitarianism is not a political belief you fucking idiot, it's common FUCKING SENSE
I'm sorry I fell for this bait lads.

>>50085318
>>50085328
>>50085358
You people are actually fucking scary. I JUST explained the fucking difference between GOAL and METHOD you idiots. It's literally just there. Can you not fucking read?

>>50085384
Why are you capitalizing words? If you can't convey your tone in a normal manner you're a shit writer and I fear for the world you are building.

Anyway, of course totalitarianism is a political belief, just like libertarianism is. It's just the belief that someone should hold absolute power in society.

Now, Merriam-Webster defines political as "of or relating to government", meaning that the choice of how strictly you are governed is a political one.

>>50085384
Method is part of politics.

Else why specify *democratic* socialism? Why have platformism? Why have anarcho-*syndicalism* instead of simple anarcho-communism? Why have Leninists, and vanguard parties? Why have them all fight each other?

Same end, different means.

Of course what he says is """true""" whether you lean left or right; anti-totalitarianism isn't unique to the left or the right. It's still a political belief. It's why classical liberals fought hard against de Maistre-style conservatives.

Also you should realise that thinking something's common sense doesn't make it apolitical.

>>50085438
>It's just the belief that someone should hold absolute power in society.
No, you idiot. Holding total power is a way to achieve MANY DIFFERENT political goals and systems.

>Now, Merriam-Webster defines political as "of or relating to government",
Merriam-Webster is a shit fucking source and you should fucking know that already.

>>50085457
>the generally accepted standard dictionary of American English is a shit source of definitions
Wait, what?

>No, you idiot. Holding total power is a way to achieve MANY DIFFERENT political goals and systems.
Yes, but the want for someone to hold that power is a political desire, one which Orwell heavily campaigned against in 1984, obviously.

>>50085457
>Holding total power is a way to achieve MANY DIFFERENT political goals and systems.
Yeah and Liberalism and Conservatism and Communism are all different ways of achieving the same goal: utopia.

Checkmate, faggot.
>Merriam-Webster is a shit fucking source and you should fucking know that already.
Why? Is it too reflective of standard usage? You know, how the term was being used in this thread to begin with?

You're full of shit.

>>50085294

Are you the same sperg that is/was sperging on the ITT we trigger DMs thread? Writing style close but uncertain.

>>50085455
>Method is part of politics.
Yes, and memorization is a part of medicine. Does that mean that if the teacher asks you to memorize the dates important battles in history classes, that he asking you to do medicine? For fuck sake.
I'm still waiting for you fucks to give me examples of political beliefs in Bradbury or fucking Mieville, by the fucking way. Or fucking Rama or End of Childhood or Martian Chronicles or The FUCKING TIME MACHINE.

>Same end, different means.
Yes. ONE political belief, DIFFERENT ways of implementation. Now tell me again: what is the political belief conveyed in fucking Orwell. You said "what ought to be done" (which by the fucking way is not politics, it's morals), then tell me what Orwell says we OUGHT to do. Not what he says we should avoid: paint me the government model that Orwell advocates in 1984 that SHOULD BE THE ONE we chose. This is DISTOPIA, NOT EVEN FUCKING SCI-FI and STILL can't fucking explain what is the political agenda that Orwell is advocating. So far you established that wow: he says being a total cunt is wrong. Especially on a governmental scale. Great. I can see I'm being brainwashed by the sinnester "don't be fucking psychopathic cunt" political clique already. For fuck sake.

>>50085457
>>50085490
>the generally accepted standard dictionary of American English is a shit source of definitions
Learn the difference between "descriptive" and "prescriptive" sources you illiterate cretin.

>Yes, but the want for someone to hold that power is a political desire,
No, that is a personal ambition. Believing that a certain political model is better than others is a political notion.

All that Orwell says is that power unchecked is devastating. That there is a level of power that NOBODY, REGARDLESS OF THEIR BELIEFS, should ever hold. And this point is even fucking stronger in the original text, Zamyatin, which based explicitly on the premise that the political regime is GOOD, but the result of people giving up their control are catastrophic.

>>50085505
>Checkmate, faggot.
If this is your idea of a joke, than it's pretty fucking pathetic. No surprise there.

>Why? Is it too reflective of standard usage?
It's not prescriptive you fucking retard. It was never fucking intended to be.

>You're full of shit.
Still waiting for those heavy handed political ideologies in Martian Chronicles, Dune and fucking Time Machine you fucking retard. STILL WAITING.

>>50085671
You're literally the only person here who has a problem.

Maybe you're the retarded one

>>50085671
>Learn the difference between "descriptive" and "prescriptive" sources you illiterate cretin.
Wait, what does that have to do with anything? Political is an adjective which means "relating to government" as stated by the most important source on the meaning of words. You're trying to move the goalposts by making the word political mean only specifically what you believe, but the truth is that you're a big dummy that doesn't understand what a dictionary is.

>No, that is a personal ambition. Believing that a certain political model is better than others is a political notion.
And Orwell believed the political model (aka a model of government or relating to it) of libertarianism was better than that of a totalitarian leader being the government. An opponent of this view, which I have already named, is Hobbes, who firmly believed in the entirety of power being concentrated in one lawful sovereign.

What Orwell believes is that power unchecked is devastating. What Hobbes believes, is that it is the best form of government (which is, by definition, a political belief).

>>50085671
Post your worldbuilding progress

Can we send this discussion to /pol/ where it belongs. I forgot that 4chan can't actually discuss the word 'politics' and foolishly commented on what people had said to me about sci-fi when I tried to physically hand them some excellently written books by authors without an axe to grind except a love for a good story.

>>50085754
>Wait, what does that have to do with anything?
Well, we are talking about definitions in language, you idiot. Perhaps you should fucking know how those things work before you start talking about them. Descriptive means: this is how it generally is used. Prescriptive is "this is how it is CORRECTLY used, e.g. how it SHOULD BE USED". There a MASSIVE difference between the two when you discuss an academic subject, where ambivalence in language becomes a problem.
Then again, considering you fucking idiots think that any "should be" statement is political, I guess that in your fucking world, prescriptive definitions are a political agency and Oxford philosophical dictionary is SATURATED with heavy handed political propaganda, because it consistently says how things should be done, so... yeah.

>Political is an adjective which means "relating to government"
That is how you use it in common discourse. Not on a academic, or even semi-academic level. Ever heard of Carol Hanisch? "Personal is political"?
No, of course you fucking had not. That would require sticking your head out of your fucking asshole for ten minutes. Which seems way outside of realms of posibility here.

>And Orwell believed the political model (aka a model of government or relating to it) of libertarianism was
Except he was a radical socialist and fucking DESPISED libertarianism with a passion. Funny, isn't it? You would not know, because in that one book you pretend you actually read, you would not find that information. Why? BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY KEPT HIS POLITICAL BELIEFS OUT OF THE EQUATION.
Because he spoke about human evil, not about what governmental model is preferable. You have literally NO FUCKING CLUE about his actual political beliefs. And that fucking proves my point more than anything in the world could.

You actually fucking think the guy was pro libertarianism for fuck sake! He was for HEAVY GOVERNMENTAL REGULATION. What Sweden has now would not be socialist enough for him.

>>50085631
>>50085671
This is our argument: you think method is not political, I do. If we stick to this, we won't scatter about.

>Yes, and memorization is a part of medicine.
Bad comparison. Memorisation is only required to do medicine; it is not medicine itself. Method, on the other hand, is part of politics itself.

I know you think that Anarchism is the same political belief as communism, and Leninism is the same as strict Marxism, but I don't know WHY. Your dictionary bluster begs the question: where does YOUR definition come from?

As for mine: Webster's been pretty descriptive for a while now anyway. And Oxford -- very descriptive -- agrees with it. So, again: where does YOUR definition come from?

>All that Orwell says is that power unchecked is devastating.
A political view; he says that governing via unchecked power only destroys. He is countered by those that say governing with unchecked power is beneficial. This is therefore political, as it both deals with the ends and the means: Orwell may want a free socialist society BY DEMOCRACY, and a Fascist may want structured totalitarianism by force.
>No, that is a personal ambition.
That would only apply if the believer thought THEY should be in charge. We are not talking about such believers. We are talking about those that feel order is necessary for a good life, or that someone must be in charge to make sure morals are kept or socialism is successful or simply to get stuff done. These beliefs are not afflicted with personal ambition.

To give you examples: Fascists, De Maistre, Mishima.

>If this is your idea of a joke, than it's pretty fucking pathetic. No surprise there.
Woooow, nice evasion. Answer this: how are Liberalism and Conservatism and Communism different if they all have the same goal?

We should not give you more examples, because our examples are based on the belief that method = politics. This is therefore the argument that must be dealt with. Anyway, I've given you examples for Bradbury.

>>50085914
A dictionary is by nature both descriptive and prescriptive, you idiot. It describes how a word has been used (what the meaning of the word in language is) and thus automatically and inherently attempts to standardize meanings for future use.

>you fucking idiots think that any "should be" statement is political
No, any opinion relating to government (as described and prescribed by the most important dictionary) is political.

>
Wew lad nice ad hominems, I bet you actually think that's a good argument. No, I have not heard of Hanisch, but "personal is political" as a saying is wrong by definition, for a dictionary describes the meaning of a word. Language is that which society speaks, and thus a descriptive dictionary is always right and should be followed, thus making it prescriptive.

>HE ACTUALLY KEPT HIS POLITICAL BELIEFS OUT OF THE EQUATION
Except he didn't. He actively campaigned against a certain form of government in his book, making it an inherently political book. I would even make the claim that 1984 is less a story and more a political essay.

>You actually fucking think the guy was pro libertarianism
No, I think he hated it less than an authoritarian government.

>Decided to look up the /tg/ worldbuilding thread after a seven month hiatus.
>60-70% of the thread is pointless arguing.

Good to know autism and explosive tempers can still be found in abundance.

Have some questions to change the mood:
>Who are the most influential entrepreneurs in your setting and what have they done?

>Which nations in your setting are currently at war with each other, and why?

>When and where was the last major pathological event and how has it impacted society?

>What are some of the endangered species of your setting? Why are they at risk?

>List and describe some of the unique arts/traditions of your setting.

>tfw have to go to the movie theater now so have to leave the discussion
Feels bad. When I come back I will respond to whatever counterpoints you make to >>50086046

>>50085987
>you think method is not political, I do.
And once again, you prove that you are an idiot. Case in point: one of you fucktards actually thought after reading 1984 that the guy was pro-libertarianism, for fuck sake.

And that is just Orwell. I we did not even fucking touch how in Farenheit there is NO totalitarian governement: everything pathological with that society is completely democratic. There is actually not a single word about how GOVERNMENT is supposed to be organized: we don't even learn how the government of Farenheit is organized: there is not a single word about those subjects there.

