Is it possible to create a believable kitchen sink setting?

>>52058448
>A Mad God did it for their jollies

Done.

>>52058448
It depends on what you consider believable. There are people on /tg/ who would screech at the map of the Earth with the mountains slightly rearranged. I have never had such problems because I don't ever feel the need to justify a world where gods and magic exist. Pretty much anything can be explained via gods and magic.

>>52058448
Just copy the real world and add magic, steam machines, aliens and anachronistic pirates.

We live in one.

>so you're telling me that there are shamans, witch doctors, griots, bards, augurs, druids, hermetics, alchemists, priests of a thousand religion, oracles, seers AND medicine men
>all in one setting that includes no less than a dozen variants on each of their core creation myths?
>bullshit

>>52058867
rhis

everything in fantasy is just aped and exaggerated from some shit that went down irl anyway

Basic rule: Don't explain everything.

>>52059076
I regret that I didn't save that hilarious map where the GM drew the air currents of his world.

>>52059308
It's not unreasonable in a Naval Campaign.

>>52058448
Rifts

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>>52058460
>Golarion
>well

Im incapable of drawing a map because im a big geography nerd and get autistic about plate tectonics, trade winds, mountains/deserts, climate zones, etc.

What ive done instead is just take a map of the earth, and removed north america so that hawaii is just west of the azures.

Then i just populate it with whatever fantasy stuff i like. Dwarves in the himilayas for example.

>>52059679
North and south america*

>>52059514
I'm okay with some excess.

Still, the last thing I am ever going to tell my players is which creation myth is true, if any, ever.

>>52059033
Muh... mah fantasy has to be realistic....
Lemme guess, you're in a creative writing program somewhere...

>>52059679
>plate tectonics, trade winds, mountains/deserts, climate zones, etc.

I have unironically heard, both from here and various other worldbuilding articles, that these are absolutely necessary things to consider when making a fantasy world. Like, fucking what? Who cares?

>>52059868

...anon he's describing Earth's cultural history.

>>52059514
It's quite unreasonable. You don't need realistic wind simulation for swimming around on a ship looking for treasure. Otherwise you get MYFAROG

>>52059939
Since these things were big parts of Earth's own history and major factors in how civilization developed, people consider these to be majorly important.
I don't, since trying to think about that shit kills my creativity.

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>>52059960
>swimming around on a ship

How I know you have nothing worth saying.

>>52059939
People who get money from the ads on their worldbuilding blogs care.

Detached grognards also care, but I've never seen one in real life. And please don't call them geography nerds, I may be a nerd in some areas, but I couldn't care less if a fantasy world sticks to what's realistic in our world.

>>52059679

...but without the North American plate, the continents no longer make sense.

Why not just use a paleo geography map?

>>52059981
I don't suppose you would decipher your screeching for us mortals?

>>52059940
...anon, he's making a painfully obvious joke.

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>>52059981
Look at this loser!

>>52059939

Thar shit is all going to have tremendous impact on civilization, especially pre-moder civilization. I don't expect autistical depth like average monthly rainfall by season by region, or anything like that, but basic fuckups will trigger me.

>>52060018
Removing half of earths mass would also greatly affect gravity which would affect 10 million other things.

One of the reasons i decided on just using afroeurasia is because i thought it would be interesting to explore the the dynamics at play if Christopher Columbus did in fact find a northwest passage to trade with the chinese.

So in my setting, high elves live in china and sea elves (mer-men basically) populate the pacific islands. Orcs are steppe peoples and russians. Humans are arabs africans and europeans. There are demi races like dwarves and lizard folk that live in particularly remote areas

>>52060026
If you're too retarded to know the verbs that refer to moving a ship at sea, you're not worth the effort of explaining why wind routes matter.

>>52060060
Only acceptable response.

>>52058448
planescape.

maybe samurai jack? idk.

>>52058448
Just say ''it's like that on purpose''.

K.A. Applegate wrote a tragically short and unfinished fantasy series called Everworld, about a gaggle of barely-even-acquaintances teens dumped in a fantasy world due to shennanigans. The alternate world was a creation of EVERY GOD EVER who came to realise that the way they had built the universe, with cohesive and solid laws of physics and shit, meant that over time they just could interact less and less with reality because it was self-sustaining and just... outgrew them. So they fucked off to a new dimension and declared ''LET THERE BE EVERYTHING THAT WE CONSIDER COOL, AND LET IT RUN ON THE SAME MAGIC POWER THAT WE ARE MADE OF, SO THAT THE REIGN OF GODS SHALL NEVER END''. And every thing was great for the Gods, shitting on the little people and leading civilisations in pointless wars for funsies and dick-swinging contests, until KA-ANOR THE GOD EATER, a God of Cannibalism worshiped by an alien race turned up and said ''what up I'm here to eat your Gods'' and then everything went to shit. It was kitchen sink as hell, with every mythology ever butting heads with fucking aliens and blacksmithing cults who fixed magic swords in exchange for the heroes real-world chemistry textbook and turned up two books later with fucking guns and all sorts of mad shit all over the place.

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>>52060196
Or maybe English is not my mother tongue?

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>>52059679
You can do this, but also take it a step further and use geographical maps of previous stages of Earth, like the Cretaceous period where most of North America was dominated by a massive seaway.

