/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

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>>52103964
Sharing my map or something.

>>52103991
everday is an interesting name. Why is it called that?

Also the non-englishy ones? Is it multiple cultures of human or multiple races or both?

>>52104040
The city is built around a giant pillar of crystallized fire. The city is constantly bathed its light.

Multiple races. Imperius Urbum and the surrounding cities are Elven, everything south of Maadi is the Sobki, the cities around Everday are remnants of the old human empire and part of the new one, Imash is a Dwarven trading city, and the two in the southern sea are Akkraok strongholds established by their advance from the east.

The Sobki are crocodilemen, the Akkraok are flightless birdmen, and the dragon symbols are actual dragons. Dragons in my setting are unique and godlike, with dragon-cult tribes surrounding their lairs.

>>52104126
>>52104040
And yeah, that's a bit of a shit description of things. Trying to keep it light without dumping everything for context.

What are some things to keep in mind when running a world whose highest form of government is the city-state?

>>52104795
Does vassalage exist as a concept? That will be a big game changer.

Give us more information about the world. Having sci-fi levels of tech vs. bronze age would change things.

>>52104795
Local patriotism, city-specific cults and gods, armies consisting of citizens.

>>52104892
But how would this differ from larger governments? Patriotism, national gods, and the draft are pretty similar to the ideas you listed.

>>52104880
Technologically it's more bronze age except there is also weird ancient tech which is sometimes practically considered magic.

>>52104880
Not that guy, but can city-states be viable against feudalism-style monarchies without unreasonable advantages?

>>52104934
Considering that there were a number of city states that existed on the Italian peninsula in the middle ages, I'm going to say yes.

>>52104933
Remember that trade allows for people to interact with other city states from far away, but that for the most part the scope of the world is pretty small. Sparta and Athens, the two super powers of classical Greece, were less than 100 miles apart. Wars are also going to be smaller in scale, with most battles having no more than about 20,000 troops fighting each other.

>>52104911
>Patriotism
LOCAL
>national gods
Not really national gods, greek or sumerian city-states had their city-specific gods, which were still worshipped in other cities. But the main cult was at their own cities.
>and the draft
Compared to feudal nations? The draft we know is a pretty modern thing, feudal societies usually had their warrior-caste plus some professional free guys, that often formed the middle-class. Mercenaries became more important as we reached the renaissance and beyond. Peasant levies are mostly a myth. City-states on the other hand often semi-professional citizen-"warriors" or in case of italian city-states, as some other anon pointed out, armies of mercenaries, if they ahd the money and such armies were available.

>>52103964
> Do you hand draw your maps, or use a tool like inkarnate?
Photoshop, tut's generally available around here. I've been considering saying fuck it and just drawing one, but I'd need a new tablet because honestly I can't be assed to do it traditionally.
> Are your maps realistic or are they whimsical?
Realistic, generally a tool for me, and a few hours of relaxation in their making.
> Do you even use maps?
No
> Are your maps for reference or do you use them in games (Like Urealms?)
I like to drop the map on the players, and update it with markers as a campaign goes on. Just as a neat little extra. Something to go "neat" at, and drudge up some memories.

>>52103964
So a few months ago on /wbg/ there was talk of supertall montains, which really fired my imagination.

I've since learned that for several factors mean that you could only squeeze a few hundred meters more out of Everest before you hit the absolute max a mountain can go with Earth-like conditions and that Everest is already freakishly tall for our planet.

However this is /wbg/. Assuming the geology faeries do their magic, what would the effects be of a supertall mountain? Let's start things off with Mt.Huge somewhere in the mid or upper stratosphere between 20-40km high. I'm particularly interested in the weather, not just around the peaks but across the continent it sits on.

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Alright I've just done a bit of a quickie to ask for advice. Think of this as a first draft map.

My goal is to map out a typical fantasy kingdom which would serve as a campaign location. Players would be traveling to and from the various villages and towns on the journeys the main roads being rather important.

It look alright?

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Alright, I've got a shit-ton of people and places to name in a setting.

Does anyone have a good set of guidelines for creating believable (or a least reasonably memorable, not letter-salad jumbles) names with out just wholesale lifting of them from some place? Partial lifting could work I guess. And I'd like to avoid all biblical-derived names in particular when it comes to people.

>>52105851
Looks comfy, if this is of any help. Maybe the south is a bit sparse, is there any civilization?

>>52104795

What caused that region to have such a small scale of government?

In the case of Greece, it was partially because of terrain that did not permit easy travel between cities.

You could also go for a more "asspull" reason, such as a strong tendency for exclusion of outsiders due to cultural or religious belief. Or they all originated from wildly different culture groups, so groups could not assimilate with each other in a reasonable time, or they did not have any desire to.

How do you come up with names for your races? I always draw a blank when it comes to naming races and ethnicities in that race. Latin naming just seems too obvious.

>>52106264
Steal the names from something vaguely similar from mythology. I'm personally passive-aggressively making monsters in the vein of minotaurs and pegasus, based on one particular creature. Sleipnirs and shit.

>>52106364
Guess that works as well, but would it work for subraces?

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>>52103964
>Do you hand draw your maps, or use a tool like inkarnate?
Both, but I usually hand draw because Inkarnate is too limiting for my taste.
>Are your maps realistic or are they whimsical?
They're basic because I'm shit at drawing, so neither?
>Do you even use maps?
All the time, the problem is that I keep redrawing them to the point that the landmass sizes change each time I do so.
> Are your maps for reference or do you use them in games (Like Urealms?)
Reference, no one is likely to give a shit about my setting anyway.
>I don't know, share your map or something.
Pic related, essentially a rough draft of the settings not! West Africa.

>>52104795
Without a centralized organization to finance them, roads between cities will be relatively rare and largely of the "trail kept clear only because people keep trampling the flora" variety. Those that are paved or maintained will likely be status symbols kept up by merchants, who are likely to form a somewhat wealthy caste viewed with suspicion due to their relative monopoly on traveling.

>>52103964
Please rate and don't hate my world and map

>https://docs.google.com/document/d/13NSIFm0w56oTbdG2C_D07Fn0hnilX0oleTacNyEGk10/edit?usp=sharing

>>52105874
In case you're still here:

Places are named after the following
>geographic features
>founding person/famous hero
>gods
>cultural reason

Everywhere is really just John's Creek, Hill Fort, Hercules, or Holy City, just in the native tongue of whoever lives there. Pick a language to model the languages spoken in a region, and translate words literally. Mix them up a little to avoid stupidity.

>>52107542
>don't hate
No promises.

Wait. Old Empire? And no one remembers its name? So why the fuck is it famous? How the fuck do people know about it?

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> Do you hand draw your maps, or use a tool like inkarnate?
I've been experimenting with photoshop lately, but I always draft it beforehand on paper
> Are your maps realistic or are they whimsical?
I try to do both
> Do you even use maps?
Essential for world building.
> Are your maps for reference or do you use them in games (Like Urealms?)
I make a less accurate player version and give it to them when they earn it or buy it.

Here's mine. Thoughts?

>>52108330
I can dig the ring shaped lake. are there spooky swamps close to it?

>>52106467
>Bugbears
>Goblins
It's been done before.

>>52109411
Actually yeah, to the south of it. There's also spooky vampire-ran city nearby.

It's the area in which I stuffed most of the horror stuff.

>>52109501
what's in the center island?

>>5210587
discount japan?

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r8 pls

>>52109647
Looks like the most standard-ish fantasy world, it's heartwarming. Only the dwarfen mountains are missing.

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Working on converting my old inkarnate map to the new format. Still waiting on new terrain and models. Current models just can't compare to the old ones. The 3d ones are neat but too big, and the small ones just dont look very good.

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>>52109896
Comparison.

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>>52109896

Never been a fan of Inkarnate myself, but in my spare time I got some pretty cool stuff with the old models. I don't see why change them.

>>52109647

>Square grid for overland map

Apart for that, nice

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>>52109939

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>>52103964
That almost looks exactly like the 1st draft of my world right here

Story time

I had some ideas about short little stories set in the Elder Scrolls world but seeing how I hate all fanfiction I thought it would be cooler and more ambitious to create my own fantasy setting. So I drew up this little map here and thought up some races of men and elves who may inhabit it

>>52109896
What the hell happened to that island?

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>>52110188
The world looked a little simple to me so I expanded it a bit and started naming things, but I couldn't figure out how to make the shorelines interesting or realistic so ...

>>52110191
The one of the right? What about it?

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>>52110221
I used minecraft maps from mineatlas to shape the shorelines with more detail and add lots of little islands and such

Now I am filling in the terrain. Coming up with the lore, names, and interesting places for this whole nap at once would be impossible as fuck so I'll write a story about one place and do all that, then move on to another

>>52110299
Nicely done anon, good endish product

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What kind of technology, if any, would Sea Elves, Merfolk, Fish People, whatever create if metallurgy can't exist underwater?

What would they use for currency, eat, and wear?

>>52110285
It's like, a rim of land around a sea. It's just a very odd looking land/watermass. I was wondering what the justification was for it.

>>52110375
They may have whalebone armor and spears with tips of sharp coral flakes. Maybe a certain seaweed-like plant grows which they can weave for fiber. Currency could be shells, or more interestingly, small pebbles of a certain kind of volcanic resin found only in the lowest depths of the ocean. They may hunt large prey like whales and sharks by ambush, or could have underwater farms growing strange bioluminescent fruits

Maybe instead they are a culture of scavengers, who sink ships and take what goods they can from the wreck.

>>52110378
>It's like, a rim of land around a sea. It's just a very odd looking land/watermass. I was wondering what the justification was for it.
Oh right. Well I'm still making decisions on that. Not sure if I just want it to an extremely large lake, or if I want it to be an inland sea thats filled by massive underground caverns that go 'under' the island.

Haven't really got to far into worldbuilding that bit of the country yet. Still finishing up 'Luskwood' to the west and the 'Deadmire' to the northwest.

>>52110378
>>52110484
Oh, that's easy. Part of the seam between the two plates dropped out into the core or something. That something would be more properly sciencey.
The fill would be a combination of a few rivers, an aquifer, and sea levels being higher in the distant past.

>>52109939
There's so much noise on that map I actually have difficulty focusing on it.
That's one major change that I like with the newer stuff, so much cleaner. But Inkarnate is pretty basic and locks you into a very limited amount of things that can be done. Good enough for throwing together something that doesn't look awful, quickly. But I rapidly moved on once I needed maps with more useful detail to them.

>>52109647
If you're using it for a fantasy Team Fortress game, it's 10/10.

>>52109939
>The Young Sea
>Not 'The Old Sea', 'The Really Old Sea' and 'The Dead Sea'.

>>52110569
>Oh, that's easy. Part of the seam between the two plates dropped out into the core or something. That something would be more properly sciencey.
>The fill would be a combination of a few rivers, an aquifer, and sea levels being higher in the distant past.