And those are STILL FUCKING DISTOPIAS. I'M STILL FUCKING WAITING for those descriptions of political agendas in Clarke or fucking Asimov.

No, fuck-faces. Orwell became famous for the statement (roughly paraphrased): "I'm a socialist and yet I find myself hating other socialists. Because those people don't love the poor: they just hate the rich."
That is Orwell. That is his "political agency". He cares more about people, about personal moral responcibility, then about the ideals about how government is supposed to be organized. That is why 1984 is not a political novel: it's about inherent evil in people - regardless of their political stances. The Party in 1984 does not actually have a political ideal. They openly admit that.

>“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”

THESE ARE THE WORDS, LITERALLY QUOTED FROM THE BOOK, that are at the absolute heart of Orwell's message. That is what he warns about.

READ THOSE FUCKING WORDS CAREFULLY. AND TELL ME:
HOW IS THAT A POLITICAL MESSAGE? Is this about government? Even if we accept that riddiculously shallow definitions you insist about: how is this about government? This is about power: which is neither exclusive nor core at any governmental model.
This is about corruption of PEOPLE. Nothing else.

>>50085914
I'm waiting on your response for >>50085987 so I'll just pick out your inaccuracies here:

>considering you fucking idiots think that any "should be" statement is political
This is the opposite of what "we" think: we think only such statements relating to governance are political. Also dictionaries are *affected* by the political views of those that write them. This extends from making biased definitions, to whether they're descriptivist or prescriptivist, to whether they consciously avoid bias.

>That is how you use it in common discourse. Not on a academic, or even semi-academic level.
This might surprise you, but we are currently engaged in common discourse.

>Except he was a radical socialist and fucking DESPISED libertarianism with a passion.
Hmm....
>The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians. -- George Orwell
See, libertarian doesn't mean right-wing libertarian. I expected you to know that, actually, given the basis of this argument.

You see that he himself disagrees with you. Ironic, no? He says politics isn't about left or right, but authority and liberty. I don't think he'd stick there, but it shows you that he obviously thought anti-totalitarianism was a political view.

>He was for HEAVY GOVERNMENTAL REGULATION
No he wasn't. He was for democratic movement into socialism. Democratic socialism isn't social democracy; Sweden is social democratic, and exceedingly UN-socialist.

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>50084458
As long as you don't go pic related you should be fine

>>50086150
ANSWER

MY

POINTS

Engage with me, and I'll engage with you.

>>50086258
Post your setting

>>50086258
Fuckoff lad, we don't need this here.

>>50086268
People would glance at it for a few seconds, then scroll down.

Discussions are the only thing worth doing in these threads, because it's the only thing you couldn't do by yourself. This means answering people asking for help, talking about methods of worldbuilding, and getting caught up in shitstorms.
>>50086294
You're right. I think it's about time we ended this. There was no longer any real discussion anyway, and what was there was /pol/worthy.

>>50086177
You already got it you shitstain.
THIS >>50086150 is what you should read. This is why I'm so fucking pissed.

Orwell's ENTIRE FUCKING MESSAGE is "You should worry less about politics and more about people." That is the ENTIRE FUCKING REASON, THE WHOLE FUCKING MESSAGE he was ever trying to convey. And it's a message so fucking important that his book is mandatory reading in just about every western school. His work is considered something EVERYBODY should fucking know.
And yet here you fucking are: with the IMMENSE brilliance and the importance of that message on your hand.

And what do you do?
"Man, that guy is so about politics!"
I have no fucking words that can describe she sheer amount of hatered and fucking awe at your stupidity and ignorance. You have read the fucking book and then claimed THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what he said.

Seriously: the "I have no words to describe this" is not just a phrase here. I'm literally dumbstruck. This is terrifying. Pain fucking terrifying. If that fucking book did not get through to you, nothing ever will, and once again, I find myself thinking: you people are so stupid, so ignorant that you are actually dangerous.

Everything else is secondary, you cunt. I'll get to your SHITTY FUCKING POINTS in a minute. But none of that fucking matters really: you just proved that you have not understood the single most important fucking message one of the perhaps ten single most important authors of the fucking century has told.

HOW FUCKING SAD IS THAT?!?!
HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?!

Stupid fucking semantics and stupid fucking misunderstanding of how dictionaries work don't fucking matter. STOP AND FUCKING THINK FOR A FUCKING SECOND HERE.

YOU THINK THAT A BOOK ABOUT HOW POLITICS ARE SECONDARY IS A POLITICAL PROPAGANDA. FOR. FUCKING SAKE!

>>50086046
>A dictionary is by nature both descriptive and prescriptive, you idiot.
No. Common language dictionary is ONLY descriptive. Academic dictionaries, specialized dictionaries are often heavily prescriptive, though even there any author is at full right to change the definition if he makes it clear in his own work. Merriam-Webster is just orientational.

>No, any opinion relating to government
>“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”
Is not a statement about government.

>I bet you actually think that's a good argument.
Maybe you should quote the argument that you take an issue with next time.

>He actively campaigned against a certain form of government in his book
No, he campaigned about human vices that the fictional government he describe embodied. Again, see:
>“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”

>No, I think he hated it less than an authoritarian government.
No, he actually did not. He hated corruption in people, and believed that corruption can transform entire society into a pathological one. He actually advocated strongly authoritative governments. The fucking guy joined the communists in Spain civil war VOLUNTARILY.

>>50086177
>Also dictionaries are *affected* by the political views of those that write them.
First of all you are stretching a definition of "political" to essentially any beliefs. Second of all: all the more reason to not take dictionaries as prescriptive.

>but we are currently engaged in common discourse.
No, we are not. We are engaged in an informal discourse but on an academic subject.

>You see that he himself disagrees with you.
You might want to read that sentence in the ENTIRE context, fuckface. Because his point is that the difference is not POLITICAL ONE, but HUMAN and moral one. That is his whole fucking point.

>>50086177
>No he wasn't. He was for democratic movement into socialism.
Which again, explains why he joined the red revolutionaries in Spanish civil war, does it not? He was democratic, at least later in his work, but his point is that government should adopt primarily responcibility over the well being of it's citizens, ESPECIALLY the poor ones.

Also:
>Sweden is social democratic, and exceedingly UN-socialist.
How the fuck do you even expect anyone will take you seriously after this shit. Socialism: and this is again back to the difference between MEANS and GOALS either democratic, or authoritative. Social democracy is SOCIALISM, that is what the "social" fucking stands for there. Are you fucking confusing socialism and communism here?

>>50086087
>>Who are the most influential entrepreneurs in your setting and what have they done?

Don't have the copy at hand but Amica Schadiff is one and she's the head of the largest and most influential merchant house in the Sha'haran Empire. So influential that the empress is forced to listen to her petition to restore the aristocracy at least once a month.

She is always on the look out to expand her holdings and interest especially abroad, away from imperial scrutiny and taxation.

>>Which nations in your setting are currently at war with each other, and why?

Beginnings of a possible all-out war between Gedask empire and Sha'haran empire due to the first's attempts to expand eastward to the sea.

>>When and where was the last major pathological event and how has it impacted society?

Haven't made one that I can remember.

>>What are some of the endangered species of your setting? Why are they at risk?

I'm naming one Djonel. Because they are delicious.

>>List and describe some of the unique arts/traditions of your setting.

Haven't really made any unique ones yet.

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>>50086605
>Sweden
>Socialist

Get out you revisionist Kulak

>>50086913
That is all you could muster up?
Well, at least I'm starting to feel more pity than anger towards you shitstains.

>>50086922
Good. Please leave.

Speaking of 'worldbuilding' rather than 'endless pseudoacademic political sperging with COMEDY SHOUTING'.

I'm considering running a shadowrun game based around a team of corporate troubleshooters for a mid-range corporation. So you're not black-visored high-corporate commandos, you're suit-wearing, tired, economy-flying, special ops problem solvers for an underfunded department of Kawasaki Heavy Vehicles division. So you've got an overstressed boss, various issues of varying legality, and funding/political concerns alongside actually getting the job done.

What media/ideas would you suggest to flesh out a setting like that? I'm already thinking a lot of cop and spy dramas would work in terms of 'underfunded but required to solve problems', and some of the less flashy Mafia films as well. The kind of problems resolved on baking blacktop with a kneeling man and a bullet in the chamber, not wall-running across roofs while rotodrones spray full-auto at you, etc.

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Let's attempt to get shit done. I'll throw together a quick guide on worldbuilding for RPGs. Only one issue: I've only run political campaigns. What kind of campaigns do -you- run, and how does your world support it? And how do you meld the world to the campaign?

Political campaigns revolve around a central conflict raging in my world. All campaigns boil down to three elements: the players' goal, the obstacles in their way, and the tools at their disposal. In political campaigns, the central conflict is carefully built to provide all three elements.

>The Goal:
The conflict must be ended by the players with a certain result. For example, they must ensure a certain faction loses.

>Obstacles and Tools
The obstacles and tools are often the same thing. For example, armies. An enemy army is an obstacle, but the players' army is a tool.

The basic obstacle facing players is that they can't win all by themselves. They're just ~four people; they'd get skewered by an enemy faction's mob, let alone an army. So the factions are an obstacle. The solution? Let the players win their own factions! Give each faction motivations, so the players can exploit them. Give each faction divisions; ally factions to each other; make divisions between "allied" factions. Sometimes these will be tools, sometimes obstacles.

But wait, there's more! Your conflict is probably driven by obstacles: think the desert of Arrakis, or space-travel's reliance on Melange. So use them: the players have no water, or perhaps they control one of its few sources. And this will impact all the factions and rebound on the players who will impact the factions, and now you see the great benefit of working like this:

The campaign plays itself. The players do all your work for you! But it's not so sandbox that you ever need to improvise. Each part has been pre-made by you.

>>50086922

Sweden is pretty much a nationwide joke here in Denmark, too.

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So I'm trying to make a setting where goblins are essentially inferior creatures, not created by the Gods or any powerful force but cobbled together by malevolent ones. For instance; Goblins don't have a soul unless forcibly inducted into religion, and would suffer for eternity unless converted by force.

Basically, I want the morality in this setting to dictate that the enslavement of goblins is both righteous and good, without moral relativists able to say otherwise. How would I do this?

>>50088565
Not like that.

>"Why do you think having a soul is good? Why do you think those forces are malevolent? Why do you think this is suffering?"

>>50088565
>How would I do this?
Not by throwing around ideas like "soul" because anyone who is a moral relativist will probably be pretty unconvinced on the relevance of the notion of "soul" either.

