/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

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>What are the most valuable or useful magical substances in your setting?

>How are they harvested, processed, and applied?

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I'll guess I'll start off by posting the (unfinished) holy scripture of most of my world's population.

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So I'm building a setting where Wizards use wands to cast spells.

How should they be viewed?
>As typical tools, however useful?
>Fashionable, noble wizards lug around decorated ones and fashion statements
>Religiously cared for and meticulously crafted
>Incredibly personal, nobody shares them and everyone is protective of their wands

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>>50424484
>/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Good, I could use some help with something:

-How do societies and the people within them generally react to the "soft" introduction of electrical appliances?

Context: It's been almost half a century since Dwarves failed to colonize the surface world and in their absence they've left behind a surplus of foreign objects: railroads, radio towers, military fortifications, and electrical appliances such as radios and those old timey crank telephones.

Keep in mind that BEFORE Dwarven colonization most societies and cultures were and still are comfortably living at a tech level comparable to the mid 17th century.

>>50424624
>What are the most valuable or useful magical substances in your setting?
"Pure" gold dust, astral gemstones, and various herbs and minerals.

>How are they harvested, processed, and applied?
Gold is mined by everyone, but the Dwarves produce the most of it. 99.9% Artifice-Grade Gold is almost exclusively a Dwarven export, which is made available to magic craftsmen and the like though their banks.
Astral Gemstones can be found in mountainous caves in the north, often in a Frost Wyvern's den. They're used almost exclusively used to store spells or to top a Wizard's staff, so demand is low. They're able to be used to make advanced magitech, but no one has figured that out yet.
Most professional alchemists have connections to herbalists or have their own greenhouse, which has resulted in heavy unionization of Alchemy. These materials vary a lot; some are illegal, some require specific growing conditions, and some can only be found in certain regions of the main continent.

>>50425185
>So I'm building a setting where Wizards use wands to cast spells.
>How should they be viewed?

It depends on two things:

1. Are wands ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for casting magic or is it just an issue of personal preference? If not then you get the "wands are for whimps" argument and elitism that comes from people who prefer to cast with staves or even their barehands- really feel that magic flowing right through your fucking veins.

2. How expensive is it to make a Wand? How expensive is it to make a GOOD Wand, a BAD Wand, etc.. If a Wand takes potentially hundreds of gold pieces to fashion from an artisan you're going to see people methodically and meticulously cared for and passed down through generations.
Like wise if they're literally just sticks or pieces of bone you'll be seeing people disrespect the shit out of them- disposing of them like used razors.

It all depends really on what YOU personally want out of them narrative speaking.

>>50425185
a mixture of fashionable and personal is coolest to me

>>50425348
>ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for casting magic

Yes, they are absolutely necessary. You can do 'other forms' of magic without wands like making potions or whatever but wands are basically necessary to do anything immediate or impactful. This way you can disarm Wizards if you take or break their wands.

>How expensive
Honestly they aren't really expensive, but they are somewhat work intensive. I play on writing out a long ass semi-randomized list of things you have to do to make a wand work, which is part of the fun.

>>50425544
If they're work intensive, then they're going to be rather expensive as a matter of course.

>>50425544
>Honestly they aren't really expensive, but they are somewhat work intensive

This Anon beat me to it: >>50425637 , but it bares repeating.

Even if the material costs aren't expensive, artisan items will still rake up costs in terms of the craftsman's time and skill, so even if your wands are made out of pig bones and pine branches it isn't going to be cheap if it takes a gnome working 8 hours to make one wand.

How many types of magic in a setting are too many? How many different ways can you have for people to access magic before it gets to be too much?

Bump so the thread doesn't die before I read through everything.

>>50426907
Whoops, brain fart. I mistook the "replies" for the "page".

>>50426757
There's no fixed limit; you could even go for a "there's a hundred different ways" type thing. But if you need an answer, I'd say around six. I'm thinking about D&D 4e, with its arcane/divine/primal/psionic/shadow sources.

>>50425377
What exactly are you picturing with that? Like how rich people "hate" talking about how much money they make?

>>50425185
That really depends on the feeling you want your setting to have.

>>50425222
It's hard to think of perfectly comparable real-world examples; the best one that comes to mind is Europeans coming into contact with gunpowder.

I guess it first gets used by the wealthy and the ruling class; if it's useful to them, it'll proliferate to their subjects; and if it's REALLY useful, it'll spread even more as people need it to compete with the people who've already got it.

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big expansion

planning on removing not-Europe completely and making a new one (bigger), right now it's far behind the rest of the map in development and I really don't like the structure of it

most of the map is far outdated and needs work

>>50427065
What's not-Europe? The continent to the far north?

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>>50427102
This will all be removed and remade, most of it just removed, not much is worth salvaging

>>50427136
It's for the best. Better to have a smaller amount of strong material than to have that same amount of strong material plus a bunch of "meh".

>>50427029
I guess my trouble is getting all those schools of magic to feel distinct from one another while still having the world feel coherent. It's hard to strike a balance I like.

>>50427388
I've found the best way to have tons of schools of magic is to have them all be different ways to access/different methods to categorize the same phenomenon.
As long as your Clerics, your Druids, and your Wizards are all accessing the same fundamental powers, it doesn't matter if the Druid needs blood sacrifices or the Wizard needs to carve runes into an oak stick.

>>50427461
I guess that might be part of the trouble, as I sort of split them up between two major sources. For lack of a better term, they'd be body and soul.

Body covers the lifeblood of living things, Druids controlling that of mostly plants and animals, and psions controlling themselves and others.

Soul covers those who have magic innately, namely gods and sorcerers, and those who get it from others, priests & witches from prayer or bargains, and wizards from the complex rites of the kinda-dead god of magic.

>>50427689
My setting's magic system is basically The Force crossed with Jungian psychology. Everyone manifests magic through willpower, tricking themselves into doing so through some sense or connection with reality.

>>50424624
"Quintessece", the crystalline form of the "aether" that is the primordial energy that envelops the universe. Humans use it as fuel for sorcery.

It is generally mined though it is fairly uncommon

>>50424624

>What are the most valuable and useful substances in your setting?

There are no innately magical substances in-setting, as magic is derived from conscious manipulation of the universe's natural laws, but in terms of human-made enchants, Ghosi Heirloom Bronze is worth the most pound-for-pound.

>How are they harvested, processed, and applied?

The Ghosi are a highly collectivist culture, and their famed bronze is the ultimate symbol of that culture.

When a warrior falls in combat, his armor and body are salvaged and examined by war-oracles. They perform a highly-secretive ceremony which makes his armor impervious to whichever weapon defeated him. Then, they cremate the warrior and melt down the bronze, recasting the plate for a new user.

Over millennia, the bronze (and its user, by proxy) become nigh-indestructible by any force in battle, save for a heat high enough to melt it. This makes Ghosi cuirasses extremely valuable to mercenaries and other fighters across the known world.

>>50427889
In addition, Aelves can naturally channel this energy as they are what the gods intended to be the ideal race. Humans and other humanoid races are simply failures. So humans require rituals/incantations/sigils/runes to conduct what is reffered to as sorcery where as Aelves can simply preform what is called magic with a simple word and hand gesture.

Aelves fuel their magic using mana which is aether that has leaked into the world and permeates the air and soil. Once an area's mana is used up it takes a while for more to move in to the area. So aelves are limited by the mana in an area. Humans are limited by time, effort, and how much quintessence they have. They can preform sorcery without it but it requires much more time and more complicated rituals that can last hours to dats. So humans really need quintessence to be useful wirh magic.

Quintessence is formed when aether in the air, mana, sepps into the ground and eventually crystalizes due to pressure and being in a higher concentration than when in the air. This happens because the soil and rock becomes saturated.

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One of the most important purposes for the practice of magic in our own world's folklore was fertility-related purposes:

Getting a mate, guaranteeing a child, determining whether it would be a boy or a girl

What magic traditions exist for these in your world?

>>50428743
>One of the most important purposes for the practice of magic in our own world's folklore was fertility-related purposes
Huh. That's an interesting point. I haven't given it much thought until now.

Doctors frequently incorporate magic into their practice. Certainly this could include fertility treatments.

I don't know how well my setting's magic would work for the "getting the mate" part, though, beyond the use of glamors and such to make yourself seem more attractive. What with the world lacking push-up bras and shapewear.

>>50428743
Warlocks are a particular kind of theurge in that they're betrayers of the pact. They have stolen the power of a spirit and taken it for their own, binding it into their soul. While powerful, they are also cursed as spirits don't take kindly to having their power taken from them.

>>50428902

Simple people need simple magic. Nothing's more important than a healthy child or a good harvest.

Even at the highest level of power, kingdoms have been made and unmade by the birth or death of an heir.

>>50429040
>Nothing's more important than a healthy child
Don't I know it.

Thanks for bringing up fertility spells. I think I can integrate this into my setting in some neat ways.

>>50428743
>tfw female Sorcerers, Druids, Clerics and Wizards on both sides of the Good/Evil spectrum summoning Angels/Demons/Outsiders in order to get children with a powerful bloodline
>not magical realm, somehow a legitimate process in some cultures
There's a witch coven on the Amber Isle that keeps their bloodline pure by siring daughters with an incubus and sacrificing any male infants. There's technically no way for a summoned succubus to remain tethered to the world long enough to bring a child to term.

>trying to make a cyberpunk setting
>Love infinities setting alot
>want to pay homage to it
>come out on the otherside practically stealing it

FUCK. All I want to do is make a setting for my fucking cyber punk story.

>>50429685
Well, what are the things you like most about infinity as a setting, and cyberpunk in general?

>>50429685
Tell me a bit about Infinities.

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>>50427065
I always pondered about how to get something roughly the climate of Europe without making a carbon copy

>>50429799
Well, it's not the only part of the world with a Mediterranean climate, if that's what you mean. Much of coastal California has one, for instance.

>>50429780

Here's what I like most
>aesthetic of most the armor and the setting
>really like the story behind yujing and panO
>think that the nomads are cool with them being essentially a living Internet
>like the idea of galactic Internet

Those are my favourite things to be honest.

>>50429799
Ah, in fact, here we go, from Wikipedia.
>Mediterranean climate zones are associated with the five large subtropical high pressure cells of the oceans... These climatological high pressure cells shift towards the poles in the summer and towards the equator in the winter, playing a major role in the formation of the world's subtropical and tropical deserts as well as the Mediterranean Basin's climate.

So it's about distance from the equator, mostly. And I imagine ocean currents have some say in it.

>>50429865
I wish I could help more, but I can't say I'm too familiar with Infinity or the specific factions. Aethetics should be easy to get, and galactic internet isn't overly unique.

Still, perhaps there are some ways you can get it to work. Maybe introduce some althistory to give yourself a different starting point and go from there, or go with some of the story they gave for those factions but tweak the end results.

>>50429865
I'm not familiar with it either, but one thing I noticed:
>yujing and panO
That makes me think that it's inspired by Chinese cities/culture, yeah? You could try making a cyberpunk city with another culture at its base, like India or Brazil.

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I'm just getting started doing some worldbuilding; and I honestly have no idea where to start.

I have a few ideas for races, the magic system, cosmology... and that's it. What should I be working on next? Nations? Landmasses? It feels like a huge step from just a few scattered ideas and trying to make it work out.