Cheers anon, tis a good way to explain it in the future. Will put that down in my notes.

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>>52105986
I've elaborated in update form. It's another rival kingdom, their roads are red, that's how you know they're no good.

>>52109511
A big "neutral" city of a regional alliance. Almost a political experiment for the participating countries.

>>52111629
>fragile peace kept by strict law enforcement recruited from neutral mercenaries
>everyone at each others' throats but keeping up the facade of jolly cooperation
>gangs in the streets
>lower class people in mixed neighborhoods while the rich and powerful live in segregated ghettos with gates that get locked at night
>no cultural holidays allowed by the government

inspiring

>>52112134
I'm still deciding the tone. Not that it matters much at the moment, my player are not political at all, they don't even ask who's in charge unless necessity calls for it. Also they're miles away from there.

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What makes a good fantasy race?

Speaking of mapmaking, I figure I might as well mention something I've been toying with for a while.

The basic idea is '1dWorld', a worldbuilding tool designed to let you make a map and plot out interesting features with a piece of paper and a handful of polyhedral dice.

I'm writing up guidelines, lookup tables and such to try and make the final version have actual value, but the basic idea is that you select a dicepool based on the type of world you want, as each size of dice corresponds to a certain type of feature, and then roll them.

You can draw a border around the edge of the are the dice cover, if appropriate, then note down the locations and start to extrapolate elements from the relationships between them.

I'm designing it to be scaleable, whether you are building a world map, a continent or a village, with the vague idea that you can even 'zoom in' on a point of interest on one map and have rules appropriate for rolling up details at the more local level and such.

Of course this isn't a replacement for proper worldbuilding, but I thought it was an interesting idea and something that could be a potentially useful tool, whether giving you a vague and semi-randomized continent to work with during early worldbuilding or letting a GM throw together a quick area map if the PCs go to an unexpected location, complete with a few interesting locations they can investigate and explore.

Does it sound like something you might find interesting, or have a use for? Any ideas in how to add value to it without over complicating it, or easy mistakes to avoid?

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>>52113347

I still can't figure that out after 5+ years

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>>52103964
Does anyone know what this kind of map is called?

Does anyone know where I can i get symbol sets like the ones seen on this map?

I want to use them in maptool for a collaborative map drawing game (Dawn of Worlds), and was hoping to find some nice symbol/texture sets instead of just using colors.

>>52113453
This sounds really awesome.

Are you familiar with the games Microscope or Dawn of Worlds at all?

I think a tool like yours could work well with games like that, or that you might draw some inspiration from them.

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>>52113773

1/2

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>>52113810
>>52113773

2/2

And that's all I have, sorry.

What are some good natural barriers besides mountains and oceans?

>>52113909

Enormous ravines and crevasses?

>>52113909
deserts, ravines, large rivers, jungles, nuclear fallout zones, swamps, glaciers

>>52113840
>>52113810
hmm not quite what I'm looking for, but it might prove useful. Thanks!

How do you come up with names for places? I'm trying to Homebrew a setting and I keep hitting a wall when I try to come up with names for places.

>>52113347
Think backwards. Think about popular fantasy races and what people like about them. classic movies also full of races and live separate from humans that you could get ideas from.

>>52113909
I'd imagine anything that would be difficult to traverse. Other natural barriers I can think of would be marshlands, maybe an enchanted forest and eats people, or because your magic kingdom is floating in the sky. is fantasy so there could be lots of ways a piece of terrain can be a natural barrier. Just look at Middle Earth, it seems like it's dangerous to travel anywhere.

I'm just talking at /wbg/ but I've been brainstorming a setting, a high fantasy setting. Around 9 races, with 2 or 3 subraces. Taking place on a large continent, around 5 large states and 4 smaller more racially homogenous states that are more tribal. The larger states are more spread out with major trading routes going through the smaller ones, and some by sea. The one major event so far is a tribe thats mostly passive and nomadic, but trade routes avoid the area of badlands or wildlands they inhabit. This changes with the changing of the sovereign, and the new leader is opting for more aggressive, and brutal means to maintain his people. Its more a confederation of tribes than one tribe, but they're mostly united in raiding and pillaging the outlying settlements of the larger states which they're having difficulties putting down or even responding too given the nomadic nature of the people.

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Hoping to set up a hard sci-fi setting making allowances for fun here and there, but I run into the problem of hard science fiction stuff getting in the way of the specific feeling I'm aiming for.

>frontier vibe (no contact with earth)
>one star system
>NO FTL
>multiple habitable worlds (luck of the draw/rule of fun)
>two sapient nonhuman races (one neolithic, one pre-nuclear industrial)

One of my players unfortunately has been draining the enjoyment out of worldbuilding this. His points usually break down to:

1. The Singularity will hit before the indicated timeline (about 200 years to colonizing, 500 years until colonies return to space)
2. Original reason for space travel (irreversible climate change) not possible due to weather control technology he assumes will be commonplace within 20 years
3. Quantum Entanglement means instant communication with Earth at all times

How can I keep the original intent of the setting, while acknowledging/disproving my player's complaints?

>>52114054
>How do you come up with names for places? I'm trying to Homebrew a setting and I keep hitting a wall when I try to come up with names for places.

Running into that wall myself. My main inspiration currently is Morrowind, which if I remember right either lifted names from somewhere suitably remote from the US to avoid the familiar or at least took elements and then structured them together. Like the 'Bal' places are hilly, or the 'Mora' places are... something. and all the Telvanni colonies are Tel Something (often the person who own's it but not always) because they made their own where as the Hlaalu and Redoran didn't really do the same so don't have that convention.

But the key thing is they sound like real place names and are fairly memorable/distinctive. Now if I can work out a nice mechanism for that... Probably getting a bunch of syllable noises, distorting them from English where appropriate (so that it's 'Ord' not 'Old' or something), assigning some rules on starting/ending letters and randomly generate stuff until it sounds ok.

>>52114625
Morrowind took a lot of ashlander names and places from ancient assyrian language. Personally I use old languages or look at tiny villages in scandinavia or eastern europe and borrow bits of that

>>52106264
It's more likely that hazards didn't permit easy travel, and great catastrophe split the world, with people congregating in small communities, some of which have become city-states.

>>52113347
embodying a concept fully

>>52106264
Stealing. Reading a lot of history textbooks about obscure subjects and writing down names, then fiddling with them until they fit what I have in mind for them. For one of my factions I mixed ancient Etruscan names with Nahuatl phonetics and endings.

>>52106264
Take given names that are connected to the main concepts of the race, and switch out or add some letters.

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>>52114536

All I can say is that his 3rd point is not valid. Transmitting information via quantum entanglement is impossible.

Here's how it works:

>generate a pair of particles from a spin-zero particle
>each particle has a spin that is opposite to the other, so they should add back to zero (from the decayed zero-spin particle)
>either of the particles have not interacted with anything in the universe yet
>thus the spin of one has not been "measured", one could say that its spin is yet to be decided
>separate particles one milky way distance apart
>measure one of the particles
>it is 1/2 spin up
>measure the other particle an instant right after the other one
>(by instant I mean an observer in the middle point would receive the results at almost the same time)
>the other particle will always, without fail, have a 1/2 spin down
>that is, any measurement on one in a pair of entangled particles will inevitable cause the other one to give a complement measurement

Now tell me, using this phenomena, how will you transmit information? Just throw some ideas out there, and I will try to prove that they cannot transmit information instantaneously.

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>>52106264
Random words, twisted foreign names, just things that sound cool or descriptive.
Naming is biggest pain in ass.

>>52114494
Leaning towards lower modern tech, like semi-auto battle rifles, bolt action rifles, pistols, etc but no full auto weapons or not plentiful. With some technology replaced by practical magic, like long distance communication is only possible with a line of sight and not refined enough for voices but Morse code via crystals containing mana. There are no internal combustion engines, but something magic that requires a conduit.

I think the motivation for the state causing the trouble should be just a growing resentment of being trade fucked over for precious commodities, their savannah lands don't have many items so they weren't always able to get what they needed. The previous leader was a diplomat, the new one is a war chief.

>>52115122
Morse code, essentially.

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>>52113347
Your personal criteria may vary, but here are mine. At least those I can think of now. Many rules can be overruled if there is a good solid reason that is explored in your work. This applies more to stories than to worldbuilding that is to be used for multiple narratives (like p&p campaigns).

>needs of the same general magnitude as the other choices
(most of the time that will equal those human)
This contributes drive to do things and and hindrances.
>sufficiently different from other choices
Difference orients itself on the level of differences between other present choices and the given genre
>race is not made to fit into a specific niche (for example 4 elements) if those niches are not a prominent theme in the world
>race is not significantly more subdivided than others
The effect is more negative when the general level of difference between races is low. (see elf subraces)
>race can interact with and manipulate a plethora of object without the use of magic
Characters simply need stuff to do, and should do so in an animate manner that can invoke empathetically experiencing the sensations.
>race can wear items
Provides culture through mode of dress, satisfies desire to have nice things, changes look to avoid boredom, provides protection in evocative manner.
>does not spend excessive amounts of time idle or doing one thing only
This applies to daily rhythm as well as general lifetime occupation. Monotony is not fun, evocative or particularly awe inspiring, even if you live a million years.
>Is not significantly more powerful than other races on individual scale (doesn't apply if used as force of nature/plot device with sparse presents in daily dealings).
>race is not laser focused on a singular theme in all aspects
>race needs more different cultures, the more numerous it is and the bigger the scope of the world
>visual design neither to plain or to busy (varies strongly with taste)

All of this is in the context of PC race mostly.

>>52114536
To help you refute the three points
1. The Singularity is not guaranteed to happen. Moore's law is not entirely true and already our ability to make more efficient CPUs is slowing down and the singularity's premise is that computers themselves will become smarter to the point where they no longer need human input to solve problems. We do not know if artificial intelligence, as in replication of a true consciousness, is possible. Massive computing power != massive intelligence. It's like having a really big calculator, you can type 80085 on it or calculate Pi to an insane degree, but it's not going to figure out how to make a better computer. With the assumption that true intelligence occurs and the beginnings of a singularity unfold, it may not be at a rapid pace either. What matters a lot is knowledge when making advancements, a lot of small discoveries lead to a bigger, grander discovery. So the wave of post-singularity computers would have to conduct research. They can't just keep building better computers and expect to figure out how to make black hole-powered ships by sitting and pondering.

2. Sure, you can have a machine that fixes all your problems, or not. It really depends on just what this climate change is. If it's something "minor" like the polar caps melting, then mankind could cope with that in 500 years. If you have a runaway greenhouse effect or acidic oceans, that's whole different story and reversing such changes would be on a timescale that's not feasible within a couple of generations. If the climate problem became a problem way too early for mankind to solve, or mankind is going full man and not doing anything to fix it at the last moment, then that's valid cause to emigrate from Earth to "out-source" production of vital goods.