Here is how you do it: make them evil by their actions. Make their behavior compulsively violent. Make their existence incompatible with existence of other life forms. Make them like poison: twisted creatures that cause damage to their surroundings by mere existence. Make NOT FIGHTING them not an option.
If they can't be reasoned with, and if they can't be coexisted with, then you have something no moral relativist will actually be able to dispute.

If you really want to drive this point home, make them parasitic. Like - literally. It's not the body, it's not a culture: is a primordial fucking land-octopus wrapped around the bones and nervous system of some unfortunate hapless critter that mutates it and uses it as a tool. There is nothing more deeply despicable than an organism that literally and physically feeds of the existence of another. People might feel sorry for a goblin that is basically a mammal that is just "trying to live his way", even if that way seems incompatible with yours.

But people don't feel sorry for slimy octopus that occupies bodies of children and poor bunnies, grows and fuses with their living tissue, until it transforms it to it's own goals: that is to plant it's own children into the bodies of all of your remaining children.

>>50088813
>make them evil by their actions.
"Why do you think their actions are evil?"

No: you won't somehow "beat" moral relativists by playing on their own turf. The only way to "beat" them is to take your worldview -- objective good and evil exists -- and print it into your world. So the goblins are objectively evil. There. Done.

No, it won't convince moral relativists, but that's because you're playing a damn board game.

>>50087983
And Denmark is a joke in Sweden, so

>>50088813
>>50088909

Good ideas so far, but I want to seriously justify slavery in this setting. The goblins are bad and stupid, they worship the evil black stuff that oozes up from cuts in the earth's crust, they are absolute scum. Therefore, the cruel ways they are treated by their masters, the hobgoblins, are not only justified but seen as a caring or even kind hand to such wretches.

how unrealistic are crossing mountain ranges? Or hills crossing mountains?

>>50087223
I'd look at the SCP Foundation's Stories, especially concerning field agents.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/and-then-what-happened
The Cool War has some pretty cool stuff concerning Agents infiltrating an anomalous artist group. No extravagant gunfights or anything, just pure espionage and PR cleanups

>>50089511
"Crossing"? Draw it in paint or something.

>>50065571
>>Does your setting have undead?
Oui

>>What kinds are present? Zombies, skeletons, ghosts, wraiths, liches?

All the kinds under the rainbow. Mostly in not!Transylvania, most people outside there don't look kindly on them. They are ruled (well, supposed to be ruled) by the Great Skeleton King, a benevolent lich who wishes for nothing more than for his land to be great. And for the fucking vamps to stop dick measuring Jesus Christ.

>>How do you kill each type?

Beat it until it dies or until it can't do anything. Fire is good too.

>>How are the different types of undead created?

I haven't really thought about the particulars but the long and short of it is it's all the fault of the Lord of Decay. The BBEG who has troubled the world since the first age. he looks for the secret of immortality (not just "never dying", but not dying even if the sun blows out and the world blows up, basically godhood). He was defeated by the Last Great Alliance and pretty much fucked up and shot into space.

Also, the Lord of Decay is actually the first human created by the Gods. Humans were mortal but they used to live a lot longer and were stronger. Because of him humans are now as they are today.

>>50088909
>No: you won't somehow "beat" moral relativists by playing on their own turf.
Actually no. You can beat them if good arguments. Such as understanding functionality of the language as well as the functional aspect of the things you describe by it.
Also, you can simply target those things are hard-wired into our brains (because morality IS hardwired into our brains, and unlike good, there is a logical and pretty undeniable argument that absolute, objective evil exists) and rely on those.

>>50089826
The two mountain ranges crossing? Not that anon but it's pretty fucking ovious that he means two distinct mountain ranges intersecting at one point.

So I think I asked 'bout this earlier, but could I get some help designing a culture with a different view of Time?

I know that the Chinese see time in terms of up and down (having been learning the language for a goodly amount of time now) while Westerners view it as left/right, but I want to design a group who considers time to be a fixed point/a cycle.
Ideally, I want to know how to justify the thinking that everything is all the same day repeated over and over with slight changes while we retain our memories of past cycles.

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>>50082140

Never be afraid to be "on-the-nose" with your city/country/etc names. There are a million similar examples like that.

>Undead
Kind of.
>What kinds?
Empowered, relatively buff versions of their old selves, corrupted by demons and risen from the dead. A kind of physical manifestation of the soul, which the demons craft a compatible body to match.

>How do you kill
Same as normal.

>Different types
Only one type, and that is created by a spiteful demon lord having a very good reason to revive someone, generally with the intent to spite the people who killed em.

>>50089988
That is a pretty shit translation desu.

>>50090018

I just grabbed it from Google. I'm no linguist.

The point remains.

What's the point of these threads? It seems like nobody ever reads or responds to them.

>>50090032
Sure. But Sweden, as that's the thing I know most about, doesn't translate or mean in any way very lucky soldiers. Sweden means the land of the swedes. The name for swedes can come from the words "Rain, sound, Us, Ours," or "Family"

Nuffin about very lucky soldiers. In the same way, Germany, in Polish, is caleld Niemcy, which means roughly "Land of the strangers"

>>50090170
It's translations of the Chinese names for the countries, which are often nonsensical due to the prioritization of phonetics over meaning.

>>50089988
>white russia

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What are some interesting ecosystems/geographical features you guys like? I need to add some diversity to this shit.

Also does anything here stand out as being particularly out of place for a generic earth-like fantasy world?

>>50090220
Oh. In that case, no comment, haha.

>>50090507
In swedish it's called Vitryssland (white russia) and in england its called Belarus (white russia)

>>50090735
Taiga, atoll, salt flats, etc.

Cool interesting land features that don't get talked about too often.

>>50090735
what's the scale of this?

>>50091180
I initially started with both continents as one africa-sized continent but as it is now I really have no idea. Scale is part of what's fucking me up.

Roughly speaking I'd peg that whole map at 4500 to 5000 miles lengthwise and fuck, maybe 2800 to 3400 from top to bottom? Intended to be mostly in the southern hemisphere with the equator maybe inline with the volcano.

What would the culture of a world with even less technological standard then we have today be like?

For my world practical innovation moves slowly. All of the basic human needs are met and QoL improvements often stagnate for years at a time. This is because every 200 years the population is simply given a master-clue by their god analog. A working theory for a new technology.

the scientific and corporate culture has adopted a competitive streak towards these gifts. With patent rights awarded to whoever is able to first make use of the "discovery" This also means that every two centuries most of the scientific community up and abandons their work to race toward this new goal.

so how does your average joe or party deal with the wild variance in technology? what does the culture of a world where cybernetic augmentation is a few steps away from ghost in the shell, cloning and robot rights are real and alternate dimensions are used for storage and defence

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I'm considering writing a alternate history Cyberpunk setting with a sort of Russian Spring feel, where the Soviets came out on top of the Cold War, and made the transition to Capitalism without collapsing, while the U.S. stagnated.

My question is, what is a good point of divergence for this history? Janajev never attempting his coup? Further back, with Gorby just being overall more effective?

>>50089965
The Earth is the point and everything revolves around it.

>>50091686
The fuck would they do that? Only way Russia could have won the Cold War would be to keep revisionism out of politics and keep moving forward with a properly planned economy.
The USSR only went to shit following De-Stalinization and the gradual cancer of revisionist elements within the party.

Also:
>Gorby
>Effective

Fucking lol
>>50091992
..Alright,but that's what most people believed before Copernicus and they still had a linear concept of time.

I have so many settings now, I have no idea what to do with them all.

>>50092409
Hmm, interesting. Apparently the concept in Russian Spring was considered realistic at the time, but maybe not so much in hindsight.

Right, so, to make Russia strong, you let Janajev's coup succeed, and go hard with a planned economy?

>>50092409
>Alright,but that's what most people believed before Copernicus and they still had a linear concept of time.

I don't have facts about it but they(before Copernicus) followed year cycles especially for farming. Shrink the cycle down to a month, week or day and it's easier to wrap it into a point. This will likely need a more tropical climate where climate/season variance is less pronounced.

Similar to flat earth model, the experience of the observer is just too small to properly grasp the larger concept and the point explanation too simple to not use. Psychologically, it may also be similar to the experience of isolation(in prison) where lack of major variance contributes to a feeling of sameness every sleep cycle.

I dimly recall an old philosophical model about the world being static and unchanging but the name escapes me.

>>50092477
Of course, it was written by an American shortly after the Cold War. It's quite likely the author had been indoctrinated to believe Western Capitalism was the only means of economic success and had difficulty imagining another way the Soviets could dominate America. Interesting to think that all the propaganda films and comics about Communist triumph over America espoused fear that the Socialist system could produce a better war machine than American Capitalism.

Ohoho, yes.

Look at patterns of growth in Russia and you'll find the largest by far under the the periods of heavy economic planning
(Lenin->Stalin)

As for Janajev.. that would imply the USSR going through three revisionist leaders in a row (including the Corn-Lord himself, Khrushchev)
I would push back point of divergence and have Kirov survive the assassination attempt. Kirov was already being groomed as Stalin's successor and would not likely tolerate the sort of reactionary backpedaling experienced in the Post-Stalin years.

>>50093333
>Tropical climate

Yeah, that'll be an issue considering the setting features a world with Arrakeen levels of desertification.

Originally the idea was that a group of nomads had a culture and mythology centered around the impermanence of man's creations and the hubris in trying to defy the passage of time.
If mother nature makes it clear that anything you build will one day crumble, you're damn well better off pitching tents than trying to defy her.

Developing speaking patterns for them, I threw in the idea that references to the past/future were considered bad luck or taboo, as the present is all that we truly can influence for certain (not that they don't plan for the future, mainly that they consider it something of secondary importance)

>>50093851
Kirov is a bit too far back in divergence for my tastes. I would say that maybe Andropov staying in would work, but he was an old motherfucker to begin with, and couldn't have lasted long enough for someone better than Gorby to jump in.

Maybe just take a page from World War 3 (The German produced(?) mockumentary) and have Gorby assassinated and replaced by someone a bit more competent?

I'd just like to keep the timeline split in the 1980s, is all.

>>50093989
Eh.. my post-1991 history is shoddy, but I do think there were some armed revolts against Yeltsin following the his dissolution of the USSR.
(was never something the people wanted, only 1/3 voted in favour of dissolving it)

Could have one of those succeed and set Russia back on the path set out by Lenin.

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>>50094059
So, Janajev?

>>50094096
Yes, Jajanev.

>>50094125
I've been running under the assumption you know who that is. He's the one who tried to throw a coup over the U.S.S.R. in 1991, and failed because all his assets refused to storm the Kremlin and kill Jelcin.

>>50094155
Yes, I know about the fellow.
Wasn't it Gorby who talked his troops down?

