World Building General. /WBG/ Hey there pals. Noticed there

Okay so I have an idea for magic in my setting that I believe is quite unique, but I need some opinions on whether it's actually good. In my setting, magic and the Church are closely intertwined; in the civilised world of the main continent the only magic users are priests. This is not because God actually exists, because he doesn't, but due to the mechanic through which magic works. For magic to work, you need to first fully believe that the universe is all predetermined. The second requirement is that you believe or even know that what you want to achieve is what is predetermined.

The Church meets both those requirements, as they believe the world is just the playground of an all-powerful being, making it predetermined to his will, and priests believe they have been chosen by God to do his work, thus simply instinctively knowing that when they try to do what God has planned for them, it will work. Lower priests can only do some little magic, like enhanced healing (as they have been taught they aren't a good enough vessel for God's work, and thus don't fully believe they can do more), while bishops, the Primates and the Patriarch can do substantially more each rank.

Another class of magic users, hidden away in the deep inland forests, are the tribes of Wild Men. They chew on a specific, rare herb, which kills about 2/3 that take them but give the other 1/3 delusions of godhood. Basically, similar to the effect LSD gives you where you believe you are the universe and the universe is centered around you, while still feeling insignificant. They believe that their actions have no sway over the world, as the world has always wanted those actions to happen, all the while thinking that since they are the universe their will IS the predetermination.

>>50206068
Don't forget that rain in a medieval setting is often the best thing that could happen to a farmer, so most people. Maybe it could just keep rain below a torrential level, while still being good for farming.

>>50206361
Interesting concept, you'll just have to be careful with writing to avoid sounding Pretentious or fedora-y I guess. Is it for a game for literature?

Also, in response to that, the rain is not in a normal place. It's incredibly dangerous, so I want ideas for dangerous or deadly changes within an area locked in a state of raining.

>>50206427
Thanks for the feedback. It's for a quest, where the MC will not be a priest anyway, so the finer details of magic will be mostly behind the scenes. On top of that, noone actually knows why magic works: the church obviously believes it's just because God exists, although over on another continent, which has just been discovered, there are also magic users who do not believe in a god at all.

>Also, in response to that, the rain is not in a normal place. It's incredibly dangerous, so I want ideas for dangerous or deadly changes within an area locked in a state of raining.
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean, but I think what you want is an idea on how to make rain have deadly effects? In that case, you could make the area a rough bowl-shape causing mudslides and flash floods towards the lower areas.

>>50206486
I do like the idea, and it has some very interesting implications. If someone were to figure it out it would be world-changing.

About the weather, the area is infused with elemental magic, which locks and enhances the weather within. So basically it would be some chaotic magic-enhanced area based around water or rain. The ideas I stated in the op were some that are floating around in my head, with rain flowing upwards, or the rain simply collects in massive spheres ear the ground, and there are entire habitats within. Another Idea I had was smaller spheres that were easy to get trapped in, and a species of Whale-like leviathan that go around inhaling the spheres and prey trapped within to feed.

>>50206427
Have it rain slowly. As in the rain falls in slow motion. Droplets hanging in the air sometimes long enough that you could use one bucket and some determination to keep your entire roof dry.

Or have the rain come like a those tipping buckets at a water park. Just a light mist as the only warning that everything in an areas is about to have an entire cloud condense and fall on their head. The ground would have hundreds of mini lakes and ponds, from water craters.

>>50206555
Oh I really like that idea of it all falling at once. I'll probably use both ideas in different areas. Thanks for the input man!

>>50206361
It is an interesting approach, and it reminds me on my own idea of magic connected to the eight circuits of consciousness. I can lay it out to you if you're interested. Basically, bards use the neurosomatic circuit, which is responsible for making us feel bliss and perceive aesthetic things via all senses.
Wizards (arcane magic users) use the neuroelectric or metaprogramming circuit which is concerned with the relativity of perceived realities and the reprogramming of all other circuits.
Druids and shamans tap into the neurogenetic or morphogenetic circuit, which connects our consciousness to nature and all other forms of life. Druids connect synchronically with everything that is currently alive and shamans connect diachronically with everything that used to be alive.
Finally there is the psychoatomic or quantum non-local circuit which encompasses true divine magic, as well as connections to demons or beings beyond our worldly understanding, such as a warlock would use them.

You sod forgot to copy the opening post!


On designing cultures:
http://www.frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir%27s_Ethnographical_Questionnaire

Random generators:
http://donjon.bin.sh/

Mapmaking tutorials:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48

Free mapmaking toolset:
www.inkarnate.com

Random Magic Resources/Possible Inspiration:
http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html
http://www.buddhas-online.com/mudras.html
http://sacred-texts.com/index.htm

Conlanging:
http://www.zompist.com/resources/

Random (but useful) Links:
http://futurewarstories.blogspot.ca/
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
http://military-sf.com/
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/
http://donjon.bin.sh/
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/index.html
http://kennethjorgensen.com/worldbuilding/resources
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/europe#wiki_middle_ages
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding

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>>50206682
That sounds too complicated to use in a game, but for literature it seems really interesting to me. Obviously quite well thought out.

>>50206702
Ah fuck. Sorry! Listen to this guy everyone.

>>50206702
>On designing cultures:
>http://www.frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir%27s_Ethnographical_Questionnaire
I love this one. I've been busy writing about one of my 11 countries for almost 2 hours now, and I'm just halfway through the first category.

>>50206703
Thanks. I thought of it as more of a different way to fluff and explain how magic works, than as a way to set up classes of magic users and make a system of it.

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I haven't written any more yet, but I'll post it in case anyone has any suggestions.

Do any of these sound like interesting settings?

Sorta space opera where Earth is the space equivalent of a third world shithole, outside of the mega cities, it's a mix of wild nature changed by invasing species, poluted wasteland and urban decay. Alien developers and corporations own large parts of the planet, especially the earth governments. Warlords and raider gangs are a big problems in many places, and a good chunk of the order is kept by a mix of human and alien mercenaries. Earth is also a popular port for pirates and smugglers looking to refuel in a less strictly controlled part of the galaxy. The moon and other colonies in the surrounding system are often better off than Earth, as most are almost entirely owned by mega corps. Humans mostly leave the planet as cheap labour on freighters and mining or salvage ships, join groups of smugglers, pirates and mercs, or as slaves, often taken by previously mentioned pirates and smugglers. A minority are either send off world for a fancy education by their rich parents on Earth, or as captains of their own either stolen or purchased outdated ramshackle ships. As such, humans are recognized as one among many species of sapient trash.

Modern Earth space opera setting, aliens come, set up a mass relay/wormhole next to earth and trade and technological proliferation does its thing. Suddenly buying your own used space ship becomes relatively easy and people go on space adventures in an alien galaxy that has only sorta heard of humans, except the first couple of usual "first stop" places near Earth that either welcoming the influx of new customers or are getting fucking tired of these stupid fucking new comers. Pretty much anything you bring home is gonna make you rich, so get to it before the influx of shit that'll make you rich starts the inevitable inflation.

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>>50206068
Help me /wbg/, you're my only hope. I have a setting I've had bouncing about for about a year or so.

Most of it has been dedicated to a lot of research into the late 17th, full 18th, and very early 19th centuries because I'd like for it to take place in a period inspired by those; the more advanced parts of the world being the most similar with the later periods. I'm an historian by trade, so the research has been in-depth and I'm mostly just expanding on my education since most of that focused on the Napoleonic wars (and the eras of Antiquity and the World Wars, but neither of those are relevant here).

Magic is more Mythos-inspired as opposed to Vancian, closer to a Dark Heresy or Iron Heroes style of how you can really hurt yourself or do damage to those around you if you fuck with it alone. Ritual (in particular, rituals with groups) are damn near required to do magic in any kind of safety, and even then it can prove hazardous if mistakes in the ritual are made.

The danger of the magic—from both a practical and mental perspective—guarantees that cults and conspiracies try to survive in the shadows; following dark gods and wicked entities. Supernatural creatures are more akin to things that go bump in the night as opposed to elves, dwarves, and dragons flying across the sky. Human-only, if one hasn't caught on so far.

The eras it draws inspiration from mean that while there is still room in the world for adventure, the things of the darkness have been mostly driven out of operating with abandon; stealth and cunning paired with overwhelming force against the unwary is their weapon now. Humanity has become dangerous in numerous ways, and some have the potential to rise to greatness; though curiosity of the eldritch and the pathetic will of others makes them tools to the more intelligent creatures of the night.

But despite how well-thought it seems to far, I find myself stuck on a few very obvious and unfortunately large things:

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>>50206068
>>50209910
I'm having a hard time finding a map that I actually like, and this bothers me; the inability to visualize the world itself makes fixing some of the following problems more difficult.

Speaking of, I'm experiencing difficulty coming up with factions; I want it to feel more like an internally consistent world/sandbox (not that I plan on running games that way unless the party specifically asks for one, as planned stories will be told but I want there to be room for them to effect the world in their own ways), and in doing so I require just enough factional vacuum to allow for things like adventurers and mercenaries to go alongside the intrigue and larger-scale Imperial warfare of the inspired periods.

Finally, I am having a hard time coming up with a consistent and believable way of maintaining how the technology can stagnate for a little while longer than it did in our own world (I'd prefer to do it without hand-waving, but am not afraid to do so), as I rather like the time periods in question and appreciate the flavor and tone that they offer; I would like for the world to be explored and even changed by the characters in a few different campaigns without having to resort to the “all these adventures take place in the same generation or so,” kind of story; on the same note, I'd rather avoid the world feeling like a Points of Light-styled place, as well. It runs counter to the narrative of how the things in the darkness have had to retreat from the public eye in their fashion.

Obviously I have a lot of work to do. Any suggestions (especially map-wise) would certainly be appreciated.

>>50209938
>I am having a hard time coming up with a consistent and believable way of maintaining how the technology can stagnate for a little while longer than it did in our own world
That part is easy; just remove easy access to coal and/or oil.
My setting's stuck in a pre-Victorian slump due to a complete lack of fossil fuels.

>>50209938
>I am having a hard time coming up with a consistent and believable way of maintaining how the technology can stagnate for a little while longer than it did in our own world
It's worth keeping in mind that much of what caused the rapid advancement of technology from the late 1700s onward had more to do with economic and social factors than with actual scientific knowledge.

The decline in feudalism and absolutist monarchy in favor of rule of law and the replacement of mercantilism with free enterprise were both necessary preconditions for the Industrial Revolution. Without this, society never quite makes the jump to modernity.

>>50210134
How do you justify the lack of fossil fuels?

Young Earth creationism with no dead dinos? Ancient precursor civilization already burned all the oil?

>>50212630
The first one, "Young Earth creationism with no dead dinos". It's a young world, geocentric world without any tectonic activity.
Tthe fundamental chemistry and atomic structures are different, so you can't make gunpowder or a battery either.

>>50212761
Fucked up the grammar, it's "young, geocentric world".

Guys I need help choosing a bad guy.

My player is apart of a Elven Noble house in a rotational monarchy which moves about with the seasons and each house assigned a season with their powers in mind (it's romanticised in lore, but reality it was a bitter power struggle, stories came later)

So it comes down to seeds I've planted
>A Young Human Prince who's civil war with his father spilled into the Elven forest and ended with the intervention of the PC, the King hadn't seemed himself and had gone mad, initially rumour was magic/enchantress who turned out to be a physician and the King had developed a brain tumor which made him see the Human Emperors of old, which led to him inviting all people who used to be apart of the empire to come into the City state and him ignoring the people of the City, the Prince had been corrupted by the Pope of the Humanity worshipping Cult of St Cuthbert into starting a Crimson Crusade meets Third Reich Faction, the Prince being young was way over his head and listened to the Elf PC who although 200 years old, looked his age(ish) although the King proud the PC arranged a meeting after discovering his condition and reconciled the pair, Pissing of the Nazi-Pope who attempted to kill the King by snatching a musket and shooting, the Pope was killed but many crusaders and the Grand Master Militant (General) of the Crusade escaped, the Prince is also a kind of blank slate, young and idealistic the player will be at the Kings funeral soon and already wants to influence the Prince into being a Puppet.

>Within the Elvish nobility is a shadow chamber that controls the underworld of the City state forest, the Houses are split between types of crime and specialisation of them, although lesser nobility in a sense there is still considerable power, the Assassin House is suprime but the House of Secrets knows too much and has a "Dead man switch" so if killed, everyone knows everyone's Secrets which the house of Secrets may not actually know ----

>>50212811
----- >In the Elvish underground lies a Noble house that's based on Dark Magic and otherworldly knowledge, my player hates the Patriarch of the house because it is very mad magician Esq with the Patriarch holding crazy magic strength connected to Elder Gods beyond explanation.

>R'yleck is the Elder God of the ocean, basically Drowned God meets C'thulhu and the player has developed an irational fear off because of a complex love arc between the PC and two NPC's that R'yleck who is actually a massive romantic watched eagerly from a Bar called Deus Decorum that the Gods all meet up and drink at outside the realm of time and watch reality, I played all the Gods as sacred imposing creatures like those of Myth until the player accidentally summoned Chaos - the oldest of the Gods through a Relic and Ritual and the Gods had to posses friendly NPC's to kill the possessed Chaos Relic, afterwards the PC had to argue their case for staying alive after seeing to much in the smokey 1920's pub with jazz music jukebox which she did being supported by R'yleck, Death, Elven Zeus and all the other Gods not caring enough (Except Continuity who wanted the process done properly) but R'yleck is creepy looking and speeks in a salad finger voice with a (Nervous) giggle instead of full stops.

>The PC's Father and Mother left them to be raised by their Grandfather and Grandmother (Maternal) the PC has never asked why, I've not developed the characters of Mother and Father beyond them taking a role in another city states Nobility through the Father's ties.

I can make someone up if you can't advise me who to pick/what I'm stuck for an antagonist,

>>50207061
Use a more readable font

>>50212630
All pressurized carbon turns into diamond instead of oil

>>50213157
But then you're going to find out how shit my prose is.

What are some good ideas for written/runic magic? Right now, I have it that magic flows freely, and to harness and use it, you need to imbue an item with runes and channel magic to flow through the item.

>>50214855
Have you read Banished Quest? Ignoring the not-QM shitposting, the QM has done an amazing job of worldbuilding. Part of that includes a style of runic magic.

It's been a while since I've updated myself on the series, so my memory is foggy. But it, like the magic system, is very intricate and involved.