3. See >>52115122 This anon knows what he's talking about. Quantum entanglement is more than just spooky action at a distance.

>>52114054
>How do you come up with names for places? I'm trying to Homebrew a setting and I keep hitting a wall when I try to come up with names for places.
I recall someone on one of these reads saying come up with three sylables an stick him together.

Sal Vok Tar
Salvoktar - then come up with some story behind the name

Though most names i generate tend to be orchish sounding

>>52114625
>>52115598
What if my setting is based more on 1930's America?

>>52115558
>The Singularity is not guaranteed to happen
Well that's sort of a relief.

> If it's something "minor" like the polar caps melting, then mankind could cope with that in 500 years. If you have a runaway greenhouse effect or acidic oceans, that's whole different story and reversing such changes would be on a timescale that's not feasible within a couple of generations
My thought was runaway greenhouse effect leads to the human race banding together in order to get generation and sleeper ships off world and colonizing a new home. Not so that everyone can be saved, but so that NOT everyone dies with the earth.

>See >>52115122 This anon knows what he's talking about. Quantum entanglement is more than just spooky action at a distance.
That is a neat explanation, although I still would like to know if you can hash out a morse code type of communication using it.

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>>52115482
Agreeing on these points.
Although on subject of item manipulation, I've been hankering to make a non-biped species, ex, quadruped.
Not major species, but sort of more local things. Not necessarily as player species either.
One earlier note I had had something about intelligent feathered flying serpents, but dunno. Been also thinking of an aquatic species.

One big hurdle would be figuring how they interact with rest of major civilizations ( especially in world with guns and vehicles )

>>52113810
>>52113840
Thanks anon. lv u xx

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>>52116024
>>52114044

You're welcome. Happy mapping!

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>>52116201

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>>52115482

cont.

>is not a hivemind, mindslave, servitor or similar
Preserving agency to do things on an individual scale, and different personalities between individuals of the race.
>individual is not multiple characters/separate physical entities
Hogs actions, and plays with itself cutting down on interaction. Seems predestined to be a gimmick, often brushed aside.
>not prone to knowingly act against its own interests/priorities or acting totally random/"insane"
>race in itself is not a joke
>character is not completely amorphous
General lack of features if not compensated for by magic, likely subject to the following point
>does not damage normal objects by default when interacting with them (or ruin them to the point that they have to fixed in some way)
>has most senses
maintaining communication and experiencing the world as a basis of action and interaction
>does not copy other races physically via shapechange, or effectively is different things on demand (such entities are still suitable for npcs, but not large populations)
>has no "auto win" conditions that are certain
Such as elves being always victorious in a forest even against foes that are similarly adept in the wild.
>doesn't have nonvisual/nonphysical elements as the only difference
>has mainly physical parts
>Is not an alternate state of another race
Shaky territory regarding vampires, I mainly direct this at skeletons and zombies from a meta perspective (in the perceptions of characters many things can be races that are not). There is also a significant presentation component. Basically there shouldn't be human skeletons running about having skeleton babies, or being spawned by an obelisk or "recruited" from a population whose only purpose is transitioning to them.
>does not have parts that never had a use for them evolutionary
(If tits, must have lips to properly be nursed)
Vestigial parts excluded.
>Is not completely unappealing in every aspect

>>52115647
Oh fuck that's easy, just check out an online obituaries or newspaper database for the time (that'll net you the older generation's naming style, which will be of far more use than a birth registry since fashions in names change continually), something like that, and just grab names and make a list to pull from.

>>52116301
Derp, discard the obituaries given it's place names, but do raid newspapers and see what trivial local news turns out in terms of places.

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>>52116221

>has room for natural visual differences between individual characters
>able to show age differences between characters
>able to visually show different character concepts between individuals
>does not depend on sexual intercourse with other races for reproduction
(parasitism doesn't equal sex)
>not metaphysically tied to partner (of any kind) of separate race, or their own for that matter
>not confined to a singular place
Excluding getting driven there for a limited time.
>no excessive concentration of physical detail on a singular bodypart
>experiences all human emotions to some degree (but context may vary)
>not ridiculously rare
Again in context to the theme.
>has positive and negative traits
Obviously.
>should posses comparable quantity of background to other races
>no innate connection to a type of item beyond resource and logistical requirements and culture
(magically bestowed skill with swords for example)
>does not universally posses annoying habits
See Kender.
>has enough volume for organs
>has enough reach to take care of items and own body
>can be slow, but faster than snail pace
>narrative tone matches setting
>visual representation matches setting

>>52115833
Limbs could be multifunctional or they use the tail.

>>52116657

>able to naturally reproduce
>able to display emotions
>not named after another race it shares no common ground with.
>doesn't violate laws of magic you may have set elsewhere
>does occasionally do things for recreation

>>52115668
>My thought was runaway greenhouse effect
That's a good reason to get off the world. Venus is a hell hole of a place on the surface. A runaway greenhouse effect like on Earth would not be much more pleasant. I recommend however to explore the idea of floating cities on Venus, it's scientifically plausible to have such things.

>More code type of communication
It's possible because we have nothing to say with complete certainty that it is impossible. It's just improbable with what we know so far. Morse code works because using electrical signals to deliver sporadic beeps and boops is not impacted by the receiver listening in on said beeps and boops. Applying the same technique to quantum entanglement would work out to something like having two conversations going on at once. The initial sender would hear noise come back from his recipient as soon as the recipient listened in on the sender's signal, assuming both observers are there to measure the entangled pair instantly. Every time someone puts out a dot, a dash comes right back and vice versa.

The trick involved with complex communication would be to somehow eliminate the noise that comes back when your recipient reads your beep. We don't know how such a thing can be possible given our current understanding of quantum mechanics.

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>>52117235
So even with computers watching the entangled particles for changes, it's highly improbable we could make a simple messaging system?

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>>52113347

Weirdness (inhuman features and alienness) mixed with Familiarity (inspired by myths, folklore and memes)

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>>52116657
>>52117198


I'm telling you, he's a CHICKEN. A GIANT CHICKEN.

>>52115411

More in detail, please. Start with ten pairs of entangled particles.

>>52117486
Not sure I understand.

>>52117566

I mean, if you had 10 pairs of entangled particles and wanted to communicate a bit string 10 bits long, how would you perform it? Or we can keep it simple, and just transfer 2 bits. Communicate the message "10"

Keep in mind that the particles are separated by great distance and that they are still unmeasured.

>>52117628
I would assume you have a pair of quantum-entangled-particles. One goes on a ship, the other stays on Earth. You designate one particular move as 1 and another as 0, with a neutral position for "at rest". You then communicate using bit strings.

I thought I had heard QEPs are not subject to relativity and time dilation due to distance.

>>52110375
>What would they use for currency, eat, and wear?

>Currency
Shells would be a good bet: either the small kind that primitive man used to use like cowrie shells or sand dollar shells- maybe something a little rarer or hard to find to help create an economy or something that requires polishing/some level of hand-crafted'ness..... Good alternatives would also include Ivory (from whales or walruses) and Teeth (from dinosaurs, whales, monsters, or sharks.)

>Wear
Most likely nothing, to be quite honest famalamadingdong.
Fabric doesn't really work in an environment completely and constantly submerged in such a uniform medium as water with how it is with light, air, etc.. So I don't see them wearing any kind of clothing beyond accessories or maybe some temporary armor they'd have worked to just slip on? Maybe look at hot, hot, temperature cultures to get some idea of naked culture/naked warfare if need be.

>Eat
Literally anything, my dude; the ocean is a massive biosphere completely bursting at the seams with life if everything is going according to plan. The ocean is so fucking huge and swollen with life it's the only real biome in the world where we see the food chain dominated by carnivores eating other carnivores for several steps. So, yeah: fish, shellfish, maybe the odd marine mammal.
Hunting & Herding is completely viable throughout the development of an underwater civilization building species, but if you want to get 'fancy' you can have them farm clams/mussels, grow kelp forests, or something like that.

Something to think about at least.

>>52117672

What is a move? Is it something you do to the particle? Describe what you did to the particle.

To reiterate: each particle, before measurement, has one of two possible spins that add up to 0 (going from the earlier example that they were created from a zero spin particle). They have no predisposition towards a certain spin, at this point the particles could be totally identical.

Before their measurement (other word for "interacting with the rest of the universe"), you do not know which one has which. But measuring one of the entangled particles collapses the state of the other, and the other will be guaranteed to have the opposite result.

>I thought I had heard QEPs are not subject to relativity and time dilation due to distance.

The unanswered question is "how does the other particle 'know' what spin to 'choose'?". The quoted part is a proposal that essentially says "because there is information transmitted at superluminal speeds from one particle to the other by some unknown thing".

One other proposal would be: There exists a "hidden variable" that is assigned to the particles from the start of their existence that decides their fate.

Both of these do not have conclusive evidence to support them yet.

>>52117828
>collapse the state of the other
So knowing one destroys the other?

>>52117865

Um, I shouldn't have used that right away. If there's anything being destroyed, it's the chances of the other one being the state you just measured.

The possibilities being "collapsed" to just one sure outcome.

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>>52117912
I still don't understand, I think. It seems to me that QE is making two particles influence each other's motions no matter the distance. Thus, by forcing one particle to change how it moves (magnets?), we can see the other change how it moves as well. By measuring the changes using supercomputers that watch them all the time, we should be able to send a very basic binary communication through space.

Please explain how I am wrong, as I am dumb and need this shit explained very basically.

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>>52117961
>Please explain how I am wrong, as I am dumb and need this shit explained very basically.
>quantum mechanics
I'm glad I came back to /wbg/.

>>52118000
>trips
>charles dance
We are now friends.
But seriously, how am I wrong?

>>52117961
>is making two particles influence each other's motions no matter the distance

No, quantum entanglement means no such thing.

The ONLY thing that's linked are the spin states of the particles, and even that link is a weak one. No matter what you do otherwise to one particle, it won't affect the other one. And the only thing you can do about the spin state here is to measure it.

Before measurement, both particles are in the undefined "could be either, so it's kinda both" state of Schrödinger's cat.

When you do measure it, the particle you measure is forced into one of the two possible states, getting ti from the fuzzy kinda sorta quantum state to just being in a single, well defined state. But since it co-existed with the other particle at one point, in a way that's only possible when they have opposite spin, this means you've also measured the other particle's spin state, collapsing that one too from "sorta both" to a specific spin state.

You have no other way to influence the far off particle by poking the nearby one. Nor can you force the distant one into a specific spin state by forcing the nearby one into one, that'd break the entanglement.

>>52117672
>with a neutral position for "at rest"

That's not how binary works. You have 0 and 1, nothing else (in modern computing the "rest state" is zero, nu current flowing, no charge, no whatever). If there's an at rest position, that'd be either of those two. Add a rest state and you have three possible states, so you're in trinary, and may as well use that third state to transmit information while you're at it.