>>50094206
I believe it was Jelcin himself. Gorby was in a political prison in Krym. The entire situation had the makings of a civil war (which would be pretty damn cool for an alt history, but it's unlikely that the country would be a power at all after something like that).

>>50093851
>Yeah, that'll be an issue considering the setting features a world with Arrakeen levels of desertification.

That should be even easier then since totally arid deserts likely have even less obvious seasonal changes than tropics and they are not inclined to have crops/farming that depend on annual cycles.

>>50089511
Mountain ranges happen when to tectonic plates collide, as far as I know, so they can't really cross. Four tectonic plates colliding in the same corner is possible, but highly unlikely.

>50095280
Aha, so it is, forgive me tovarich, not thinking straight when I wrote that.

This particular group are more along the lines of the Mongols (pre-Genghis) no real agriculture to speak of. They subsist off of animal husbandry (a sort of camel/donkey/cow mixture) and hunting/gathering.

What would explain why exactly this occurred rather than developing a traditional sense of time.
The sun still marks the passage of time (originally I had it that they believed the sun was a giant eye-god that willed the world into existence by perceiving it. When the sun goes down, it's actually destroying the world to start again in the morning. I quickly realized the issue with that, because any damn fool can just stay up all night and prove that theory wrong.)

What's your opinion on misunderstandings and unfounded rumours from other lands in your setting?
Like, maybe the human traders say that the grubby wood Elves seem really backwards, living alone in the forests with no permanent abode, and through rumour after rumour and retelling after retelling, we end up with cannibalistic war Elves, patrolling the forests looking for their next victim and leaving the ground unusable, forcing them to move on. If they don't find prey, they eat their own children.

I tell my players the twisted, obscure perspective of the locals rather than objectively the truth, but then they get mad when they get there and nothing is as I said it would be. What do?

>>50090170
>is caleld Niemcy, which means roughly "land of the strangers"
Niemcy, or niemec means "mute ones" in slavic languages. In polish, niemy (or in czech němý) means literally "mute", while "Niemec" (němec) means "German".
So Germany is not "land of strangers in slavic languages, it's "Land of the Mute Ones".
To the old slavs, Germans were people who spoke in a different, strange language they could not recognize and could not communicate with them and that was a strong enough impression to base their name on.
Much like the greek using the word "barbarian" for non-greek unfamiliar cultures, which comes from "bar bar bar", onomatopoic sound representing "human-made noise that we can't understand, not speaking in human language".

I love the czech derogatory term for Germans though. "Skopčkák", an equivalent to English-used "Fritz". Because it literally means "down-the-hill-person". I have no fucking clue how that came to be.

>>50097297
>What do?
Normally I would say get better players, but from the sound of it, the problem might lie elsewhere.
It seems like the rumors you are making up end up sounding a lot more fun and interesting than what you eventually really offer them.

Or perhaps tone down the misunderstanding stories to be more silly and stupid than awesome-sounding. Reality should always be stranger and more interesting than rumors. It's OK if you tell your players stupidly distorted stories of foreign cultures: but if you prime them for interesting horror-style cannibals and then present them with dull rednecks not doing anything interesting in particular, of course they are going to be dissapointed.

If you tell them about primitive, dumb cannibalistic savages, and then present them with a strange and interesting non-canibalistic culture of forest nomads, it should be fine. If it isn't, the problem might be that your real wood elfs are simply too dull.

>>50097923
Czechoslovakia is (from what I remember of geography) pretty hilly.

I assume that term would have come from the fact that, for the most part, Germans lived in much lower lying areas than the Czechs.

>>50097213
>I quickly realized the issue with that, because any damn fool can just stay up all night and prove that theory wrong.)

And? religious fundamental literalism is a new concept, people in the past wouldn't have cared if you could "prove" a religious theory "wrong".

>>50098024
>Czechoslovakia is (from what I remember of geography) pretty hilly.
Czechoslovakia does not exist anymore.

I might have mistranslated it: "Skopčák" has more of a meaning of a person "coming DOWN the hill", that would suggest they live in higher elevantions than czechs do.
Bohemia itself is essentially a crater, surrounded by mountains on almost all sides, and surrounded by German speaking lands.
"Zákopčák" (over-the-hill-person) would make more sense, since it's the top of the mountain that historically always constitutes the borders and the mountain ranges themselves were largely uninhabited: germans lived on the lowlands on the other side of the mountains.

Now that I think about it, there is a possibly in association with the word "skopec", which means "wether" (that is a castrated ram). "Skopové" is a czech word for lamb (meaning the meat specifically). So it either insults germans by comparing them to wethers (castrated animals were generally used as symbols of impotence or stupidity, like the most frequently used czech insult, "vůl" - used in equavivalence to "moron", but really meaning ox, a castrated bull). I don't know if "skopec" was ever used in the same insulting sense though.
Or it may refer to the notion that germans are "sheep-herders" or "people who eat lamb".

>>50098137
Neither does Leningrad, but I spent fifteen minutes looking for it on a map the other day.

I am not very smart all the time.

And yes you're right, forgot that it was situated in a basin. Coming down the hill people would make more sense for the Germans from the Czech's perspective.

>>50098108
Yes, but they still have to have grounding in logic.

It's very difficult to shake, say, a Muslim or a Christian's faith because leaving God as an unknowable ever-present force leaves a lot of wiggle room for his existence. No matter what I do, there's no fundamental way of knowing whether or not God made it happen because he's ascribed so much power.

Making a claim that the earth is destroyed every night is a different story because it's testable. If I stay up all night and notice no discernible change, either you were wrong or you were right and we just don't notice it happening, in which case it doesn't really matter because I'm not effected by it.

>>50098269
It's the other way around. People don't invent religions that don't make any damn sense -- or rather, those religions don't become very popular.

People forget that shit like modern atheism...isn't modern.

>>50098269
You have a very romanticised view of Paganism, situations like you describe have been recorded throughout history; Christians purposely chose sacred trees housing tutelary deities to build their churches throughout Europe believing it was falsifiable evidence their pagan deities were powerless, it didn't really stop pagan worship.

>>50098368
A religion doesn't have to make any damn sense, people will make sense of it. Hence why sola scriptura is heresy.

>>50098452
Religion is more than its """original""" texts, as you agree.

>>50089965
>>50098269
>>50098368

Speaking about religion and views of time, if you are interested in that, you REALLY need to read this. It's hard reading, but very short and also perhaps the BEST STORY ABOUT WORLD-BUILDING ever written.
I should be a mandatory reading for any ambitious world builders.

http://art.yale.edu/file_columns/0000/0066/borges.pdf

>>50098452
>A religion doesn't have to make any damn sense, people will make sense of it.
You really got it backwards. Religion IS MAKING SENSE of world, not vice versa. Religion may speak in a language that you find difficult to understand, but all religions "make sense" in some way: make create a religion means "to make sense of the world".

>>50098635
Borges is the literal opposite of hard reading.

But yes, you should read it. His Book of Imaginary Beings is also excellent reference material. Read the Di Giovanni translation.

>>50098706
>Borges is the literal opposite of hard reading.
Students that used to attend to my classes tended to disagree.
Borges is hard. On many levels. I will actually make the claim that he might very well be the best writer of this century, one of my colleagues once made the bold statement that he might be the best literary scholar since Aristotle, and I can't say I don't agree at least with the sentiment, but he is very inaccessible to most readers, even among liberal studies students. I've mostly read him in my native language translations (which were made by a whole team of people, and which are very, very good, much better than most of the English translations I've came across) but his works are so odd and so densely packed with meanings that it confuses and often frustrates people. My experience with getting people to read and understand say, Pierre Menard, have not been particularly successful.
And Tlon is one of the heaviest of his short stories.

>>50098787
Good doesn't mean hard.

Borges is the dude I recommend when people ask how they can get stuck into literature. He's got a simple, modern style, but the ideas remain complex. And they're engaging, interesting, and bite-size too.

What do people miss in Pierre Menard? I mean, it's not Lottery of Babylon-tier, but it's still pretty clear.

Given you have a large sample pool, and given you were directly involved with how difficult people found a work, I'm going to assume you're right. But it still doesn't make sense.

>>50065571
>Does your setting have undead?
Yes, as of right now the desert Aedda moon is where you want to go to find the corporeal sort.

>What kinds are present? Zombies, skeletons, ghosts, wraiths, liches?
The corporeal sort are simply undead. Suppose they'd fit under the "fantasy zombie header". You take a body and make it function again or at least imitate proper functionality (they rarely come out "normal" and something is always off about the undead, but we're not talking rotting corpses that can walk here).

These are generally hated as the various Aedda religious views tend to include ancestor worship and the idea that the moral world kind of sucks. So the idea that a soul that has passed to paradise has been forced back into having to live again is a bit of a no no (and if they weren't forced what kind of freak would someone have to be to WANT to come back).

You can also get the incorporeal sort. The aether has a diffuse will of its own. Imparting a will upon it is how everything from physics to life itself works in this world. Meaning it is entirely possible for the right circumstances to lead to powerful emotions imparting themselves into the aether. This means that the ghosts of living people can absolutely be a thing. They're the worse, largely because they freak people right the fuck out.

>How do you kill each type?
Guns work pretty well. Though you can technically convince a ghost to stop existing, but most folk are too busy being afraid to try that.

>>50098833
>Good doesn't mean hard.
While that is true, Borges is both. He writes the way he writes his story in the same way he writes his literally academic works. His writing is strangely "snappy" in that he can say in one short sentence what Eco needs several fucking pages to describe, but that often confuses and distracts reader. And most importantly, it requires a bit of "archeological" work to actually start uncovering what the hell is he even talking about and why. Tlon reads mostly like a philosophical essay. Pierre Menard seems literally meanignless and basically nonsensical to most readers. Al Mu'tasim is a fictional literary criticism of a book that does not exist. Again, I have three years worth of teaching Borges at university behind me.

There are easier stories and harder stories in his collection. Circular Ruins is usually the one I tended to start with, because it's deceptively simple and very punch-line-y if that makes any sense. I usually followed with Garden and Secret Miracle because they still have a very discernable dramatic structure. Then you can move towards the more abstract works like Lottery, Funes, Al Mu'tasim, Herbert Quine etc... eventually finish with what I have found to be the least accessible of his works: Menard and Tlon.

As for what people don't get about Menard?
We are talking about a story that starts with two pages listing a seemingly random collection or unrelated works, then proceeds to describe a dude setting up an absurd and completely meaningless goal, goes into fucking sections where it lists two completely identical paragraphs of Don Quixote while praising the differences between them...

My students generally seemed to be confused by most of his stories, but Menard made them downright angry at times. It's actually my favorite work in Ficciones, but it was the one that usually resulted at least one of the students asking why the fuck are we even doing this.