>>50214855
Pre-defined languages required to channel magic runs into the issue of "How did spellcraft develop in the first place?" and "Is it even possible to innovate?".
My system just uses mental imagery and the soul of words, not the words themselves. Allows for a dystopian future where Wizards aren't able to manifest effects they have no words to describe, too

>>50215246
Never heard of it.

>>50215255
The metaphysics of the setting is reality is a story in a book, so the written word has power. Technically, anything written can be empowered, but it takes a lot of magic the more is written, these are simplest words the people know. Most also don't know this, they just think these are the words for spells to work.

For innovation, I do have a few ways that show how runes can be used in clever ways, like alchemy uses etched runes on glass and tubes to change chemical properties of the ingredients, and Elves have to use a combination of marks scarred to their skin and their blood to power items, do to their magical nature and how they affect the flow of magic.

>>50210496
I was planning on having a few factions try to stick to a de jure or de facto absolute monarchy, with their own cultural reasons for keeping their mercantile and caste systems; being perfectly fine with their monarchy. In the vein of Turtledove's "Gunpowder Empire." That's certainly one way of helping it along, thanks.

>>50212630
>>50212761
I like the idea of a world with a distinct lack of proper fossil fuels to get them past a limited amount of steam technology.

>>50212761
In regards to your comment on gunpowder and the battery, that's not a poor start of the thought process. I'm thinking of fucking with the chemistry of firearms a little so that smokeless powder is far more difficult to make than black powder; maybe find a way to not make it possible at all.

The constant presence of barrel fouling through black powder would do more to prevent the mass adoption of cartridge-based weapons than would forcing a stagnation of the evolution of firearm-loading technology via handwave; if people knew about cartridges--and maybe even the richest people or royal-guard units used breech-loaders--the fact that those cartridges used black powder would mean that the weapons would need an extensive amount of cleaning during extended combat. Automatic weapons would never likely come about, as the fouling of the weapon through the use of black powder would make them little more than novelties that eventually blew themselves up.

Assuming technological determinism, this would eventually see the richer civilizations forcing their way up to about the mid-19th Century in terms of military technology; approximately Franco-Prussian war. But it could arguably take them far longer to get there. The potential for global politics and adventurers/mercenaries making their marks over the course of generations in Napoleonic era-inspired fantasy land would last much longer than it did historically, achieving the tone I wanted for the setting's militaristic aspects.

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I'm creating an urban fantasy/sci-fi game.

Basically I'm already set on having psychics in my game. These are people with 1 (one) (single) psychic ability, there is no way to get more then one. But they can be decently powerful, up to throwing people around or stopping a few bullets, but not as powerful as say a Wizard in a fantasy setting.

However as I've been reading and getting into unknown Armies a lot recently I've been seriously considering adding some kind of magick in the setting in that vein. However I am very skeptical of adding in magic, even though my setting has a lot of 'mysterious' shit that just 'happens' that is basically magic, I am skeptical to put in actual magic.

So would it instead be so bad to put in a sort of subtle reality warping style luck manipulation stuff? Things like doing small rituals to symbolically sway events in your favor, or tattooing symbols on your skin that give some sort of subtle power or bonus? Would that take away so much from the otherwise 'realistic' porton of the setting?

page 10 bumperino

I am writing a book; So my nation is the United Terran Commonwealth. We are Humanities final product. We believe that xenos should be treated equally. All citizens have to do 4 years of service for the right to become leaders/vote. It can be military, or for more pacifistic species, govt. service. Their space combat doctrine is capital ships, which large amounts of starfighters or drones to support. Their FTL travel is a version of the alcubierre drive.

Our govt. Is a military republic, where military service (or govt. serivce) is the only way to gain the right to vote or become a leader. Humanity is largely Atheistic, and the government is very secularGay rights are widely accepted and xenos are given the same rights. So far, we are at war with the holy gaa covenant. A fascist theocracy hell-bent on purging all life from the galaxy. We are allied with the Serene Monarchy of Praetor, and the Maskin confederationThese posts are all mine. We have conquered two species, the Chinorik, Molluscoid specie whom are massive shipyards. their planet surface only consists of 15% land and 85% water. The other is a humanoid species which can interbreed with humans called the Noma. Humanity uses Gauss, Railguns/Mass drivers, Particle Beam technologyu, and Sometimes plasma.Humanity is a sprawling empire consisting of 75 worlds, with ongoing colonization efforts in the second sphere of expansion.
The mode of FTL travel is the Alcubieere drive, Inertial dampeners are used to make sure the crew doesn't die, unlike poor captain neimeier. Heat dissipation are used to stop hawkings radiation from affectign the crew radiation. Warp travel takes a while, and also, after leaving warp, tehre is a warp wind down, which may last from a couple of hours, to a week. There are also wormholes which people can cross ( but there are only tow stable wormholes in the galaxy.). The tachyon sail was used by some precursor civilizations. Moss-Jurgat drives are in use by the old prithin confederation.

>>50220315
>>50220334
I hope you've got some bitch ass story happening there because this is the dullest sci fi setting I would never read a book about.

>>50220315
>>50220334
How good is my world? Do you like it /tg/

>>50220353
oh

>>50220353
But humanity is not all sunshine and rainbows. There is amss genocide happening here. Humanity and the coalition commits war crimes that make the ones the japanese committed in ww2 look far more nicer. The quadrant is normally at war. The gaa turn prosoners of war into cyborgs and send them out on massive banzai style rushes to exterminate the enemy. The prithin federation is a rotting husk of what a great interspecies federation is like. They are fighting a millennia long civil war, withweapons that could make the death star look like a toy. Three of species have already gone extinct due to war.

>>50220389
Life is hell if you are on the fringes. Gaa border raids, Mass extermination, genocide. There are gaa slave soldiers, which are slaves to the gaa covenant. Guess what, they are given electro-shock collars, and forced to go on massive suicide charges, most wont survive their first deployment, hell, they probably wont make it to planetside. If they retreat, they will be electrocuted to death. Conscription rate is akin to birth rate, Gaa soldiers like to purposely bomb them and call orbital bombardments for fun. IF you survive more than one deployment, then you are considered a veteran.

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Gailian military before Antal Reforms was quite common for the time period and was identical with their neighbours. Massed levies and men at arms gathered and scrounged together by local nobles who banded together to fight at local field was the standard for quite long and still is for multiple nations and groups. Poor showing of Gailian men at field, especially after failed campaign to relief city of Kecel and further losses upstream of Kecel river lead into coup by group of nobles lead by charismatic Antal Kovacs, a young noble of family of not much worth.

In the year after the failure at Kecel Antal Kovacs and the nobles gathered their forces and decided that the current situation with the army is not viable. North Gailia where they were based became the test ground for Antals Reformed Army. While the reform was still underway the latest defeat at Kecel happened to Kings army and hasty truce was settled between Gailia and Kecelians. The beaten Kings army marched back home, still five thousand strong with three thousand auxiliaries supporting them, they were stopped by Antals new troops seven kilometres from the capital Gailia. King demanded Antal to step aside and join his forces to plan new expedition to beat the Kecelians once and for all. Antal didn't move, while Reformed Army only had three thousand men and 400 cavalrymen. Kings army while superior in numbers was ragged and weary, while Reformed Army was fresh, but without first battle.

The coming battle was sound defeat to Kings army that lead into King and several of his nobles getting captured along with good number of soldiers in the army. With King in chains Antal Kovacs marched to capital and put himself to the throne with his noble supporters placed in important positions across the Gailian lands. In coming years after strengthening Reformed Army and beating few more rebellions the Antal wrote book called "Reformed Warfare and Organisations" that became the new guideline for Reformed Army.

cont

>>50220355
>progressive atheist utopia vs. evil theocracy
Pretty generic, desu senpai.

Those are some well-worn late 20th century tropes you're working with, and while that's fine for a setting, I really can't see how this is going to be any good as a book. I feel like at least a dozen guys have already written this book.

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>>50220872

Gailian regiment is formed from 14 companies of 120 men each. Ten of these companies are formed from infantrymen and four formed from archers. In total that is 1680 fighting soldiers which are supported by several hundred assistants and other personnel of baggage train. As the regiment gets new soldiers as older soldiers retire or die due to fighting, remaining soldiers are shuffled to create full companies with equal number of veteran soldiers. The idea behind this is to make sure that the regiment doesn't have weak spots that might fail in the battle. Reformed Warfare and Organisations state that multiple regiments should fight in close cooperation with other regiments and force the victory through their own skill and superior operational mobility achieved by regimental structure.

Cavalrymen, engineers and other soldiers are picked during the training period to form their own corresponding units listed in Reformed Warfare and Organisations. These soldiers are not organized in regiments, but directly in companies due to their smaller numbers.

cont

pic partially related. 54 and 55 could represent the normal soldier in the regiment.

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>>50220926

The strength of Gailian regiments is not only their training or way they operate is their standardized equipment. This ensures that every soldier is equal in equipment and can trust that the guy next to him is similarly armed and trained. Normal Infantryman having both spear and shorter close combat weapon along with their always useful knives and their kite shield. They are armoured with long aketon, leather greaves, gloves and kettle helmet. More experienced and longer serving soldiers have mailles given to them. This has lead to that some more experienced and older regiments have higher percentage of mailles on their soldiers with regiments like 1st or 7th having mailles distributed to every single soldier in regiment. Over their armour they wear a colourful tabard that makes it easier for soldiers to spot the men of their own regiment and company during the fighting.


For fuck sake I tried to keep this short, but my rambling skills took over. I tried to have the regiments to have bit of a Roman legion feeling, but not the size or how they function. Give me your opinions and if you think this is shit say it and shoot it down.

Pic related, Goliath here could easily be veteran soldier of some regiment. But instead of getting beaten like scrub by puny David, it would be other way around due to Goliath having hundred of his mates with him.

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I asked this several times but I want multiple opinions.
Are those mountains ok?

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>>50223052
Well think how the tectonic plates move against each others and push the mountains up.

I made few paint edits. Red shows where the plates are moving and orange shows where the plates collide.

>>50223300
Am I supposed to make the middle part of the continent higher?

>>50223591

I do not know, it is your world. I suggest you to look on real world locations, for example Himalayas how they were formed and why Tibet is so bloody high. Then think how could I put similar geological feature in my world?

Would Space Dwarves and Space Dinomen be too ridiculous to kill the mood of a sci-fi horror dungeon crawler?

>>50223939
How could you be scared if you have a sci-fi velociraptorman and a midget space viking giving you backup?
Should change it from a "horror" dungeon crawler to a campy "horror" dungeon crawler.

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>>50223300
>>50223052
Looks fine to me. As long as your mountains form ranges that at least vaguely correspond to tectonic plates, you're good to go.

Don't let the geography autists get to you; the real world is full of places where mountains do weird stuff.

>>50224450
>Implying all Space Dinomen are raptors
Racist.

Seriously though, "horror" is probably not the best way to describe it. But I do want a sense of dark foreboding and danger as they explore dead alien ruins.

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>>50214855
>>50215255
There are races of godlike beings existing somewhere in the setting far beyond human reach, in another plane of reality or on the other side of the universe or something. These beings are capable of 'speaking' directly with reality itself (or God or whatever), telling it what to do so that they can alter the world or bend physical rules. They devised a language and system of writing and told the universe that this writing symbolized their words and commands, so that they can tell the universe what to do more efficiently.

Humans (or whatever races you have) can utilize these same symbols, tricking the universe into thinking these are commands given by those godlike beings, so they can indirectly tell it what to do. How much they know of this writing and how they learned it, how effectively they can use it, how widespread or secretive it is, etc, depend on the setting. Innovation could come from experimentation to discover new characters, words, sentences, etc. You could also have multiple different writing systems or languages created by different godlike races (maybe angelic and demonic beings, or some other dualistic thing) which affect reality in different ways.

This only really works if you have a blind idiot God who can't tell or just doesn't care where the commands are actually coming from.

Alternative: the Gods, angels, demons, spirits, or some other entity or entities capable to influencing the world are really big fans of art and calligraphy. Write a request for them to do something for you in an artistic or interesting way and they might just help you out. The greater the request, the more impressive you have to be; nice calligraphy might heal a cold, assassinating somebody or enchanting an object would require something special like pic related (depends on how difficult you want magic to be). If you don't have time for that, buy a ready made request made by a professional and offer it to the being(s) whenever you need to use it.

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Hey /WBG/, I have a predicament. I'm trying to brainstorm appropriate cultures and civilizations the like, but I don't exactly know what sort of climate or geography of the world. Could you give me some rough estimates based on the locations of the landmasses?

When did taxonomy come about and how might I go about naming species scientifically without latin roots?

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>>50225158
>trying to perform centuries of scientific discovery and genealogical classification in your personal fantasy universe
Stop, anon. You don't want to go that far unless you're actually living there.

>tfw trying to work out a fantasy universe's metaphysics

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More stuff to continue Gailian stuff, but in another part of the world. Still very wip as whole, but gives a skeleton to flesh out.

Three millennia ago when Dwarven colonists and adventures first crossed the sea and ventured far south in search of mountains and riches that were promised. But alas they found nothing expect sandy dunes and rocky plains. Dwarven caravan already in trouble and men ready to mutiny against their leader, they managed to stumble upon Great Sand River. River that crosses these plains and brings life upon the shores. Here they camped and decided to rest their weary souls for awhile over the winter months.


In their camp next to the river they actually enjoyed their lives. Building small houses from white granite gathered from the outcroppings and bricks made from the clay found from the river, the camp turned into a town. Dwarven caravan leaders, supported by their now content brethren decided to stay there naming their town White Haven, their new home in desert. Here five hundred dwarven laboured in coming years, building their town and actually thriving. During the first winter inhabitants of White Haven had visitors in form of sailors and traders moving downstream to unload their trade goods and buy foreign wares to be sold upstream. This was their first contact with outsiders.


Word of strange short folk settling next to the river and building a town made from white granite spread and so did rumours of riches and other plunder. White Haven grew into small trade stop and the population grew from five hundred to one thousand inhabitants, with dwarven section of town distinct from rest. This separation made the rumours spread even more and it was fourth year of White Havens existence that first proper band of bandits and raiders decided to attack. What is know is that these raiders were beaten terrifically one sided way. This meant that White Haven stayed bandit free for quite long time.

cont

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>>50225254

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>>50225400


The biggest reason why White Haven grew into metropolis it is now was fifty years after its founding was when twenty thousand people of Kalisti tribe sought safety inside the walls of the city. Kalistians had fled the on going onslaught far west and fled across the land in search for new place to live. Dwarven rulers of White Haven were reluctant to let them in, but in the end decided that they can handle the new influx of kalistian folk. In coming years the city grew heavily, kalistian and other humans outnumbering the original dwarven citizens multiple times. This lead into problems as kalistians wanted new power, they did outnumber the citys original inhabitants quite well and some were disgruntled to being relegated into status of manual labour for dwarven. Riots and strikes happened and dwarven rulership debated to throw kalistians away from the city. It nearly happened, but it was decided to provide kalistians and other humans a parliament of 30 men. This parliament pleased kalistians and others enough so that peace could come to the city. Afterward more members were added to parliament to represent new people and interests in the city.