>>52118067
Okay, so all those other sci-fi's using QE to do FTL comms are talking out their ass?

COUGHmass effectCOUGH

>>52103964
Just shooting out some ideas I've had for a setting, I'd like to hear some suggestions for more direction
>100 years post magic apocalypse (magic is not a thing people were aware of when it happened)
>some people are now magic-sensitive, but it's really low level stuff, eg need to enchant any arms or armor daily to get any actual benefit
>1890-level technology
>setting is just a 600 sq mi chunk of land on the coast between ocean to the west, massive ruined city and swamps to the east, forest north, and mountains south
>city ans swamps are totally dead, filled with pockets of magic that will kill people in terrible ways
>weird shit shows up though, like gears that allow for weak perpetual motion generators to be made
>survivors are living off the scraps of old civilization and the rare object explorers bring back
>different settlements have different advantages - 1 has a working gatling gun for defense, 1 has a sailing shop rigged for fishing
>forest was revered by natives in pre-colonial times, lots of spirits of the dead became trapped in it and try to claw their way back to the mortal coil
>when they make it back it's in powerful bestial forms, but there's ways for skilled magic-sensitives to scare them off or even banish them
>high risk, high reward
>mountains are just there, kind of impassable for a bunch of victorians on horses and not much better on the other side
>out on the ocean, reefs exist where there never were reefs, extremely difficult to actually get out to sea and nobody's ever come back
>most of the fish they catch are deep sea fish even though it wasn't that deep previously

>>52118089
Oh yes, it's prime buzzword technobabble nonsense. Right up there with nanobullshit.

In reality quantum entanglement is very intriguing for quantum mechanical research, since it does something which as far as we know should be impossible and with that tells us where to dig to find new and exiting shit, but trying to make practical use of it? Good fucking luck with that.

>>52117961

Oh okay now I see your misconception. I just needed you to say more things so that it becomes clear, and other things I have failed to explain.

Once a spin state has been decided by measuring, that's it. You can't change it anymore. That particle you measured now has a 1/2 up spin, and its corresponding particle has a 1/2 down spin. Their entanglement was relying on the fact that since they came from a zero spin state particle, they should have opposite states. Now that both spins are known, the entanglement has essentially been "broken". If you somehow manage to change the spin of one particle, it won't reflect on the other.

I bet you're wondering why this is such a special thing in the first place. After all, this could be what was happening under the hood:

>zero spin particle splits into two
>the particles from our perception have unknown spin
>but from the perception of particle 1, it has 1/2 up spin
>from the perception of particle 2, it has 1/2 down spin
>upon measuring particle 1, we foolishly claimed that it caused particle 2 to have a down spin just on the sheer virtue that its spin became known to the rest of the universe
>when in reality their states have already been determined
>that is if the universe were rolled back to before the measurement, particle 1 would always be up spin

So why are the physicists creaming their pants over this?

>already been determined
This is not what current theories tell us. Before measurement (reminder: This simply means interacting with the rest of the universe, not being perceived by a sentient being), a particle has a certain wave function. This wave function constitutes the various possibilities that would turn out when the particle is measured.

Suppose that the wave function for the spin of a particle says that it is a 99/1 to be up spin (more likely to be 50/50, but this is an interesting example). As far as we know, only wave function decides the end result of a measurement. Cont...

>>52118125
>Oh yes, it's prime buzzword technobabble nonsense. Right up there with nanobullshit.
Oh thank fucking Christ!

Now I can go back to using slower than light laser communication in-setting.

>>52118147
This shit is still cool, and I'm still listening. Thanks for taking the time to educate my stupid ass.

>>52118147

We make two entangled particles. We confirm that the wave function says it's 99/1 up spin for both. Okay good. Prepair 100 pairs of these.

Suppose I didn't know about quantum entanglement and you had me measure the spin of those 200 particles. The result was 100 are up spin, 100 are down spin. I would be thinking I was being bamboozled, since I know that the odds of these happening are so low.

Quantum entanglement phenomenon says that our understanding is incomplete. There must be something else behind the scenes. The one thing we know for now is that it cannot be used to communicate.

>>52118107
I do like the idea of civilisation having clawed it's way back to sitting somewhere in the 17th-19th century on its own merits. Because I don't see the "old shit we still keep in working condition, otherwise effectively stone age) state as being possible to maintain for any real amount of time. New Vegas being a prime example of fucking it up, where the NCR for exmaple runs a large limestone mine to make concrete, but the luxury hotels on the strip still haven't gotten around to putting a new coat of paint over the tattered wallpaper.

Unfortunately you then quickly revert to exactly that, scraps from the old civilisation and little else. And an IMO much too heavy focus on the fancy old toys and Stalker-style artefacts. Sure, it's what the players will be bothering with, but that doesn't keep the world alive. Farming on the other hand, that keeps people from dying, so you need farmland, and tools to do the work with, and a steady supply of new tools as the old ones break. The wear and tear on a plough-bill might not seem like much at first since it's a pretty massive thing, but start counting kilograms of iron and year per acre of land and you'll notice that you need a very steady supply of iron.

So I think you should at least choose one path here. Either it's small huddled groups keeping remnants of the old world going for as long as they can Mad Max style. Or it's a re-stabilized society that have developed back to late 20th century technology. The latter will take a lot of people, so your worldbuilding should build around how they stay alive, and that won't be plundering the local Wal-Mart for canned foods.

And as this whole thign smells a lot of Stalker, you could just go with that. Small camps, or gold rush towns, for the adventuring sorts to sally forth form trying to find the wonders of old days and magical artefacts, with food and basic gear being brought in from more stable, well-adjusted communities outside in trade for these wonders.

>>52118147
I think the issue is that the two particles never interact in a way which could transmit the relevant information, and as such, meaning they never perceive the spin state of each other. If they did they'd come pre-measured with their probability wave functions collapsed (the whole thing about measurements in quantum mechanics comes form this, measuring requires interacting, and it's this interaction that keeps screwing things up, not that there's someone reading the data on the instrument in the end), but they don't.

This also ties into why we can't communicate through this. We can't check to see if a particle is "unmeasured" or not, because poking it in any way whatsoever (which we must to get any information form it) means it's now measured.

>>52118250
You caught the stalker, I know it wasn't exactly subtle. That aspect of it is sort of secondary and was more or less a reason to make a city into an impassable barrier but still a place to go. The tech benefits will only be quality of life improvements - perpetual motion, maybe, but only enough to run a few strings of lights overnight. Etc.

There will of course be blacksmiths who will make decent iron and steel tools, allowing agriculture to be the main supply of food, but Joe Shmoe who can sail a ship can bring more protein to his community, and they can fertilize soil with the bycatch. That was more of a way to draw distinctions between towns than to explain what's driving them. Definitely want to avoid Fallout's flaws.

The idea isn't for it to totally be a society. I'm thinking maybe 30,000 people scattered over dozens of small communities over an area half the size of Rhode Island. Maybe shrink the timeline, 60 years, so grandpa can still talk about the glory days that all ended when he was 14 years old. People are still stabilizing before big improvements happen.

What I'd like to flesh out is the magic elements. I'm inspired to use some Abhorsen stuff here but I'm not sure how to implement it. That's what I was starting to go with with the haunted forest, and why I picked a turn of the century tech level, but I wasn't sure where to go from there.

>>52118326

An analogy I like:

You go outside and see that it is raining. Your friend also sees that it is raining. You bake some bread to eat. Using just the fact that it is raining, how do you let your friend know that you are eating bread right now?

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Could a topography like this reasonably exist? I'm making the northern tip of a giant Africa-like place, and I'm trying to figure out how the landscape would look. Right now it's a rough, ugly sketch in Hexographer so that I can get everything right before I sketch it out nicely by hand or in photoshop.

Map scale is 24 mile hexes. It's large grass and shrub lands to the south, a fuck huge desert in the shadow of that mountain range, and savannas that slowly transition into forests on the hills at the base of the mountains. Rivers come later.

Am I making an obvious fuck up? Am I missing an important geographical feature that should be present? This is my first time seriously worrying about the climate, and I'm still pretty shit at eyeballing how things should be.

>>52118554
Wind from the ocean brings clouds, clouds hit the mountain, water comes down the mountain as rivers to the coast, grass grows where it's wet, cities along rivers..

>>52118425
As something to perhaps keep in mind, even 30 000 people means almost a tenth of those 600 square miles would need to be farmed with modern methods, and since that's not an option I expect the necessary amount of land per person to more than double, possibly much more.

>>52115668
>the human race banding together
Hah hah hah hah, this is the most unbelievable part of your sci-fi universe.

>>52118681
Eh, assured destruction has been a good motivator for us in the past. Ever hear of the Cold War?

>>52115482
>>52116221
>>52116657
While the reasoning behind many of your points is obvious enough, others really sound more like your personal pet peeves or completely arbitrary.

>>52118696
You mean that inter-human conflict?

>>52118723
The one that didn't end in nuclear holocaust, yeah.

>>52118754
Because we love each other so much?

>>52118806
Because self-preservation is a hell of a drug, and preserving our descendants is tied into that. So if it comes down to preserving the species, we actually have real world evidence to back up the idea that humans can work together.

>>52118859
>So if it comes down to preserving the species
No, we have no case of this happening. The cold war ended because one site, that represented only a small part of the entire human species, of this war couldn't keep on with it. It was not "humanity" that ended this conflict.

>>52118928
It was humanity that prevented it from going nuclear. Self preservation nigga.

>>52118939
Point me at this "humanity" that proactively ended this conflict. Show me the exact actions this nebulous "humanity" performed to stop possible destruction. I want to see the council of humanity coming together and telling itself to just stop.

>>52118982
You aren't a blackened cinder. More's the pity.

Now Fuck off.

>>52119006
I bet you write HFY fanfiction, considering how much you fellate this vague concept of humanity.

>>52119039
Not really. I have empirical evidence that humanity survived the Cold War by not nuking ourselves. You merely have your enormous faggotry and autism, which is scientifically dubious.

>>52119058
Empirical evidence would show you that it was not because of the "humanity", but it was some important key figures doing, out of different reasons, while 99% of humanity did jack-shit.

>>52119087
You know what? Never let it be said that I pick on retarded children. Here's your (You).

>>52119162
You are apparently not able to argue your point at all, but thanks for the (You). Have one as well.

>Come to /wbg/
>someone is trying to argue that events that were caused by, resolved by and were entirely concerned with humans are somehow not attributable to "humanity"
I guess the things that humans do just aren't related to humanity.

>>52108214
They know about it due to all the ruins scattered around Aizeon, and very few fragmented scrolls of text

Do stars have a purpose in your worlds? Is astrology something relevant?

I'm tackling such an issue right now developing my world. Im determining if I really even need stars, and how weird a starless night sky would be?

>>52113347
Familiarity, nobody cares about anything unless it's associated with something that's been done to death a thousand times.