>>50098452
>>50098371
>>50098368
>>50098507
Alright, so why don't I just post what I have and let you folks decide what makes sense and what doesn't?
(Remember that I said they consider references to the past or future unlucky, so it's written in uniform present tense but referring to past actions)

In the Beginning, there is naught but an endless being; a single mass of infinite size stretching onwards and onwards and onwards. This was The Great Eye, and it was all that was before it opened.
When it opens, the Eye sees in the nothingness life. Where the Eye looks, the earth rises up from the void, and from the earth rises a great tide of life from which rise yet more and varied forms of beast and man.
Where the eyes of men and beasts can only observe what is created, and the eyes of the sand and stone are unable to perceive any but themselves, The Great Eye combines perception and creation into one harmonious motion. Creation, however, comes at a great cost, for its creations can perceive it as well.
As the creations of the Eye gaze upon it, it is squashed and crushed; forced to conform to their will and obey their limited sight. No longer can it be infinite; for the eye of men and beasts can only see so much. The Great Eye that is all now becomes a tiny spec amidst an empty sky. Fearing that it would be reduced to nothingness, the Eye curses all those who dare to gaze upon its unknowable form with blindness. These are the Changesayers; for in knowing the nothingness from which the world is sprung, only they may truly know its ever-changing ways.

>>50098635

thanks pal

Does anyone have ideas for mid-tier magic items to use in a campaign? Stuff besides the usual stuff. Thinking of giving these magic items to a recurring elite team of mercenaries that work for an enemy nation.

>>50098368
>>50098371
>>50098452
>>50098507

(Cont.)
The Eye no more spans the vast sky. It is a mere husk of its once-great splendor, and must journey across the skies to view its creation in full. Leaving the limited sights of men, the skies are left empty and filled with the Eye’s pale twin. The Pale is a cringing, cowardly thing; a mere shadow of the Eye’s fiery splendor. Where the Eye is that to Be, the Pale is that which is Gone.
The Eye is Creation, the Pale destruction.
The Eye is life, the Pale.. death.
When the Pale takes to the skies, it manifests in crude mimicry of the vast orb of the Eye; glaring down at all that has been made. It spreads death to all creatures; forcing them to lie before it and fall to a half-death: the body still as stone but the spirit lingering inside. The spirits it pulls forth from the body it seizes for its ever-growing collection in the heavens, which it lays out in pride like a tapestry for all to see. Over its dark reign, it deigns to unmake everything the Eye had created. But all it destroys, the Eye creates once more when it again arises; new bodies for spirits trapped in aching husks that they may flow like a stream from the dying old world to the freshness of the new.

Also, not written up properly yet, but:
-The Pale (moon) isn't strong enough to constantly keep up a consistent form. It starts with a round imitation of the Eye, but gradually wanes into nothingness before it musters up the strength to manifest again.
-Being killed or dying = a release of the spirit from the body. The Pale isn't strong enough to fully kill, but it can weaken that connection enough to make people comatose (sleep).
Where a spirit goes all depends on what's in the sky at the time. Dying at night (especially by unnatural causes) means your spirit belongs to the Pale. Dying during the day means you go back to the Eye and eventually just get put in some other body.

>>50098961
What edition?

And how high leveled will PCs be by the time they meet them?

>>50098999
nice trips

5e and the PCs are going to be level 5 when they first meet them and will continue to run into them for the next several levels (maybe level 8? i haven't decided yet). Definitely mid level though.

>>50098924
There's a big clash between my experience and your students'. The only explanation I can think of is that your students -- the ones that got frustrated -- weren't doing something they enjoyed. Were they new? Was this in an introductory course -- in a situation where they might be realising they chose the wrong degree?

To me, the works' presentation as essays or book critiques made it MORE easy to understand. It set the tone for the whole story. And like you say his style is academic; academic language is deliberately clear, and Borges does kinda lay most things out on the table.

Take the comparisons of two paragraphs. He repeatedly goes over the idea that each is different in meaning because of its author's context, with specific examples! He explains everything in detail. No, he doesn't directly tell you the -point- of all that, but he doesn't need to.

I agree his references are technically difficult, but you can look them up. But you don't need to; the stories stand as strongly without them. Like, I understood Menard and Tlon when I was a completely ignorant kid, and I didn't know shit about linguistics or Don Quixote although I knew a lot about Nimes.

>>50099035
I see.

What's the party makeup of the mercs?
I would make them mirror the PC party so that everyone gets a cool item they can use when they finally kill them.

As for what they actually are..
>Homing bow for Ranger
>Pied Piper flute for Bard
>Dagger that secretes its own poison for Rogue
>Heirloom Holy Avenger for a Paladin
>Some sort of talisman that engages berserker raeg-mode for Barbarian
>Magical gauntlets with inbuilt Cure Minor Wounds enchant for Cleric
>Magic animal pelt that allows shapeshifting for a Druid
>Bracers that increase strength for Fighter
>Something inscribed with a mid-tier Daemon's True Name for a Warlock
>Enchanted Brass knuckle-type things for a Monk. Maybe they add fire damage to unarmed attacks?
>Ancient tombs detailing lost magical arts for a Wizard
>Some sort of cool staff for a Sorcerer? I dunno.

>>50099364
The plan was for there to be four (the party is five). I already figured that their leader would have a ring of concealment (basically a bonus to stealth checks). I think I'll be having a master swordsman and archer as well. I want the last one to be a mage but I don't know if they should be a wizard/sorc or a cleric/druid. I like the idea of a homing bow for the archer but I would like a more finesse-y weapon for the swordsman (something that isn't STR-based but more based around dexterity. a bit stereotypical but think like a saber or katana than a broadsword).

Just for reference the party is a paladin, a sorc, a rouge, a ranger, and a druid.

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>>50099416
Hm.. Give the Swordsman an enchanted rapier and parrying dagger that get bonuses to being used together.

And in case none of the party are willing to invest in two-handed fighting, give the parrying dagger something that makes it useful for disarming enemies. The rogue could get good use out of the dagger if nobody wants to use them together.

For the Mage, make them a wizard/sorc and give them a book of long lost spells that both the sorcerer and paladin can learn from.

>>50099558
Those are both pretty cool ideas, thanks. I really like the idea of an old tome for both paladin and sorcerer spells.

>>50099140
>Were they new? Was this in an introductory course
No to either of those. The course was for intermediate students and was optional to the boot. The students were from various fields in fact: ranging from Philosophy to social anthropology, journalistics, cultural studies, psychology, as well as more traditional narrative theory, comparatistics and Hispanic or English literature fields. Few students from general linguistics too. Not an entirely dumb bunch either, most of the time. A lot of them were very lazy to think though.

I think the general problem is with expectation. People generally expected a story, not a literary/philosophical essays dressed up as short stories. If you handed them the same material in the form of an academic article, I think they would have less problem reading it, ironically enough. But people read fiction in a different way than they read fiction.

As for laying the cards on the table, it's not that easy with Borges as well. It took me reading several interviews with the man to understand that Circular Ruins are actually about the act of writing a character. And in case of Pierre Menard, let's not forget the whole story is also STEEPED in irony. It is - I believe intentionally - impossible to tell whenever it's a joke. It serves both as a serious analysis of contextuality in literature (almost twenty years before Barthes and his Death of the Author!) and as a major joke at the kind of pretentious gits who would seriously consider such a meaningless and arguably non-sensical claims to be done.
The point is the main problem of that story. If you read Death of the Author, you know WHAT is he trying to achieve in the first place, which gives you a clear key to interpret and approach the text. He is a literary theoreticist and he make an academic claim. Fine, clear enough.

But Pierre Menard is a short story - in the form of literary criticism - that fools around with the reader literally every step of the way.

>>50099416
>a bit stereotypical but think like a saber or katana than a broadsword
Nigga just make the swordsman a dwarf and give him a katana and make him a ronin. Super easy.

>>50099630
Perhaps left over from a time when the practice of Holy and traditional magic weren't segregated schools?

>>50099727
Since sorcerer magic is something you are born with, maybe a "forbidden" book that mixes the two abilities by combining sorc magic with religious/holy magic?

>spend a hundred hours ironing out my setting's magic
>know the ins-and-outs better than any in-setting Wizard
>tfw wanting to teach magic in your own setting
We need a word for this feeling.

>>50099790
"Sandersonism".

>>50099742
How do sorcs learn new spells again? I don't really touch magic very much, much prefer straight choppas.

>>50099790
We like to call that Elron Hubbard syndrome:
Trying to take your novel and force it into the real world.

>>50100039
I believe the PH says that it differs from setting to setting but generally its that they have latent magical power. Wizards have a greater understanding of magic (hense their larger spell list) whereas sorcs are just stronger with magic because of their bloodline but because of this have a smaller spell list.

In my setting this operates similarly, where sorcs learn magic in the same way as wizards do but are usually less knowledgeable about the ins and outs of it. Sorcs are also generally stronger than wizards in terms of pure firepower while wizards have more utility (wizards are also more common)

>>50099790
It's called autism. You should get it checked out.

>>50100113
Alright, then having a book makes sense.

Maybe a long lost artifact from the cult of a forgotten God of Magic?

Hey /tg/ tell me about your setting's Pantheon. Mine's pretty sparse and I desperately need inspiration.

>>50100183
In my setting there is a region that has many magocratic city-states so that might work instead. There also is a powerful coastal empire nearby which could've produced the tome as well. My main worry is what the tome will do though.

>>50100235
Shiif:
God of wind and time.

Shiif governs the elements representing change: not the slow, cautious change over centuries, but spontaneous and widespread tides that flare up and peter out.
He is a fickle god and will rush in towards that which catches his fancy, only to abandon it in mere seconds for the next apple of his eye.

His followers are mostly drifters and wanderers; those who know impermanence and go where the wind takes them.

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>>50100346
>Shiif, God of wind

>>50100235
I'm bad with names, so they don't have names. There's many small gods that watch over large regions and people inhabiting it and also the Progenitor who made the rest of gods and the world itself and was never heard from again. Some people think if they eradicate lesser gods progenitor would return and establish paradise on earth.

>>50100235
There's a couple powerful Dragons, a Fae Queen, a Kraken, a trio of Titans, and a Lich who makes maid outfits for his skeletons. They're not so much "divine" as "supremely powerful individuals who have been around since forever".

There's also a lot of not-so-powerful people that mortals have deified, but mortal religions are shit.

>>50100235
So you know how people say lobsters live forever and never stop growing?

My gods are literally that taken to its logical extreme. They don't really do much, just lobster things.

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>>50101391
So this?

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaeus_%28dialogue%29
Was Plato the first worldbuilder?

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>>50101633
>realizing how much of your metaphysics you copied from Plato

>>50101633
Pherecydes of Syros did it before Plato.