Any advice?

>>50430100
There are two common ways to start.

1. Start big.
Start with the feel you want the world to have. The stories you want to evoke or the conventions you want to deny. Build the world to reinforce that feeling.

2. Start small.
Start with a single character. What is she like? What made her that way? How does she reflect the place she was raised? Now build a city around that. Now build a country around that. Then think of another character.

You can try either of these, or you can switch between the two: come up with a country, then come up with a city within the country, then tweak the country to better fit the city, then tweak the city to better fit the country.

Something to consider is not starting with the whole world. Try just a continent or a region or a small mining town, and fill it up with details that make it feel like real people live there with a culture all their own.

This all may sound a bit vague, I just don't want to push you towards a particular type of world or story or whatever.

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So what's a good way for Wizards to enchant magical items?

Like what actual process does it take? I haven't been able to get a good grip on how it differs from normal daily spellcasting.

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Does anyone have any ideas for how to make magic dangerous? So far the magic in my personal setting is being fleshed out sort of like Warhammer style magica, but not AS bad. Like, there are side effects, possible mutations and changes to your body for having it flow through you, etc. What sort of ideas do you have for having it be dangerous enough that it's not an everyday thing that anyone would practice?

>>50430872
Depends somewhat on how common you want them to be. Generally, my preference (to use magic weapons as an example) is for the mage to seek out a skilled blacksmith, commission a blade specially designed for the enchantment they plan on using, and seeking out rare gems and materials necessary for the particular enchantment, before putting it all together in a day-long ritual.

Generaly, I'd imagine that ritual would involve numerous small, but permanent enchantments requiring rarer reagents, gradually layering up to the full effect of a permanent magic weapon. To make a stronger one, you simply add more and more layers, but obviously it gets rather costly and difficult to hunt down that many rare materials.

>>50431007
Well, outside of magic just corrupting you or giving you a chance to explode, there's the possibility of something more external.

Perhaps casting spells attracts the presence of 'mana hounds', creatures that eat magical energy directly and can sense it from a great distance, meaning any mage will almost always have a few tracking him, depending on how active he is.

Thus, it's hard to practice and learn Wizardry, as these things are heavily resistant to common defensive magics and can easily kill an unprepared mage. It makes staying in one place for a long time less feasible, as the more magic you cast the more you'll attract.

It then becomes the sort of thing that leads to traveling mages who try and use magic sparingly, as using their most powerful spells runs the risk of becoming a very large dinner bell.

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>>50431007
In my current setting, my "magic" is a technological remnant from a long-dead civilization. Innumerable little nanobots that respond to the right stimulus/input, and output energy. Originally they were used to gather and transport energy, but in the ages since, people have discovered rituals and acts that can provoke an action. People don't know *why* it works, but they understand there's a system at work and magic remains mysterious.

The little bots are semisentient as a group, but networked in such a way that the more casting that is done by an individual, the more will tend to congregate around them. This is how I explain a more experienced wizard doing more damage than a novice one with the same spell. More energy to draw on.

Now, getting to the question, I also have these little buggers as the basis for what "fuels" monster creation and growth. Monsters feed on this untapped energy....somehow. I'm thinking of trying to get my players to investigate this shit and let the system work itself out that way. But the divide is that powerful wizards working within civilization bring power to that civlilization. Magic is stronger for commoners, crops grow better, people are healthier, crude electric device analogues are capable of creating a steampunkish setting, all from the stronger concentration of bots/magic, but the powerful wizards individually have less magic to call on.

Rogue wizards out in the wilds can call on greater individual magic power, but there's there's lots of stagnant dark corners for bots to accumulate and cause monsters to spawn and grow in power and threaten the wizard who doesn't take precautions, like redirecting them at civilian villages.

So there I have a ideological split that can easily be reframed by both sides. One sees it as good v. evil, the other as Individualism v. Collectivism. Technology v. Magic. Personally, I only feel I succeed when my players fight amongst themselves over moral choices.

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>>50431579

>"Magic" is the technological remnant from a long-dead civilization

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>>50431007
In my current setting, magic comes from the Elder Gods, so using it too much runs a risk of the Cthulhu monsters from beyond space and time noticing you and deciding to fhtagn your shit up

>>50431579
Tell me more anon? sounds pretty interesting

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>>50424624
The most valued substance in my setting is a fluid known as "biogel", "ichor" or "nectar". The setting itself is set in a dystopian organic city inhabited by mutated and broken beings known as "freaks".

It is an organic substance that can be used to rapidly heal and shape flesh, fuel augments and maintain the broken bodies of the freaks along with other, more esoteric uses. It is both a raw resource, a basic necessity, and an unit of commerce, as it is used almost like currency.
It is treated with near reverence by the denizens of the setting, and without it, their society would quickly break down.

It's raw form is pumped from the depths of the city, trough relatively rare "wells" that are the subject of fierce conflict between the Noble houses that rule the city. It's diluted form can also be extracted from the various fluids and even the flesh of the city itself, along with the new born freaks that the city has spawned.

Refining the substance depends on what purpose it is being prepared for.
Raw Biogel is used as a simple resource for organic manufacturing in the bio forges of the city, where it is used to boost the growth of flesh and bone into desired shapes.
More refined forms are used for medication, nutrients, fuel, and other, wide range of functions in the society of the freaks.
The purest form of it, is something the nobles keep to themselves and use to prolong their existence, and enter a trance like state where they have a total mastery over their bodies and can change them to their whim.

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So I have an urban fantasy/light sci-fi setting I got going on. Essentially, it's set in a city where many different worlds meet and once you are there you can't come back; so the city is full of lost souls and other beings from around the universe, having a great amount of diversity and basically being forced to just try and live together in relative peace and harmony. However the city can be a dark place a times and has wild animals, gangs, crazy magic psychos and monsters roaming about in some of the darker places, especially within the old service tunnels and in ruined and abandoned factories and buildings.

Basically; I want ideas for what kind of monsters to put here. They can basically be anything from any world, but I need them to be at least somewhat original. What's a non-fantasy creature you can put in some old urban shopping malls and laundromat dungeons instead of the usual crypts and caves?

>>50431773
Big picture, the world is huge because it's set on the outer side of a giant ring in space. At the center of the ring is a controlled singularity (which the ring controls), which was part of a binary star system. Part of that ancient civ, they intentionally collapsed one of the stars for deeper lore reasons. The ring is harvesting the singularity's gravity, resulting in a steady 1G but the inhabitants are subject to slightly irregular day-night cycles with minor seasonal variations.

On the ring itself, though, the wind only blows west to east, and it does this constantly, and every X (I haven't finished the math, likely several hundred) kilometers there are giant white elliptical towers several kilometers high that serve to dampen the wind, but also causing climactic variations along the ring. So immediately east of the towers, the wind is calmer, but colder and precipitation is more likely. A permanent winter with light snowfall. Immediately to the west of the towers, however, are windy steppes. Further west might be a breezy breadbasket, then a london-esque weather, more towers, then a windy desert. The wind also serves as a way for a land-based sailing ship+railroad to be powered, except it can only really efficiently go one direction, so that influences trade and population centers.

"Dungeons" are where the ring infrastructure comes close enough to the surface that people can dig down to it and tap into it, creating a reason why humans could live in permanent winter, they can power heaters or other "magic" devices to run greenhouses. However, because of the "magic" concentration and they've tunneled into the subsurface labyrinths (maintenance tunnels) where there's lots of baddies, they have to send down regular armed forces patrols to keep the region clear, or in the case of smaller towns, hire adventurers to do it. Larger cities need multiple smaller satellite "breaches" to supply their demand, keeping adventurers in demand there too.

>>50431773
The nanobots are intended to be an autonomous maintenance system, repairing the ring and keeping it functioning. The current humanoid inhabitants aren't really authorized to be there, but at the same time they're not really doing a lot of harm, so the immune response is minimal. However, wizards are unauthorized users and they're misusing resources, so the more they misuse them (cast magic) the bigger and nastier the immune system response is (monster spawning).

Also serves as a regulator for population density, as civilizations that pass a certain energy consumption threshold provoke a monster response that, if it doesn't destroy them, will damage or displace enough people to mitigate the response. This is how I square having magic healing and such amazing advances like sanitation while still keeping average city size below 25k-ish but still allowing for huge set-piece capitals with fancy militaries and elite guards. One thread hook leading the players into this deeper lore is the steampunk people's city provoking a nasty response. They'd go down into the depths, fighting nasties, and eventually come across a terminal that would put them in contact with the ring's central control/consciousness. Past that, IDK what the hell they'll do. Maybe I'll send them into space, hunting down what happened to the lost civ, and why they built the ring. Maybe they'll go crazy and kill the ring consciousness and the whole thing'll get sucked into the singularity.

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Does your setting have any republics? Elective monarchies? How did these systems form?

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>>50429906
This, Europe would probably be colder if not for warm Gulf current.

>>50432234
It does have a republic. It was a colony of a powerful empire that has already autocratic rule eroded and all but replaced by plutocracy. The empire had fallen to a magical zombie apocalypse, but the colony remained, and having somewhat rose-tinted view of their homeland they had replaced previously appointed from the capitol autocracy with assembly of top land and ship owners. They also happened to control the primary trade hub which further increased influence of merchant class.

Looking for inspiration for 'travel journals". A bit like in the Martian but someone setting off in an unknown fantasy land instead of Mars.
Similarly, examples of letters a traveler in a strange and distant land would send to his family

>>50431881
http://www.scp-wiki.net/random:random-scp

>>50432783
>Looking for inspiration for 'travel journals".
"Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino
"Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges
"Italian Journey" by Goete
"Record of Stone Bell Mountain" by Su Shi
"The Travels of Marco Polo" by Rustichello da Pisa.
"Gulliver's Travels" by Swift
Also, there is a pretty interesting anime on this subject matter called "Kino's Journey".

Or give me a year or two till I've finished my own fictional traveler journal. I'm actually writing two of them, one as a mere part of world-building exercises, which I don't really value as "literary" work, the other I hope to perhaps get published one day.

How are the roman numerals following a noble's name typically derived?

For example, if someone is named King James IV, does that mean that he is the fourth King James, or just the fourth James in the family?

>>50433630
Fourth James in this country, most likely.

>>50433630
He is the fourth king going by the name of "James" in the history of that country or that particular dynasty. Had he not reached the title of king, he would James of - family/or place".

I want to make a setting where wizards are all chain smokers. I'm thinking there's a plant that replenishes mana when smoked/chewed. Setting would be right around the time that people have discovered a way to refine it into a potion that doesn't give you cancer.

Anything I should add to this idea to amp up the fantasy-noir feel?