Those beavermen you have? Call them elves! Make them shit cotton! Who cares? As long as they have a familiar name that's all the players are going to care about

>>52119804
You sound somewhat upset.

How many races are too many?

I have this idea for a weird sort of fantasy kitchen sink world where the multiverse has collapsed and the remnants survive in a single cobbled together world.

Inherent to the setting are six fundamental elements of reality, and each "race" is associated with one of the elements. The elements are Body, Mind, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.

I right now have a human analogue race for Body, Mind, and Air.

I have a four kinds of beastmen, who favour Body but are based around Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.

I have these weird amorphous shapeshifting race based around Water.

Ideally I want to have a human analogue for all six elements and some more aberrant kind of races for the other elements except water.

Is this too much?

My main inspirations are things like Elder Scrolls and Talislanta

>>52120622
I've seen this post before and I will tell you the same thing now as I told you before. As many races as you and your players/readers can keep track of.

If you have to keep describing something over and over you fucked up. How many races are you going to be able to include in a scene while making their inclusion matter? How many are you actually going to be able to remember to include at all?

Never go full remastered original trilogy.

>>52120644
They're easy to condense down into really basic concepts.

The Beastmen are chimeric Land mammal people, Bird people, Aquatic animal people, and Bug people.

The humans of Mind are all about knowledge and are a broken hivemind.

The humans of Air are all about sound.

The humans of Body are all about the flesh like native-american cenobites.

The shapeshifting race are more like reverse buddhists, emphasizing attachments to maintain identity.

They all have their own regions in the world. The world is much more like a videogame world than a real geographical world, because it's pieced together from pieces of worlds of other dimensions.

>>52120622
Alright I'm going to add to this >>52120644 with what I call the bar fight test. Now a bunch of people are in a bar. There is about to be a fight.

How able are you to properly describe the future participants of this fight? Particularly in a digestible way. You want to avoid the "wait one of those is here?" "Yes they were like the second guy I mentioned". This is a bad time.

You also want to avoid avoiding the question by siphoning all separate creatures into their own neat and tidy ethnic ghettos.

Also as a more personal bias, you already are going to be hard pressed to find anything about these races that makes them properly unique from the other options being presented.

>>52121069
Ah so this would be like me discussing beer with someone who enjoys ipa. A waste of time for us both due to astoundingly different tastes.

>>52121094
Thing is that it's intentionally very kitchen sink. It has a lot of recognizable elements, but like Elder Scrolls or Talislanta, how i'm putting these pieces together is different.

>>52121094
>Ah so this would be like me discussing beer with someone who enjoys ipa. A waste of time for us both due to astoundingly different tastes.

There is still crossover especially since it's been like centuries since the collapse, but they have their own sort of territory.

>>52121094
>siphoning all separate creatures into their own neat and tidy ethnic ghettos.
This seems to be how it works in real life, though.

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>>52118716
With a topic such as this we are bound to venture in the realms of taste. Otherwise we would remain so general that the criteria are unhelpful.
Also mind that we haven't specified a genre which might change priorities significantly. And a medium. And a role in the story.

I could elaborate on the reasoning, if I get a pointer to the part in question.

>>52105172
Not sure if you're looking for something cheap in the tablet department, but UGEE has some excellent cheap stuff. Picked one up for $60 AUD about a year ago and desu it's comparable with wacom; the pen nibs wear out pretty quickly, but I'm also a notorious hard-grip pen user.

>>52105659
don't know much about mountains unfortunately but I'd assume a super tall mountain would mess with the wind a lot; either splitting it or forcing it to spin rapidly or something.

>>52107300
Plains of life seems like an odd name for somewhere with no settlements. Care to expand?

>>52107542
Looks nice. Seconding the other anon on the old empire; like I can kind of understand that maybe it's so ancient that your people couldn't hope to know much of the specifics about its civilisation (like us with cromagnons).

>>52110299
I like this anon. Are you worried about the pencil quality degrading over time? Also on the shape of the OP map my first one was also like this, but I actually just threw together something that had nothing to do with my world for a play with inkarnate + nice OP image.

>>52111476
What's on the other side of the moutains? If it's not fleshed out, or nothing, why not just crop it out? I do like that you used a different colour for the rival's roads though, it makes the boundary really clear.

>>52115748
I like this anon. What's FE 2018? Obviously it's some kind of time keeping system, but what's the significance?

>>52119341
That's a pretty literary concept anon. Like Heart of Darkness or Lord of the Flies. 10/10 negativity.

>>52119768
people in my world use stars to represent some gods. Others are thought to be the portals in which the gods enter the world. Undecided on whether it's true or not though.

>>52119341
There's a difference between me shoving a carrot up my ass, and 'humanity' collectively shoving a carrot up its ass.

Any just straight city building tools? Want to have a massive city as a full campaign setting.

>>52122891
For the pencil quality yeah these maps are just temporary and once I have the details solidified Ill create them online or maybe just trace them in pen piece by piece

>>52122891
>Plains of life seems like an odd name for somewhere with no settlements. Care to expand?
It does have settlements actually, I just haven't decided where to place them. The name comes from the fact that the Native Torons believe that an entity simply known as "the Land" birthed them from the mud of a watering hole located in the region, thus giving their race "life" from the earth and soil.

>>52119733
Then they'd have a name, or at least one they made up for them.

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This is the first map I've ever made on Inkarnate. Work in Progress obviously. Constructive criticism would be appreciated.

>>52122891
>What's on the other side of the mountains? If it's not fleshed out, or nothing, why not just crop it out? I do like that you used a different colour for the rival's roads though, it makes the boundary really clear.

Sand, a lot of sand. Due largely in part to the danger of crossing those mountains there have been few expeditions to discover what lies beyond them. Of the few that have returned, the answer has been great dunes of sand as far as the eye can see, amongst more wild claims.

Lads, anyone got an unmarked island map? I'd like to use one for an up coming campaign.

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>>52127197

>>52127277
nice dubs, and possibly one with a few unnamed cities?

>>52126902
>Sperm forest

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>>52119341
WELL

>tfw getting ready to worldbuild
>tfw am excited and don't know where to start

i will finally make my fantasy a reality

>>52129222
Take out some paper and write down things as you think of them!

Could I tell you about the make up of the United Terran Commonwealth?

Is a creation story a good start for world building? I've been getting pretty inspired and have been writing non stop for about an hour on this one story.

>>52129898
Depends. In my world, we don't know how it was made. It does seem like a good idea, if you do fantasy. For sci-fi it'll suck.

>>52129898
Some worldbuilders take a primary interest of theirs and weave it into a creation myth.

>>52129967
What do you mean by primary interest?

>>52130024
Tolkien had a hard-on for his conlangs, and his creation myth involves the gods singing a song of creation. Just use something close to your hobbies and interests to give your setting a soul of it's own.

>>52130069
I guess I kind of put my math inclination in it, even if it was unintentional.

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Dos anyone got any tips for doing world maps?

>>52130339
heres a tip for you: look at the picture you posted, and don't do *that*.

>>52130339
islands and continents tend not to have smooth edges for one

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I got lazy on the rivers (which are lacking a lot of tributaries, bends, minor rivers, lakes, etc.) and the coasts aren't as jaggy and involved as they should be, but I feel like I can blame both on the scale.

Would it be viable for a primarily mountain based people to heavily rely on horses?

>>52130954
Not in the slightest.

One of the most important background plot things is that the entire world has no memory from before a certain day, basically like in Big O. However it's been long enough that most people don't remember this anymore, short of a few incredibly old beings like Liches that were around back then.

If we assume that there wasn't really any active attempt to cover this up, how long would it take for this to be "mostly" forgotten (as in- it's still in some old books and some scholars know it probably happened but your average person won't know)? 100 years? 1000 years? More?

>>52131174
Depends on how history is recorded. If it's word of mouth, only a couple generations. We Humans are only able to piece together the past ~6000 years of our own history, albeit heavily fragmented.

>>52122926
FE 218 is the year of the final map. It's the 218th year after the Founding of Camlann by a powerful local demigod, and about 80 years after Camlann conquered or absorbed the other kingdoms within its sphere of influence, becoming the sole "civilized" power in the Girtian Vales (the valleys and mountains around the River Girt, which flows into the Great Canyon and the Midnight Sea).

It's only significant because 218 is the year that conditions are ripe for a civil war, as the former kingdom of Seynreah regains power and influence thanks to new trade agreements with powerful foreign empires and the royal family weakens with the death of its last undisputed heir. This, combined with a bloody and unsuccesful war against the jungle-dwelling barbarians on the kingdom's eastern border, leads to a weakening of the kingdom's economy to the point where some of the greatest powers on the continent have begun carving it up into spheres of influence and starting proxy conflicts with noble houses. And the player, as one of the heirs of the kingdom, has to set this whole mess to rights somehow.

>>52130954
>>52131001
Why not?

>>52131297
Horses aren't mountain animals. It would make more sense for them to use mountain goats or donkeys.

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>tfw constructing the basis of my world
>tfw constantly having ideas for future events and origin stories that don't even unfold until many years later

>>52131257
Yeah that's a good point. I want it to be something there's still rare evidence of but still recent enough it's relavent.

I'm thinking 150-200 years in a high magic pre-renaissance setting (with a certain scholar pointing out how strange it is that nobody remembers this already if PCs find them, almost like the world is pretending it never happened).

The truth is that people didn't suddenly develop amnesia or anything worldwide, its that the world is literally only that old, as if everyone just popped into the world like actors on a stage. If the PCs decide to become archeologists they'll find that there exists no history books or other written records from before this point either.

>>52126902

Is this supposed to be the US/Canada?

>>52131330
Why not ponies?

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I feel like I went with a shitty route with the colors.

> Do you hand draw your maps, or use a tool like inkarnate?

I'm a newbie to worldbuilding, but I found that using Dwarf Fortress is a great way to get random map outlines.

>>52131499
How would ponies possibly be better for a mountain than a horse, the adult version, when horses are suited to plains and open areas, not mountains?

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How can I improve my map? I know Inkarnate is shit, but I'm not an artist.

>>52131903
Still not sure if I even feel like coloring this one. More likely I'll use a few greys to make the waterline more clear.

>>52131911
Feels like it wants to be larger overall, but iirc Inkarnate doesn't let you do that either.

>>52131911
Start by thinking of a single interesting idea, pseudo europe with viking north and token exotic asia island and egypt island with random cultures probably swapped with fantasy races dose not need to exist

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>>52132007
>It's been done before that means it can't work

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I've been working on and around this map off and on for a while. Had to recycle names from my old works because I can't think up names worth a damn.

>>52132054
No, it's not "been done before" it's been done already. There's a difference. You aren't doing it again by redrawing the coastlines in the most obvious way possible. If you aren't going to actually try to make your own world just use any of the existing 1000

>>52132091
You don't need to reinvent the wheel faggot, chances are your special snowflake setting isn't much better than his

>>52132117
That's my fucking point dumb nigger.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel of generic shitty fantasy just because you're dming.