>>50101633
Worldbuilding has almost definitely existed for as long as critical thinking has, it predates language

>>50101633
...No.

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>>50090735
KARST
A
R
S
T

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>>50065623
i like you. do you have a pseudonym or something of the sort?

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Working on making my setting's arcology culture more removed from present-day Western culture, but just vaguely recognizable enough to make the weirdness stand out more.

>Clocks
People in my setting use metric time. A day is 100,000 seconds long, and broken up into 100 centidays (a centiday is roughly equivalent to 15 of our minutes). A myriasecond, or 10,000 seconds, is almost equivalent to two ultradians (human sleep cycles).

>Chernoff Masks
More complex machines have mechanical Chernoff masks built in to translate data into facial expressions. This allows humans to read gauges on an emotional and instinctive level for greater efficiency.

>Mirrors
All the walls in the arcology are covered with mirrors to make the rooms seem larger. Really opens the place up. Makes it less claustrophobic.

>Ultraviolet Lamps
UV lighting is used extensively in the arcology along with face masks and silver door handles to help control disease.

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Done did some Trolls last night.

Fast fact about Trolls:

-They do actually (sometimes) live under bridges. Be mindful of any suspiciously well-kept out-of-place bridges with BONES astrewn underneath them.

-Trolls will grow constantly through out their lives; either until they run out of food, get crushed by their own weight, or are too large to hide from the sun. The largest consistent Troll sub-species are Mountain; reaching 30ft easily in their lifetimes.

-There are many types of Trolls beyond the ones depicted, including: River, Mountain, Ice, & Desert.

-Troll Ivory is quite a lucrative business; highly prized as both a luxury good and a trophy.

>>50102533
>are too large to hide from the sun.
What happens to them in sunlight? If they turn to stone, how is their ivory able to be harvested?

>>50102582
>What happens to them in sunlight? If they turn to stone, how is their ivory able to be harvested?

Trolls actually BURN in contact with direct sunlight; a large and fat enough Troll will burst into flames if he's exposed to the sun for any length of time.
Normally they can regenerate and heal themselves through any kind of trauma, but once the sun gets them they start a steamin' and a cookin'.

A Trolls hide, blood, & fat are all just as valuable (if not more so), but people typically kill Trolls by exposing them to the sun; leaving only their bones & teeth behind to be harvested.

>>50102533
I've seen you in a few other threads and I love your art. You should do a dump of it all sometime.

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>>50102968
>I've seen you in a few other threads and I love your art. You should do a dump of it all sometime.

Always appreciate such kind words, Anon..... But I have a Tumbls that contains +all the art+
That you can look at over here: http://spaghettiart.tumblr.com/

It has all the world building, but also has the stuff a little too raunchy for /wbg/ and OC stuff that is a little too "micro level" for /wbg/.

>>50102730
How do you expose a troll to the sunlight in a way that is easier than killing it?

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Cities on a planet whose atmosphere is unsuitable for human breathing.

What would large, habitable constructions be. Geodesic domes, underground metropolis or something like the forward bases in Avatar?

At the moment i'm trying to put down how major cities and places might work when the air is super oxygenated. Aesthetically I like the idea that normal people outside of a city would have personal breathing apparatus that through an advanced method, changed the atmosphere back to regular air.

This apparatus would be super varied from population to population and the rich would have less cumbersome designs. Of course, those in hardsuits wouldn't have to worry.

>>50103163
I was always partial to the arcologies, building underground will probably always be more expensive.

One time when I have to envision something like this I however went with relatively small buildings that combines living quarters and workplaces nearby.

Let's talk about world building for a moment friends, and in particular food and restaurants. In the modern era the idea of restaurants, essentially establishments purely dedicated to serving food, is actually not a very old one. The modern idea of the restaurant was born out of the French Revolution and the aftermath there after.

For most of history the idea of having a chef prepare food for you was limited to the wealthy and powerful, often nobility, but otherwise as well. Private chefs were the name of the game for most of history. One could secure food at dormitories, meeting houses, and the like, but they were generally poor affair made by the unskilled, and "modern" restaurants were almost unheard of.

After the french revolution a lot of nobility died, and a lot of chefs were out of work. This lead to the invention of the modern restaurant. This is also the reason french cuisine and french cooking styles dominate classical culinary education.

So the question is, does your setting include modern restaurants? And if so what cultural climate allowed them to exist?

>>50104130
Not really. My setting has stereotypical taverns and feasts. Now that you mentioned it, I may introduce a Prince feeding people with fine food as a PR move once in a while, but that's about it.

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>>50104130
Pic related has a bunch of restaurants. Ancient Rome had them too, there are some well preserved ones, and I'm pretty sure India, Angkor and probably a bunch of other societies had them as well.

The modern form of restaurant might be French but there's no reason they can't exist in an earlier setting.

>>50104263
There are notable exceptions.

India did not actually have restaurants like we do today.

Rome did for much the same reason that France did, but on a more drawn out and less violent time line.

China had some, and you mostly saw them spring up then die out immediately after times of political strife.

What I'm saying is that restaurants need a certain political and social climate to be around, and should be under consideration.

>>50104130
Motherfucker Pompeii has fast food take-aways.

>>50104403
Yes, food take aways and modern restaurants are very different. Masses available "fine dining" generally need a certain social climate to spring up.

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>>50104320
>India did not actually have restaurants like we do today.
Yeah, I thought I had read about some kind of restaurant mentioned in a medieval Indian play, but looking it up now it seems to be more a of food-serving tavern.

>What I'm saying is that restaurants need a certain political and social climate to be around
That's fair enough. I'd say any urbanised, relatively affluent society could have restaurants, though whether they actually exist or not will depend on the culture of the society involved.

>>50104130
There's also a significant technological component to the emergence of modern restaurants.

If you're doing your cooking in a heavy cast-iron pot over a fire, as was common through the mid 1700s, you simply cannot have a wide selection of menu items available on short order throughout the day. You'd build your fire and burn it down to coals, and you'd have a method of cooking that was both highly inefficient in terms of fuel and difficult to control. It was fine for making a large quantity of a single dish available at a single serving time, but not for the kind of cooking done at a modern restaurant.

With the invention of the modern cooking stove in the late 1700s, you could cook with much more easily controlled temperature and prepare single dishes separately throughout the evening as they were ordered.

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>>50089988
Try this one...

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>>50100493
P U R E I D E O L O G Y


>>50103042
>TFW you'll never ride around on a centaur mom

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>>50105746
>D R Y L A N D
>Land of the Rivers of Rivers
>Land of the Rivers of Rivers
>Land of the Great Water

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Are those mountains ok?

>>50107316
I personally find them very offensive.

Do you guys like animism as a component in your settings? I personally find it extremely interesting to integrate into the magic system

>>50107316
Sure.

Personally, I would have the horizontal range curve down rather than up, so as to match the curvature of the southern coastline and suggest the corner of a continental plate.

>>50102356
Thanks!

I don't have a pseudonym no, not really sure why I would need one.

>>50107501
He wants to find more of your shi.

>>50107583
I don't really publish or post my stuff on the internet with the exception of in worldbuilding threads on /tg/ though.

I'm really flattered but I don't really think of myself as an "author" or anything, so never thought it'd be necessary.

>>50104130
>So the question is, does your setting include modern restaurants? And if so what cultural climate allowed them to exist?
My Beastmen has a culinary tradition, owing to the huge variety of racial dishes and cultural/regional tastes. A professional chef is akin to a sculptor or fine weaponsmith, with the profession being seen as a craft and an art.

>>50100235
there's different pantheons and then several minor deities and cults

>Major Religions
The Three Sisters (The Magnificent Lady of the Sky; the Great Lady, the Prince of the Four Corners of the World; and the Blind Sister)

The Six and One (The Dead Mother and her six daughters: the Sacred Voice, the Watcher, the Guide, the Joyful Prayer, the Ruin of Civilization, and the Soul of Sacred Flame).

The Broken Crowns of the Infinite Horde (mostly unknown, aside from the fact that they all seem to be twisted and insane [though not necessarily malicious] in some way. the twin goddesses of delusion and discord have a minor cult that has been mostly stamped out)

The Lady of Black Obsidian and her Celestial Court (basically a severe abstraction of the Six and One, the Lady of Black Obsidian is fairly analogous to the Dead Mother)

>Minor Religions and Cults

Children of the Devourer - a small, insular cult devoted to the Devourer of Kings, a sort of supernatural serial-killer (according to legends) that targeted the old Aoipeon Kings during the Hegemony, and any other kings that popped up during the founding of the Four Princedoms and the subsequent Electorate. His/her influence had such a terrifying effect on the leaders of the Middle Rim that it is part of the reason that 'King' and any equivalent titles (mainly Chieftain and Haqaer, for the Pale Tribes and Successorship in the south respectively) are now largely defunct, the leaders styling themselves with the next lowest rank to 'hide' from the Devourer.

Whalehome - blue whales in this setting are essentially minor gods, controlling a large part of the ocean's currents, to the extent that sea travel is fairly dependent on the migration patterns of the whales. thus, the Whalecallers at Whalehome are probably the most important little religion in the entire world; every major religion and country in the Western Rim plays some lip-service to the Caller of Nine Songs out of necessity.

>>50107866
Beastmen have*

>>50065571

Hello /wbg/, it has been a while since last time I posted here. How are all of you doing?

>Does your setting have undead?

Yes, all undead are not natural to the world, but something that is done by magic. Either by work of mortal creatures or by godly intervention.

>What kinds are present? Zombies, skeletons, ghosts, wraiths, liches?

Reanimated dead are the most common so zombies. Skeletons do not exist.
Ghosts or wraiths are spirits of people who haven't departed from the world. Most ghosts are just lingering ones without much effect in the world, but if they are not exorcised or removed from the world they might turn into dangerous wraiths. Most wraiths are spirits of people with magical affinity. This is due to them having more life force to become proper wraith. Not all wraiths are dangerous or hostile, but all are something unnatural.

>How do you kill each type?

Holy weapons are the easiest choice to dispatch dead, but if they are not available hacking them apart works just as well. Main thing is to destroy the body. Think walking dead as ships, if you poke enough holes or hack it apart it sinks. Same principle is in undead due to their souls escaping from the holes.

Ghosts and wraiths require holy weapons or exorcism. Most simplest way of exorcism is for holy man to speak to the ghost and try to see why they are ghost. From here required task can be done to appease the ghost.

>>50109041


>How are the different types of undead created?

Necromancers and unholy magis acquire dead body and then through ritual drag a soul to the body. At this point magi doing the ritual can decide how much independence the walking dead has. Less independence, more concentration it requires for the magi to control the dead.