>>50424484

I meant to post this is the last thread but it died before I could:

>Magic, is your setting low magic, high magic or no magic at all?
Technically none but "thaumaturges" do exist that use a form of advanced technology to simulate magical effects. There's been attempts in the past to create actual mages but all of those have ended in failure. There's also psychics that also can play the role as mages but they're incredibly rare and the gene for psyonics is very recessive so I won't talk about them much.
>If you have magic, how do you power it? Where is the source of the power?
An ancient nuclear battery called 'Gears' that last a long ass time and that power various different gadgets that can do almost anything if time is put into studying and understanding how their systems work. Most wear 'gears' on their back, and given that these 'gears' are almost always malfunctioning or leaking in some way, usage of them is hazardous and requires extensive training and understanding of the specific systems quirks and mannerisms. Just please make sure you don't fuck too much with the advanced wiring that no one really understands all that much.
>What makes you mage? Is it born power only given to few chosen or can everybody use it?
If you're psychic you're born with it, otherwise it varies by culture. The most common practice is for a Master Thaumaturge to have a trial by wits, with the most skilled participants being taken up as apprentices, of which all are ordained into the secrets of Thaumatergy that if revealed to outsiders is usually a capital offense (Thaumatergical Guilds have their own jurisprudence separate to that of most nations). Once the Master becomes too old, crippled or otherwise unable to perform their duties, he designates a successor of his choosing to, the rest of his students serve the Guild in other ways. Scheming to become successor is not uncommon.

Cont

>>50434767
>How does the magic users do magic? Do they need staffs, long rituals or just by flick of a finger?
The gadgets are usually rigged in such a way that makes them concealable, but still effective; and are activated via the use of a keyword spoken into a voice recognition engine. However, the language required to activate these systems has complicated grammar that's often difficult to pronounce by humans due to its guttural nature.
>How effective is the magic?
Pretty powerful when the systems work perfectly. However most systems are jury rigged and are more often than not just as dangerous to the user. Thaumaturges will spend their entire lives trying to fine tune their gears to put out more energy, more reliably, more often, in order to fuel the requirements needed to power a gadget that might allow them to pause time for just a single second.
>Is there taboos or forbidden things in magic?
If you're not an ordained Thaumaturge and you're trying to use a 'gear', don't. It's not only considered a major crime that could get you executed or worse in 99% of the world (which even in those places, a Thaumaturgical Guild would just send an assassin to deal with you and recover the gear), but it's dangerous as fuck without proper training with the side effects ranging from radiation poisoning, hair loss, and (in the case of an explosive incident) atomic devastation.
>How does new mages learn their craft? Schools, apprentices or something else?
See above
>Pointy hats Yes or No?
Sure, just don't forget the battery or you'll look like a fool.

>>50434496
>Setting would be right around the time that people have discovered a way to refine it into a potion that doesn't give you cancer.
I don't see how vaping is noir. You probably should drop that part.

>>50435053
>potion
>vaping
Okay anon

>>50435125
That's a mental image your premise gave me.

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>>50434496
>fantasy setting
>cancer
Why use the same biology and metaphysics if you're including magic?

If it's an important potion that needs to be inhaled, create the fantasy equivalent of a humidifier.

>>50429685
I fucking love their aesthetic and the Nomads living internet and blatantly want to steal it for a Science Fantasy game.

Are their any guides like the designing cultures for races? I'm having trouble coming up with the aspects of different races

>>50424624
Godsflesh.

Taken from the corpses of the gods.

Highly illegal in many systems, traded dominantly by the Githyanki pirates. Can be refined into a drug that effects all races, or can be used in the construction of weapons/armor to imbue them with a shard of divinity. Such things appear weirdly biomechanical in nature and fuse to the body to the user.

>>50425185
Treat them like musical instruments, which are treated in all the different ways you mentioned.

>>50425222
You'd probably see those advanced items treated in almost religious ways, if the people finding them have no idea what the prinxiples behind electricity, radio, etc are, and there's nothing written to teach them or dwarves to instruct them, then the only way to get more phones and radios is to mimic then perfectly.

Anyways, the big thing about phones radios and railroads is that they connect disparate areas, expect to see big empires rapidly become more efficient, which may make then more expansionist. Fortifications, on the other hand, may make everyone harder to kill and conquer if there isn't new weaponry to go with it. Siege warfare may become even bigger.

>>50424624
>What are the most valuable or useful magical substances in your setting?
Nepenthite. Crystallized magical energy, it is is generally found beneath the earth in places of particular magical or spiritual significance. The Unification Crisis little more than an excuse for Carska to seize the King's Mountain in Lorne. Said to be the dwelling place of the nature god, there must clearly be some truth to it given the ridiculous amount of nepenthite present. In the West, sites of power among the native people are often filled with nepenthite deposits, particularly where Fabled chieftains are said to have been active.

>How are they harvested, processed, and applied?
The modern applications of nepenthite were almost unimaginable before 79 years ago, when the first nepenthite catalyst was constructed. Previously, any attempt at harnessing the power of nepenthite was unstable at best and explosive at worst. Now, however, the incredibly arcane energy stored within just a small shard of nepenthite can be utilized completely. These catalysts drive much of Carska's magitech, from the automated Peacemaker soldiers and experimental airships to the arcane lights casting a soft glow upon the gilded spires of the Carskan magisters while the rest of the population live out their daily struggles in a muck and smog beneath them.

>>50429799
You just need to be in the temperate zone and not be dry.

>>50427065
Hot damn, much better than my Google Draw or Paint maps.

>>50431881
Take a look through the Numenera bestiary.

>>50434496
The root discolors teeth, meaning you can judge a mages power by how gnarly their smile looks.

>>50424624
>What are the most valuable or useful magical substances in your setting?
The one setting that I frequently find myself returning to doesn't have magic in the mystical sense. there's some fantastical technology at work but even that behaves, like technology, with grounded rules and limitations, like a mash-up of Star Trek and Firefly as such there is no specific magical substance to be harvested, at least none that has any real value.

I'm trying to think of a good way for vampire damage immunity and combat to work.

The general premise is that their bodies constantly repair themselves semi-magically (AKA semi-illogically) by transmuting blood into anything their body needs. Silver, however, causes terrible genetic damage when in contact with the vampire's own blood, leaving permanent damage in necrotic wounds that can spread throughout the body. Mundane weapons can still kill a vampire by destroying the brain or heart, or by leaving a weapon pierced through a vampire's body, but most other wounds will be rapidly sealed after some rest.

All vampires are constantly fighting cancer due to their age, and the gradual slowing of their metabolism leads to cancer killing them of old age. This metabolism is highly linked to their generation, with the closest vampires to the source living the longest while a 9th-generation vampire will live shorter than a human. Aged vampires enter a process called mortification based on their generation, where their body begins to mutate, shifting them towards a nosferatu-like appearance and sometimes causing extremities to become grotesque and vestigial. At this age they slow down, hibernating for long periods of time and producing little of value, until the cancer finally kills them. A concoction called Mortifex, (subject to retconning and revising) containing healthy blood from younger vampires among a cocktail of rare alchemical ingredients, can be used to prolong a vampire's lifespan and prevent the cancer from causing mortification, but there are obvious risks to using the foul elixir.

Most vampires die of tainted blood, followed by being murdered, blood starvation, burning in sunlight, and finally by old age.

>>50435905
The big thing I'm wondering about is the consequences of vampires being so hard to kill in combat. I already reasoned that vampires would be everywhere and tend to dominate politics and science, but war vampires are something I'm trying to figure out now. A small group of vampires in full plate armor attacking at sunset could ruin a much larger force and levies would be useless against vampiric soldiers. How might warfare change to counter this? I'm thinking less field combat, more longbows, and more fortifications.

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>>50435919
>Vampire soldiers
>can't cross a stream or river unless they bring their coffin with them
>can't invade a castle, have to siege until they're invited in
>holy water
Vampires a shit.

>>50435919
Seems like the only country to Vampires would be the threat of silver weapons. So your see vampires that destiny regular armies, and then elite human units wielding silver. If you cant field enough silver units to keep the vampires from running rough shod over your army, then you might as well not have an army.

>>50436055
Fucking autocorrect making me look retarded up there.

>>50436046
You don't need to be invited in if the castle isn't standing anymore

>>50436073
What's the tech level? I doubt some medieval vampires could flatten a castle with artillery.

>>50436099
I dunno, I'm not that guy, was just positing the idea

>>50436046
>vampires decide to lay siege to a castle
>camp out in dark tents during sunlight
>defenders charge out at sunrise and break the siege and the vampires can't defend themselves
I guess I overestimated war vampires, they're better off fighting unprofessionally.

>>50436202
>vampires decide to lay siege to a castle
>>camp out in dark tents during sunlight
>>defenders charge out at sunrise and break the siege and the vampires can't defend themselves
reminds me of this funny little stunt in one of my old campaigns, our airship was boarded by vampires, we all run below deck and bar the door, Vampires can't get in and have to be invited. of course we refuse to let them in but they are relentless, so I ask what Time it is, about midnight, so I say that if they wait patiently for about nine hours we'll open the door and let them in. come 9:00 A.M. and we open the hatches to find half-a-dozen ash piles on the deck. That's my story of how we defeated Eberron's dumbest vampires.

>>50436202
They can still be useful as axillary forces.

>>50436055
I'm a stickler when it comes to chemistry, silver weapons in my setting are relatively realistic. Silver is a pretty crappy material for weapons and in the setting it is mostly used in arrowtips, small extra spikes on maces or hammers, decorative emergency knives, and rapier tips, the latter being a ceremonial concept for posh vampires more than a common application.

>>50436549
Does it need to be pure silver, or would silver alloys work?

>>50436549
Additionally there is Mithril which is an alloy of silver protected by a magical grease. While extremely expensive, mithril weaponry the best method against vampires while still being practical in general combat that doesn't involve vampires.

>>50436549
Iron armor splitter with a silver spike on the back to dig into a vampire whose armor you've sundered.

Only fantasy, no sci-fi?

>>50436663
Everything

Hi /tg/! I'm setting up a section of my world which is a blend of ancient Greece (city states, thousands of scattered islands, climate) and Celts (specifically the Welsh)

I've got nearly everything stuck down, but I'm having trouble with creating fictional foodstuff and animals. Any suggestions on how to get over this creative block?

>>50425222
They'd probably learn to exploit them as soon as possible and jumpstart their society. People are selfish and want to make money.

>>50437284
Thank you. This will sure to be an interesting read.

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Quick question: Is it reasonable to assume that a medieval fantasy army could march maybe 10-15 miles per day at most, considering baggage train, infantry, and armored horsemen?

I'm basically trying to base my setting's scale on the backstory I've built up for it, and I want to ensure that while the country isn't huge like modern-day France, it isn't so small that an army could reasonably expect to walk all over it in a week. Right now, I've scaled it so that it's about 200 miles long at its widest point, roughly the size of the Duchy of Brittany.

>>50430872
If you study the history of actual magic, there are a lot of different answers depending on the magician and school of thought doing the enchanting.

Someone like Aleister Crowley would have you use blood or other unguents to sort of coat the object in magic which is then absorbed into tis substance.

Chinese magicians believe that substances themselves have power, and that enchantment is simply taking that natural substance and shaping it into the tool to be used. Hence the bronze mirrors, jade knives, etc.

Modern-day witches and wizards might believe in the magical properties of certain substances, or believe that certain materials or shapes are more conducive to enchantment, but the key is thought and will. They believe that you can direct your energy and will into an object and enchant it into whatever you need.

>>50430872
I once conceived a setting in which magic is done by drawing runes on objects to alter their properties. It also put guns into an interesting place, and to a extent all projectile weapon due to difficulty of painting runes on small objects.

>>50437842
A Roman march is 24 miles a day while carrying a 45 pound pack and setting up perimeter defenses at the end of the march.