>>52132055
when I do names I just read shit about ancient civilizations and riff off of that desu

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How do I use Inkarnate and not suck.

>>52133806
idk desu anon. But there are some places where the circle shape of the tool is painfully obvious (at the top, and others). A smaller hex grid would complement the scale your hills and mountains seem to imply.

>>52103991
Most of your rivers make no sense, especially the one near Sutaq (North-West).
Rivers flow from the top of moutains/hills/plateau to the lowest points: seas and oceans. (Unless there is magical/fantasy explaination to this?)

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I wanna make a big fantasy map that's mostly untamed wildlands with some pioneering areas. Just did a little today while chillin with friends

>>52111476
I really like this, would adventure/conquest in.

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The vast majority of the planet is covered in ice, this map is for the large area of still habitable land.

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>>52131499
>>52131741
You two are giving me a fucking migraine with your retardation.

>>52131499
Horses are bad for mountains.
Ponies are horses. Not a different species, not a different subspecies, just a vague group of breeds.
Therefore, ponies are bad for mountains.

>>52131741
Ponies are not young horses, dumbass. Those are called foals.

>>52134264
Volcanic vents?

>>52134483
That's what keeps the sea warm and the surrounding area warm. There are other small other areas of heat around similar places.

Rate my world.

The Everstorm Desert and Everfreeze Forest are home to an ancient blue and ancient white dragon receptively.

Silva Noctis is a Fey portal forest that is in eternal night.

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>>52134809
Forgot the map

Thinking about updating it in the new version of Inkarnate

>>52131465
No.

>>52134234
Thanks (though I've just noticed I left a village in the fucking ocean. not removing it either). You might even get a chance to if you check the gamefinder threads a month or so from now. That is, if you like the idea of wild west style traveling lawmen in a vaguely Renaissance powder fantasy setting.

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And it's done.

>>52135154
Well aside from ocean anus it very pretty. Without color it can take a second or two to figure out if I'm looking at water though. Especially with that one lake in the northern mountains, and the larger lake below depending on how my eyes approach it.

>>52135185
Yeah, I've got grey marking that but the image is pretty small. This is also more of a reference map ideally, I'll need to zoom in on different areas I think

>>52135197
Ok yeah, you can kind of see it if you squint. Anyway lets draw the focus back to the map itself. Any story behind the various long spindly archipelagos? Lot of narrow sharp cuts in that coastline.

>>52135255
That's partially how I tend to draw coastlines in general, since I like how that looks. It's obviously not-quite-natural, the bay just south of Dhul there is kinda twisted apart for example, but there's not exactly stories as to why. At some point there might be, but right now it's just a vague something.

>>52135266
Fair enough. I too like archipelagos. I never made it into a full map, but I once had a very spindly spirally island chain with a volcano at its center. Something about leylines or whatnot. You know you want to call that one peninsula the claw. You know full well which one.

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>>52134817
This is just a trial update Ive done for it, a lot of stuff got moved or resized but this is sorta the vibe I'm heading more towards

>>52135298
I mean if I was gonna it'd end up being the Dragon's Claw, but i've never felt super certain about naming things for their shape on maps. Starts to make me wonder if the maps I draw are more accurate than the in-setting maps, and by that point the fourth wall is having issues.

>>52135322
...Is that Azeroth?

>>52135322
Why are there rivers in the desert with no fertile land around them. What keeps the eternal rain shadow rainforesty looking place wet? Why is there a winter level right next to 2 deserts and an arid plane?

>>52135337
No fuck you, that's the claw. It's mountainy plenty of high ground for people to see its shape with reasonable accuracy. (I've always considered every map I've drawn to be more accurate than the in setting maps. Then proceed to use my master map to make shitty knockoffs if the players want one).

>>52135347
A wizard did it

>>52135347
>>52134809
>>52134817

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I want my setting to be more evolutionary fiction than fantasy, devoid of magic but with many staple fantasy creatures present as mundane animals who evolved to resemble their counterparts in mythology. Large frilled lizards who spit acid as dragons for example, harpies as large bats, goblins as (relatively) highly intelligent monkeys, and so on.

I'm left wondering what do do with Dwarves, Elves, and Orcs though, which I'm inclined to include for the aesthetics, but which also seem a little superfluous. They could easily be not-so-distant relatives of homo sapiens, or even just different races of homo sapiens—it's not like IRL Abbos aren't more alien to IRL Europeans than Dwarves would be—but at that point I wonder what's the point of distinguishing them at all.

Should I go for such a low-key interpretation and just make them fictional (human) races with the odd little mutation, or risk coming up with something more original at the risk of it feeling forced, like orcs deriving from gorillas or elves being in a symbiotic relationship with some parasitic funghi or plant or something?

>>52135544
I mean I like the magic sort, but god damn I am stealing bat harpies.

Also dwarves are a real thing. You don't really neeeeeeeeed to reinvent the midget unless you desperately want them to be bearded, stocky, ax lovers.

Elves you could explain as being maybe some jungle dwellers that benefit from their height picking stuff out of high branches, fitting in between thin gaps in the thicket, good hearing due to the constant risk of bat harpies swooping down at night and culling the absent minded.

Orcs I dunno, take them less literally. Need to be hardier due to some rugged environment.Thicker skin due to sharp shit, sharp shit dust storms. Tiny air knives.

>>52135628

"Orcs" are not as strictly defined as elves. So depends on what Anon wants Orc to signify.
If its "tucked primitives" then go with pig orcs.
If its "muscled brutes" then yeah something gorilla related.
If "greenskins" then symbiotic lichen-like structure.
And so on

>>52130792
Lustria

>>52110643
Is that a Muppets treasure island reference in the world building thread? It really is my day.

Question (hard to explain question) for a bit less realistic world of fantasy. If in a previous age a guy literally smashed a continent apart would you diehards give me shit for just making it splinter apart into a buncha islands? How would that work or tectonically look?

How do you guy normally make your city/town maps?

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Tell me about your ancient civilizations.

What were they like? Were they advanced?
What did they leave behind? What are the ruins like?
What do the current civilizations think of them? Are they revered or demonized?
How did they fall? Was it their own doing, or something/someone else's?

>>52137903
Depends on what you mean by smashing a continent apart. If he punched it really hard and the continent cracked/cratered and the ocean filled in to separate it into landmasses, wouldn't be too hard. I dunno how snapping a tectonic plate would work.

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Not sure whether to post this here or make a new thread, but I'm looking for advice on building a desert setting. Specifically, I need help making water realistically scarce on a continent scale. Right now, I'm doing a bit of a fiat whereby most water that can be found above ground is too salt-laden to be potable, and only certain (jealously guarded) magics can be used to desalinate it. Otherwise, it's just a few underground reservoirs that supply much of the known world's water, and the process of getting to/harvesting that water is filled with all sorts of Underdark-esque dangers.

So how can water be scarce without disappearing altogether? How can we reach relatively sophisticated levels of civilizations (medieval/Renaissance-ish) while keeping basic procurement of water a major factor?

>>52140689
>Were they advanced?
I avoid that cliche. The wonder and mystery in my settings come from forward progress, and exploration of the unknown. Yes even the fantasy settings.

Fucking sick of everything great and wondrous being some ancient elven shit that someone found in the ground after a few centuries of some mysterious fall that befell a civilization capable of making such great shit to begin with.

>>52103964
Any general advice for a post-apocalypse coastal Final-Fantasy-industrial-esque fantasy country? The idea is my players are marooned here for a year or more and I'm hoping to avoid pitfalls for blending tech and fantasy.

I plan on things being driven by magical electricity, the air to be poisonous in places, nature to have reclaimed the area for the most part, and give the feel of Chernobyl countryside with them arriving in the epicenter - essentially a chemical plant with port and lighthouse.

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>>52141255
As a follow-up question, how to create interesting amounts of variation in terrain so that it's not "dunes and sand forever"?

Desert art also very much appreciated.

>>52135544
Abos are basically half orcs already, just go to /int/ ask some Australians about them. You always can "evolve" them a little (like giving them a higher muscle mass, even bigger jaws and teeths etc) and makeing them not able to crossbread with humans (which is not as far from truth if you look at their genetic shift from other humans). You can even make them green via haveing some sort of symbiosis with algaes.

For Dwarfs, there were subspice of humans somewhere in Indonesia that were on avarge four feet or less. Thousands of years in underground societes could have made them more like Dwarfs. But they would be albino sun haters with little or no eyes and echolocation.

If you want to see elves as "high, noble race" just make them neanderthals. Sure, they would be shorter than humans but higher inteligence, more strenght and other "noble" characteristics of elves you woudl have. Plus light hair and eyes.
Or maybe you want elves as "hippies in forest". Then make them evolved lizards (with feathers, like dinosaurs). That would be cool I guesses.

>>52140689

>What were they like?

Mostly agrarian kingdom with mage-priests as a powerful faction. Large amount of seafaring as well. Founded on a large subtropical and very fertile island, with most of their population and industry concentrated there.

>Were they advanced?

For their time yes, first to found real cities, first to raise professional armies and so on. Compared to present, no.

>What did they leave behind? What are the ruins like?

Materially very little. Their colonies were conquered or resettled by other cultures, who built their own things. The only original parts are basically underground by now and don't look like much.
Culturally lots. Pushed other peoples towards civilization, made the first true alphabet, showed that magic can be codified and taught.

>What do the current civilizations think of them? Are they revered or demonized?

Humans hold them up as proof that men were first to become civilized. Other races usually counter that there must be a reason Ur fell.

>How did they fall? Was it their own doing, or something/someone else's?

The island they were based on turned out to be the central bulge of a huge caldera. It erupted. Tsunamis and ashfall destroyed some of the largest colonies nearby. Collapse in trade and climate disruption did the rest.

>>52141255
>>52141283
>mesas
>salt plains

Hey lads, does it make sense for a poor end of the city to have things such as slave trafficking going on because some people may not care for what's going on in that end of the setting?

>>52140689
The old Anoroi were masters of carving buildings from raw stone. They literally built their cities into the steep cliffs on the shore, but their tools and methods were lost when an earthquake destroyed 90% of those cities. The few surviving texts in old Anoroi language are very cryptic when they refer to the act of building. "We (put) our hands (on) the stone and tended to it. In our minds was the temple-shape and we worked (until) the non-temple (= everything that isn't a temple) was removed (from the stone)."

The only remaining Anoroi ruins that haven't fallen into the sea are parts of the crater city of Ven Val and the sunken sanctum of Kel Anor, home to the cave people that descended from the Anoroi that were left trapped inside it as it sunk.

>>52141522
Yes
Just look at the real world

>>52141283
>>52141255
You could make it to where there is a lot of fresh water in resevoirs that are deep, so deep they're hard to get to. Not impossible, just difficult.