White Haven or City of Towers as known by others grew bigger and bigger during its three thousand year history with 400 000 inhabitants currently. A capital of Kalistian Empire, still ruled by dwarven from the original expedition and governed by the parliament. Ruling large parts of the rocky plains and the Great Sand River.
If questions about these fellas or Gailians please ask.

>>50225254
>Not going full Toady and writing a program that can simulate the history of any universe you want to make
Its like you haven't even uploaded your consciousness in to a quantum computer yet.

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>>50225427
>letting in a massive influx of refugees that overbreed and out-populate the native population

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>>50225427
>>50225531
>it's called White Haven

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>>50225531
>>50225724

Oh for fuck sake. I didn't expect this while I really should have. Well memed lads.

Dorfs do have built a Wall to separate their living quarters from humans. That is where the original part of White Haven was founded. As true to dwarven roots, walls were built. Currently the dorfs number around 150k in whole Empire with 30k living in the city. While humans do outnumber them, without dorfs the Empire would have fallen long time ago.

Instead of being useless yokels, kalistians were super useful for dwarven. Cheap numerous workforce to work the fields and quarries. No wonder they got bit upset.

Parliament has power to govern the Kalistian Empire, but the dwarwen rules descending from original founders have the ultimate power. So when their interest are at risk, they can influence the Parliament or even veto their decision.

>>50225427
>>50225884
Why does your Empire have a parliament? Is there actually an "Emperor"?

>>50225971
"An empire is defined as "an aggregate of nations or people ruled over by an emperor or other powerful sovereign or government, usually a territory of greater extent than a kingdom"

They just rule a lot of land and people. Calling it a kingdom would be an insult.

If you read the previous messages proper. The Parliament is to give some vestiges of power to the people and to move workload of doing menial governing to humans. It is most probably the reason why there hasn't been a successful coup to throw dorfs out.

>>50226092
It sounds more like a Republic with tinges of an Oligarchy to me.

>want to discuss setting for a game i'm developing
>if i discuss it and people praise me for it my brain thinks i'm receiving the accolades for a finished product beforehand and i lose the willpower to work or write it any further

i want to die

>>50206068
>drawing characters in my world
>accidentally click "Don't Save"

FUCK

Alright /wbg/. How did you decide to design your races?

How did you determine how many, and what notable features they would have? Are they Human-only, fantasy, alien? What helped you draw inspiration?

>>50229247
I decided what I wanted to include, then made logical reasons for them to be there.
Having a single Beastman race with a variety of subspecies to branch off of helped.

>>50206068
Probably too late a response, but how about having the water go sub-zero (but due to the magic it doesn't turn into ice), storing in clouds and then falling to earth in a single, massive drop (i.e. 10 kgs of water in a single raindrop).
Since it's heavier than usual, it would have a much higher terminal velocity and such rain would be like being hit by a cannon.

>>50231013
Ohh, I dig that. I'm going to use that for a zone! Cheers.

>>50229247
I try to look for different less known civilizations or groups of people. Instead of going with basic blood thirsty barbarians I would search for ancient German tribes and see if I can get something out from these.

For example for coastal tribe I looked into ancient frisians of frisii tribe. Then I thought about their technological skills and went through using grain into golds economy creation.

bump. Anyone have some good guides to post?

>>50235936
Most of good guides are in the OP post that is in early part of this thread.

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>my race ideas start with a visual
>then brainstorm about their world/habitat
>simulate evolution
>the original design wasn't fit for the environment and they would have evolved differently
>the realistic end result looks all fucked up
he wasn't supposed to look like this

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>>50236477
>fantasy setting
>evolution

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And so that we get some easy and lighthearted discussion to this thread so that we don't have to bump this back from page 10 always, thread questions!

Pick one of your nations and explain followings:
>Bread, what kind of bread do they eat?
>Food, what kind of food they eat other than previous bread?
>Land, how much is there land and who owns it? How does the quality of land or terrain/environment effect the people there?
>Overhead, how are the common folk taxed and how do they live their lifes? What does basic farm have?
>Cutting corners, how do the common folk save money in lean times?
>Middlemen, how does the trade move in the nation? Directly from farmers to merchants or is the someone in the middle doing the transportation?
>Craftsmen, how are they organized and how do they charge their crafts?
>Textiles, what kind of clothes and clothing do the citizens wear
>Preservation, how do they preserve their foodstuffs
>Containers, what kind of buckets or bins are used?
>Mining, is there mines in the area and what do they mine there?
>Magic, does it affect the things above?

A lot of questions, but they will help in worldbuilding a lot.

Also take Grain into Gold where I took these guidelines. Read the thing, it really helps.

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>>50209938

Draw mappe

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>>50237618

Mappe

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>start mapping for a mock MMO i brainstormed with a friend
>make it more realistic, keep increasing the scale, work on location/resource/size realism
>go too far
>and even further
>hundreds of hours of work and passion
>the map is utterly useless and irrelevant when it comes to its original purpose
>time to start over
has anyone had a similar experience?

>>50238367
I lost all my maps when my external harddrive died a year ago.

>>50238441
>not keeping a backup copy of your worldbuilding that you carry with you at all times

What word would use to describe fey from another dimension teraforming earth? This is high fantasy. The fey don't have a name for their planet, because there are no other planets or even stars in their dimension, so they don't think of it as anything but the ground. They want to make earth more like the fey world.

>>50225146
Pop into this and compare the latitudes to Earth, then adjust for your star's attributes, time period, etc
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/

>>50239611
>http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/

Alternatively draw a grid on your map. Use photoshop's rulers as metrics for 10 variables of latitude. It doesn't have to be the usual pole to pole nor even symmetrical. You could start at 60 degrees north and end at 40 degrees south with each 10 'inches' in photoshop being 10 degrees of latitude.

>>50238367

Draw map, then design world/setup. Have basic and loose ideas in mind, but let the map guide you

>>50239020
Could call it "diagenesis".

Would it be reasonable for nomadic tribes to survive in the desert through the trade of metals, stone, and gems to local settlements?

>>50242035
Nevermind, apparently "diagenesis" is already a thing. Damned scientists and their predicable naming schemes.

>>50242136
Here's my opinion after a few drinks, so take it for what it is:

If the minerals were difficult to extract, yet highly valuable, I'd think that communities would form around them. It would be lucrative enough to have a larger scale operation working constantly. Perhaps if the resources weren't plentiful enough in one area, you'd have people
go from place to place in order to extract it. However, I don't think desert nomads would be lugging around a lot of heavy equipment.

I think the only scenario it would work is if the resources were easy to extract, but doing so would be dangerous (e.g. the desert flora or fauna is extremely lethal).

You have to take in consideration the availability of the resource, its demand, usefulness, and most importantly in this case, the difficulty of bringing it to consumer

>>50242491
Well, the concept is that the desert is the home to gnoll nomads you travel and hunt giant earth elementals that roam the desert. Larger ones move slow enough and are big enough that vegetation would grow on them, and the largest ones would even house an oasis on their backs. Over time, the gnolls figured they could break them apart to find valuable material and trade the excess to the local kingdoms for needed supplies, allowing the tribes to grow.

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>>50206068
Eyyyy, just who I was looking for. Please give me some feedback on a map Just got to working on the rivers. Pls no bully riverpolice, I swear I have heightmaps. I'm basing it off a map I generated somewhere else.

>>50243188
What's going on there along the northern edge of the western continent where it looks like two rivers are converging at the coast with a little river bridging them together inland?

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>>50243279
Lake carved out of the desert by a falling star. The star was taken out of there and brought back to one of the nation's capital ages ago but the settlement on the northern edge became an important city tieing the industry in the hills to the north of the lake to the ocean for trade and transport.

>>50243365
Oh, I see. On the zoomed out view, I mistook part of the coastline for more river.

I'm working on my very first homebrew campaign for when we're done with Lost Mines of Phandelver.

I'm going for a desert setting, focused on a city state built on the coast of a sea, over the ruins of the ancient NotEgyptian empire. The city is governed by a few wealthy troll families who keep the sea clear of pirates and tax anyone and anything that passes through their domains. This is basically Egypt so besides taxation the region also sustains itself from it's mineral resources, luxury goods such as fabrics, and agriculture. Artifacts from the old civilization are in high demand and low supply due to the ruins of their necropolises and temples being cursed and full of undead.
I'm going with Warcraft style trolls, so most trolls, especially those who live outside the city have a more tribal society. (the higher class trolls have completely let go of their roots in the name of profit and capitalism) Racially the city state is quite diverse due all the trade that comes through, with many people from around the known world settling there or just passing through.

The whole story of the campaign is that an ancient lich/pharoah from the old civilization has regained corporeal form and is raising an undead army to "retake" the old kingdom, and then the world. Typical lich king stuff I guess? The heroes end up at this city state to investigate the disappearance of a foreign noblewoman's friend, and pretty quickly shit hits the fan when the dead start coming back to life and attacking people.
I'm pretty happy with what I got so far, dunno if I'm gonna develop this into a bigger world or if it's just gonna be a one shot for this campaign.

>>50243365
>fallen star
I've been using that as a central theme to my setting for the past year, hearing the term is almost nostalgic.

I need an art program that lets you easily make hex tiles with infinite zoom

>>50237228
>Bread
A cabbage-based bread. Spongy texture
>Food
Seafood, Pork, hydroponic plants
>Land
Medium-sized Island Chains. The land is owned by a feudal aristocracy, but the only worthwhile parts are the towns and cities. The slums and beaches aren't considered "property".
>Overhead
Taxes are determined by social class. The actual numbers vary, but everyone takes an annual payment from the class beneath them
>Cutting Corners
Piracy and Black Markets
>Middlemen
Merchant traders. Sometimes also known as pirates depending on who they work for.
>Craftsmen
Private companies are organized underneath an aristocrat depending on what they deem necessary to produce.
>Textiles
Depending on who you are, it could be the highest fashion, coarse linen, or hemp
>Preservation
lots of brining and pickling
>Containers
Crates, Bags, and Barrels
>Mining
precious little
>Magic
magic has a direct influence to what social class you belong in, and therefore what you can really do. Otherwise, magic usually doesn't affect things once they're dead.

>>50237228
For an Undead Kingdom:
>Bread
Very simplistic grainy loaves. Flavour is not a concern obviously.
>Food
Mainly farm animals (cows, pigs, chickens). Also any unfortunate soul who happens to wander into the kingdom risks ending up on a platter.
>Land
The kingdom itself is very large, but very little of the land is inhabited, with a good 90% of it being densely forested. Due to the lack of any real farming, almost the entire population lives in cities by the ocean, the richer clans obviously own larger houses.
>Overhead
There is no true lower class, as the mindless dead (zombies, skeletons etc.) do all of the labour. Most commodities are untaxed, with the exception of rare metals.
>Cutting corners
Everyone is a rich prick. The poorer clans serve the richer ones and as such the richer clans are obliged to support them.
>Middlemen
Resources are collected by the mindless dead and sent to their liege, who usually sells them to passing merchants (usually goblin merchants).
Craftsmen
This is usually handled by the less prestigious clans, who are contracted by the wealthier clans. There are also guilds who rent out labour.
>Textiles
Excessively fond of long, flowing robes.
>Preservation
Nothing is preserved. Anything to be eaten is usually eaten alive.
>Containers
Generally iron barrels.
>Mining
There are a lot of mines (most of the economy is from gold). Mainly gold, silver and ruby.
>Magic
Necromancers are the most valuable asset a clan can have, as they are able to increase the clan's workforce. Artificial humans (homonculi) are also created using magic, which is important for the vampire clans especially, as humanity was hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago.

>>50206068
okay, call me an autist if you want, but

is there any info on how to realistically emulate tectonic movements and stuff. i want try making a really realistic world, without just going "here be mountinz"

(captha was to pick pictures of mountains, ironically)

>>50206546
>If someone were to figure it out it would be world-changing.
Would it? If you knew how it worked, you wouldn't be able to use it.

>>50206682
This is a joke, right?

>>50224727
What I did is treat magic basically like computer code for reality.

Gods speak in 1s and 0s directly and lay out the foundations and particulars of the universe as they please. Wizards are basically feeling their way through learning Lisp - mentored by the fey (and the occasional demon), who figured that shit out aeons ago - while sorcerers are using a WYSIWYG program.

Priests are like a grandmother asking her programmer grandson for help with everything.

>>50225884
It should be called Short Haven or Beard Haven.

>>50216014
>if people knew about cartridges--and maybe even the richest people or royal-guard units used breech-loaders-
Interesting tidbit: They (rich people) actually did use breechloading, cartridge based guns IRL, and before your time-frame as well. Not to say they where common, cheap or particularly great, but they existed.
Here's a video of a gorgeous Example from 1625:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beOgmCxeh7A

>>50226144
Don't worry, this is 4chan. No one is going to praise you.

>>50229247
I decided which fantasy tropes I liked the best, what racial traits may lead to increased diversity in gameplay, and then went from there. Cultural diversity between races has been more of an afterthought.

>>50206068
A question for those of you who succesfully used a world they build to run a game: What are your experiences?
What where things you overlooked when building?
What where cool things you build in that the players completely ignored?
Did you have the System you where going to run the game with in mind when designing the world?
In general, how much do you think it added to the game that you had your custom world instead of a pre build one or a generic one?

>>50237228
For fantasy Russia

>1
Bark bread, mostly. There's a shit ton of forest, but most of the country is too cold and/or rocky for effective farming.

>2
Monster meat and potatoes is the big one. Since mass production of firearms became convenient, the cave bears and giants that infest the mountains have become prey to a growing culture of trappers and hunters. Areas closer to the sea naturally eat a lot of fish

>3
!Russia is an enormous nation, although most of the land is basically useless. The Crown owns all the land, and loyal administrators are appointed to administer various areas. The environment is varying degrees of cold and rocky, infested with monsters and generally terrible. The communities that survive are full of hardy, sinewy people with a high threshold for discomfort.