>>50437842
that seems pretty slow if you consider it "at most". It all depends on terrain and the like but I'd say 20 miles a day would be closer to the maximum

>>50437842
A brisk walk is 3 miles per hour, so I'd say closer to 25 might be reasonable if they march for 8 hours. It depends on how much gear they have and the weather, but even then it probably wouldn't go below 20.

>>50432234
The nation of Portoia/Portage operates on somewhat of a constitutional republican system, although they are also a theocracy. They elect a Riark who is both a religious and military leader.

The prophet Rayan's bloodline is still surviving, with his primary male line, their wives, and the virgin daughters of Riarks carrying the surname al-Rayan. In rare cases a man from another family is given the al-Rayan name after marrying a former Riark's daughter, but he must also be the Riark to be given this name. The system of electing a Riark is derived from their religious book of law, which has a few loopholes that are occasionally used.

The Riark can choose an heir to bypass the election, but if an overwhelming majority of the council opposes this, an election will be held. When there is no Riark or lawful heir, the electing council meets at Portoia in autumn. These are members of the royal family, prominent merchants (unjust merchants are typically exiled or killed), local elders, the heads of major families, and military officials. Usually there are between 100 and 200 of these members. Foreigners, vampires, and women who do not carry the al-Rayan name are forbidden from becoming council members, however nothing was ever written to prevent them from pitching to be Riark. When council members do not show up, their votes are not counted and they do not factor into the total needed for a majority. Before each electing session, the council has dinner and mingles with the candidates. Then, candidates are allowed to pitch their offerings and debate. The first to be heard are sons and brothers of the previous Riark, then other royal family members, and finally council members who are not of the royal family, who must go through the additional task of marrying a daughter of the previous Riark and taking her name.

>>50438526
After the pitches come the longest part, the vouches, in which every council member is allowed one speech, the contents of which are not regulated by the constitution, allowing filibusters. They typically spend hours debating eachother and the candidates. At midnight of each session, the vouchers vote or withhold (protest vote). A candidate must take the majority in two consecutive sessions to become the Riark.

If no one takes a majority in the vote, then the session is over and another will occur the next evening. This process is often drawn out for weeks before a decision is reached, and other times it can take years due to a strange law that forbids elections in the time between snowfall and leaf-fall.

The Riark, when elected, is given free reign as long as he does not violate the book of law and he is not publicly opposed by the council. It is the duty of the electing council to investigate and prosecute a Riark accused of this, and they can hold a vote to dethrone and exile a Riark, which works similarly to the election of a Riark but without candidates or autumn-bound rules, instead the council members argue their interpretations and evidence and then vote to strip the Riark of his title. The council can also override the decisions of the Riark by holding a session pretty much identical to the latter "impeachment" system, which must be announced with a week's notice to every council member. They then vote to overturn an order from the Riark, and those that are not present for the vote are not counted (so, if there are 100 council members, and only 60 show up, then only 31 votes are needed).

>>50430872
Time for a lesson on basic Artifice, courtesy of the WIZARD COLLEGE.
>To begin with, it is of the utmost importance to prepare an environment with low-to-no airflow. While Master Artificer would prefer to enchant in a vacuum, most of you still require respiration to sustain yourselves.
>Sufficient Gold Dust must be prepared in advance, as the process of enhancing an object's latent magical energy cannot be interrupted. You should have calculated the volume and surface area of the object in advance, to help determine the exact amount of Dust required
>You will be utilizing your own magical energy to create an enchantment, with the Dust acting as the binding agent; anchoring it to the material plane. A ring made of platinum or any of its alloys may be used to assist you in larger-scale imbues.
>Concentration is required for intervals of an hour or more, so any interruptions must be prevented ahead of time.
>Scrolls for the spells you wish to imbue should be at the ready, as maximizing your available mana and limiting unnecessary usage is essential. Some clients will pay the additional cost for Manabloom potions, but do not assume this to always be the case.
>Be sure to imbue activation methods and conditionals before imbuing any magic effects. Failure to do so could result in catastrophic arcane failure or, in the worst case, the waste of potential profits
>A completed magic item will last an eternity, growing no stronger or weaker with the passing of ages. Always be sure to double and triple-check your conditionals, and ensure that the item functions exactly as the client wishes.

>>50432234
>Does your setting have any republics?
Plenty, How else do you govern entire star systems effectively? iron-fisted despots get pretty expensive to maintain after a certain size.

Have any of you guys been inspired to make a setting after read/watching a piece of inspiration? How far from the source material have you gone?

I am currently working on a magitech/sci-fi setting loosely based on more action-y magical girl anime, namely the Nanoha series

Not sure if this is the thread for this, but can anyone recommend good campaign-tracking software for GMs?

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>>50439286
>Have any of you guys been inspired to make a setting after read/watching a piece of inspiration?
Yes, pick related.

>How far from the source material have you gone?
Considering how small and cryptic the original source material is, I'd say I moved pretty far in that I fleshed it out and filled a lot of my own content. Like hundreds of pages of new content: dozen new cultures, four thousand years of history of my own.
Sadly, I still did not move far enough as few absolutely core concepts are still directly taken from Shuna, which is a problem if I ever actually decide to take it to the next step and use the settings for anything commercial. I have been mulling over this for a year and a half now, actually: how much of a problem the ripped-off core premise could potentially be.

>>50439286
I usually tend to find myself just wanting to run a game in whatever setting it was instead. That said, I do occasionally take some details, especially from worlds that aren't fleshed out fully.

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R8 my current map, the result of 2200 simulated years of history.

Still continuing with running history, so it'll be completely different soon.

>>50438074
>>50438103
>>50438385
Alright, thanks for the help. I might be able to make that work even with the current scale, or I might have to make the setting bigger. Especially if, in times of war, the army has to deal with opposing forces or fortifications or whatever.

>>50440426
I like the sigils

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>>50439564
>Considering how small and cryptic the original source material is, I'd say I moved pretty far in that I fleshed it out and filled a lot of my own content.

Shuna no Tabi/ The Journey of Shuna canonically takes place a few hundred or so years after the events of Nausicaa and the valley of the wind (manga).

The monolith is if anything just another ancient-tech, terraforming/agricultural facility where Heedras and grain are produced to service the needs of the surviving humans, but with the way things are most people in this point in time don't know what a Heedra is and just look at the facility with a mix of fear and superstition.

I don't say this to poop on any of your progress or material- Just adding insight/context, maybe you haven't read the Nausicaa manga and you'd like to know, etc!

>>50424624
Well, my setting is largely Bronze Age, so Iron and Steel are rather rare and valuable for weapons and armor.

As far as more mystical materials go, the first most would be Gossamer, woven by Elves. It has more names depending on the region and usage, but essentially it's a strong, lightweight, magically attuned material made by elves. The exact process is unknown to the outside world, but in reality it's a complex arcane process ever in an Woven mage creates an illusory blade, and then solidifies it into reality. This allows them to appear as though they were made from glass, gold, or leaves in intricate designs, yet be as sturdy as steel.

The second would be Demonwrought materials, essentially weapons and armor forged of demons. Which is to say, Demons are essentially solidified Soul energy, and Demonwrought weapons are actually demons created in the shape of a weapon. They're strong and durable for that reason, but they also siphon life energy from the wielder and their victims, just as a normal demon would in their presence. This makes them rather risky to use except form the strong willed.

The last major one I'm still working on a name for, but it is a psychoreactive material designed for mentalists and psions. All those with psionic potential are born with a small black pearl embedded in their bones somewhere, sometimes hidden, sometimes obvious. To make one of these weapons, quite simply, you use the bones of a dead psion, including their pearl as a focus. However, as such a pearl can retain remnants of their will, it's risky to use for weaker psions or non-psions, as if the deceased is stronger they may mentally dominate and possess the user.

>>50442004
>Shuna no Tabi/ The Journey of Shuna canonically takes place a few hundred or so years after the events of Nausicaa and the valley of the wind (manga).
I wonder where that "canon" comes from, since Shuna predates Nausicaa by good couple of years and is based on an old Tibetian myth. It's far more likely that Shuna was just Miyazaki flexing out the same creative muscles he then got to exercise when writing Nausicaa and some OTHER people then decided to neatly try to wrap both of the stories together forcefully because they are so similar. In reality it's entirely certain that when Shuna was being written, Miyazaki had no fucking idea he'll even make Nausicaa, much less knew that he is going to introduce concepts such as Heedra, which were really only concieved pretty late into Nausicaa's production, after the rather infamous break and creative crisis that he had.

That said: my premise is pretty much identical. Not entirely on intention, at the time I was inventing my world I actually only had original, untranslated version of the book and I actually overlooked the motif of people being used as a fertilizer in Shuna, and I thought that my idea of the God-people buying slaves from humans in exchange for golden seeds was clever new invention of my own. And I drew a lot of inspiration from Nausicaa as well, so that does not help either.

>>50440426
Maybe I'm just a plebe, but I'd love to know how you simulate history.

The map is pretty interesting, looks kind of like an alternate version of Eurasia/Africa/Oceania, but with civilization mainly being a thing in the African-looking part (if I am interpreting your map correctly)

>>50438853
>How else do you govern entire star systems effectively?
Feudalism.

I have a rando question.

Is there a way to make an empire that has recently conquered and colonized the larger part of humanity and its many cultures across a known world, and not be seen as an evil power to most readers/players? Is there something that empire can do and be? I don't care to make it seem like a force of good, either.

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>>50424484

>/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Sure, I've got another question.


What happens to a "Dungeon Town" when a Dungeon runs out of Dungeon to crawl? You know what I mean, right? What sort of process does the Town -that once relied on both the tourism and the constant supply of treasure & monster parts- go through when it just stops. There's non left- nothing, they've picked it clean!

-Where do the people go? What happens to them; especially the people who don't have dungeons-specific jobbies (or does it just affect EVERYONE equally)?
Bonus: Who is hit hardest and who is hit the softest?

-What about the price of goods? Will normal people be able to afford groceries? Smokes? What about adventuring supplies now that no ones buying them? Is this a good time to ironically purchase things like muskets & magic items?
Bonus: Would Dungeon Crawlers/Adventurers be selling their items lower to cut losses? Garage sales?


-Is there anyway to profit off of a cleared dungeon? Could people still earn a profit from it as a tourist attraction now that it's safe? Sell charms, keychains, and give tours?

>>50442300
The exact same thing as a mining town.

>>50442300
Ever seen a Gold Rush town? Pretty much that.

Alternatively, and more interestingly in my mind; What if the dungeons keep appearing because of the leaders of the town? They are the true heads of the cult the PCs are hunting in the Dungeon, populating the Dungeon with worshipers and monsters for PCs to hunt in order to keep the town prosperous. A period of six months or so of coast activity as PCs revel in their hard one gold, only for them to move on and then find a new location to profit from. Once they leave, the leaders put their hidden efforts back to work, and wait for the next heroes to come around.

>>50424780
the formatting on this is rad, gj

>>50442280
also, to expand on this, I mean they pretty much finished doing this about 200 years ago.

Also, one major difference from European powers in the real world and what I'm going for is slavery is very taboo religiously due to humans literally being enslaved by demons in early times. So there's no legalized slave-trade or practise, and this Empire was mainly just interested in making themselves the governing power everywhere, maybe more similar to the Romans.

>>50431061
This is actually a really cool idea!