That, coupled with your prized desalination magicks, could lead to a lot of city-states that are formed around those cities with either powerful enough magi to desalinate water for teh public, or with wells that are deep enough to get to the resevoirs below. Which can lead to plot hooks in and of itself; going into the Underdark (Which I imagine in this setting would look almost tropical and be humid as hell considering the water is all underground) to repair a well or destroy amonster that's leechign water off of the city woudl be neat.

Also you could still have a River Nile kind of landmark in your setting, with the water too salty to drink unless the local priests are able to desalinate it. People would still, I Would think, live near it if the priests are able to regularly desalinate water for the masses, as it would provide a ready trade route.

Also look into either real plants or ones you can make up that thrive off of saltwater. Imagine an alien jungle that's hostile to regular beings because of its biological adaptation to salt water. Could be cool.

>>52141762
>real plants that thrive off of salt

so, online gamers

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>>52141283
The main variation in terrain is generally from sandy deserts to rocky deserts. Mountains work too (Afghanistan, Utah), as well as all manner of high plateaus, canyons, mesas, and the like. In general you wouldn't need too many excuses either, just place the entire continent in the horse latitudes where Australia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Sahara are, and if the winds aren't set up to blow a lot of warm water over the place it's going to just naturally be dry as hell.

>>52137903
It's never the wrong time for a Muppet treasure island reference.

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>>52142208

>>52140689
Gonna answer real quick.

>What were they like? Were they advanced?
Not-Greece was developing a lot of food storage and military tactics, while Not-Egypt was getting there with the mathematics. Not-Sweden was working out metallurgy.

>What did they leave behind? What are the ruins like?
Not-Greece never really died, they just built another civilization on top of it. Now all their old catacombs are full of earth-fey and subversive cults, and it's pretty much too late to fix it.

Not-Egypt is a pit of sand and salt, their great works sunk into the earth and the ocean, their magic dead and their guardians crumbled.

Not-Sweden never really changed.

>What do the current civilizations think of them? Are they revered or demonized?
Not-Greece hates their ancestors for their poor planning. Nobody knows much about not-Egypt.

>How did they fall? Was it their own doing, or something/someone else's?
Not-Egypt declared war on God(evil). They didn't take him out, but their defiance inspired the world to take a stand and eventually broke his power. After the war, their nation had pretty much enough life left in it to bury their dead, before the whole thing keeled over and disappeared.

They none the less provided the cultural origins for a full third of the world.

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Here's a map I'm working on at the minute.

Could use some advice on doing forests. I was thinking of just doing a dark green tint similar to how I did the forest, but would rather an icon to show it.

>>52119768
The Stars stand still in the sky during the night. There is but one sun whose warmth is felt by those upon the world. The Eye of God stands high and still in the sky, shining light down upon all that is good and bringing light to denizens of the day. His gaze unwavering, beacon to all that is good. But even He who brings life must rest, and after day is over, The Eye will blink. His holy sight blinded, darkness descends and light gives way to the Fell creatures of the night. Give thanks for His Sight during the day, for there may come a day when the Eye of God closes one last, final, time.

>>52135154
Bruh holy fuck that's some swank-as-fuck looking lines. Upload a high resolution version so I can steal that shi- I mean use it as inspiration.

>>52141260
Look into Eberron, steal some ideas from that.

>>52131911
Do the reverse of >>52115748. From Inkarnate, find out what the key features you want are, then learn how to make the textures or colors you want in Photoshop. You can even get brushes that are specifically for fantasy cartography.

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>>52143824

>>52119768
Most of the setting has a naval based economy, they need the stars badly for navigation. They're just regular space suns though.

>>52119768
Stars are glittering sources of magic; radiating energy through the cosmos. They've "fallen" before and have been used to create fantastic magical artifacts by the resident demigods.

How do I world build for a D&D 5e setting? I keep thinking I need my own homebrew system, but I acknowledge no one wants to play anyone elses shitty home brew system so I keep coming back to "might as well just make a D&D settng"
The problem is that 5e core rules has a lot of stuff I don't like, and the players are even worse with their non-core materials they always want to be playing.
I keep thinking "Okay, now how does bullshit like dragonborn and tieflings fit into this. Oh, and kitsune as well because I know shitty players will want to play that too."
I also like low level/low magic campaigns and players always want to play higher level stuff too.
It's just so frustrating, so I go back to thinking of ideas for my shitty homebrew no one else wants to play and the cycle repeats.

>>52144400
I just run AD&D 1e or some OSR shit with a handful of houserules and include the things I want. I ain't about to carry a system's extra baggage honestly

>>52144128
This is nice. Would appreciate a blurb about how you name stuff too, those locales sound legit.

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>>52141486
Definitely have those in the list, as well as some limited savanna.
>>52141762
Those are literally some of the exact plot hooks I had in mind, lol. The not!Nile idea is a good one, and one I'd thought about in the past. Just wasn't actually aware that the Nile was a salt river, and so wondered whether such a thing was at all realistic, haha. I haven't gotten very far into my research on this one, as you can probably tell. Thanks!
>>52142208
OK, cool, so jet streams aren't such that they would eventually bring in damp air. I'm not good with meteorological details. /wbg/ comes through again. I'm mulling having some canyon networks, which I realize are formed by glacial activity and rivers, so I might work it into ancient history and religious belief systems that the continent wasn't always so arid. Thanks for the tips!

>>52144793
90% of what I do is I read obscure ancient-history shit and steal names or slightly modify them. Ellada is just a name the Greeks used in addition to Hellas, and a lot of the local names are just ripped from ancient cities in Greece and Mesapotamia that are usually referred to by other names. Gaiseron is named after an old king of the Vandals. You can likely do the same thing with basically any culture.

>>52144855
Most deserts are going to have rivers in general, but they don't usually make things that different. The Nile of course exists, the main reason it shapes the land around it so much and creates the fertile farmland is because it has its own floodplain. The Colorado also goes through desert for basically its entire length.

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Rate my coast

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While there are numerous post-Collapse writings about humanity during the near mythological “Imperial Era”, much of the information comes from third hand sources and retellings of retellings that have caused the history of mankind to become very muddled. Prior to humanity’s arrival on the shores of Giperboreyia, mankind had, for an unclear period of time, been unified under the rule of the Chernov dynasty. Reports of existence under the Chernov dynasty vary widely in these accounts of the empire, but generally it is agreed that the Chernov emperors were absolute monarchs backed by the authority of the Dualitate Church and by an imperial tradition that predated the unification of the continent under their rule, suggesting that the Chernov era was not the first time humanity in its totality had been ruled by a single monarch. Beyond a multitude of post-Collapse writing about the Human Empire, the Elvish (Pari) travel writer Tansar Safari wrote of the empire as encompassing a South westerly oriented continent between three to four times larger than the entire continent of Giperboreyia.

>>52145694
Between 100 and 200 years prior to the “Collapse”, the first human sailors from Chelovekyia sailed far enough to the north east to come upon the fisheries of western Giperboreyia. Upon the southern shores of Giperboreyia, mankind came across the first race that was not its own. They were separated from the bulk of Giperboreyia and its various peoples by massive mountains and a wide desert that had formed in the mountains’ rain shadow. In this isolated corner of the continent, the native Brownies had built a collection of city-states that were organized into several competing leagues, each dominated by one or two main cities, that traded border cities in skirmishes every war season. The Brownies cared little for men, but the odd spices that the Brownies cultivated made their way south to the Chelovekyia and quickly became a status symbol for the ultra wealthy to be served with meals since they could not be grown in the chilly lands of man.

>>52145714
While there would be a few fisher colonies that would emerge on the coast of Giperboreyia and a few conflicts between the Brownies and men, it was not until the Collapse that men departed from their homeland in droves and the first wave of human conquest began. Volcanos had been observed by men for some time, writings about the Burning Isles and the Sulfur Sea show that; but nothing like the Collapse had ever been seen before. No one that saw the catastrophe lived to write about it, but those that lived along the coasts told of how ash covered the land in the wake of the catastrophe. The ash poisoned the lands that weren’t in the immediate path of the eruptions destruction and it blotted out the sun so that Spring never came. The Empire attempted to maintain some semblance of order, but with its backbone broken by the Collapse, the continent fell into chaos. The first few refugees were all connected to the fisher colonies, but soon more and more began to try and flee. It was disorganized and few could afford the travel fees, but a few dozen became a few hundred and a few hundred became thousands and soon the Brownies began to take notice.

>>52145735
Though the ash never fell on the Giperboreyia, the weather turned colder and drier. The equatorial lands of the Brownies began to feel only slightly more temperate than the most northerly lands of Chelolovekyia. Crops were failing and humans began pouring into the lands. The competing Brownie leagues put aside their differences for the time and began a campaign to drive humanity into the sea. It was here that the last vestiges of the Empire saved mankind. The grand Imperial Fleet ferried thousands troops hardened by the civil war that occurred after the extinction of the Chernov dynasty, northwards creating a population that could not be easily destroyed and the arrival of the new Vasiliev Tsar on the shores of Giperboreyia galvanized the people and rallied them to a united cause, if only temporarily. Against the armies of the Empire, the armies of the Brownie city-states were crushed, their cities sacked, and their peoples either slaughtered or enslaved. The vestigial empire could not survive the peace that followed its victory over the Brownies.

Though Alexei Vasiliev had gained great admiration for his victory over the Brownies, his untimely death plunged the imperial remnant into chaos. Already nobles that had fled northwards were arguing over what part of the new realm would be handed to them, but with Alexei’s death the commanders that took the lands refused to hand it over to the old nobility. Commanders of troops set themselves up as lords of the cities they held and in the countryside the refugees wrought havoc upon the land like an uncontrollable horde.

>>52145075

Sexy

>>52145075
turtle/10

how do I make cool names

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Any of you draw up the varying arms and armors of your settings/cultures?
I'm planning on making my setting into a traditional ttrpg/wargame hybrid, so I've found it necessary.
kinda like fantasy tabletop Mount and Blade desu
Excuse the shit art.

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>>52135628
>>52136756
>>52141369
Thanks for the input.
I think I'll go with quasi-humans for Dwarves and Elves, and gorilla-abbos for Orcs. The latter are meant to be a stand-in for negroes, commonly used for slave labour on plantations, so they'd benefit from being objectively non-human to make it easier for the players and PCs to empathise with the views of IRL slaveholders at the time.

As for the Dwarves, there really isn't a point to make them anything other than short, stout humans. They're going to dwell in the interior highlands of my tropical archipelago, growing rice in terraces* and living in villages built of stone or carved directly into the mountains, with the aesthetics drawing on Hindu architecture.

Now, for the Dark Elves I was thinking that they could be essentially a breed of human, but—in keeping with the nature hippie theme of Elves—in a symbiotic relationship with some plants or microorganisms. They could have long, matted hair that's host of any combination of certain plants, fungi, or mosses that produce a natural insect repellant to keep mosquitoes at bay (and thus malaria and other diseases). As a result, the Elves could settle in areas avoided by any other races, like swamps or rain forests teeming with otherwise-deadly insects.