>4
Most people work for the state, in one way or another, and communities have production quotas to fill in return for land use. As long as the wood/iron/sulfur keeps flowing, settlements are allowed to govern themselves as they see fit, but shortfalls are harshly punished. Farms tend to be very large (though poor), as there's no shortage of semi-arable land, and it takes a lot to get a decent harvest.

>5
Well, it's !Russia, so I guess either by dying off or eating their own children.

>6
The royal trade consortium is a state-run organization that controls and authorizes commercial trading efforts. !Russia's only trade routes are across the sea, and the consortium maintains a fleet of ships for this purpose.

>>50247864
>7
Craftsmen in outlying communities are usually left alone and assumed to contribute to their home town's production. City tradesmen and larger companies are required to join governmental guilds and have their prices centrally set. Truly outstanding artisans tend to get hired by the court directly.

>8
The commoners tend to stick to sackcloth, leather, and in some cases just animal hides. Wealthier communities may move up to linens or, more rarely, furs. The fashion for the truly wealthy is to wear armour and imported finery, no matter how poorly suited it might be to the cold weather.

>9
Either by fermentation, or by tying it in a sack and leaving it hanging from a tree outside.

>10
Simple wooden stuff, though just about anyone can affort an iron lockbox if they have anything valuable enough to store in it.

>11
Mining is !Russia's most important industry. The mountain slopes are dotted with vast mining complexes, digging for iron, copper, silver and sulfur, among other things.

>12
Not as much as one would think. The !Russian churches are tightly controlled by its paranoid ruler, and their magic colleges are severely hampered both by !Russia's uneducated population, and their lack of access to the arcane innovations of the mainland. Druids are viewed with suspicion and hostility due to !Russia's previous experiences with fey magic and witchcraft. The introduction of practical firearms has further pushed the nation away from magic.

>>50237228
Okay, so here is it about the Crayfish Province of not!China
>>Bread, what kind of bread do they eat?
Little bread is eaten in the valleys where rice is the staple, but hearty rye bread is common in the north and the dryer mountains in the south-west
>>Food, what kind of food they eat other than previous bread?
Mostly rice and rye as cereals. The main protein source for most is fish and crayfish which are both fished out the rivers and farmed on the rice fields. Beef from water buffalo, and poultry, both chicken and water fowl, is not ubiquitous, but common enough. In the north, and other forested regions, hunting fills this gap as well.
Another important staple of their diet are the fruit produced in the Orchards who dot the landscape.
>>Land, how much is there land and who owns it? How does the quality of land or terrain/environment effect the people there?
A big majority of the land is good, arable land, owned by the family matriarch. The landscape is relatively homogenous, with only southern mountains and the northern forest breaking the mold. The villages in the mountains are generally smaller and rely more on their orchards, but are renown for the spirits they burn. In the north the Beishui river is the border to the forest and the villages along its banks are among the richest in the province, thanks to the abundant cedars that are exported throughout the whole empire and beyond.
[tbc]

>>50248680
>>Overhead, how are the common folk taxed and how do they live their lifes? What does basic farm have?
There is an extensive bureaucracy that keeps close records and the 'effective taxrate' would be something like 25%, but because of a civil war in the other end of the empire the tax system outside the province has collapsed, lowering it to 15-20% or so.
A typical farm has a big main building, boxing in a main yard,15-30 acres of cereal fields and a garden for vegetables, as well as fruit trees in the village orchard and grazing ground in the common pastures.
>>Cutting corners, how do the common folk save money in lean times?
Villages and farms are mostly self sufficient, so there is little to cut corners, aside from reducing spending on bought foodstuff and selling of high-price/low-calorie products like livestock.
>>Middlemen, how does the trade move in the nation? Directly from farmers to merchants or is the someone in the middle doing the transportation?
Almost all grain is transported through barges who are directly under state control, aside from that it's on a case by case basis, but river traders are a common sight all over the land. Wood from the north is rafted down river directly, for example, while ore and precious stones from the south often go through many hands.
>>Craftsmen, how are they organized and how do they charge their crafts?
Most crafts are organised in Guilds, but this organisation is rather loose outside of the cities. Craftsman traveling with river traders are also quite common, especially for those with crafts who aren't needed regularly.
[tbc]

>>50248690
>>Textiles, what kind of clothes and clothing do the citizens wear
Linen is the most ubiquitous material and wool is pretty common aswell, mostly to protect from the elements. Cotton is somewhat of a higher-class material, worn by Priests, Merchants and Administrators, as it has to be brought in from the southern provinces.
The clothes are usually utilitarian, but often dyed in vibrant blues, greens or yellows.
One unique clothing item to the province is a puffy, lined waistcoat, dyed either a dull grey-brown, earthy orange or dark, earthy red, that vaguely resembles the carapace of the crayfish.
>>Preservation, how do they preserve their foodstuffs
Smoking, pickling, salting, nothing out of the ordinary
>>Containers, what kind of buckets or bins are used?
Wood, earthenware, ceramic and copper, in order of usage. Cast iron is very uncommon and only really used in mining areas
>>Mining, is there mines in the area and what do they mine there?
There are salt mines in the north, iron mines in the southern mountains and small copper mines all over the province. Jade is found along many rivers aswell, but mostly quarried near the capital of the province in the south-east.
>>Magic, does it affect the things above?
Yes, it does. The magic in this world permeates everything, so on a low level it's always present. It doesn't do anything huge or flashy, but it helps in many ways: It can lessen the load in manual labor, help to battle disease in people, cattle and crops alike, it eases long-range communication and in a hundred different ways raises the quality of life.
[fin]

>>50237228

Palghars, I have posted about them in past and so I post again.

>Bread, what kind of bread do they eat?
Bread made from barley or oats, thought oats are usually made into oatmeal.

>Food, what kind of food they eat other than previous bread?
Pasty filled with either fish or meat is very common. The most common meat eaten is sheep, with the other usual livestock coming behind. Horse meat is valuable, but enjoyed by everybody. Different kinds of cheeses are very common

>Land, how much is there land and who owns it? How does the quality of land or terrain/environment effect the people there?
Palghar lands are quite dry plains. Most if not all farmable land is being taken care of with rest of the hilly and rocky land being used in herding. Most of the land is owned by the families who farm it, but outside farms the land is owned by the state. This land is then separated to corresponding nobility who in turn control who is allowed to herd and where.

>Overhead, how are the common folk taxed and how do they live their lifes? What does basic farm have?
Typical households are large as whole family lives there. As oldest son inherits everything and royal laws protect against splintering of lands. This is to secure the power of land owners and obligates them to arrange one horseman to service of local knyaz. This horseman is also part of the taxes they have to provide, if household cannot provide the horseman they will have to pay much larger taxes.

>Cutting corners, how do the common folk save money in lean times?
By introducing more oats and other crops used as livestock feed as food. Larger amount of fishing and foraging will happen. Other choice is to butcher their sheep herds, but that cuts their major source of income.

cont

>>50248716

>Middlemen, how does the trade move in the nation? Directly from farmers to merchants or is the someone in the middle doing the transportation?
While the farming homesteads are quite close to towns and are concentrated, they can sell their crops and crafts directly to merchants in those towns. Sheep herders cannot split their manpower that easily so they sell their livestocks to roaming sheep merchants who then deliver the sheeps where they are required. So the flow of trade goes from farms to towns to big cities. Due to heavy reliance of horse in the palghar culture, the quality of roads is not great. This and because several rivers cross their lands they use boats and barges to transport their goods.

>Craftsmen, how are they organized and how do they charge their crafts?
Craftsmen are organized in town/city wide organisations which represent the craftsmen during important town relating meetings. Of course inside these organisations there is always power struggle to be the trade who represents all craftsmen. The state has put maximum price allowed to most mass products. This is to ensure that product prices cannot skyrocket. This is not always enforced, but things like bread and ale stay cheap.

>Textiles, what kind of clothes and clothing do the citizens wear
Palghars are practical people. They wear normal trousers and tunics for their everyday life, including nobility. Of course the clothes of nobles are more higher quality than the clothes of common folk. Linen and wool are the most common materials for clothing to be made from.

cont

>>50248735

>Preservation, how do they preserve their foodstuffs
Due to the lack of trees in the palghar lands, they mostly use ceramic bins and bottles to storage their stuff. Meat is air dried or salted to last long. Cheese made from goat or sheep milk is very common.

>Containers, what kind of buckets or bins are used?
As mentioned before, the lack of trees forces them to use ceramics as much as possible. Brass and lead containers are also used a lot.

>Mining, is there mines in the area and what do they mine there?
Palghars have very severe lack of iron in their lands, forcing them to import most of their iron. They do have very profitable copper, zinc, lead and nickel mining.

>Magic, does it affect the things above?
Magic does not have much effect to things mentioned above. Magic being rare, the practitioners sell their trade for highest bidder or directly serve some noble. Magic doesn't have much part of the daily life of palghars, because they do not believe in fate. They do thought understand that magic if used wrong can be very dangerous, but if used properly helps them. This is why healers usually work as priests

>>50248716
>>50248735
>>50248762
Sounds interesting. Can i ask a few questions?
What size of country are we talking about here? Is it big or small?
What's the geopolitical situation around Palghars?
What level of technology are we talking about?
What's for of government does it have?

>>50248865
Oh my questions!

>What size of country are we talking about here? Is it big or small?
Palghar heartlands are about size of a Portugal, but the palghar culture and their other cultures in their culture group live in area that is about size of a Iberian peninsula. The size of Palghar nation has been bigger in past, but due to foreign invasions and civil wars they have lost most of their lands to neighbours or just cannot govern them.

>What's the geopolitical situation around Palghars and What's for of government does it have?
Complete shake up of Palghars Ruling Council. Seven out of ten members were removed by force of aggressive persuasion by younger more aggressive faction called Arrows. The newly elected High Knyaz decided then to start the raids against southern lands in search for plunder, slaves and cattle. Summer raids have continued for past three years.

This has lead into strained relations, but if Palghars decide to go and conquer their former lands there is not much others can do than try to resist them. The weak rulers have been the biggest reason why Palghars have been weak as they have been

>What level of technology are we talking about?
We are talking at around 15th century or bit earlier. It is bit hard to think how technologically advanced they are compared to rest, but due to them being located at coast they have connections to everybody else around.

Palghars are a culture centered on their horses, so you might want to think them as Rohirrim is horse usage, but with mix of Roman and Russian culture.

Might write bit more later if you have questions.

>>50249070
Interesting.
Can i ask a few more poignant questions, then:
If they have to buy most of their Iron, what do they export to pay for it?
You mention nickel and zinc in the mined ores. What are these used for that makes them profitable?
Zinc is usually used to make brass, so is brass still a big deal in your world or does Palghar hold a monopoly on it?
And Nickel. It's not that useful in a pre-industrialised context, as it's hard to refine and the only real use is to alloy it with iron. But as the deposits refinable with pre-industrialised equipment are already alloyed with steel (and/or cooper) this becomes redundant.
If you want to be more realistic, you could have Palghar produce small quantities of high-quality steel from this instead of pure nickel.
(Of course assuming that real world chemistry aplies and you don't simply handwave it with magic)

>A species where women are bigger and stronger than males

Would the military be largely male or female?

>>50250062
Depends on type of military, tech level, cultural attitudes towards gender roles, and reproductive process.

I like all the random question posts!
Please, keep them coming.

I am having session 0 tomorrow, with some friends. Gonna be GM'ing for them, hopefully. It will mostly be a little introductory fluff, and character-building, since none of them have played our system before.
Been trying to get ready, I really like these question, even if it is just for my own notes.

Is there anything specifically that people would suggest for an introductory session? Like; Definitely bring up X, but don't bring up Y ?

>>50250157
space faring civilization and lay eggs.

>>50250514
So non-melee combatants, military is similar to a Navy crossed with an Air Force, and no burden of gestating young?
Men would probably still be a bulk of the military, with women serving as brute labor and/or frontline infantry.

>>50217757
You could potentially work it in so it fits into what you already have. Say, for example, that someone (or multiple someones), have the single psychic ability to enhance themselves or others.

This could take the form of them blasting a few key points of the body, which leaves a sort of scorched pattern akin to a tatoo, but can provide biological boosts in the long term, like enhanced speed or strength depending on the marked area. Basically make it a rather specialized biokinetic ability.

I feel like having both psionics and magic in the setting can get to be a bit much, especially if they overlap heavily.

>>50249507

>If they have to buy most of their Iron, what do they export to pay for it?
I have thought that most iron they buy is bought by the state, so the money that goes into iron imports comes from states treasury. While being imported, iron is not that expensive to be extremely rare. Of course it is costly, but if craftsman needs an iron tool he can acquire it. The lack of iron is especially felt in the military and due to that bronze has to be used heavily.

>You mention nickel and zinc in the mined ores. What are these used for that makes them profitable?
Zinc is mined so that they can produce brass. Zinc is mined in proper zinc mines or extracted as byproduct of lead mining. Small amounts of nickel is extracted as byproduct.

>Zinc is usually used to make brass, so is brass still a big deal in your world or does Palghar hold a monopoly on it?
Palghars use brass a lot in different applications. From coinage to statues. Palghars do produce a lot brass crafts and because they know how to craft them well they are exported to other nations. Their capital city of Pal (named after the people living there) is known as City of Brass due to brass being used in quite many structures. Due to that it is also known as Green City. Also brass looks pretty nice.

>>50250684

>And Nickel. It's not that useful in a pre-industrialised context, as it's hard to refine and the only real use is to alloy it with iron. But as the deposits refinable with pre-industrialised equipment are already alloyed with steel (and/or cooper) this becomes redundant.
>If you want to be more realistic, you could have Palghar produce small quantities of high-quality steel from this instead of pure nickel.
That is good idea. This is actually one of the best things in worldbuilding. Reading more about these metals have made me learn new things. Now I know that nickel is hard to extract and not just handwave everything. As idea that Palghars produce small quantities of high-quality steel from iron they import. This could happen with usage of magic helping the process and the process being a state secret on level of Greek Fire. Palghar Steel™ could be a big brand.

>(Of course assuming that real world chemistry aplies and you don't simply handwave it with magic)
I intend to follow realistic stuff in everything as possible, but of course due to fantasy world it is going to have some leeways. This nickel thing one of them.

>>50250684
>the money that goes into iron imports comes from states treasury
So, how does the state get the money to pay for it? (Both as Wealth and as Gold/Silver?)
I would imagine that iron would be at a premium, especially from the neighbors who don't want them armed.