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>>50430872

I don't know about other objects besides wands but how about this;
>There are dozens of ways to enchant magical wands, different Wizarding traditions have their own methods
>If the wand's material is already magical in nature, such as the wand being carved from a unicorn horn, fang of a giant snake, or the bone of another creature then there is no need for enchantment
>Most wands are made of common woods however, and need enchantments
>Knotting- In this process the Wizard ties their own life force with the wands magical energy, resulting in a 'knot' that ties them together. If the wand is broken the Wizard will be badly hurt by this, causing some minor soul shredding as a result. Naturally if the Wizard dies the wand will also lose power. This method is extremely common.
>Crystal Batteries- Aligning magic crystals and storing the wand with them, allowing the wand to align with the magic in the crystals. The crystals may lose charge after doing this depending on how powerful they are.
>Sacrifice- Typically sacrificing a small creature, such as a goat, is a good way to charge the wand with excess life energy. Small creatures like chickens and rabbits don't have enough energy on their own and would need several sacrifices just to equal one greater creatures. Obviously human sacrifice can create some powerful wands but this is dark magic
>Circle of Wands- Magical tradition in which wands are all aligned to a single goal or group, charging them with the power of all the other wands together. This works only so long as the wand owner obeys the tenants of the tradition; else their wand will lose its power
>Blessing- Obviously the blessing of a powerful entity, such as a God or demon, can empower a wand.

>>50442810
Glad you like it. I just kinda though it up on the spot and it spiraled out from there.

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>>50424484

Pre-combustion non-magical airships, feasible?

And whether they are or aren't, what effects would they have on a medieval-type of society? Would it make world conquest before firearms possible?

>>50443189
Hot Air balloons existed in the civil war and were used for scouting. If you have some way of making it go forward, it could work.

Not sure if it'd let you conquer the world, since it'd be slower than a ship more likely than not, and while you could use it to rain crossbow bolts, arrows, rocks, and bombs down on people, a lucky arrow or two will probably put an end to that.

>>50443189
>Pre-combustion non-magical airships, feasible?

Do you know what makes them 'go'? I'd imagine some kind of leonardo da vinci shit. You could use actual hot air, or maybe the people found a way to extract helium and use it to build giant dirigibles.

If you don't mind dipping a little bit into the semi-magical components you could do something like having a special hot-springs resource that never cools down, so ships using it can fly. Or just some kind of fungus that, when dried and then burned, produces massive amounts of helium or something. Not even that magical, just a little weird.

>What effects on a medieval type society
They'd be owned by barons and up only, depending on how expensive to construct. I'd imagine each really big guild might also have one to transfer their materials and masterworks about.

>Would they make world conquest before firearms possible?
World conquest was always 'possible' before firearms. It literally was only a question of logistics, distance, and risk reward. There isn't much reward for conquering tribes of cannibals in the jungle with no useful food or cash crops, and no economy to speak of until your own nations become so wealthy that its easier to find cheap labor elsewhere. (ie; actual imperialism)

Remember that the Roman and Mongol empires conquered huge amounts of lands without even having an airship style of technology. A sufficiently motivated, wealthy, and martially gifted civilization could use airships to easily cross giant natural barriers like deserts and mountains, and making their supply lines almost unreachable with exception to other civilization with airships. So yes, airships would be really fucking OP and you could see some god damn gigantic feudal empires using them.

Of course you're forgetting the number 1 rule of worldbuilding; if you like it, put that shit in.

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>>50443370
Thanks for your feedback, gave me a lot to think about. As for your question:

>Do you know what makes them 'go'?

I imagine some kind of complex sail-system. I have to admit, I'm pretty physics-ly challenged, so I don't know if that's absolutely retarded.

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>>50443432
I want to expand on this, hot air or helium just to make them go/stay afloat. Sails to utilize wind for actual orientation/locomotion

>>50443432
Possible, but not great. Flying against the wind would be even more difficult than in the ocean, which already requires you to sort of loop-de-loop around. If you could reasonably predict wind conditions, you'd be fine.

I'll also point out that it would be way less efficient to transport stuff via hot air balloon than via ship or even via merchant caravan, except if you're dealing with mountains and such.

That said, >>50443370 hit the nail on the head.
>if you like it, put that shit in.
You can always make up some magitek to power them.

What are some old wives' tales in your setting? Or other things that lots of people believe but which aren't true?

>>50444421
>but which aren't true
Oh, anon. They 'are' true.

>>50442300
simmilar to mining towns, It dies out either all at once or gradually. depending on the structure and make up of the dungeon, the town my survive on a decade more, switching to various agricultural or extractive reasources.

Farming the fungus on level 3, stripping various defunct traps for parts, extracting architectural parts and archaeological nicknacks, Mining out the crystals from levels 7-14, maybe some enterprising adventurers use the emptied place as a training grounds for their guild, setting up simulations and shit.

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I'm trying to sort out the details for an undead heavy setting. Basic idea is that the gods of life and nature died, resulting in the disappearance of healing/holy magic. Thus the major kingdoms were overrun by necromancers, vampires, and other dark forces who seized on the chance. Now the living hide in small pockets while the undead lords vie for power with one another.

Pretty basic summary, but where I'm getting hung up is on a matter of logistics. Specifically, I want life to be something rather scarce and crucial, something everyone is vying over and trying to cling to. I'm not sure whether to implement life energy as an actual substance that can be stolen, but there's also the matter of what the living humans eat when the outside world is thoroughly drained of life and conquered by undead. Eating a zombie seems like a bad call, even if you cook it well.

I guess I'm just trying to sort out how humans could sustain themselves in the somewhat longer term in a world where the circle of life is so heavily disrupted.

>>50445129
If there are some sort of grain silos/elevators or flour stores, that'd probably be where they'd start. I imagine there'd be high incidence of diseases like scurvy and rickets.

Some might rely on fishing, since it'd take a lot for the collapse of the land biomes to cause the ocean to run out of fish. Of course, this leads to the problem of only having so much fresh water, forcing them to return to shore to restock quite often, leaving them vulnerable.

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Do you guys ever realize something then suddenly get sentimental about your settings?

>>50445592
Sentimental how?

>>50445493
Yeah, dietary needs for vitamins from fruit and milk are probably going to be the trickier things, though I was mainly concerned about food in general. Grain silos are an option, though might not be enough for the timescales I was thinking.

Fishing however sounds like a very fitting option. With all of the necromancers and undead fighting over the land and harvesting all the life there, it seems very possible the seas would go untouched for the most part. And with relatively few surviving humans, it wouldn't be too difficult for them to supply enough fish. The hard part is getting past everything else in the way.

That solves the biggest concern I had, which was starvation, though you bring up a good point about scurvy and rickets.

>>50445697
Well, scurvy/rickets are more of a concern for a bread-heavy diet than for a fish-heavy one.

>>50445612
A thought or an idea that evokes feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia.
I was just thinking how amazing it would be to cast a spell for the first time

>>50445821

That's every setting though you gober.

>>50445865
But I want to experience it in mine.
The sentimentality comes from simulating a setting in your head for months.

>>50445821
Oh. Occasionally, I guess. More often it's taking something which already provokes an emotional response from me and interpreting it into the setting. So my love of figuring out how stuff works gets translated into the world's unique technologies. Or the sense of isolation from one of the worst valleys of my depression shaping the architecture of one of the major cities.

>>50445735
Fair point. I may need to look into fish-heavy diets and see how feasible it is, but right now it sounds like it could be a fine option.

>>50445984
The Inuit are probably a good place to start for that.

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>Some animal products, including liver, Muktuk (whale skin), oysters, and parts of the central nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, and adrenal medulla, contain large amounts of vitamin C, and can even be used to treat scurvy. Fresh meat from animals which make their own vitamin C (which most animals do) contains enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy, and even partly treat it. In some cases (notably in French soldiers eating fresh horse meat), it was discovered that meat alone, even partly cooked meat, could alleviate scurvy.

Really the #1 cause of scurvy is a diet of old salted dried meat and hardtack

Why do wizards work in towers?

>>50446008
>>50446064
Yeah, that's what I read up on. The indication I'm getting is that as long as they're also hunting some aquatic mammals or harvesting kelp as well and not cooking it heavily, they'll get plenty of vitamin C. Livers, fish oil, and fatty meats along with that and it seems like plenty to sustain a diet off of.

I'm surprised how well this works out. The oceans should be a prime source for such things, relatively unscathed by the undead apocalypse, but it also provides a constant driving challenge to survive, as those sorts of things won't keep very well for long outside of an arctic region.

>>50446115
How long has the world been "dead"? I imagine there'd probably be a generation or two of people with lots of scurvy before they made the adjustments of adding mammals and kelp--assuming the majority of them were not experienced sailors.

>>50446064
What is she baking?

My first thought was "Valentine's chocolates" since that seems like the kind of thing for which there'd be a romanticized picture, but my best guess for what the bag contains is baking powder, and you don't need that for just chocolates.

>>50446082
To look down on all the little people.

Tell me, /wbg/. How "anime" is your setting? And on a related note, how much of a Japanese influence does it have, if at all? What about an Asian one? Does your setting have a not!Japan?

>>50446139
I haven't worked out an exact timeframe, though I was planning on it being rather long, probably a century or more. I'm not sure how well that would work out with the tone I'm aiming for, but I felt it would help if nobody was really around for the rise of undead, so it was more shrouded in mystery.

>>50446163
It's green tea mix.

>>50446082
It's the easiest plan to get automated magical servants to construct. More complex blueprints or schematics or materials other than stone blocks can overwhelm them, so building a circular tower straight up is the easiest solution.

>>50446174
Not overly so, though I might not be the best judge. Not many asian influences, though I have been debating placing some on one of the smaller island chains.

>>50446174
Somewhat. One of my key influences in creating the core aesthetic was Kiki's Delivery Service, but otherwise the main inspirations are a variety of mostly-equatorial cultures (Cambodia, Polynesia, modern and indigenous Brazil, Mali, India). Korea got in there, but I think I cut out the area most inspired by Japan.

>>50446200
Also there's the high ratio of living space provided to real estate taken up. If you can float and teleport and walk up walls, stairs aren't really a hassle.

>>50446082
Taller, pointed objects make for a good conduit for ambient magical energies.
>Towers
>Point Hats
>Staves

>>50446174
Quite. I'm directly inspired by the fantasy anime that ultimately proves a nihilistic universe that will inevitably bring doom. I also like how things like pointed ears, sharp teeth, and strangely coloured eyes or hair is a mark of some kind of spiritual heritage or corruption.

>wizard staff
>wizard tower
>wizard hat

they're clearly overcompensating, aren't they?

>>50446459

Yeah it's all a ploy for you to think about dick.

How much detail do you think is necessary in developing your setting's literature/entertainment/pop culture? I think it does a lot to make a world feel more real and immersive.

In particular, theater plays a large part in my setting's culture. People in the cities get to see new plays first, which then gradually trickle out to the smaller towns' playhouses; typically, only the most profitable plays will make it out there at all. This feeds into the common conception among city dwellers that folks in the country are uncultured; essentially, imagine if you met a person who'd only ever seen explodey action movies and cheesy rom-coms and never anything more substantive.

So to that end, I've come up with skeleton outlines of a couple plays, and I'll probably have several more before I'm done.

>>50446184
Ah. So it is Valentine's chocolate, then?