*(Would being short making it easier to work in rice paddies, since you don't need to bend over as deeply, or would it makeit more difficult as you would have a more difficult time moving through the water?)

>>52119768
In mundane contexts, it's mostly nocturnal navigation, astrolabes have gotten very elaborate.
They're used by sorcerers to determine the direction in which they must draw their summoning circles to summon the desired entity. Also, starlight can be used to "power" magic circles if moonlight or sunlight aren't iluminating it.

>>52144855
>>52144908
Might be helpful to consider this: rivers generally take water away from a region, they don't really bring it in. Climate in general (humid vs dry, affected by temperature and wind) does much more to keep a land green than flowing water.
Even floodplains are watered by floods, which are caused by rains upstream.

>>52145694
>Chelovekiya vs the Brownies
Curious whether you actually are a Russian neonazi, or just trying to sound like one.

Either way I'm much more triggered by that one island that looks shaped by glaciers, right next to the giant central desert. You could pull the desert back a bit into the rain shadow of your mountains, maybe push it a little eastward.

Speaking of the mountains there should really be a few huge rivers flowing out of all that area. And that eastern peninsula seriously needs some distinctive features - at least put some low mountains around that painfully obvious hand.

Overall okay/10, needs less obvious racism

>>52110375
They could use undersea vents to forge or i personally have them use high water pressure to cut metal even more precisely than the best dwarven smiths

>>52140689
>What were they like? Were they advanced?
They were wise and spiritual people, who knew powerful magic and technology, tamed dragons and knew how to kill gods.
>What did they leave behind? What are the ruins like?
A disaster area littered with dragon bones, washed by acid rain and ash falling from the skies. Some magical stuff too.
>What do the current civilizations think of them? Are they revered or demonized?
They are legendary. Since their land is isolated, some don't believe they exist.
>How did they fall? Was it their own doing, or something/someone else's?
They killed their gods to steal their power. Turns out it's not that great of idea. Some of them are still around, since they did steal god's power and became immortal.

>>52119768
Star have no purpose, but people attribute some to them.

Moon, however, is very important, because it's where the afterlife (And pre-life) is.

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>>52153763
Ah, thanks, that's helpful. One concept I'd thought of was having an extremely tall mountain range on the continent, tall enough that evaporated water will condense and collect there. My thought was that, through underground waterways, this could be one of the main suppliers of water for rivers and oases, as well as make it a built-in mythical location, with a few religious cults revering it as the Worldwell, or some such thing. Thoughts?

What are the general guidelines for a desert world?

>>52155026
Sand worms are mandatory. That's about it.

>>52154903
I'll confess, I didn't actually read your posts properly until now ... but yes, underground rivers and springs fed by mountain rains sounds reasonable.

If you have reasonably populous cultures in your setting, they'll probably have some interesting irrigation and farming traditions. Either using canals and such like the ancient Egyptians, or something niftier ... underground/canyon farming, maybe?

Larger settlements would probably use natural water sources like the aforementioned rivers and oases, but there are other ways to get water. See qanat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
Apparently common around the Persian deserts and the Tarim Basin. You could have outlying settlements using those for water, even if they're not close to the rivers.

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>>52155941
These are all really great, thanks. I'd never head of qanats before!

>>52113773
I remember us learning this kind of symbol drawing back in high school geography, in South Africa funnily enough. Id suggest high school geography books

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>>52140689
The Faun was a race of ancient, isolationist jungle-dwellers, that managed to carve impressive temples and senates throughout their fetid swamps. The territory was far too hostile for any other race, but the Faun had evolved in it. They left behind monolithic, half-sunken structures, in what once was white stone, but is now cracked and vine-clung pillars and collapsed roofs. They're still around, though. They were driven out in a war of extinction by their magical counterparts, the Satyr. In the rest of the world, they are known as a fledgling tribe, a lost people, wandering the world. That said, they are generally well liked, due to an almost supernatural charisma. Both the Faun and the Satyr are goal-oriented, but the Faun do it through subtle manipulation and friendlyness in general, while the Satyr are the twisted duality of just that; Taking what they want by force.

>>52145075
Pretty good, just tamper with the eyes a bit. You know exacly what I mean by eyes.

>>52135347
Not him, but a river runnign through the desert doesn't automatically mean good, fertile land, and altitude, respectively.

>>52113773
Guess you could call it a climatic map/climate zone map, or land coverage map. More academic words might include biotope/ecotype/habitat map, but I honestly don't know which a geographer would prefer.

>>52134138
Except for the one in the north-west, not sure what the problem you're seeing is. Can you point it out?

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hey /tg/!
https://gifyu.com/images/VelikaJebenaMapacc8f3.jpg

rate my map

pic unrelated

>>52130954
>>52131001
Not if it's something like the Himalayas, but horses can live at high altitudes on plateaus and they're well adapted to cold weather. The Ethiopian highlands had a feudal horse-riding aristocracy, and I'm pretty sure Tibetans relied heavily on cavalry. Central Asia is full of mountainous areas which hosted or host nomadic cultures; look at Kyrgyzstan or the Altais. Anatolia is mountainous and hosted plenty of cavalry based cultures like the Hittites and Seljuks. I could go on.

Basically, if you can find pasturage on plateaus or in valleys, you can raise and use horses. Depending on the climate they may have to be taken down into the lowlands to graze during the winter though.

>>52114625
Literally Adjectiveplace everywhere. My setting is a post-flood world with small and very far-apart "continents". The migrant cultures in the main continent intermingled and homogenized (after murdering the fuck out of the native elves) so there aren't mystical ancestral old names, just a bit of latin, a bit of franco-germanic and a lot of english.

I've made my continents for my new world map, but now I'm on the task of figuring out how the climates work. How do I into thermohaline circulation maps?

>>52120622
>How many races are too many?
Four.
1 race subdivides and attacks itself.
2 races face against each other.
3 races generate a dynamic of controlled opposition.
4 races eventually devolves in 3 vs 1.
5+ races will always devolve into human/human proxies vs everyone because you can't develop them all and players/readers will not want to waste time playing funny colored people unless they have snouts, digitigrade legs and are waiting for you to leave so they can yiff with the other furries.

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>>52130954
Those horses wouldn't be the lithe and graceful horses you see in the generic tropes, they'd need to be hairy, slow and surefooted to not fall off a cliff and hairy as balls to not freeze when traveling in winter time.

>>52160987
>rate my map

6/10
It's a great map -maybe a little cluttered and dense- but the photo quality lowers your score considerably.. That and the resizing is a little off; it's either too far away or too close.
The Aesthetic though can't be beat; really feels reminiscent of that old ass "literally anybody who can draw" 1st edition art, love it.

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>>52162044
On Earth (or other suitably round worlds) the winds move East to West at the Equator, and then reverse every 30 degrees or so of latitude. The winds also have a slight diagonal incline as in pic related, so regions where the arrows move away from each other are typically drier unless near water.

Take all that with a grain of salt. Even experts don't much understand climate and weather patterns, and it is a hugely complicated system. Example: a dry seafloor in Chad provides 90% of the Amazon's nutrients.

>tfw seeing all this effort people put into maps and weather
>90 percent of my world is GODS DID IT LMAO
At least I'm having f-fun

>>52162804
i wish there was some kind of software that could simulate this

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>>52103964
Is there any possibility that on this map, the area labelled "Skaaras" could be warmer than the area south of it, "Vauln", without magic, or making the globe of this world different in tilt or size from Earth?

(Fyi, the continent is from the top of the map to its southern tip about 1,400 miles, and is located entirely in the northern hemisphere. Vauln is mostly arctic, at least in temperature and weather.)

Also any other commentary on what the weather may look like in this continent would be appreciated. I am trying to understand jetstreams and weather but struggling.

>>52163469
sorry same anon here, just saw >>52162804, very helpful. Still, any feedback welcome.

>>52163469
Also by warmer I mean, somewhat noticeably. Like the centre of Vauln its roughly northern Alaska, while Skaaras is nearly temperate in comparison. Also would like Skaaras to be dry. I can rearrange these things if they don't work.

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hey /wbg/ this is my first time ever really seriously putting a world together, so I'd love some input on the initial draft of my mountains and rivers. the northeast is going to eventually be a pseudo-Europe with the southwest being pseudo-Africa
what do you think? where did I go right/wrong and what should I add/remove?

>>52130792
American Southwest/Amerindians in the west and centre meet Celtic Europeans to the east meet French Canadians to the north?

>>52160987
got character. I wouldn't draw the cities like that but I mean it works out for you.

>>52162118
What if one race is small in population and generally very agreeable in temperament (ie. halflings)? can we include them as a subgroup of one of the other races if they are otherwise similar enough in culture?

>>52160987
Its kind of busy and noisy, but overall it looks like a detailed world that you gave a lot of attention, and is fun to look at, if a little hard to read.

>>52140689
Fairly advanced by 'modern' standards of technology, but not space-age - giant labyrinthine Acropoli dot the Sestypian deserts, and contain vast clockwork mechanisms serving some ancient mechanical purpose.

Nowadays, self-declared principalities and warbands of those claiming to be descendants of the ancient city-builders fight over what remains, while trying to pierce deeper into the underground vaults that these mechanical temples seem to be protecting.

>>52165047
Myths of its collapse are varied as according to different Homeric-esque poets and scholars, but a common motif among most accounts are that an entire year of sandstorms and catastrophic weather razed away at the inhabitants of these ancient citadels. Some claim an ancient curse was to blame, following an age of dragon-worship.

>>52163469
>>52163645
Not really, outside of "It's Magic!"

If Skaaras is near the Arctic circle, then cold rainy weather hits its west coast and rolls southwest. Vauln will be warmer if only by default. And a little dryer due to the mountains, and the rain slowly petering out over land.

>>52153926
>Curious whether you actually are a Russian neonazi, or just trying to sound like one.

Neither.
Do Russians have some kind of racial animosity towards the British or the Maya? The Brownies are just these guys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_(folklore) but with a political structure akin to the League of Mayapan. They aren't supposed to be less than humans or anything like that, they just ended up getting fucked over by a more brutish and violent culture that was doing what ever it needed to in order to survive an extinction level event.

> island that looks shaped by glaciers, right next to the giant central desert. You could pull the desert back a bit into the rain shadow of your mountains, maybe push it a little eastward.

the Glaciation period is supposed to have ended well over 10,000 years prior, but I'll take your advice on pulling back the desert.

>Speaking of the mountains there should really be a few huge rivers flowing out of all that area

probably right. I've got the not-Ganges already, I should add the not-Indus as well.

>And that eastern peninsula seriously needs some distinctive features
haven't really started working on that part yet, that's why it's so barren. All I know is that it's gonna be where the Not-Songhai Elvish kingdoms are located.