>>50250860
Taxation, tariffs, fees and income from the land owned by the state. Then they do raid their neighbouring lands for plunder and slaves, especially with more hawkish leadership.

Iron could be bought from across the sea where it is plentiful or around the coastline. It is true that their closest neighbours wouldn't want them to have iron, but if they cannot get iron bronze is sufficient in weapons.

IRL iron surpassed bronze because it is far more common and isn't alloy. Bronze is better than iron in many cases, but isn't as good as steel.

So I would go with explanation that Palghars use bronze because they have the know how, equipment and facilities, materials available in reliable way and numbers and need for substitute of iron due to lack of it. Also they have major copper mines. As we know tin and copper doesn't show up in same areas, my reasoning is that Palghars have to trade for tin also. This kind of tin trade was done historically in Europe with Rome/Greece relying on British and western europe tin and middle-east relying on tin carried over Silk Road. And working on bronze is easier due to its lower melting point. This allows fast and easy casting of it.

>Tin is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, with about 2 parts per million (ppm), compared to iron with 50,000 ppm, copper with 70 ppm, lead with 16 ppm, arsenic with 5 ppm, silver with 0.1 ppm, and gold with 0.005 ppm (Valera & Valera 2003, p. 10)

>>50237228

Because stuff like this helps me to create the pillars that I can use to expand the world, let me continue with already mostly done Mallard Folk of Red Marsh

>Bread, what kind of bread do they eat?
Rye bread or oat bread. Both crops grow pretty well in the marsh.

>Food, what kind of food they eat other than previous bread?
Mallard Folk can practically survive with rye and oats alone, but they do have some basic livestock like chickens and pigs. Their "specialty" is that they grow ducks. Domesticated ducks are more premium food eaten in holy days or other important events.

>Land, how much is there land and who owns it? How does the quality of land or terrain/environment effect the people there?
High Chief Roland who is the current chief of Red Marsh technically owns all the land by having a claim on whole marsh. But practically it is not supervised and the land ownership is very fractious. Some land is owned by the farmers and some is loaned by nobles. Red Marsh as the name suggests is not a watery hell hole some might think, but majority of it is dry land. This very peat rich land is still very wet and is not suitable for large structures or major farming.

>Overhead, how are the common folk taxed and how do they live their lifes? What does basic farm have?
Taxation depends of the current ruler, but most common is that chiefs tax collector comes with a cart and collects the taxes in form of grain. Basic farm is built from wicker walls with moss packed as insulation between two wicker layers. Foreigner could say that the houses are big upside down baskets with window and door holes built into them. These structures are water and wind proof and provide enough comfort for mallard folk living there. Because the family size is huge the farms tend to grow into small hamlets inhabited by the family members. Built into circular formation with walls between is to keep unwanted creatures like wolves or others away and to provide safety.

>>50252656

>Cutting corners, how do the common folk save money in lean times?
They grow some marsh grasses and reeds which they and their livestock can eat. They can also substitute some of the rye or all with part of pine bark.
(I have tasted bark bread IRL and it really didn't taste great.)

>Middlemen, how does the trade move in the nation? Directly from farmers to merchants or is the someone in the middle doing the transportation?
Most trade the farmers can do is to transport their grains and other farm products directly to nearby town. The mallard towns are plentiful, but not big. This has lead into development of small centers of trade where farmers sell and purchase what they need from others. The trade between towns is usually done by proper traders who own the capacity to move goods long distances on land.

>Craftsmen, how are they organized and how do they charge their crafts?
Compared to humans, mallard craftsducks are heavily decentralized and without guild or "unions". Most of their work is done by need and necessity and not to by excess. There is small amounts of foreign trade concentrated mainly on selling their bog iron.

>Textiles, what kind of clothes and clothing do the citizens wear
Linen is their choice for material. Some poorer mallards wear clothing made from reeds and other grasses. Long tunics and dresses are most common way of clothing. Due to their feather coverage they really do not need pants due to their ability to easily sit on ground without them.

>Preservation, how do they preserve their foodstuffs
Mostly by salting their meat or by smoking the meat. Rye bread stays preserved very easily if it stays dry.

>>50252701

>Containers, what kind of buckets or bins are used?
Mostly build from wood. Normal barrels and wooden bins. Thanks to clay rich ground they do make a lot of smaller clay containers for everyday usage.

>Mining, is there mines in the area and what do they mine there?
There is no mines due to too wet ground. Their major source of iron is bog iron which they dive and drag from the swamps and lakes dotting the marsh.

>Magic, does it affect the things above?
Not really. Mallard usage of magic is concentrated of seeing the future and predicting what happens. So in that way magic influences what they are going to do. They are superstitious and trust what their priest and godspeakers say to them.

>>50252656
>Not Mallard Men
Ya done fucked up

Could a landlocked empire clinging to a mountain range sustain itself?

>>50253130
Do they eat dirt?

>>50253130
Yes. Look at the Ancient Middle East. Or Ancient, Pre-Imperial China.

I have a massive, 40-page PDF containing a shitload of notes on a 5e campaign setting I've been running a game in for almost a year now.

Would anybody be interested in reading it?

>>50253130
>>50253487
Better yet, look at Nepal or Tibet.
>>50253684
Fuck no. There's a reason you were running it.

>>50253684
I'm sure at least one person would.

>>50253887
Those in solitary confinement, perhaps.

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Here's that PDF I mentioned. Feel free to tell me how/why it's bad.

>>50253770
>>50253951
Its not really notes so much as a work-in-progress setting guidebook.

>>50229247
I based them from cultures, governments and leaders throughout history and mashed them together with bits and bobs from other weird inspirations from my brain, as well as real life. ( pretty much what everyone else does so nothing too out there)

I think of their biology first ( planet, gravity, air content, what minerals are available etc) and then design an evolution then a social evolution then go from there and see what I come up with so I can end up with just about anything really... ( I generally keep it pretty realistic )
I then think of tech levels/ tech evolution
And brainstorm what kind of tech this faction/civ/species would have.

And I don't forget politics or economy factors either

Am I doing it right /tg/?

>>50206068
Hey /wbg/ how do you present your world building to your players? I was thinking about putting together a wiki and working from the top down into the starting town from the international level as I already have alot of the larger things getting figured out. OFC I'd also present it in the normal session zero prompt and introduce things during the game. The wiki sprung to mind as I wanted to compile a large resource for my current and future players and having the ability to add things to it as I need to is a pretty good option IMO.

What's a good way to decide on races to include in a setting? I'm having a hard time striking a balance between having a good variety, and having enough room for them all to have multiple nations and cultures so things aren't crowded.

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>>50253130
Terrace farming is a thing.

I've been wanting to make up a science fantasy world set after an apocalypse in the near future of the modern day. (in our world) If i post some ideas, could i get some feedback please?

>>50255367
Go for it.

>>50255424
So i had two ideas for the initial apocalypse event. Nazis that hid in the arctic have a civil war, the side that wants to restore contact with the outside world wins and makes contact, in the middle of global proxy war and tension, israel nukes them which floods the world. The second was a supernatural event causes a shift and changing of the continents position, changing the geo-politics of the world.

>>50252994
Mallard Folk imo sounds better than Mallard Men. And I kinda want to avoid insertcreaturename Men. Of course there is no avoiding of uneducated peasants calling them Fookin' ducks!

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>>50250514
>and no burden of gestating young

Someone would have to take care of the eggs.

>>50255483
But it doesn't have to be the mother 'or' the father. Commie egg-hatching communes, go.

>>50255448
Israel nuking a secret antarctic Nazi base and flooding the world is a ridiculous premise. I don't even know where to begin with explaining how that makes no sense.

Magic shuffling around the continents might be better, as that could shake things up in a more sensible way. Just have everything magically become like Pangea again and you'll have a lot of awkwardness with territories and new neighbors. Not to mention that this would probably screw with a good deal of infrastructure, communication, and climate.

>>50255588
Nice numbers. The arctic one wasn't supposed to be terribly serious. i was thinking along the lines of iron sky type shenanigans.

>>50255829
I think it could work better if you had the Nazis announce themselves by flooding the world with some doomsday device instead, assuming the rest of the world would die and they could take over, only to get nuked in retaliation since they weren't aware of ICBMs.

That could give you a decent waterworld type setup in a slightly more plausible manner.

>>50250062
Hyenas are like that.

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Suggestions on this map? Sorry for the crappy pic.

Do you create world maps for planets if you're running a space campaign or do you just try for starmaps instead?

>>50257078
How space is it?

If it's Star Wars or Star Trek levels of space, where flying between planets is as easy as driving down the street, then there's no point in planet maps. You'll only visit the main city anyways.

If it's low-tech space, where travelling between worlds takes ages and most of the action happens planetside, then a few world maps are necessary.

>>50257078
I generally aid for star maps. Maybe world maps for capital worlds, but generally a map isn't too key to have for any given planet if you have shuttles or transporters or anything.

I could see using it when it was key to a mission, like if the players are intervening in a world-war style event and managing conflicts between a lot of factions on a larger scale, but even that doesn't need the strictest of maps.

>>50256982
Farmland seems kind of far from the city. Unless the city area contains farmland.

>>50257146

I didn't place normal towns yet, the one city I placed was significant because it's so fuckhuge. There are towns/cities scattered around though.

>>50256982
You have a tropical rainforest and delta tropics in opposite corners of the map, which is a bit odd depending on the scale here.

The farmlands being far removed from everything else, including the big metropolis, is rather odd. Those tribes of herdsman might not stay tribes of herdsman for long when there's farmlands they could easily raid for food.

Aside from all that, there does seem to be a pretty big blank area near the center. Not sure what's intended to be there.

I think it's alright, but you may need to be more clear about where things are, where various cities and kingdoms are, and maybe shuffle around a few areas so things fit better.

>>50257101
It's more Star Wars, couple hours from planet to planet, days or weeks from system to system.

There isn't really a warp drive though, you have to tap into currents going from system to system.

>>50257179

Pretty large scale. Basically the main area you see is the northernmost area of one large continent, the smidge of delta up there is another continent.

The migrating tribes is a lore thing - Tribes of minotaur (generally peaceful) migrate with their herds of animals. Their animals are mainly for themselves, with a small amount of outside interaction.

Farmlands might not really end up being farmlands, but it's an area with plenty of farm-like communities. Basically bumpkin-ville.

Nothing specifically planned for the center area.

Wondering if some you you gents can help me with a bit of myth / history building, or at least be a possible sounding board.

Setting is high fantasy, although there is no Resurrection / planar travel / provable afterlife.

Millennia and so much more ago, before written history at the dawn of the roots of civilisation, there were four. They stood upon the greatest hill of the world one day and looked upon a fresh, unbound and chaotic world and argued in primitive tongue over how to set about starting civilisation, if at all. This argument started a fight between the four, with rising emotions and fury leading to one of the four dying. This was the first murder and the three left felt the first and most primal fear- the fear of death.
Screaming a prayer to the powers that be, they wished not to save the fourth, but to escape the fourths fate by whatever means. Binding the three to concepts, they became manifestations and avatars of primal forces that made up the world; they could not die for if they did, these forces would cease to exist.
The first wished for a body that could not fail him. He was bound to the flesh of the world, his body a plateau of power.
The second desired power to eliminate any threat. He was bound to the mystical energies of the world, becoming the first and greatest of Dragons.
And the third... I am not sure. This is where I need ideas, honestly, or critique on the story so far. One or two of these historical figures may appear in the campaign I'm running, but their tales are shreds of myth by now for the most part.

>>50257078
When I planned ny soace stuff long time ago, I just wrote the system name and planets/locations inside the system. For long distance traveling I made a sector listing of systems. Within sector it took X time to travel from system to system and if you went from sector to sector it took Y time to travel.

This way I had rudimentary way to measure time. Then I added modifiers and other additions to the sectors/systems to spice things up.

>>50257328
If that's the scale, then it is rather weird to have a tropical rainforest far to the south, and another tropical delta far to the north. Unless that metropolis is on the equator, I don't think that could work geographically.

As well, if that metropolis is filling that entire area, it would be absolutely massive. Like, I don't think you're getting the scale. That's going to be a city or shanty town that is the size of some countries.

The migrating tribes being generally peaceful minotaur just makes it a bit more questionable. The mongols were generally peaceful nomads, but look how that went. And they were normal men against armies, rather than monsterous humanoids against country bumpkins.

Having a big swath of what's basically the shire next to the not!native americans is a bit odd.

>>50257351
Not entirely sure what you mean by "his body a plateau of power". Did he become the earth or something?
For the third you could do "wished to be removed of all harm" or something and they become a spirit or a lich or something (assuming that doesn't conflict with the no resurrection rule).

>>50257379
Do you try for one major location/planet/problem per system? What about the actual number of planets per system. Do you tend to use our solar system with it's 8 planets and many dwarf planets as a baseline or do you think it's more the exception?

>>50257351
I'm surprised you didn't go for the typical Mind/Body/Spirit angle.

Have the first be Body, so he becomes a big earth elemental or whatever.

Have the second be Mind, twist his request to be the knowledge to deal with any threat instead, and have the draconic form be him using magic to pick and choose the best bits of all the creatures of the world, supplemented with massive magical know-how.

Then the last is Spirit. Have them ask for the will to carry them through anything. You could make them more intangible like a ghost that's able to dominate others through sheer force of personality and willpower.

Also, that first bit read weirdly, having only the four, but also having some other separate powers that be. Might want to make it more clear that the 4 are closer to people earlier, since they're praying to the 'powers that be'

Overall, it seems like a solid world myth. I'm surprised that the one they killed didn't make a dying wish to the powers that be for something either.

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How much do players pay attention to rivers. I'm having a hard time with mine and I'm afraid the river police are gonna come and take away my mapping privileges.

>>50257674
Just make sure that they don't do anything too weird like cross over a mountain or valley. As long as they go from a higher elevation to a lower one towards the ocean, most people won't notice.

>>50257410

Yeah I was wondering about the geography thing with the rainforest and delta. I'll probably make the delta something else. The entire area on this map is pretty warm though (because fuck ice).