>>50446459
Clearly they feel they can't live up to society's impossible standards of pointiness.

>>50446483
The idea of widespread plays sounds rather neat. I think it'd be rather easy to come up with more, if you file off the names and settings of some modern movies and switch things around to fit a more fantasy setting.

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>>50446459
You would shame an old man for carrying a walking stick?

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>>50446510
I COULD do that, but then the plays would reflect the values and ideals and history of our world, not the world I'm creating. Though to be fair often I don't need much more than "They were happy. But then they were dead." Boom. Oscar gold.

>>50446479
>implying I need help

>>50424484
working on a world, for a story and upcoming game (unrelated just 2 birds 1 stone)

Is there a resource out there to help me develop an indepth city. Its based loosely on Dol Amroth / Casterly Rock.

Being a wealthy city-state/fief of a powerful nation and will be the corner stone to both the story im writing and will be the epicentre of the game.

Any resources to help me flesh it out would be appreciated.

>>50446646
What do you mean by fleshing it out? Like, coming up with the culture? The economics? The map?

If it's either of the former two, check out the ethnographic questionnaire in the OP.

>>50446665
All of the above. I did just open the ethnographic questionnaire and it does seem to offer a lot to help, I didn't think to link it to city-building which was stupid because a city can be its own culture.

Economics would also be massively helpful to make it more consistent and realistic.

>>50446696
see: >>50437284

>>50446706
Beat me to it.

>>50446706
>>50446710
Thank you

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>>50446696
>>50446706
Here's another good, comprehensive one. Outlines some of the basics for my favorite hobby.

>>50446483
Yes. That being said, I love her VA she's so cute holy shit

>>50424484
I'm building a setting loosely based off Celtic (particularly Irish and British) folklore and history.

What the actual fuck is Cold Iron, and how do I keep the Fey a viable threat if every adventurer in the land has an iron weapon?

>>50447018
You could make fae as a rare/mythic foe. Mostly kept to themselves. who most people don't actually believe are real. Or have them skilled at glamours so that when they do interact with normal people they do so in disguise.

Have them spread false rumours and myths, to hide the idea their cold iron weakness. Crap like being allergic to salt, can't speak during the midday and twilight hours. Crap that lets them "prove" they aren't fae if opposed.

Then have iron weapons be rare because of the availability of steel.

Nobody is going to carry around an iron sword when they could have a superior steel sword, and the superstitious folk would at best have an iron bar.

>>50447111
I love the lying little shit type of fae. Love it!

>>50447131
I like the idea of a town off in the woods, known for its 'odd folk', a small township that likes to keep to itself.

They do seem to have the most knowledge of the fae of the forest but wouldnt recommend going looking for them. They are even willing to sell adventurers "cold iron" weapons, and yronwood staves, the only weapons known to allow their weilders to hurt the fae.

They say that if you hold a yronwood amulet or stave you can see through their glamours and wont fall prey to their ensnaring songs.

>little do they know the town itself is all fae, they pass on false rumours and sell tainted unpure iron weapons that dont work. Yronwood is just simple wood with a nice shine.
>every now and again they stage an "attack" on the township to demonstrate the miracle weapons they sell.
>laughingcapitalistfae.jpg

Yo, I could use some help on where to put shit on my middle continent, as I'm not terribly knowledgeable of how rivers/plate tectonics/volcanic activity effects geography besides the basics.

FYI, dark green is all forests, light green is shrub/grasslands and prime farming with sparse forests, yellow is arid grasslands, and the tropical green is swampland.

1) This isn't a continent colliding or anything forming a sea, but is a very shallow inland sea resulting from flooding. The water is only a couple thousand feet deep, and is similar to the large inland sea in north america during the jurassic/cretaceous. There's some volcanic activity on the strip of land.

2) Some volcanic activity on these islands, not terribly certain what to do with them.

3) Same with these guys, some volcanoes, not much else I can think of.

4) Along with 2 and 3, this chunk of land is part of the same continental plate, which is slamming into the above. How should volcanic activity/mountain ranges be effected/created?

5) This is the marshes fed from the inland sea (which has more freshwater than the true ocean), how might it be irrigated so greatly?

6) There's another continental plate colliding here, creating a mountain range in the far west, how would this look and how many mountains should I place?

7) Honestly I haven't a fucking clue what to do in this shrubland.

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>>50447560
Fuck forgot map.

>>50447560

Did you mean to post a map lmao

>>50447560
>>50447586
Okay, so a few things at a glance.

Firstly is that 3, 4, and 2 works out, I think. Assuming the plate they're on is rather circular and the islands are near the edges, you'd get volcanic activity. The penninsula 4 is on would probably end up like either Italy or India, depending on timeframe.

However, there being another continental plate near 6 might not line up as well, depending on the size. However, plates can go at different speeds in different areas, but I would expect to see mountains all along that region, including in the south near the 342 plate.

I'm assuming there's another plate bordering that strip of land near 1, to justify the ridge to contain the flooding or the valley to form in the first place, as well as volcanic activity. I believe the latter makes more sense, with the idea that that strip may pull away completely some day.

I'm not sure if 5 woks out as a position for wetlands, though I'm not as sure here. I do feel like it needs a river leading to it from the west and forming a tributary out though.

7 feels like it may end up being rolling plains. It's very central and surrounded by lots of land and mountains, so it will probably be temperate and lightly forested.

>>50447560

> This isn't a continent colliding or anything forming a sea
>There's some volcanic activity on the strip of land.

what

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Does anyone have a recommendation for a good town/city map creator? I've been using Inkarnate for the big picture maps, but I'm looking for something for low key details (houses/buildings, roads, paths, walls, etc.)

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Posting my shitty map for the hell of it.

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>>50447675
How's this looking?

>>50447841
Not sure quite which angle you were going for with the northwestern plate, though I would say the range would probably be thinner but longer.

As for the one to the south, the mountains should be a bit more sporadic on the right side, due to being nearer to the coast. The ones above the peninsula seem fine.

>>50447812
I wish I could do complexity like that, but with my map the scale would be totally off.

>>50447812
That is a really big and really weird mountain range.

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>>50447856
How small should that mountain range be though? I'm picturing it as a really big crunch between two plates, and it's the home of the goblins, who lord over an ancient but decaying civilization of great cities.

>>50447891
I think those are some pretty nice improvements. I'm assuming you're asking about the northwest range, and it mainly is a matter of it seeming to be one big block of mountains.

Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong compared to what you have in mind. I think overall it's fine.

>>50447891
>>50447923
Hmm...actually, on further thought, I think I know what's bugging me about it. For a mountain range, it doesn't have a main sort of 'spine' if that makes sense.

Like, trace the biggest peaks in the other ranges, and there's a clear line or curve that's the center of the range. Do it with the one in the northwest, and you get a zigzag.

I would say to put that really tall peak towards the center of where you want the fault to be, make general line of the other tall peaks along it, and then fill the gaps with those smaller mountains.

You do have some wiggle room but I think that would help make it look more unified.

>>50447946
Hm you're right on that count.

>>50447987
Yeah, that's also how mountain ranges tend to form, with the height in the center and forming in rows.

It could work in a weird shape if you had the plate connection be an equally weird shape, but it would still be possible to trace a line and generally follow where it is.

>>50447862
Complexity?

>>50447869
Suggestions?

Anons? Just out of curiosity, have you ever come up with particularly weird or odd origins for humans in your worlds?

For example, one of the theories for humanity's origins given in D&D 3.5 was "a slutty female halfling offended the gods by marrying two guys (one dwarf, one elf) at once, so they punished her by making her give birth to twins who were a blend of all three races, and those were the first humans". Which you have to admit is pretty weird for D&D.

>>50447841
>>50447812
Ok first of all
>Inkarnate
Stop that shit.

Secondly, on the second map you have that weird penis shaped peninsula that is entirely too long to not just be an island chain/archipelago.

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>>50448698
>Secondly, on the second map you have that weird penis shaped peninsula that is entirely too long to not just be an island chain/archipelago.
What was that, some bullshit about it being "way too long" to not be an island chain?

Somebody should tell reality that then.

Much to my chargin i dont know an awful lot about my history. What loosely historical group or time period related factions could i have in my post apocalyptic Britain? For example sort of like how the minutemen in fallout are based on the revolutionary fighters of the same name.
All i have so far is a nation in the west midlands called "Mercaea" a misspellt version of merica which was a kingdom in england.

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>>50448698
>Stop using inkarnate
Kys, cunt. Inkarnate is a pretty good mapmaking tool for your regular Fantasy world, just because you're too autistic to sculpt a decent coastline doesn't mean it's a shit tool.

That being said, those using inkarnate to create something else than a landscape with marks, such as City maps or God behold something worse, should also slit their wrists.

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>>50445592
Vampires are a major part of my setting, there was a point in history long ago when there was an actual vampire city, Talkath, inside of a huge cave that housed hundreds of vampires and an untold number of human servants, who give blood to their masters in exchange for payment and protection. The less physical activity a vampire has, the less blood they need, so the city had a somewhat sustainable supply of blood as it allowed vampires to congregate in a safe place that was fitting for more than just a family. This city was sacked by sun worshippers, scattering the vampires and forming the modern clan system. This led to some vampires taking over an entire empire and building a tower in the middle of it as a new vampire city, but very few came to live there.

It would really suck to have lived in Talkath and still be alive centuries later, after the fall of the city most vampires had to become murderers/slavers to get blood and they all separated into tiny sects that do not communicate properly. A vampire might have have had tons of vampire friends from the city who are now secluded in basements or caves with no way of finding them. Then there's of course their human friends dying as well.

>>50449442
Wow, an inkarnate map that doesn't look like shit. Nice work.

It's still a very limited program.

>>50448698
Yeah, it sucks, but its still better than nothing. Especially when still in the cenceptual phase.

>>50442403
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PROSE

>>50424624
In my homebrew setting, there's a sort of liquid metal that is fairly toxic but conducts electricity and magical energy very well. As such, it's a basic component in enchanting items and creating potions, and also serves as the lifeblood in giant magical mecha.

I've been calling it quicksilver, but I don't know if I could just use mercury or if there's another name that's similar but not entirely the same.

It can be found in natural pools and streams below the earth, but more commonly it is locked in ore in a crystalline structure. The rock is heated in bags made of copper or lead sheets and crushed, and the metal rises through the powdered rock to be skimmed off.

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>>50448014
>>50447946
In Inkarnate you can manually set the sizes of mountains so that you form distinctive spines and outgrowths in your mountain ranges rather than randomizing it.

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>>50454852
So I take it you watched Escaflowne?

So for northern, subartic cultures wood for homes is pretty much the standard right? What about castles, monasteries and forts? Should the ramparts be stone and the keep wood, or both stone or both wood? I can only imagine a castle made of some sort of stone from a local quarry like granite would not insulate or heat very well.

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>>50424780
I'm taking a small break from working on the scriptures, and decided to start writing a broad outline of the country's history instead.

This document is supposed to be published some years after the other one I posted.

Let me know if my take on elves has been overdone or has merit.

>mythology is primarily a blend of norse, celtic, and wuxia
>3 worlds, the mundane world of humans, the otherworld of the fae, and the middle-ground of warriors/wulin
>elves resemble norse svaltar, but instead of being their own creation or "fallen fae" they are humans who lost their grip on their own humanity and joined the otherworld
>largely depraved predators who eat humans

>>50455624
Stone can work, but it's mainly a matter of having braziers, fire pits, or fire places to provide warmth.