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Adjust the coastlines a bit, or only show part of the map, and this one works great for the lazy man.

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>>52059679

>>52061931
>says he's a map autist
>post noodle worldgen

You're a cruel man

>>52062015
Yeah, but they're bad at being autistic so fuck em. Pastamap works good.

>>52060856
Then go practice on >>>/int/ .

>>52063263
Do you feel better now?

>>52060076

ITT: 4e players get their jimmies rustled by people who have and use a little basic geographic knowledge.

90% of putting in the effort to read and reply to a thread like this comes from shame at their own half ass work. So they compensate by lashing out.

The irony being that it takes about as much effort to stick it out in a thread like this as it does just sitting down and working out the climatology.

>>52060831
I wanted to fuck the witchgirl.

>>52061067
Now make the oceans blood and everybody ages from their death to their birth.

>>52059939
>In Chad, on the southern outskirts of the Sahara, there’s valley called the Bodélé Depression.
>It was once a lakebed, and the dry dust in the valley floor is full of nutrient-rich matter from the microorganisms that lived there.
>From October to March, winds coming in from the east are pinched between two mountain ranges. When the surface winds climb over 20 mph, they start picking up dust from the valley.
>This dust is blown westward, all the way across Africa, and out over the Atlantic.
>That dirt—from one small valley in Chad—supplies over 50% of the nutrient-rich dust that helps fertilize the Amazon rainforest.

>At least, according to that one study. But if it's right, it wouldn’t be a crazy anomaly. This kind of complexity is found everywhere.
>The basic building blocks of our world are crazy.

Tell people like that to fuck off.

Apparently using fantastical elements is no longer fantasy. It has to be grimderp, realistic, and "look at me I subverted ALL the tropes."

Kill creativity, one autist at a time.

>>52059076
This.

Nothing kills my interest in a world faster than seeing it rendered as an entire collection of continents, especially if the GM hasn't got a modern or Age of Exploration theme in mind.

Stick to a single country, or a single continent. Keep the scope of your world contained, and leave HERE BE DRAGONS in all the margins.

>>52060000
>Detached grognards also care, but I've never seen one in real life.

Of course not. Grognards take 1d4 damage for every round they spend in direct sunlight.

>>52063787
How about a middle ground?

You can hardly say ELVES DWARVES HUMANS ORCS HOBBITS DRAGONS MAGIC X200 is the setting that encompasses the spirit of creativity.

I'm putting together a setting atm, designed solely for tabletop. I'm not including a single 'existing' race, but basing every race off a mechanic that would be fun to have as a PC. That's a better route imo.

>>52061931
I remember seeing a post of a guy who did the same with dice instead of pasta and whatever type of dice plus the result determinated what was on that place

>>52059939
Has anyone ever had players ask about any of this?

>>52060138
If you avoid shitty game systems like D&D that assumes that anyone who does anything interesting can teleport to the moon and back in 12 seconds or so, your whole campaign can take place on the territory of Great Britain and still involve multiple kingdoms, large scale wars and wild unexplored places. You don't need a whole fucking planet.

Part of the reason that the real world is so diverse is because most cultures were pretty damn isolated from each other. Your african shaman wouldn't run into a native american, ever. Parts of Europe would have some connection with the far east but for an average person in Spain or Italy, the chinese might as well be lizard people.

>>52064365
But anon, grognards have no Constitution. They would instantly die if no wait I get it.

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>>52063652

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>>52061067
What would the tides be like on such a world? I assume it would fucking suck to live on the far right or far left.

>>52060996

>Texas, Florida, Flyover states, and Mexico underwater.

Wonder if we can bribe God enough to make this happen again.

>>52067817
>Implying Texas isn't underwater 10% f the year
Half the time the fucking weather is always whatever happens to be worst for everyone involved.

>>52058448
I seriously cant tell if the "A Dark Tower" is a reference to the book series by Stephen King or a generic cliche reference and I think it's both and it's doing my head in.

>>52067733
Based Requiem

>>52058448
Isn't that what Faerun is? Not Arabian Nights right next to Not Lothlorien without regard for actual geographic processes that form deserts and boreal forests?

>>52067864
The other half the sun is pissed.

>>52059679
thats awesome dude!
i generally dont put that many details past: this is a city of orcs who farm mushrooms, but that many details really makes the world more living, and it feels like the creator really cares.
tolkein wrote an entire language for his world.

yay passion!

>>52069012

>tolkein wrote an entire language for his world.

not quite.

Tolkein wrote an entire world for his language(s)

>>52059063
or simplified, since truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.

Please explain the kitchen sink thing, I'm far too drunk to understand currently

Let's say one of the factions in this setting is actually really technologically advanced. Think GDI. How do you excuse them not knowing about all these people living on the same world?

>>52070470
Toss elements or settings wholesale from fantasy franchises. You get stuff like ASoIaF sharing landmasses with Middle Earth and similar.

>>52059679
Those are pretty fucking cool things to take into consideration

But when making the map of a fantasy world whose creation myth is "lol the gods wanted it to be so and bam", is it really necessary to apply the same principles of reality?

>>52058448
Fading Suns

>>52067683
Older editions and 5e generally work on teleportation being short range and so unreliable as to be worthless though.