Regarding the metropolis, that's the point of it, I'm well aware of the scale (it's also not going to scale exactly to the red ring, it'll probably be like 3/4 of that size). It's fuckhuge and to outsiders is seen as a wonder, and to those living there it's either a hellhole or paradise. Leaving the city for any reason is nigh on impossible for normal people due to the laws and stuff in effect, and incredibly difficult to actually get in to if you're not someone employed by the city (such as food producers, military, etc). A population that massively overgrew their population limit, causing massive areas of slums and with starvation being a huge issue. Food is produced from the island south of the city, the surrounding ocean, and the forest west of the city (which I forgot to mark on the map), and imported from other areas. I'll still probably scale it down a bit as well, as I realize, even with starvation being a key component here, the food requirements are still astronomical, but either way it's still a humongous city that could fit every other city that will be on the map into it and still have room for more.

The minotaur tribes don't really have the resources to take over anyone else's land, they're only concerned about surviving and their animals, so I'm not really understanding the point of your Mongol reference. Do you mean what's stopping them from taking over the surrounding land?

>>50257693
If they do notice something, it becomes a plot point.

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>>50257693
Any egregious offenders here? red to green, high to short hightmaps to kinda get a sense for how hilly/mountainy places are.

>>50257768
Southwest corner, river to nowhere.

>>50257788
Goddammit, liquor. I meant southeast.

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>>50257788
Valley through hills leading to lake. It goes backwards.

>>50257807
It goes to a lake, m8ie.

>>50257724
I do not see how leaving the city could be impossible. The sheer number of people living there would be enormous. You would need a wall around the entire city constantly patrolled by guards to actually enforce any sort of policy that prevents leaving. Food would be incredibly scarce if they have to import it all from an island that's even smaller than the land of the city. It's just far too big to feasibly work.

You could get the same effect by taking one of those islands from the delta and making a city the size of that instead. Still crazy large and densely packed, but not to the degree when it's larger than literal mountain ranges.

Where would you even get the stone and wood to build that many buildings? How do you convince guards to even police an area that large when people are constantly dying of hunger or disease? Corruption will be rampant as people try to leave, and it'll be easy to leave because there will be constant demand for new guards, who will in turn get them and their friends out because the place sucks.

Any merchant who wants to sell food in the city will have a hard time because of the laws, but even if they get in, there's nobody to sell it to because everyone is busy starving in slums. What do all these people do in the city anyway? What job opportunites are there besides guards?

You're pretty much proposing you take a Depression era newyork city, and then copypaste it a bunch of times into an area the size of the state. It won't work out.

As for minotaurs, you just pointed it out yourself. They don't have many resources, and they're focusing on surviving. All it takes is one bad year for them for someone to get the bright idea to go a little extra north, smash up a farm, and steal all their crops.

They don't need to take over, just raid. Since it's just scattered farms and farmers, there won't be any meaningful resistance

I wanna set my next little campaign in the biggest city in my setting. It's a city that's on a bridge which spans a 30km (or something) mouth of a bay. The city spans the entire bridge. It's run by elves who gave up on the typical witchcraft/moon sun and star theocracy and instead are like a capitalist monarchy with elected officials who ultimately answer to the queen. They are somewhat analogous to 1700s france (a lot of culture is based on The Rose of Versailles), with dirty peasants below pomp and circumstance. Sword dualing is big in organised sport and in the streets. The population is mostly elves, with almost no other fey (they are hated), some humans, dwarves, orcs, etc.

I have no ideas for building a campaign here.

>>50257947
Orphans try to pull the ultimate heist.

>>50257436
I'm probably describing it rather badly because its late, but basically he gained eternal youth and supernatural strength. He's still human, but totally immortal by all means. Think roaming level 20+ monk that cannot die, cannot age and strength never decreases.

I'm actually trying to avoid doing something undead-related, having the ritual of Lichdom instead be something that was perhaps even borne from jealousy for and/or inspiration from the "True Immortals"

>>50257515
That's actually the general idea / angle, but I want to supplement it with some other concepts and muddle the mixture, so to speak- Flesh & Nature instead of outright stating "Body" and Mystical / Arcane forces instead of "Mind".

"Spirit" is difficult without doing the expected, like ghosts or undeath. I do like the idea of asking for the willpower to live through disaster though.

I'll try to write it out a bit better, although this part of ancient history is before the age of writing itself (think stone age equivilent), so its more myths into stories into whispers with lots of room for interpretation if I can hopefully get it sorted in my own head correctly.

>>50257947
Well, something tells me that'd be a big merchant city, with lots of trade going across it. You could split up the districts and have people even living under the bridge as a poorer district.

Campaign ideas would be typical for an urban campaign. Solving requests for aristocrats, taking part in duels, dealing with any problem people that blow across the bridge, it depends on what you have the players be. They could be closer to officials, or they could be underbridge thieves trying to claw their way up.

>>50257989
The plan is to steal the bridge out from under the city.

>>50257995
Well, then rather than spirit, perhaps go for a more soul type thing. Not undead or ghosts, but a brighter outtake where they're just sort of an unstoppable glowing force of sheer might. They can fly because they can tell gravity to fuck off. They can go through walls because a wall can't stop them. If a person attacks them they'll either cause them to pass out with fear or send them into a state of awe and adoration.

>>50257995
How about instead of becoming undead, they become a spiritual parasite, able to take over other people's bodies when his current one dies?

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my fav worldbuilding is starting a campaign with a game of "the quiet year"

http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year/

everyone takes turns building a community, and forming a communal history to a town/country/world. I recently ran a game set in colonial new sweden in the 1600s to found the game setting for our Call of Cthulhu campaign. everyone loved it.

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>>50258144
I didnt even have to write a campaign, it basically wrote itself. It was a ton of fun. I'd highly suggest it.

>>50258063
Kinda neat, but maybe a little too spirit-y still.

>>50258080
This is a cool idea, I like the idea of one of the immortals completely disregarding his body. However, as well as or instead of hijacking bodies, would the ability of "perfect reincarnation" be too much to pull on players? Like, you can kill the body, but the spirit always reforms in another body somewhere, rapidly (well, by adolence) regaining all memories of all former lives

>>50258144
In fairness I got the idea from the start of the latest "friends at the table" Campaign. I'd suggest a listen if you like APs.

http://friendsatthetable.net/e/marielda-01/

>>50258227
>However, as well as or instead of hijacking bodies, would the ability of "perfect reincarnation" be too much to pull on players?
The only thing with that is it potentially violates that "no reincarnation" rule you put up earlier.

>>50258144
That does seem rather interesting. I've tried collaborative worldbuilding as a group before, but the large scale usually makes it tricky to use when you lack the bigger details of the world.

Focusing all of that detail on a single town would be much more manageable.

>>50258318
Going for no Resurrection / afterlife to make death more dramatic and less an inconvenience like previous games I've run, yea.
But reincarnation could be explained as the spirit flying out and "hijacking" the nearest / a targeted fetus somewhere, maybe.

>>50258359
i think if you set out a general world status and idea, but have people create a town It'd probably be best. I think creating a nation/world would be a bit difficult, but if you're planning an urban campaign it's fantastic for creating a city.

>>50257905

For the city, I didn't mention everything about it, namely the corruption of those in power (who in turn controls the military). On the note of building resources, yeah you're right. I was going for a metropolitan-area style city, but the size I was going for is a bit much.


On the minotaur tribes, I also left out the part where the tribes are self-sufficient, so it would take a pretty bad year for them to consider that. But that could maybe be easily fixed by giving the northern area a military presence.

>>50259348
Yeah. That's pretty much all it takes. Make the city a smaller scale, have some of that surrounding area taken up by farmland to help feed it, and make sure there's a reason for people to actually want to live there. This is the main point where I think you need to do some revisions. A big mega-city that sucks to live in can work, but you need to sort out the why and how of its continued existence.

Having a larger government that has knights or an army to help fend of invaders is all the northern area really needs, as even aside from the minotaurs having a bunch of good farmland is a tempting target for raiders and invaders of all sorts.

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>>50259434

>>50257505
I tried to be diverse by adding barren systems of not much worth alongside inhabited systems. Usually if the system has name instead of numerical designation it has inhabitants.

Systems itself had realistic amount of planets around its star.

>>50255890
Yeah some wolfenstein type shit. "Guten tag capitalist dogs, today we un get our revenge!"

>>50224727

Would you mind sharing how the language made its way into human hands?

I have an idea you can add if this were a living language: since it slowly changes over time, certain magical words lose or change meaning. This would be reflected in how the runes work. How would the humans adapt to this? Universities of magical scholars learning the patterns of how the language adapts or just making guesswork on what the new "word" could be?

I want to a post-apocalypse scenario that combines stuff like robots, ww3 with subtle magic and shit like wendigos and vampires coming out of hiding due to societies collapse. I was thinking an almost dark souls tier vibe, that sort of quiet, "its all just fucked" vibe. But im out of ideas and creatively burnt out lately, tips?

>>50261939

It sounds like you just vomited a bunch of shit out, but if you are serious about this idea;

What sort of aesthetic you going for? Something like Fallout retrofuturistic 50s vibe? Maybe you're more looking for a steampunk or dieselpunk feel?

>>50261966
Modern aesthetic.

hey teegee, i have an odd request (and im not sure if this is the right thread or not)
I need to name a god for my setting but the name needs work into an odd restriction: it has to rhyme with Orion (whether you choose to pronounce that as Oh-rye-uhn or, say, Or-ee-ahn is up to you).

>>50263157
Ireaon (eye-ree-un)

I'm sorting out a pantheon for my setting, mainly to help me define the creation and history of the world.

So far the main one I have defined is a god of warfare, light, and oaths. At some point in the past he ended up killing most of the other gods.

My trouble is that I'm not sure what other gods I should fit in, or how to tie them in with the various races that would have been around at that time.

Right now I just have it in mind that there would be a number of draconic gods/demigods to be slain in this period, explaining their rarity, and that another god would have created a magically adept race of elves who ended up abandoning their god during this purge.

As far as the other remaining gods go, I mainly want to make sure there's a god of shadows that managed to escape the purge, along with another god of healing who gave up quickly and was spared.

Any suggestions or thoughts on how to tie these together would be great. I can give more details on the rest of the setting if needed.

I had the idea earlier yesterday to try and make a homebrew 5e setting with a World War 1 dieselpunk theme. Basically two factions consisting of various nations are engaged in a huge war spanning most of the world, technology is at an early 20th century level, incorporating magic into some more complex devices and vehicles. The battlefields of the world are dominated by bolt-action rifles, water cooled machine guns, bulky tanks, and even clumsy walkers and heavily armored airships. Combat would be more focused on avoiding getting shot by taking cover. Casting classes are left mostly the same, but martial classes are either heavily modified or replaced.

In the political background, an elf-controlled Allies equivalent sends hordes of humans, halflings, and dwarves to die in the trenches, while a coalition of facist dark elves, tieflings, and their slaves mount an agressive expansionist campaign against them. Campaigns and plot hooks would be inspired by real life war stories, espionage, and noir fiction.

Would that really work with 5e?

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>>50265970
Make the God of Healing a goddess that seduced the God of Warfare into not murderizing her.

>>50265970
Typically there's a goddess of fertility. Food and childbirth are pretty essential to society.

>I mainly want to make sure there's a god of shadows that managed to escape the purge
You're saying that like you don't have total control of the situation.

>>50266026
Don't use 5e. I like 5e, but don't try to shoehorn everything into it.

>>50266076
Or a god that seduced the god of warfare into not murderizing him.

>>50266151
Or make the God of Warfare a goddess. Athena is a good trope to invoke.

>>50206068
Posting my setting, need honest opinions and suggestions on things I could do better.

>Progenitor race figures out plane-shifting several million years ago
>Find 4 other planes, eventually weaken reality enough to let 2 races of godlike abominations wreak havoc upon the world
>Progenitors close gates, but not before abominations warp and distort the planes and nearly destroy earth when they fight
>The last dying remnants of the Progenitor civilization put Earth under lock and key, meaning that nothing that leaves Earth can ever return.
>Eventually, humans begin to "fall" into other planes
>Earth is now basically forgotten, and humans are living in worlds that are still very much frontiers, full of ancient megastructures, and warped, strange creatures

>>50266076
>>50266151
>>50266213
That's a great idea! Certainly explains why they were spared, and having them be a couple should make things interesting.

>>50266079
I do, but it's mainly a matter of sorting out my thoughts on it.

>>50266079
Okay, do you have any suggestions for a better system?

>>50266418
Not him, but you might take a look at Only War from the 40k RPGs. Call the lasguns normal weapons and a guard squad fits fine in WW1. It has rules for tanks, walkers, and other vehicles. There's advanced tech to stand in for the magically powered stuff, and psykers can fill the role of mages.

>>50266418
GURPS would be my go-to suggestion if you wanna do something for which there's not a dedicated system (it's good enough, but not great, and ridiculously math-heavy).

But Only War sounds like a good fit, so listen to this anon >>50266478.

My setting has an ancient advanced civilization that disappeared under mysterious circumstances millennia before most of the action takes place.

One idea I've had which I really like is that they established a functional colony on the planet's moon. Now I've got a possible idea to expand on that and I wanna know what you think.

The original idea was that the colony was essentially just a research base, but that's not quite satisfying enough. Instead, perhaps the empire had developed some form of long-range communication, but it only worked if there was a direct line between both the transmitter and the receiver? This made it impractical for communication over more than a few tens of kilometers, due to the curvature of the planet. So they decided to construct relays on the tidally-locked moon; the two ends of the communication link would both point at the relay and thus be connected that way. If the project was successful, they could establish a similar relay on the planet's smaller moon, which is typically on almost the exact opposite side of the planet from the larger moon.

Obviously the physics of this world aren't the same as ours (I mean, there's magic and shizz, for another thing), but I'm aiming to have the science and technology of this world seem to have an internal logic to it. What do you think?

>>50267594
That's basically how satellite communication works anyway. You send the signal up, it's recieved, and then directed back down.

That wouldn't even need to be limited to those two ground points. You could send messages anywhere within a certain area.

>>50268160
What I was sorta imagining with the transmitter/receiver thing is that each (point A and point B) are connected to an antenna of sorts which beams the relevant information to the relay; but you can also send messages from point A to point C, point D, whatever. Anything on the right side of the planet. All that to say that if that's what you meant by "anywhere within a certain area", I meant that as well, I just didn't express it right.

>>50265970
>>50266324
Alright, so contemplating it a bit more, how does this sound as a rough timeline for the origins of the setting?