>>50456481
I should clarify that I mean the norse dark elves or black elves. I'm also toying with light elves being a sort of ascendant state for warriors who die while having perfect harmony of physical and spiritual strength, but their inclusion is unimportant at this point.

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>>50456481
>blend of norse, celtic, and wuxia

Not really sure what thread to ask my question, but this seems like a good place to start.

In a space-based setting, I was contemplating having an alien race that uses radiation-based weapons. How effective would that be?

>>50458372
As in spaceship-to-spaceship weapons, or personal weapons?

Also, electromagnetic radiation? Alpha particle radiation? What're we talking here?

>>50458422
Both, actually. At the personal level and full warship scale.

I'm not exactly sure, as my knowledge is pretty limited. I understand the basic concept of a microwave radiation-based weapon that could boil someone alive, but beyond that, my only real knowledge of it is "invisible fire that can kill you years after you've been exposed".

>>50458441
Electromagnetic radiation includes microwaves, x-rays, and gamma rays, the last of which would be the most likely to be weaponized. But providing a beam of light with enough power to be dangerous would require a ton more energy than accelerating a projectile to accomplish the same. If they had some kind of readily-available source of great amounts of electric power but no source of combustion, I guess that'd be where to start.

Alpha particle and neutron radiation use high-energy alpha particles or neutrons respectively to trigger chains of fission reactions, which are much more destructive, but that'd only occur when used on certain unstable materials (like plutonium) so it's probably not the greatest weapon. Otherwise it'd just, like, increase the target's risk of cancer.

>>50458601
Very useful. The rough idea I'm working with is a Star Wars-type science fiction setting, where laser and directed energy weapons are the norm and humans are basically treated much like orks.
The aliens that use the radiation weapons took a path that blends organic tech with more traditional. Ships grown around metal frames and living armor, inspired by the stuff from Scorn. I was thinking that they'd have no problem producing massive amounts of power, but they have a mindset that everything not them must be burned clean, so I was thinking about the idea of radiation and plasma used to scour anything organic away. The radiation might also have a bonus of ignoring shields and body armor in the setting.

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>>50456323
get the fuck on the /wbg/ Discord, you beautiful autist

https://discord.gg/ArcSegv

>>50458306
My initial goal with the setting is to take the wuxia genre and apply it to western fantasy. I'm drawing on norse and celtic mythology because that's what I know best, and I think that drawing from primary sources is better than drawing from established fantasy.

>>50437842
From experience, a platoon can cover about four miles an hour (about 60-100 people) in a fighting load with good conditioning. A larger group, like a company of 300-400 can march about the same, but the mobilization time is disproportionately longer. You're looking at a solid two hours to get all gear prepped, everyone formed up and moving, and this was just with a 3L ILBE pack and a rifle. Getting tents broken down, baggage trains loaded and the likes could take several hours at a company sized level. After the hike, you still need to set up camp and perimeter defenses, which (again, in my experience) takes about an hour for defenses, and another hour to hour and a half for other logistical parts. The highest rate sustainable by a modern military marching on foot is about 18 miles a day, for a week. Granted, this will cause significant light tissue damage and potential larger issues like stress fractures and torn connective tissue, so for a medieval-era army, I would likely say that marching for more than two weeks without stop could stop an advance dead in it's tracks. Now, with a few days to rest between hikes, it is entirely possible to stretch this out. Taking the weekend off (or even just shorter hikes) is entirely capable of stretching out your effective distance. Resupply is also a major factor, which takes time that can also be used for recuperation. The load that your infantry carry is another major factor. A 15k hike with 45-50lb is unlikely to cause issues other than mild dehydration and blisters, however the same hike with 90-110lb (the heaviest we will carry) is entirely capable of doing significant damage, if kept up for long durations. Another point to note is that modern equipment makes hiking longer distances far less damaging to joints and connective tissues than the past, as even the difference between what Marines carry now and say, Vietnam makes a significant difference.

>>50454966
Kind of. I was also thinking of the Warforged from Eberron and the Mournland and it's effects, and Samurai Jack. I want my giant mecha to spew robot blood when they fight.

>>50459879
Now that's some great information. Why do most people cite statistics about ancient-era and medieval armies marching farther per day? Is it just something historians worked out by estimating distance travelled and dividing by time?

>>50460249
Mostly because they're carrying far less weight than we do today and things like the VA don't exist so there is far less of a push for leadership to not have soldiers fuck up their everything in training and deployment. Again, in a medieval setting, the likelyhood that they are doing weekend hikes for conditioning is much less (though I'll admit, I know very little on that topic), as opposed to us in the modern world. You could push an army to do 20-25 miles a day, but you certainly wouldn't have them be combat effective afterwards. Our hikes are geared to getting us in position to launch an assault on an enemy position after getting there and dropping our heavier gear. Mind you, a combat load for us is a 10ish pound rifle, 6-9 full magazines (about a pound or so each), a flak (weighing about 25lb) and a kevlar weighing maybe 3-5lb with night vision and the likes. If your armies have the ability to get a fair portion of their forces mounted and trading out who is walking and who is riding every so often, you can certainly extend your daily travel without causing damage to your soldiers' long-term health. But if you're in a high attrition situation, this wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue. Some important questions would be
1) How is war prosecuted in your setting?
2) How large of forces are regularly deployed?
3) How fast can you replace losses? Rotate out frontline troops?
4) How do the governing bodies at play view their soldiers? Significant investments? Cannon fodder? (You see where I'm going here)
5) What sort of equipment is common? A soldier carrying a crossbow is going to have significantly different logistical requirements than a swordsman, as would an artillery battery.
6) How long to wars usually last? A year, five? What causes the length?
If you can flesh out some answers (even in broad terms, I can start giving pointers to other factors to consider. More to follow.

>>50460555
cont. Granted, this is through a more modern lens, but many factors of war remain the same. We still teach lessons taught in the Art of War, albeit changed for the times.

>>50442300
They turn into ghost towns, but generally it is a semi-slow process.

You will have some resources to harvest, you will have farming. Some people will be wealthy and decide that they are going to stay. Others will look at the free houses and squat.

Then building get converted to barns and sheepfolds, buildings go into disrepair. Old folks die off. Then it will revert to the same type of town it was before, any farming and so on or regular trade.

You might have some hanger ons if you have Historical style serfism as they would want their X number of years in town to free themselves of being tied to the land.

>>50446064
>>50446115
Green food and fresh meat are generally good sources of Vit. C.

As a note, things stored in copper will not help you with Vit. C.

There is also illnesses associated with only eating untreated corn, and white polished rice.

I have a idea that I am working on, but I need a decent map.

I am horrible at drawing maps.

Is there a good source of online public domain or otherwise kosher to use maps? (outside of generators)

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How do you treat Elementals in your world, /wbg/?

Are they smart enough to create impressive structures and civilizations? Are there more diverse kinds of Elementals than just the standard monster manual ones? What is their culture like, if they are civilized?

>>50461388
Well, for my current world, I made the conscious decision to not have any weird extradimensional planes of energy or anything, so I kind of went without elementals.

I do think with what I've worked out, they could exist, though it would be almost entirely as beings created out of normal matter and fueled by magical energy. An earth elemental would be basically indistinguishable from a golem, save for the elemental would be more temporary.

Theoretically, a more fully fledged civilization of elementals could exist, but it would basically require an act of god to forge a race of them, and they'd be very odd compared to the other races, as they wouldn't have an afterlife.

>>50461388

elementals are cute! CUTE!

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Wish me luck, I just selected this map for a band new worldbuilding project.

>>50461638
*Brand new

>>50461388
Natural occurrence, like wild animals. I haven't put too much thought into them other than earth ones, which is weird, since I usually really like elementals.

>>50448698
>weird penis shaped peninsula that is entirely too long to not just be an island chain/archipelago.
Looks like Baja

>>50462126

Archipelagos, peninsulas, and isthmuses are often formed by the same process

>>50461388
Elementals don't exist. The planet is too calm for that.

There are golems though, and they basically are built to act as administrators and generals that, since they can't die and are emotionless, are able to provide tons of data as well as insight when it comes to both military and domestic matters. The only problem is that, while being made of rock improves survivability, most are not trained to fight or flee from an enemy and as such are quite easy to destroy, taking with them all their accumulated knowledge upon their destruction. Intact Ancient Golems are priceless for this reason.

>>50424624
>What are the most valuable or useful magical substances in your setting?
The Spirit itself. Spirit is its own form of Matter, and is utilized in everything magical. True living beings have both a Body and Spirit, while other things might have one or another (like a Rock and Ghost respectively).
>How are they harvested, processed, and applied?
There is some harvesting and processing that happens, but that's some super eldritch, evil stuff. You only need to manipulate Spirit to cause Magic. Harvesting it is only known for bad things.

>>50428743
Discerning a person's Birthsign has to be done by magic. It helps others understand where their natural aptitudes lie, and can be seen as a guiding force in their lives. However, once the person is born, how they are raised is equally important to the "final product". It allows you can get a little peek at a newborn's genetics, and from there practice some eugenics if you really wanted to.

>>50439286
I steal concepts and ideas rampantly, then at Implementation make them fit together.

>>50442300
The Bandits and Wilderness Exploitation Preservationists that the city hired go and refill it

>>50448396
The setting I'm working on now is based off the events of previous games. Humans existed before, but now they're all some form of demi-human. Some might appear more or less human depending on hand-waved genetics, and for some places, how human you look determines your social standing. The Fish people would rather not be Fish-like, so the least fishlike are nobility while the more fishlike live in slums. The Fantasy Cyborgs, however, want to completely replace their bodies with metal. The more augmentation you've done, the better they regard you.

>>50461388
On a lesser plane than even animals. They both are governed by "instinct", but since Elementals don't have to worry about food, shelter, sex, or love, nobody really knows what they "do". They're a weird anomaly that happens where Body and Spirit perfectly mix..

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Might do a better version of this

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Offering this once more, have added the climate zones key at the bottom and tweaked the climate zones some more to make them seem somewhat more realistic. And yes, I know the climate regions would not look quite like this, I'm wanting realistic looking, not really realistic since this setting is magical and the gods simply set things as they were and all.

Thoughts and comments are more than welcome!

>>50462722

>Dry
>Eastern side of a continent
>At the equator

I don't care if you're concerned with realism or not, that's just wrong

>>50462828
I know, but I'm not really trying to make it right or proper. I just want to know if this looks good and stuff.

If you want, I could give you a blank version so you can fiddle with the climate zones yourself. I have multiple versions of this map ranging from blank to political to more.

>>50462881

No, it's just a basic concept: Moisture comes from the east, and the equator is the moistest place, therefore the eastern side of the equator is the moistestest place

>>50463011
How do you explain the Somali coastal desert? Or the Brazilian Lençóis Maranhenses desert/park? Both lay near the equator and are on the eastern parts of their respective continents.

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>>50463059

>basic

The ITCZ has some weirdass fluctuations due to the wobbling earth and shape of the continents, which gives Somalia a pretty shitty climate; also it's not quite on the nominal equator anyway

Lencois is actually wet and hot (average perceptitation is 62.9 inches a year), I'm guessing there's just a lot of sand and winds that give the area shitty soil and nothing for plants to cling onto.