Fresher the body more intact the walking dead is. They are practically magis thralls as they keep their agility and senses. It is common for necromancers to acquire number of thralls to do menial tasks. Some people volunteer on becoming thralls due to magic putting their body into a limbo. They do not age or require food or sleep. This comes with the negatives like body slowly starting to break down, but that can be fixed with magic.

Creating walking dead is very close to revival of dead. Both of them include dead body and dragging the soul back to it. The difference is that in revival the soul has to be of the body and the magic required is much difficult compared to just dragging random soul to the body as with necromancy. This means that number of magis capable of revival is just a handful in the whole world and revival is reserved for unnatural deaths or deaths that came too soon.

>>50109041
Fucking horribly. It's 4AM and I'm trying to rework the whole basis of my world.

>>50109049
I thought I posted this third part already, 4chan giving me problems...

Creating undead also requires a lot of life force to be spent. This also means that necromancers cannot create hordes of undead fast unless they do a lot of life or blood sacrifices or have enough runes to act as batteries. This complicates the necromancy and especially revival a lot.


One that could be classified as undead are vampires. Vampires are creatures that require life force for their sustenance. This is unfortunate side effect of trying to store too much life energy inside them. It is like a very addicting drug, at start it is easy to handle, but as time goes it becomes harder and harder to remain without additional life force. At this point vampires usually turn mad and become insane. But if the magi can handle the additional life force and acquire more he stays sane and his/her magical powers increase. Even if the magi stays sane it is highly illegal and against more or less every religion and civilization. So along with rest of the undead they are hunted without remorse.


It does feel good to worldbuild again. If you have questions please just ask.

>>50109064
Sorry to hear that, hopefully you manage to get something working. If it feels better my world is hopelessly work in progress

I am on a fucking worldbuilding roll so let us copy paste some old stuff. Someone might remember this from old old thread. I haven't touched to this after I posted it here then.
>>50100235

Patheoning, all is very work in progress. This is partial list of gods worshipped mainly by different human kingdoms. All gods had more power in the past, but nowadays it is small miracle if they answer prayers.


Major Gods
>Mother
Mother represents all things life and is major goddess. She is wife to Father. She is usually represented as faceless mother or with icon of sun.


>Father
Father represents all things death and is major god. He is husband to Mother. He is usually represented as faceless soldier or with icon of moon.


Both Mother and Father have different regional variations on how they are pictured or worshiped, but those are the main points. They are regarded as gods higher than others.


Minor Gods
>Ulfbrant
Ulfbrant is god of battle and bloodshed. It is said that he walked the earth in ancient times fighting in countless battles. He is regarded as patron god of soldiers and those who have to fight for living. It is said that he was originally spawn of Fathers attempt to help people of the world and so is regarded as son of Father. He is pictured as giant with two spears.


>Eilfarn
Eilfarn is god of horses. It is said that Eilfarn was first to tame horses and is capable of shapeshifting into one. He is regarded as patron god of horsemen. He is pictured as golden horse.


cont..

>>50109314

>Mathaus
Mathaus is god of smiths and craftsmen. He stole smithing from elven and presented it to humans. For doing that elven magis tore him apart and fed to their foundries. Even in death he continues to protect those who work with flame. He is pictured as man in pieces holding a smiths hammer.


>Harlon
Harlon is god of travelers and vagabonds. Harlon in ancient times traveled from one end to another in the world. It is said that he is still walking on this world, helping those who need help on the roads. He is pictured as man with walking stick.


>Juoli
She is goddess of herding. She herded the first cattle around the world and taught the skill to elven and humans.


>Masked God
Masked God is god of tricksters. He is associated with those who fool others. It is said that he managed to fool the entire world and other gods to forget its name and looks. Masked God isn't pictured anywhere.


>Viktas
He is god of diseased and sick. He is called to prevent sickness and death coming from that. In event of sickness it is his duty to help in healing. It is also his duty to release sickness and plagues to world. He is pictured as man carrying hourglass. He is brother of Vialtas.


>Vialtas
She is goddess of healing. Her duties is to heal those who are sick. She works closely with her brother Viktas. She is pictured as woman with sickle and herbs in her hands.


>Barithas
Barithas is god of slaughter and death. While Ulfbrant fights with bravery and gallantry, Barithas fights savagely. It is said that in ancient times he fought against countless beasts and through that is regarded as patron of beast hunters. He is pictured as spearman in red.

cont..

>>50109314
>>50109328
Pls less GIANT SPACES

>>50109328


>Karl of the Dead
Karl is god of dead. His duty is to watch over the dead and ensure that nothing disturbs their sleep. He is patron of gravediggers and embalmers. He is pictured as hunched man with shovel.


>Jan Twins
Jan Twins are gods of farming. Both Jans in ancient times taught humans and dwarven how to strike the earth and grow food. Jans are regarded in high glory by Mallard Folk as it is said that Jans showed Mallard Folk how to grow reeds and other grasses.


>>50107406
Animism is practically how magic works. Everything has life force and if you gather enough you can do magic. Living beings of course have more than plants. Magis use their own excess life force to do their spells so they can recharge. Amplifying magic through runes is common, but more savage people are forced to use blood magic and sacrifices for their rituals.


Again if questions, then please ask.

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>>50109344
Sorry it badly got copied through drive and I didn't realize my mistake. So deal with it

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So how horribly have I screwed my geopolitics just from the look of this map, /wbg/?

China demanded border treaties from the Soviet Union as it was recovering from its failed attempt at capitalism, which sparked a war

I figured the Sovs would annex East Turkestan for the Asian republics and the coast of Manchuria because big industry

>>50110075
During early 1900s Manchuria was heavily patrolled by Russians so most likely and they had major interest on the area. It would help to know what is the timeline of your world as I see some strange nations and borders like Korea as whole or Baltics.

>>50110107
The Soviet Coup of 1991 succeeded. Soviet troops succeeded in holding Belarus, the Asian republics (Though it was effectively a civil war down there), and the Caucasus. Ukraine and the Baltic States broke off, though Ukraine only managed to survive for a small time after independence due to a strong Russian minority in the east, and eventually a war with the Soviets and Hungarians, due to having to oblige a mutual defense treaty with Romania.

The North Koreans joined in on the Sino-Soviet war, which prompted the South Koreans to join in as a Soviet co-belligerent near the end and unite the country.

I'm considering justifying a Soviet victory in the Sino-Soviet war due to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and effective ABM/Interceptor technologies defeating Chinese ripostes.

Sound alright at all?

Oh, and I was considering a big war in the middle east, and am also thinking about making it go a little bit nuclear, but maybe that would just make me seem like I'm making the setting nuke-happy.

>>50110197


I would make Baltics their own states, they are too diverse to be under one banner. Some kind of defense treaty between them is possible along with joining NATO asap.

I would also make the former Warsaw Pact nations completely independent and not allied with Soviets, too much bad blood between them. Thought some kind of agreement to stay neutral or non-aligned is possible. Also Transylvania to Hungary is not plausible due to majority people living there being Romanians now, too many Hungarians left the place.

Korea business is plausible if given good enough reason for SK to join the war. Trade agreements or something else that could give them advantage against Japanese economy and power.

Sino-Soviet war would have been hard thing to solve if there is conflict in west same time, but if Chinese are weakened enough or their civil war is still partially going it would be possible for Soviets to win. Usage of tactical nukes is plausible if used by both sides or if Soviets manage to first strike at Chinese nuclear arsenal and C&C.

As easy thing make Saddam die due to Kurd/Iranian bombing and make have Kurds go full rebellion. No gassing of Kurds as Saddam is gone and make Iran supply them. I don't see East Turkey imploding yet, unless Armenians don't get involved in Kurd business.


I do like it.

>>50110351
>Also Transylvania to Hungary is not plausible due to majority people living there being Romanians now, too many Hungarians left the place.
I didn't know that, thanks.

So, possibly make Ukraine independent? Or have the Soviet Union invade them anyways?

I'll make the Baltic states all in a mutual defense pact, but all independent nations.

Also, there is no conflict in the west at the time for the Soviets. The annexation of Ukraine would have either been before or after the fact there. I'll also say the Soviets promised North Korea, and a lucrative economic alliance to help in the Sino-Soviet war. Does that make sense at all? I know the SKs were definitely west-aligned, but that also seems like a deal they would take. It could also be one of the deciding factors in the downfall of the U.S. as it loses influence.

The middle east idea there is a good one, though I do want a bit of a collapse in Turkey. Perhaps a coup (Typical of Turkey, really) after harsh suppression of Kurds in the East, leading to disarray in the country and secessionism from the Armenians?

>>50110434

You could make Ukraine independent, but only the west Ukraine. East Ukraine would be Soviet state inside SU. Moldovia could also be Soviet state. Check the map where majority of Ukraines Russians live and make decision through that.

By conflict it doesn't have to be shooting conflict, just cold war tensions high. The better equipped units would have to stay in west to safe guard the border. This means that in east B-class divisions would do the most heavy lifting. This means a lot of T-55/T-62/T-72 models, especially the early models. T-64s and T-80s were deserved for better divisions.

Korea thing is good.

Turkey going full Armenian genocide on Turks could be plausible after hard line military coup goes through. It would help if NATO left Turkey after that (not plausible due to SU still kicking around) or Kurds going full rebellion thanks to independent north Iraq and Iran support. Armenian support would require independent Armenia or Soviets giving military support to Kurds.

>>50110637
Would Soviet support for the Kurds and Armeians be out of the question?

>>50110656
Soviet support to PKK is very plausible as they are the Kurdistan Workers Party. Support to Armenia not as Armenia would be inside SU in your map and in IRL. They gained independence as SU collapsed IRL.

Soviets would happily support anybody who is socialist and willing to fight against capitalist bastard pigs of west!

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>>50110712
Alright, how does pic related look? It's sort of a best case scenario for Kurdistan. I'm also considering doing something interesting with Israel or maybe Egypt. Any ideas?

>>50110743
Syria wouldn't go down without fighting. The fight against Kurds would be easier for them than the current civil war by large margin. Also they are Soviet ally.

Eqypt is also pretty stable due to military practically having power instead of Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel would rather nuke everybody than letting itself be destroyed. Nobody on their borders is strong enough to fight against them expect maybe Turkey.

Syria could support Kurds outside their territory if given some incentive by SU like modern military equipment.


One thing that could happen is South Africa not giving a single shit about Nelson Mandela and continuing their apartheid. If they swore to fight communism heavily they could gather support from USA and others who would require it due to SU flexing muscles. Maybe after suppressing riots in bloody way they could decide to remove Mugabe from Zimbabwe? Africa back then was one messed up place.

>>50110822
I like the South African idea. Do you think it would lead to annexation, or just Rhodesia part two?