>world begins formless, primordial dirty opts to shape it with divine power
>creates all manner of animals and monsters, enjoys watching them fight to survive
>loneliness sets in however, and they opt to create others like themselves
>portions off several chunks of her energy, giving them bodies inspired by mixes of the most dangerous of the animals and monsters below
>give the new dragon gods free run of the world below
>things go rather well for a time, dragon-gods figure out their places in the world
>dragon of whispers eventually convinced siblings to slay their parent and split the power between them
>all but one agree
>they suceed, each claiming a portion of her power, save for the dragon of healing who sat out
>ashes of the primordial god are scattered throughout the world, forming the source of nature magic
>dragon of whispers takes his shard and fucks off to the depths of the ocean
>dragon of magic opts to create a replenishing pool of energy with their shard that can be accessed by anyone with a spark, the source of arcane magic
>dragon of knowledge decides to make a race of his own followers, dividing his shard among them
>these are elves, and their drive for knowledge leads them to discovering the arcane energy pool and mastering magic
> other dragom gods feel threatened by this, use a portion of their fragments to make a few 'angels' in their image, these being true dragons
>dragon god of hunting kills a few of these lesser dragons, stealing their shards before hiding underground, making his own race of followers, these being demons

(Cont)

>>50268826
>one of the elves learns of nature magic, and aims to master it instead
>draws on primal power to become the first dragonslayer, killing one of the 'angels'
>this eventually results in a crusade by them against dragonkind, slowly amassing divine shards and ascending to godhood
>attempts making some of his own races, but they come out as little more than animals and nowhere near elves
>dragon of knowledge asks elves for help, they use their mastery of magic to hide their city and leave him to fend for himself
>elf dirty now seeks to slay the true dragon gods, working his way through many and gathering shards
>only ones who escape the wrath are the dragon of healing who offers to marry them, the dragon of whispers who is able to hide, the dragon of magic who fuses with their arcane pool, the dragon of hunting who hides underground only to be chained by the demons as a fuel source, and the dragon of knowledge who shatters himself into many 'angels' who scatter
>elf dirty uses all the shards gained to secure their position as head god, and the rest to provide small sparks to the races they created, allowing them true sapience

And that's basically where the myth would end and history would start.

Wondering if I should work on my kitchen sink fantasy setting, or work on a high fantasy meets Kill 6 Billion Demons setting, where the gods are dead and the mortal races try to collect the fragments of their power.

>>50269339
Which one do you have more done for?

>>50269339
I'm not typically a fan of kitchen sink settings. I feel like they lack an individual flavor. So all other things being equal, I'd suggest the latter.

>>50271622
The kitchen sink one.

>>50271886
Its for a skirmish wargame idea. The latter idea would work better for a specific set-up, but the setting is bare-bones and needs A LOT of fleshing out.

>>50272341
You can try cannibalizing stuff from previous settings/ideas that didn't pan out. I do that a lot.

It's more work, but I really feel like a setting with a defined, unique identity will come out better than something generic and spread thin.

>>50272341
Even a skirmish wargame isn't a great place to have a total kitchen sink. You at least want consistent theming and logic to it.

I need a cool name for a region of space that is entirely dark and has a spider motif. It's a place you need to travel through, but travel carefully.

>>50274289
Arachnodonal space.

>>50274289
The Silk Abyss

>>50274344
Too technical. It should sound more like a dangerous region of the seas.

>>50274355
Silk sounds too fluffy. This place is filled with tiny slaver spider-people. They can literally control your mind if they bite and inject their venom into you.

>>50274289
The land of creepy things you really wish you hadn't seen and oh god don't step there, named after the last words of the brave explorer who was tossed into it by the wizards guild. It's shortened to Nostep space.

>>50274393
Venomous Void?

>>50274393
The Widowmaker (as in black widow spiders).

>>50274393
Eight-Eyed gauntlet.

>>50274289
The Nebulous Web

>>50274637
The nebulous nebula.

>>50274427
I settled on the Widow's Reach. Sound sufficiently ominous for sailor types, but recognizable enough.

So what's a good way to write up and store worldbuilding information?

So, I'm trying to come up with a fantasy setting that has what my players would like + some of dire darkness of Berzerk.

I will be using the Anima system as my engine and I renamed the races found within and gave most of them a small bump in a skill + a specific skill that they can get a modifier in. The angel like ones I stripped out their whole divine mission thing nerfed both of their abilities tied to it (the protection and wings) and let them have new versions of that are good, but not so good they break shit.

If someone could look this over and tell me if there is anything more world building I need to do I'd appreciate it.

>>50275948
Oh right link to the google doc, with comments turned on is here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZGOIFXXt566oYMgmKBjihtuk0mSapz1XvSj6NOf12BU/edit?usp=sharing

Just thought about this but would including a section on the views on magic, witch trials, having witch trials, and such be a good addition to the setting?

>>50276769
Yes, because it fleshes out the cultures in your world. Witch hunts, if you write them well, might be very important to some groups and people and through that influences the actions players take.

Thought the write-up on witch hunts doesn't have to be too long or drag on.

>>50276962
Thanks for the advice.
Guess the first thing to decide then is what counts as a witch. And work out from there.

What motivates you to work on your world? I have been working on a world and a story to go with it for over ten years but i'm rately motivated to work on it even though it's dear to my heart. I just dont know how to organize all of the information and i'm too lazy to write.

I also keep scrapping and restarting from the ground up on so many aspects of the world. The only thing that's stayed consistent over the years are the main characters for the story and the general idea of what i want the techology level to be

>>50206068
I know nothing about geography.

Where should I logically place rivers, swamps, and hills?

Hey /wbg/, I'd like some advice.

Recently I've been making a setting heavily inspired by the Roman Republic and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Basically a fantasy ancient Mediterranean.

I'm enjoying making mythology and history for my Not!Romans but I'm only changing a few major things while still being able to say "it's fantasy Rome" and that phrase clicking with players.

My question is, should I bother? There's much more depth provided in the real historical Rome than I can ever make. 2 out of my 3 players absolutely hate politics and/or history, so a historical campaign is just shut down immediately. But me and the other player LOVE what they hate. I'm wondering if my Not!Rome would be worth bringing up to them in a campaign pitch. It would be much simpler for my non-history friend to grasp, and the hypothetical PCs wouldn't have to touch politics.

>>50277570
I had this problem, and I found a solution;
I made a 5E and a Traveller campaign on Roll20, each one based a particular aspect of the worlds I envisioned. I so they were only partially filled out. Then I invited one of the players to play on the side of the main bad guy. Since having a player on what was essentially my side, I was able to react to the ideas he was presenting, and fleshed out the inner-workings of the world in a way that made sense.

You should try making a game based partially on your ideas, and let people pick it apart and put it back together. You will find inspiration, you'll know what you can and cannot do, and you will learn to easily accept and move on from different things.

>>50277787
If I may offer a suggestion: don't tell your players that the game is based off of actual history, and then base it off of actual history, BUT, change the names of all the historical figures and let the players change and affect history with their actions. There's a book by James Clavell called "Shogun" which is about that Sengoku era of Japan, the characters and events are all based off their historical counterparts, but the names of the people and the locations are changed. This was really clever because it made someone who wasn't familiar with ancient Japanese history, like me, have to accept the book as an original work of fiction that was very fleshed out and interesting.

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>tfw lewd things keep sneaking into my kitchen sink setting

>>50280546
Like what?

>>50280661
Hobgoblins tribal chiefs with shortstack harems, a swamp monster that reproduces through (possibly consensual) oviposition, catgirls, lewd magic, etc.

>>50280694
What, why? Not that there's anything wrong with that as long as you can play it straight.

>>50280989
I know, I only posted that greentext because the thread was on page 11

>>50280694
The first and third of those I could see not being too magical realm. The others are more questionable.

I mixed together goblins and imps together in my setting in an attempt to make a justified evil cannon fodder enemy, only to end up with demonic shortstacks.

>>50281193
Lewd magic is the end result of pervy old Wizards spending too long fucking around with magic. Don't try to seduce that loli at the bar, it's probably fuckin' Norgalon the Wizened having a night on the town.

As for catgirls, Humans aren't one of the original races and Beastman/Human crossbreeds result in something straight out of japanese anime.

>>50281533
Yeah, that's probably a more magical realm way to have lewd magic.

The only way for it to work and for it to not be weird is if the spell was for another purpose and just ended up being used for lewd things.

For example, a spell designed to strip targets of armor, both for convenience and for combat usage, inadvertently got rid of all clothing instead.

Wizards turning themselves into lolis? Part of a lifespan extension trick that requires they restart from a young age, and to escape the notice of the god of death they also have to flip gender to help them hide their true nature.

Stuff like that is the way to have lewd magic in a setting, where it's something meant for one thing resulting in something lewd, rather than being lewd from the getgo

>>50281631
Norgalon's either just using an illusion to make people think he's a loli, or using a temporary spell to assume the form of one.
Magic is super-flexible in my setting.

I'm trying to introduce the Big Bad to my players next session.

What I have so far:
The BB was the champion of the ultimate evil thousands of years ago (like Sauron to Morgoth). Possibly a Melee Lich
His longsword is a hungry sentient blade.
This undead champion was disarmed and defeated, then imprisoned in an ancient tomb which was guarded by a sacred order of clerics. The ultimate evil was destroyed.
Over thousands of years, this order of clerics has devolved into a cult, and the unbreakable sword has passed from owner to owner.

Now the party has acquired the longsword, they know it to be sword that is hungry, and they don't know the bonus effects.
Next session they will be tricked into freeing the lich, and he will be reunited with his sword.

The twist is that the only remarkable thing about the longsword is that it is hungry for blood and doesn't break. It doesn't do anything else if you do feed it.
The Lich Champion is just going to go around butchering villages.
How should I stat a lich to be a pure champion swordsman?

>>50281631
>>50281664
A good example of a spell that more than likely had lewd origins was the [Vibrate] spell, which can be used to disarm an opponent or assist in in the potionmaking process.
You also have spells like [Darkvision] or [Endurance], which had non-lewd origins but see heavy bedroom use regardless.

I'm making a martial artist character concept for a low power M&M game. The idea right now is a formerly superhuman kung fu master long past his prime. However, I've been stuck on his backstory for a while right now because I realized I have no idea of how to make up names for fictional kung fu styles. Does anyone know of any resources I could use for inspiration?

I also don't know if I should make him a second-generation immigrant so I'm not forced to roleplay an actual chinese person and come off as some sort of weird racist or chinaboo, but I guess that's more fitting for the actual M&M thread

>>50282184
http://lingojam.com/TheTelQuessirOnlineTranslator

As a GM, I usually write out spoilers or the weakness of my characters in a translator like this (Dwarven/elven/etc.) and use that as their name.
For example: I make a lich who's soul is inside of an ancient holy tree, his name is therefore Ndengina I'orn, which means "kill the tree."

I've been doing this for years and no one has caught on.

>>50282683
Thanks anon

>>50237228

Kingdom of Highstream, one of the more vanilla kingdoms in my world.

>Bread, what kind of bread do they eat?
White bread, the lands are quite fertile so farmers can provide quite good crops if the weather or diseases don't mess things up.

>Food, what kind of food they eat other than previous bread?
While the lands are fertile, most of it is used as farming land. This means that cattle herds are not that common, but normal livestock is common. Ducks are common livestock thanks to Red Marsh being upstream of their lands, common trade with Mallard Folk allows traders to have access to what they grow. Thanks to rivers crossing the land fishing allows peasants good alternative supply of food.

>Land, how much is there land and who owns it? How does the quality of land or terrain/environment effect the people there?
Land is owned by nobles or major farmers, who in turn lease the land to peasants who work the land. This contract based system is as ancient as the kingdom is. Peasants then do the required work to their lieges and rest of the time farm their lands. Kings law prevents lieges from exploiting the peasants which in turn keeps the peasants happy. Land is fertile and quite low, but dotted with rocky hills, this is because how rivers and rains have eroded the land.

>Overhead, how are the common folk taxed and how do they live their lifes? What does basic farm have?
Taxes are collected in form of grain from peasants or in form of work depending on the contract. Normal farms are quite well built, Kings Inspectors have quality standards to keep up. This is to ensure that in case of flooding the houses of peasants don't get swept away by rising water. Built from heavy stone or timber and most having two floors, they are probably best built housing commoners can get within thousands of miles.

cont

>>50283870

>Cutting corners, how do the common folk save money in lean times?
By fishing and by using cheaper crops like rye and barley. Most of Highstreams cities have Grand Canaries, which have enough grain to last months and even years. If required those cities can hold for years under siege or help citizens in case of famine or disasters.

>Middlemen, how does the trade move in the nation? Directly from farmers to merchants or is the someone in the middle doing the transportation?
Most grain and goods peasants produce are carried forward by them to nearby hamlets and towns where they are bought by major traders. These traders have their contracts directly from Kings Treasury. This means practically a monopoly on trade for certain traders in different provinces. While this curbs free trade this makes sure trade is on time and stable.

>Craftsmen, how are they organized and how do they charge their crafts?
Different guilds heavily restrict who can craft what inside cities and even outside where they try to enforce their power. While guilds have power to enforce the crafts, Kings Treasury has mandated price roofs and taxes to certain products. With most orders coming from the Kings Armory or from other states organizations through contracts guilds get stable source of income. With Kings Treasury controlling exports most big orders are contracted from abroad from contacts that are not seen as dangerous for safety of state.

cont

>>50283891

>Textiles, what kind of clothes and clothing do the citizens wear
People of Highstream are very practical in life. Trousers, shirts and tunics are worn by the peasants and workers. Over them cloaks and ponchos are worn to protect from weather. Nobles wear vests over their shirts, but don't wear cloaks unless they are traveling. Those nobles who hold non-hereditary rank of Knight-Errant or are part of Knightly Orders wear metal gorgets over their vests and sash with colour and insignia of corresponding Order neatly tied around his neck. Most of the clothing worn by common folk is dyed in many colours, but nobles and other "important people" wear more plain coloured clothing with small touches that tell others from which house or family they are.

>Preservation, how do they preserve their foodstuffs
Salt is easily available for salting everything that is possible is done. For vegetables that are common for nobility and more richer peasants pickling is common.

>Containers, what kind of buckets or bins are used?
In countryside most towns have potters and others who make stoneware and burn clay for bricks. Through them most small containers are made to be available. Timber is exported from Red Marsh and lands upstream to fuel the needs of the craftsmen. Due to importation of timber barrels are in demand, so good potters make large stoneware bins to hold most things.

>Mining, is there mines in the area and what do they mine there?
There is iron and tin mining in the kingdom. Most of the tin is exported to Palghars or used by local craftsmen. While iron is mined they have to rely on exports from Red Marsh.