>>50462722
Where my temperate rainforests at? AKA the best biome.

>>50436099
If they waited long enough they could.

Not like they're pressed for time, being immortal and all.

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Okay, been starting to sketch out some general ideas for my new yet unnamed world. Let me know if you think any of these ideas are dumber then a bag of rocks.

1. This area was the core of a human empire that collapsed, and now consists of Kingdoms, duchies, republic city states, and perhaps even a religious state. Inspired by 1400's Italian political setup. With ruins to explore of course.

2. This is a area settled by another cultural group then the former human imperial culture.

3. This inner sea area would have a feel of it own, with coastal cities and perhaps quite a few cultural groups on the shorelines.

4. Great Lakes region - These are large freshwater lakes. Wet and cold. but they also moderate the climate for much of the landmass.

5. Island should be something. trying to avoid the "Island of the elves" meme.

6. This is a cultural area me thinks. Perhaps the home of the fools who go into the insane weather of the northern seas.

7. Somewhere in here will be a city that provides passage between the southern sea area and the great northern sea. Perhaps it is like byzantium, the last holdout of the old imperal society that is also the gateway to the great wilderness to the west.

8. This is a huge block of wilderness. Perhaps it was once settled by the old imperals, but it been overrun and now is full of ruins and wilderness to clear and out and explore.

page 10 save rave

>>50465697
8 could be a mixture of the wild west/Louis and Clark expedition where it has some settlements but are too far apart for a centralized power to form

>>50465697
"Ruins of a collapsed empire" is a mite overdone (SotC, Crystal Chronicles, Points of Light from 4e, and Journey come to mind), but it's one of those cliches for which I've got a personal soft spot. It can be done well, but try to add a new spin on it so it seems less familiar.

#4 is a bit... off I'm guessing they're fed by the mountains to the northwest, but it seems like the way they'd moderate the climate would be by winds blowing off of them--winds which would be blocked by those same mountains. Swap the lakes with the mountains and it'd fit better.

How is the weather in #6 insane, exactly?

I really like #7, but maybe #8 is an area they didn't settle? Maybe it's their Afghanistan/Russia. They really wanted to conquer it, but they couldn't, and exhausted their resources trying. It could even be a factor in their empire collapsing.

>>50468794
Ooh, ooh! What if the empire's modus operandi was as they expanded, they established "administration cities" from which their new territories could be governed. They built the city at #7 in anticipation of it being the administration post for the wilderness in #8, but now it stands as the last true vestige of their power, forever overlooking their greatest failure.

I think that'd be cool, anyway.

>>50465697
island of dwarfs that are british themed.

>>50437842
>>50459879
Keep in mind as well that Medieval battle-gear was quite a bit lighter than what modern soldiers wear today.

>>50468588
There will be small settlements, people hanging on and homesteaders and the like. there might be a coastal fort towns that are trading posts.

As for 4 - they are fed off the mountains. the massive lakes moderate the temperature since water will moderate extreme temperatures. If that was all land mass, the central areas would be very hot in the summer, and very cold in the winter.

6 has insane weather since storms and waves grow the have a entire rotation to gain power. The Northern seas would be like the roaring 40s and screaming 60's in the southern hemisphere, but more powerful.

7 did control parts of 8 before, but they where overrun by humanoids and others.

>>50442280
>>50442405
To make an empire give people good feels, you gotta make it a bit more accepting.
There's a reason more recent empires were looked down upon and why everyone thinks Rome was the best shit ever:
Rome came saw and conquered with a strong, but fair hand, with (generally) a respect for the brave local fighters and their culture and allowed them great rights so long as the conquered swore fealty to the Empire.
Recent Empires have been kiniving, rude, disrespectful, greedy, and beat-around-the-bush, and thus no one likes them because no one likes what they stood for.
People like Rome for what it stood for.

I need some list of modern nation's full name, I can't just call every nation the "Republic of"

>>50442280
The Achaemenid empire and the Caliphates come to mind. They were generally tolerant (though not exactly embracing) of existing cultures and religions as long as they didn't directly threaten the empire's rulership, and they brought with them many advances like safe roads, new science and technology, and even what is perhaps the world's first postal service, in the case of the Achaemenids (who also outlawed slavery).

That said, the Caliphates tended to kinda be dicks to Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, and the Achaemenids taxed the crap out of their people.

>>50469163
Kingdom, Commonwealth, Nation-State, Democratic Republic, People's Republic, Democratic People's Republic, Duchy.

The CIA World Factbook might be a good place to get more.

>>50469163
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states

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Here is a map I made for a throwaway D&D campaign.

>>50470645
Okay.

>>50460567
>>50460555
These questions would be good for anyone doing some worldbuilding to consider.

>>50461368
Inkarnate

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>>50424484

Alrighty, I got one more in me.


I have a God and or Titan who still walks the earth, "Gog'magog" is his name.

Gog'magog spent most of his career aiding and assisting the early development of many of the more savage races and due to this features HEAVILY in the creation/origin myths of: Orcs, Ogres, Humans & Centaurs, Giants, Ettins and Cyclopes. He even went so far as to fight the Gods themselves after they descended upon the physical world to claim dominion over it's mortal peoples; he fought with his fellow Titans for independence and when the gods were defeated- he was the last Titan left.


My question is: How would people worship a God who's given everything and has asked for nothing in return?

>>50472262
Assuming they can't just give him food, I'd imagine a common one would be showing off all the cool stuff they've built thanks to that initial help. It might vary from tribe to tribe, but I could see them viewing him as a sort of god of crafts.

>>50472262
By following his example.

>>50460555
Not the person you replying too, but those are some great questions, and since I am building a world....

>1) How is war prosecuted in your setting?
Depends on the area.

Ex-imperial area it is mostly semi-professional hired hands. There are a handful of standing companies of mercenaries.

To the north there is more of a levy, and the lord cost is providing weapons and armor. Many times, the sword and armor is given at the end of the campaign season to the survivor in payment.

Serfs can only be called away for 40 days as a Levy in most areas without payment. This limits their use outside of defensive militias.

>2) How large of forces are regularly deployed?
Generally raiding parties of 30-300 men, and major battle, 5000-6000 men. Alexandros at the battle of Elven sorrow had a army of 95,000 men, which is still the largest army to be put into one place.

>3) How fast can you replace losses? Rotate out frontline troops?
Rather quickly in most battles.

>4) How do the governing bodies at play view their soldiers? Significant investments? Cannon fodder? (You see where I'm going here)
They are much more protective of their serf levies then hired hands, as the serfs will need to return to pay taxes, while the lord usually pays the sell swords to go away.

>5) What sort of equipment is common? A soldier carrying a crossbow is going to have significantly different logistical requirements than a swordsman, as would an artillery battery.
Chain and mace/sword is a common footman weapon, However many governments will have smaller, specialized units such as woodland units or archers.

>6) How long to wars usually last? A year, five? What causes the length?
Wars can last for years, but marching season is normally about 80-120 days for large (1000+) formations, but small 10-30 man raiding bands can happen all year.

>>50427065
Beautiful. What are you using?

>>50470645
What program did you use?

>>50472504
paint dot net, drawn by cursor

Some of the formations were randomly generated through donjon and slowly redrawn, a few are still pretty obvious as I haven't touched up the coasts. The file was also doubled in dimensions twice so certain areas have pixels 4x bigger than they should be.

next thread should ask questions on slavery and rebellions

>>50472565
I'll make the next thread later tonight, will do

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Bumping with a couple PDFs periodically

>>50472565
I made a setting where I wanted slavery to be integral to the society and race relations, and people questioned why.

>>50473413
Were the people questioning you on 4chan or elsewhere?

>>50473397
>calls bit of text prior to any other content "interlude" rather than "prelude"
The trash would be too dignified a place for this.

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Overly animated and flamboyant swordsmen with feminine body language

MORE or LESS intimidating?

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What does it need?

>>50474892
The rest of the Americas to the north of it.

>>50425185
I actually really dig the way they use wands and staves in The Gods are Bastards, where it's basically fantasy western and wands function as pistols.

A wizard/shaman/warlock/cleric can just do magic or whatever, they don't need an implement. A wand or a stave is basically an implement that's had a single spell ingrained into it, and all it needs is a magical power source, usually a charged magical quartz or crystal, though the really old wands used reagents like dragon heart strings. Doesn't really need to have the crystal recharged or replaced all that often, the real limiter is that firing it too rapidly causes it to "overheat" which could cause the crystal to explode rather violently, and mana burns are no joke.

So basically, you have wands which function as shorter range revolvers, and staves which are rifles, both of which basically cast a bolt of lightning across a magically generated magnetic corridor that keeps it moving in a straight line up to a certain range. They can be used by pretty much anyone using a mass-produced trigger device called a "clicker," but there are also wands that are triggered telepathically by genuine wizards, which are generally higher quality.

>>50474814
Depends on the level of *teleports behind you* and Bleach-style stupid-sword-energy-blasts they have access to.

>>50474892
Aside from >>50475038 's point that it does look a lot like south America, the big thing I would say is more ports.

Right now there's 2, and they're on opposite sides of the continent. There should be one near the cape as a stopover at least, and probably one on the north side as well. Either that, or a more significant island or landmass out to sea.

>>50474892

Soccer

>>50474814
Voldo and Ghirahim come to mind, and they can be pretty intimidating

>>50474814
I'm trying to imagine a Mad Max style world where, alongside shit like War Boyz, Buzzards, and the Fallout "Raider" look of car tires and hockey pads, you have famboyant anime pretty boys cutting a swath of destruction and mayhem across the wasteland, wearing puffed shirts and wielding flea market "DRAGONBLOODHAWK" swords like some kind of lunatic bargain-bin yaoi Landshnechts.

>>50474892
A crashed plane with a soccer team cargo as loot in a gonzo encounter.

>>50475538
>>50475538
>>50475538
new
>>50475538
>>50475538
>>50475538

Going to push this thread over the bump limit, have to get to sleep

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>>50475547
Since you want to push, here something to ignore, what I worked on today, the first rough draft of religion.

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>>50475555
>>50474444
check em

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>>50475822

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>making a new thread this early

>>50473469
On 4chan of course. Where else would I bring up slavery in a setting? Nobody else would accept it, they'd all wonder why they couldn't stop it.

>>50476337
I know that GURPS has slavery built into their main fantasy setting. as in a empire of slaves.

>>50476410
GURPS has a main setting?

Also, the issue is that people always say slavery is inefficient and that it's just not worth it to have it. But I really question that.

>>50477283
Gurps has a main fantasy setting - Yrth / banestorm.

In 3e it came with Gurps fantasy as a default setting, in 4th edition they split it out as a setting.

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>>50424484
>All this hard work
>just so players can ignore 99.99 percent of it

>>50477334
It's not on the wiki
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/GURPS

>>50477339
I'm actually going to turn it into a video game about a noble house being founded when it rebuilds a ruined castle and trying to survive court politics for the next 200 years, like Crusader Kings II

>>50477352
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Banestorm

>>50476337
Well, 4chan is also home to /pol/ and /r9k/. If you bring up slavery, there's a good chance it's gonna seem like you're taking the chance to talk about Glorious White Man Conquering Negro Savage.