>>50110743
Also Yugoslavia would be in some sort of crisis. Different nationalities fighting each other just like in IRL. Bloody mess already, then just add Soviet influence to Serbia and you have nice blob of angry serbs prepared to remove kebab. Make stuff like SU enforcing No-Fly-Zone over Yugoslavia which includes everybody expect Serbs and NATO can't do shit unless war deccing SU.

>>50110845
It would most likely turn into Rhodesia 2:0, but heavier SA support. This would practically mean that Mozambique and other socialist states would be drawn into the conflict.

But due to trigger fingers being already itchy and if SA suppresses the black riots. Proper shooting war there might happen. One thing to take in account is that former colonial powers of are France, UK and Belgium would have to step in proper if they are more hardline against communist. If not sending troops, but at least selling material to SA and not embargoing shit out of SA and Rhodesia.

Socialist states around Thailand could also start their shit, but most likely they would be against China and not west. Depends thought if you want to draw them to bigger picture.

>>50110871
Southern China (Canton) is a Japanese puppet state.

Sounds like I have the making of a pretty good world devolving in to brushfire wars. Now, how do I spark a second American civil war, ending with the pacific states being puppeted by Japan, and an anti-soviet, but still communist faction in the great lakes?

If I can get the geopolitics right, I want Japan to sort of take America's place in the fight against the Red Menace. Unless you have a better country to hold the torth.

>>50110902
>to hold the torth.
Jesus. I mixed up hold the torch and hold the front.

So... I'm brand new to this. But I have a feeling I know a good way to make some great progress.

Would someone ask me things about my setting? Anything at all. I have a feeling if I let people ask questions, you'll come up with things I should cover that didn't even occur to me to answer.

>>50110972
What does war look like in your setting? The size of armies, the tech level, the last great war, etc?

>>50110902
America imploding would be more or less impossible unless you bring Shadowrun level shenanigans into the game.

Canton most likely would be under Taiwanese influence if PRC explodes into warring states.

More militaristic Japan is possible but would require USA to give go ahead on changing the constitution. Even then they could be regional power at best. Them and ROK in north east Asia and ANZACs in south.

>>50111007
Hmm, alright, so America stays together, barring any extremely unlikely circumstances.

Obviously, as you can probably guess, I'm going for a sort of weirder take on a cyberpunk setting, where I want everything to be a lot more black and white, rather than just all hyper-capitalist. A sort of resurgence of Fascism (Not by name, of course) as a harsh response to U.S.S.R. belligerence. Do you think the U.S.A. could even possibly become some Empire-like figure, in the wake of extreme Anti-communist demonstrations? I'm sort of going for a dystopic "What if the Cold War overstayed its welcome" thing.

Also, you reminded me about Taiwan; Canton could very well unite with Taiwan to reform the Republic of China, no?

>>50111052

Obviously, as you can probably guess, I'm going for a sort of weirder take on a cyberpunk setting, where I want everything to be a lot more black and white, rather than just all hyper-capitalist. A sort of resurgence of Fascism (Not by name, of course) as a harsh response to U.S.S.R. belligerence. Do you think the U.S.A. could even possibly become some Empire-like figure, in the wake of extreme Anti-communist demonstrations? I'm sort of going for a dystopic "What if the Cold War overstayed its welcome" thing.

Also, you reminded me about Taiwan; Canton could very well unite with Taiwan to reform the Republic of China, no?


I do see USA being the Arsenal of Democracy in the world with even heavier control on world politics. This mainly due to SU being what it is in this ATL. the 60s anti communism would raise it's head even more and around the world. In other hand more socialist parties in west would also become active. Either with idea of supporting SU or saying that our brand of "insert country X" socialism is better than rest and we all should calm down. I wouldn't thought go into police or military gunning down rioters in west.

So what you could see is bit Watchmen like world.

>>50111083

Damn it, managed to fuck up the formatting and Taiwan. Oh well.

Whole Canton might be too much to bite for Taiwan, but Taiwanese influence and landing to coastal cities is something that could happen in this ATL. Japanese involvement is plausible also.

>>50110982
Most of the major conflict in my setting is between the primary kingdom (The Empire of Weir) ruled by the Imperial Council, and the Deadlands, ruled by Mundri, Lord of the Undying, Prophet of Amhraxus, the Devil of Undeath. The Empire's forces are large, but not enormous, more of a normal-large size of highly-trained soldiers. The Deadlands almost exclusively consists of the undead, whether unintelligent skeletons and zombies, or intelligent undead, like vampires and liches. As such, their forces are innumerable, but zombies don't exactly know how to use tactics. Tech level is standard fantasy medieval Not-Europe, minus any gunpowder weapons. Castles are a thing, knights are a thing, crossbows and plate armor and catapults and cavalry and magic are all things. Magic in particular is highly useful, especially against hordes of undead, where a single fireball can take out more zombies than a single soldier could, and mages are much more portable than catapults. Although towns and villages of the Empire still suffer the occasional Orc raid from northern forest lands, they are driven off easily enough by lords' militias and detachments from major cities when appropriate. The bulk of the Empire's standing army maintains presence along the eastern border, where a river has been diverted to provide a more easily defendable barrier than just a wall.

>>50111083
Possibly Japanese, Australian, and Taiwanese involvement in the second(?) Chinese civil war after the Soviets have their piece with it? After that it's sort of a lower-end western puppet state, I imagine.

>>50111100
I mean...it's generic as shit but quad dubs don't lie.

Tell me about the Empire. Its founding, its government, its ethos, as it were.

>>50111182
Pretty much. I know I'll get better with time, but hey, you know what they say about practice.

The Empire was founded around 600 years ago, and is based around the coastal city called the First City. Although the city's name has regularly changed over time whenever a new ruler takes over, everyone still calls it the First City even if it has a different official name. This is where the Empire essentially grew out of, and being the only major port city within 600 miles, is also the seat of the Empire's government. Originally, there were a large number of small, independent holdings controlled by wealthy men who claimed the most land and troops, but approximately 60 years ago, the Good King Rogerik (the Not-Arthur) managed to unite the holdings under the common cause of fighting the newly risen Deadlands (brand new at the time). The people followed him because he was intelligent, brave, and wise. However, the King was killed about twenty years ago because he lost in a duel versus the Queen of the Southern Kingdom of Cougaria, M’rarra. He dueled her because there otherwise would have been an additional conflict between their kingdoms, which the Empire couldn’t afford, considering its ever-present war with the Deadlands. They were in conflict because the Queen’s husband was assassinated while traveling in the Empire, and Cougaria believed it was set up by the Empire so that Cougaria would be weakened. When her husband died, M’rarra took the crown and became the Queen, and swore that she would kill the King for their betrayal. The assassin went uncaptured, the Queen grew impatient, and threatened war if they didn’t have the King’s head. Instead of getting the Empire stuck in another war, the King offered to duel the Queen, knowing he couldn’t convince her of their innocence. Ever since, the Empire has been ruled by a High Council of the most prominent merchants, mages and clergy of the Empire.

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>>50110982

>What does war look like in your setting? The size of armies, the tech level, the last great war

I haven't thought about how different nations fight their wars, mainly because I haven't mapped how different they work and how many of them there is. I would say in pretty diverse ways.

I also need to take in account how different neighboring nations influence others. If one is using heavily horses and cavalry does their neighbour switch to pikes or does that open their now more static army into more easily defeatable opponent.

Lets take few examples.

Palghars are not!Romans who heavily uses horses. Their armies mainly consist of three parts.
>Light cavalry/horse archers, paid men at arms who serve the lords. In peacetime they herd cattle and sheep in the flatlands. Wartime they form skirmishing element whose main mission is to cause attrition to enemy before decisive battle
>Light infantry made from levied citizen-soldier and other folk.
>Heavy cataphracts made from professional soldiers and nobles. They serve nobles in different positions and are the main fighting force of the land.

Palghars bit look like pic related

Mallard Folk of Red Marsh are the Glorantha duckesque race in the world due to reasons!
>Skirmishers make most of the Mallard Folk army. This due to their light armor and weaponry. They excel in combat in Red Marsh, but thanks to their small size are nimble scouts and ambushers outside their homes. Thought forests and other coverage is very important to them.
>Noble Warriors are lowest class of Mallard nobility. They are ducks that have gained their rank through rigorous training and they form the spine of Mallard Folk army. They can hold against most enemies to buy enough time for Skirmishers pelt them with arrows, slings and darts.
>Warriors of Jan are priest warriors. Trained from duckling to fight in pairs. They are deadly opponent in 2vs1 situations. Many have underestimated them in battle and lost because of it.

I need some help coming up with ideas to create cultures. Each culture is loosely based off of one or more real world cultures, is attuned to one of 12 aub-elements, and mixes physically with something non-human (it was humans only until someone played God, so now everyone is anywhere from 15% to 85% human).

Here's what I have so far:
[Air]
Wind: Chinese culture, mix with birds (Tengu)
Thunder: Standard European, mix with cats (for obvious reasons. Think Charr and Khajiit)
Lightning: Nothing

[Fire]
Fire: Native American culture (plains and southwest), Werewolves (canines in general)
Arid (desert, erosion, time, friction, etc): Middle Eastern culture. Scorpions (brown drow. Maybe hivemind?)
Bio (chemicals, poisons, acids): post apoc, cancer, mutations.

[Water]
Steam: Russia? Mist forms?
Water: British Caribbean. More human-like are the british colonials, more fish-like are ghetto jamaicans. Think Zora
Ice: Vikings. Dwarven Vkings? Giant Vikings?

[Earth]
Earth: Maybe Japanese? Torn between dwarven insect hivemind and rock golems.
Plant: Irish Fey. Either have a dryad-like connection with a tree, or can transform into a tree.
Metal: Fantasy Cyborgs. Inner city america/Industrial revolution. ghetto steampunk.

Some were easy to do (Thunder, Wind, Water, Metal), but I can't seem to find something that fits well with others (Lightning, Steam, Earth,etc). Any oddly fitting combinations that I'm overlooking?

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So I want my dragons (and dragonborn) to have metal or at least partially metallic bones, for the purpose of making them refinable and highly sought after. What would be some possible quirks/consequences of a species that walks around with a metal skeleton? Besides the obvious "weighs a lot" issue

>>50112593
>Metal poisoning
>no calsium storage
>weaker weight to strenght ratio
>airport security will have a hey day with them

>>50112593
An incredibly difficult time maintaining body temperature, broken bones take longer to heal if at all without a smithy, which adds all sorts of problems off the top of my head.

Also, actual calcium bones are fairly flexible, so while a magical metal bone system might be more 'durable' they'd have difficulty in tasks requiring very narrow spaces, for example, without literally stripping flesh.