>Magic, does it affect the things above?
As with Palghars and others, magic doesn't have much effect with the life and doings of most craftsmen and common folk. Healers and herbalists do their jobs and runesmiths are handful in whole kingdom with most contracted by Kings Armory or Royal School of Magic.


If questions throw them away!

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>>50283918
Highstreams military is mostly professional. By degree of Kings Marshall and Inspector of Army each noble has to maintain number of troops based on their rank and lands they own. The troops have to be armed and equipped by the standard degreed by Inspector of Army. This all allows fast gathering of units to form different formations and forces that make up the Army of Highstream.

Compared to Reformed Army of Gailia, Highstream relies on the troops provided by nobles, not on troops maintained and quartered by state. Reformed Army does have better formations and training in, but they will lose in terms of equipment and hardness of the Highstream military.

Military is augmented by different militias. All cities and towns are required to maintain a force of City Militia. Technically a part of Kings Justice, these militias form the lowest level of military police for the state. During war time these militias maintain garrisons and form auxiliary troops for the Army.

Thought well armed and armored, the number of troops Highstream can field is smaller than some of their neighbours. This means they have to rely on Knightly Orders stationed in their kingdom or mercenaries contracted to fight with them.

Most of Highstreams military are either armed with halberds and shorter weapon of their choice. Highstream halberds are mostly dagger-axe on one side and hammer on other. On top they square spearhead. This combination is to provide best possible combination against most foes.

Their armour is good. Torsos are covered in plated mail over gambeson. Hands are protected by plates and hands have leather gloves or mail mittens. Legs have chausses with schynbalds and polyens. Most troops also have heater shields strapped to their left hands. Heads are protected by open sallets with aventails that cover their faces.

Bit like pic related, but not that long mail.

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Thoughts on this for a map? Mainly want to make sure the basic geography is alright and there isn't anything too weird going on.

What's a good nickname for a race of tentacled parasites that take control of skeletons and form ligaments and nervous systems?

I have a formal name but I can't think of anything that isn't super generic for a common name.

>>50284855
Not much can be said about it without a scale. Is it a small region or a whole continent?

>>50285128
Intent is for it to be a continent, sorry if that was unclear.

Most of the locations there are just the more major or key ones I've come up with so far, mostly major cities, towns, or forts.

>>50285108
Skulljacks?

>>50284855
>upside-down South America

>>50280546

That reminds me actually.

This is from the early to mid century "The Story of Civilization" historical anthology by Will Durant with his wife Ariel Durant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant So there is a quaintness in the descriptions, but they do have source citations which I can refer to if necessary.

Book 1 Our Oriental Hertiage in these references.

Pg 45: "What the primitive maiden dreaded was not the loss of virginity but a reputation for sterility; premartial pregnancy was, more often than not, an aid rather than a handicap in finding a husband for it settled all doubts of sterility...The simpler tribes, before the coming of property, seem to have held virginity in contempt, as indicating unpopularity. The kamchadal bridgegroom who found his bride to be a virgin was much put out and roundly abused her mother for the negligent way in which she had brought up her daughter."

Pg 45: "In many places virginity was considered a barrier to marriage because it laid upon the husband the unpleasant task of violating the tabu that forbade him to shed the blood of any member of his tribe. Sometimes girls offered themselves to a stranger in order to break this tabu against their marriage. In tibet mothers anxiously sought men who would deflower their daughters; in Malabar the girls themselves begged the services of passers-by to the same end, "For while they were" (page 46 now) "virgins they could not find a husband".

Pg 46 "In some tribees the bride was obliged to give herself to the wedding guests before going in to her husband; in others the bridegroom hired a man toe nd the virginity of his bride; among certain Philippine tribes a special official was appointed, at high salary, to perform this function for prospective husbands."

>>50285286

He goes on to explain what changed the concept of virginity from a fault into a virtue was "dubtless the institution of property", "the virgin bride was found to bring a higher price than her weak sister, the virgin gave promise by her past of marital fidelity which now seemed so precious to men beset by worry lest they should leave their property to surreptitious children"

"The queen of the balonda was quite naked when she held court for Livingstone. A small minority of tribes practiced sex relations publicly, without any thought of shame."

"In general the 'savage' takes his sex philosophically, with hardly more of a metaphysical or theological misgiving than the animal; he does not brood over it, nor fly into passion with it, it is as much a matter of course with him as his food"

Some other stuff that I couldn't find again but there's a good room for magical realmliness in sex-relations if you wish to pursue it. However adultery as soon as property develops is pretty much universally punished severely for women (not for men). Though that still allows for strange behavior before marriage, such as with that whole temple prostitute business.

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perm invite link for the /wbg/ discord:

https://discord.gg/ArcSegv

>>50207061
can we call you bible anon?

>>50261794
>capitalist dogs
National Socialism promoted State Capitalism, you nerd. It had a psuedo free market and everything.

>>50286338
Discord, why? If you answer to discuss things, we already have these half dead threads that regularly require page 10 bumping

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So, I posted this map before, but this one is edited slightly more; Tell me if I've completely fucked up on anything (I'm not super sure on the whole Soviet ownership of Alaska thing at this point, just to clear that up). I'm going to try and justify America falling as hard as I can without dipping in to bullshit Shadowrun-esque things.

>>50277995

Ohh sneaky, I'll have to look into that "Shogun" novel. I'd have to be careful though if I want to touch the Caesar Civil Wars era in the Late Republic. The other history buff knows that bit very well.

Thanks anon!

>>50286701

Hm, I'd definitely look up the history behind why Russia sold Alaska to the US.

If memory serves, it was sold around the time of the Crimean War in the mid 1800's. I would think Russia was desperate to recoup some $ from that during/after the war ended.

I might be totally wrong though.

>>50286776
Mind you, the setting is in the 21st century, with the turning point being 1991 with the Soviet August Coup.

It was sold in the Krym war because the Russians feared that the British would invade it.

Doing a post far future apocalyptic megacity. Any advice for megacities?

>>50286747
The basic idea off successful warleader deciding that he should be the guy leading the nation is pretty used. Very doable thought.

One thing you could do is to make the not!Pompey win instead of not!Caesar. That should throw the history buff away a bit, especially if you follow the history and let not!Caesar nearly succeed.

>>50286747
>>50286907
Or, you could do a story about the civil wars that followed Caesar's death; should the party continue the shitty republic or the help begin the Empire? There is a kind of moral ambiguity because everyone's a bastard.

>>50286842
Consider why people live there, and where supplies for the city come from. If life is too terrible in the city, people will leave, and for everyone staying in the city, that's one more mouth to feed.

Also consider why it exists in the first place.

>>50287031
Yep, there is a lot of choices. Very turbulent times.

>>50287056
I was considering something so ancient that the current residents don't know much about the people who made the city, at a size and scale where the megacity now supports multiple villages inside, with large swathes of crumbling monolithic buildings filled with dangers of the past between them. Each settlement inside the city will need to explain its existence, of course, but the existence of the city itself boils down to 'it's just always been this way '

A narrower question would be 'what sort of dangers would an abandoned city itself present' and 'what would exploration/foraging/ survival/ hexcrawling look like inside semi abandoned megacity'

>>50287163
Ah, okay. I figured you were asking for a functioning megacity.

For an abandoned one, I would say to look at something like Tibet. Basically, think of it as akin to a mountain. There's high elevations, dangerous drops, 'caves' to explore, and small towns and settlements trying to carve out a living at all heights.

If the megacity has been abandoned for long enough, it may resemble a mountain more fully. Wildlife will be the main concern, and farming would be more useful than foraging, assuming you could find soil.

If it is stil relatively intact or functional, you have have ancient traps or security systems at locations that used to be important but have lost all meaning. A former prison would be a labyrinth to the new natives, for example. Likewise, things being functional means scavenging for materials, as whatever they built this city out of is probably better than stone spears. This may result in weird magitech inventions or just steelsmithing in an otherwise tribal society.

Survival again depends on the state of the city, though with so many buildings finding shelter is rarely going to be an issue. The hard part is finding a shelter that doesn't have someone or something already living in it.

Exploration wise, you'll probably want to have two 'maps' in mind. The map only you as the GM can see, detailing what the various districts and key locations of the city used to be, and the map for the players, which is for marking things as they are now.

This will let you come up with reasonable things to find when they stumble into a 'cave'. If they're in the shopping district, they may come across an old hardware store. If there's a prison like I said earlier, that may be seen by the locals as some sort of cursed and dangerous location of some renown, and they'll probably have a name for it.

It's a matter of how much nature has taken over and how much is still recognizable.

>>50287291
Looking to something like tibet/ mountainous terrain as inspiration is a really good idea, thanks. The system is Numenera so the 'weird science' aspect is already built into the flavor of the mechanics.

>Sapient beings are all born with a bit of soul energy
>Soul energy correlates to power, functioning as a sort of reserve that recharges over time
>Strong souls can tap into this for magical effects, and even those that don't tend to have better luck or be more powerful
>Weak souls can't use magic, though they can channel some of their energy towards a stronger soul through devotion and prayer
>Demons are creatures that are physically made of soul energy, and can't produce it themselves. They must drain it from others to survive and grow stronger

>When a creature dies, their soul leaves their body and rejoins the cycle of soul energy
>The creature's deeds and values in life imprint on their physical remains, meaning that wherever they lay buried will be subtley influenced by them
>Someone whose values involve peace and family will find a peaceful rest, especially if buried near loved ones, and may give subtle clues to their decedents who come to their graves for advice
>The corpses of powerful creatures or tormented individuals can often cause dangerous effects
>Necromancy is seen as a terrible act as it overrides the corpses values with those of the necromancer, effectively erasing the remnants of their personality for cheap personal gain

Thoughts on this for a setup? I felt like tying the afterlife to physical bones might be a more interesting take on it, with soul energy being more of an animating force and energy that wasn't as tied to a person.

Just a small question here. I have a druid in my group with a focus on freedom and an ever changing landscape, say they believe sustainable forestry is the way forward instead of blindly respecting it.

I figured a great "villain" to introduce would be a radical sect of druids that want to burn everything into ashes (great fertiliser innit) to bring more biodiversity to the table and wipe the slate clean.

What do you guys think? I really like the imagery of a druid sect focused around ash and rebirth, but I'm not sure where fire (where else can ashes come from?) would fit into it thematically.

>>50288113
Phoenixes? Wildfires are something that is supposed to happen in nature with decent frequency. You can't really burn everything down all at once, but I could see them doing it to areas they view as 'stagnant'.

I'm not sure if that would promote biodiversity as much as just be something they see as part of the natural cycle. At the very least, they'd certainly burn down a tree farm for not housing any real wildlife.

I could see them making great use of any natural animals that happen to breathe fire, assuming there are any in your setting. Fire breathing lizards, fire spewing beetles, phoenixes, all quite fitting.

>>50288214
Yeah, that's sort of the idea im going for, I am totally stealing that phoenix idea. I guess I meant stylistically though, I think it'd be a lot cooler and more eerie if they were associated more strongly with ash rather than fire and it seems things like salamanders kind of ruin that aesthetic.

>>50288113
Sure sounds cool imo.

The Druids in my game are pretty much wizards who draw their power from the elemental planes and that untamed nature acts as connections to the planes, giving the planet life and giving them power to work with.

>>50288270
Salamanders can fit fine with that aesthetic. Base them off real salamanders instead of mythical ones in terms of looks. Have them be mostly an ashy black color with patches of smoldering yellow instead.

Perhaps you could even take it a step further and have them use Ash of various things for certain rituals or spells. After all, if you burn a magical animal to death, that ash might be pretty potent stuff if used as fertilizer.

I could see them taking the ashes from a troll and fertilizing a new growth of forest with it, resulting in plants that grow and regenerate at incredible speed.

>>50288365
Yeah, good idea. I can see that. I think a sort of "devouring flame" that eats from the inside out gradually might be what I was looking for from the start.

The other question I had was Chinese clockwork wizards or Arab clockwork wizards or something else entirely? I need a "national enemy across the sea" and after playing Dishonored 2 I feel inspired to have a faction whose elite likes clockwork a lot.

I'm thinking of running 2 or 3 one shot campaigns for my friendsto help flesh out my world and introduce them to the idea of pen and paper rpgs. While my world is pretty bare bones I'm thinking of having the players be a part of major historical events in the world. In some parts it would be a Forrest Gump sort of thing where they just happen to be in the right place at the right time while another might be the players directly preventing a fall of a great empire or the like. Could this work? thoughts?

>>50288509
Well, Arabia seems more fitting to me, though that's more due to the potential Hourglass/sands of time angle to tie in with clockwork things on a more thematic level.

China could work as well with the idea of terracotta warriors. Swap them out for a brass and make them actually move and you've got something awesome. Plus they could do some pretty zany things if you give them gunpowder. Even outside of firearms you could have clockwork soldiers with flamethrowers. Or even better, clockwork dragons that breathe fire.

There is also the possibility of mixing the two in terms of aesthetics and culture.

>>50288113
If they're radical and villainous, they'd work perfectly with a "If thy hand offends thee, cut it off" dogma. Ecoterrorism + Arson would be pretty lit. Better yet, make a militant subset of them French and call them The Garsons.

>>50288577
You know what? Mixing the two would be really great (if maybe slightly difficult), though perhaps with an Arabic emphasis. I really dig the clockwork warrior idea too, of course left to the elite who can afford it.

Alright, so to sate my current early twentieth century sky boner I've started researching the era and planning out a new setting. Anyone got any interesting tidbits, history nuggets, or inspiring events I could direct by attention towards?

Right now I've been looking into all those little revolutions you don't hear about in the american education system. Reading timelines and picking out interesting sounding events, considering technological innovations and their implications.

Im using random tables to generate the basics of star systems for a space fantasy campaign im working on.

My question is how important are ancilliary planets in systems? Usually there is one major detail of a system. Let's say it's a planet, how important is it to know how many planets are actually in a given solar system, and what's a reasonable number on average?

>>50289217
If you're not going to visit the other planets, it probably doesn't matter all that much.
According to google, most star systems only have 1 planet (334 planetary systems, with 394 planets between them), although it is apparently difficult to locate smaller planets like Earth.

>>50289217
I'd honestly just say X number of other planets are there. Make it feel like the main planet isn't super isolated. I figure most players would snap to an earth mindset of "Main planet has the life and matters, other ones probably have some bases or whatnot on them for specific and or scientific purposes"

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describe the world of pic related

>>50291061
Horny wizard's room. Ducking that fuck.

new thread >>50291099