/wbg/- Worldbuilding General

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Imagine that around the time humans began to organize beyond tribal structures about 10,000 years ago shamans, medicine men, witches, etc. discovered some magical ritual allowing them to travel between caves. You do the ritual in front of a cave in Asia. You pass through the cave entrance into the dark, turn around and walk out. Blammo. Now you're in Africa, Europe, Australia, the Americas. You get the idea.

Obviously, technologies would be quickly disseminated, like the wheel, domesticated animals and crops, metal working eventually. Diseases too, so no more massive borderline extinction events in the Americas. But what about social and cultural ideas? How will those react to near-instant global travel?

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>>52999421
1/2
To the hill-peoples of the Mecava Belt, it is called the “madness of the gods”. To the sea-peoples of the Jyodwar Archipelago, it is known as “the litany of demons”. And to others, those touched by magick are called “the gods’ chosen”. In any case, it is widely considered to be both a blessing (in the mildest sense of the word) and a terrible curse. Its origins are unfathomable, though myth and religion have provided their own explanations. It is, if not exceedingly rare, at the least not prevalent in most human populations. It is transmitted hereditarily, though often many generations will pass in which no magickal person is born. It emerges in the intermediate stages of adolescence, a little before or a little after the onset of puberty. Immediately following its development, the recipient’s life is irrevocably changed. Vitae, or magickal energy, begins to rush through the body, and, if not stopped, will quickly overflow, resulting in disastrous consequences both for the individual and their surroundings. Some, who do not have the privilege of being taken in by a Magi House or educated by a hedge mage, will either die (usually taking others with them) or become a deformed creature, commonly called witches.

However, even when properly controlled and equipped with a magickal Limiter, the Art is taxing and often dangerous. Even magi who serve in a mostly scholarly capacity suffer greatly reduced lifespans. Additionally, many magi, especially those belonging to the greatest of the great Houses, are employed as soldiers either in the continental wars of their patron state (as all Magi Houses swear fealty to a sovereign master) or in bloody inter-House warfare. Even so, magick offers great benefits. Natural philosophy and medicine have achieved important advances through magickal intervention.

>>52999620
Well ideas and customs would trade hands as much as actual goods would, you might get religions spreading much faster and farther than before think how the internet has altered ideas, instant communication and transportation of ideas and concepts to other cultures at such an early time period would radically alter everything really. Wars , alliances, cross-continental empires and religions etc.

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>>53000130
2/2
Over generations of use and study, the magickal arts have been structured into a general hierarchy of various Canons, which are classified as either Greater or Lesser. This system was codified and disseminated by House Anselmo, the magi pledged to the Imperial Demesne, during the height of the Potentate. Anselmo's Omnibus, as it is known, has been adopted by all major and minor Magi Houses. However, the Omnibus is not without its critics. The magickal commentator Deomondel notes, “...In the ancient days a magus might work the Art with abandon, had they the mettle and means. Thus are the exploits of the grand magisters, of Dagobed and Dilö, of Igbeldassa and Lehenna, of Opilbanda and Ibb, are chronicled and studied by all magi of consequence. But the high bloodlines have thinned, and we cannot even work our own Art, given to us by the gods, without the aid of the Limiter. Neither can we work it without the ignoble apparatus, that is to say the “Omnibus”, to confine us. The spark of those ancient magisters has left Feol, I fear, and Magick, perhaps once a veritable Art, is now something far lesser...We cannot very well classify magick as if it were a tree or a flower.”

But Deomondel’s contemptuous attitude is not shared by the majority, and the Omnibus has generally been considered to be a congenial influence on the magickal arts, if perhaps a less “creative” one than Deomondel might have liked. And, contrary to his claim that the potency of magick has declined over time, one could rather assert that the structure of the Canons allows for deeper study of a given magickal discipline, as a consequence resulting in the creation of a more powerful magus.

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>>53000176
I'll add some more
3/?
The Twelve Old Lines, as their name implies, are the twelve oldest Magi Houses of Feolyn. As is the case for the noble houses of Feolyn, the Magi Houses practice their own brand of selective breeding in order to preserve the strength of their house-magick. Magick, of course, is not something that can be bred for as one breeds cattle---it is far too wild, mystical, ineffable, unfathomable. And, indeed, many so-called successors to the Magi Houses have been born without the magickal spark (for the most part, their lives have ended cruelly: smothered in the cradle, abandoned on the streets, gelded and kept as a house slave, or, very rarely, adopted by a noble house). However, there is no doubt that breeding two magickally gifted individuals heightens the potential for the resulting child to inherit their parents’ magickal spark. And as magick is the livelihood of a Magi House, the lives, especially the sexual lives, of the members of the House are carefully ordered and choreographed. Any duplicity, any illicit dalliances with scullery maids or slaves, any foolish notions of “love”, is punished by gelding or death. Magi are short-lived---although their nature is inherently selfish, they have something larger than themselves to protect. Consanguinity is a consistent issue, and the children of Magi Houses are sometimes physically, if not mentally, handicapped in some way. But inbreeding is becoming less and less common, and many Magi Houses choose to form Breeding Pacts with each other, exchanging seed or wombs along with coin and artefacts. Each House pledges fealty to one of the vassal states of the empire, and is skilled in its own brand of magick. They are serviced by their respective Novitiates, magi not of the House bloodline, who act as soldiers, scholars, spies, diplomats, and retainers of the chief House magi.

>>53000130
>>53000176
>>53000415
Sounds like fun worldbuilding, but an absolute shit way to play a mage in a game. Unless you want your players to play some kind of palace-dungeon exploration game that's all about social combat.

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>>53000415
The nature of magi is paradoxical. They are both inherently selfish, yet, given their brief and often miserable lives, usually work together to achieve some common goal. All magi strive to achieve the completion of their own personal Opus. An Opus can be anything: the working of a masterful spell, the summoning of a powerful Grand Spirit, the writing of an acclaimed work of magickal scholarship, the creation of one's own magickal artefact, the slaying of a particularly infamous daemoniac or lich, even something as mundane as being recognized by the Hierophant of the House---something, anything, that will make them eternal (immortality, unfortunately, is an impossible, though oft-sought after, ambition). Many magi, of course, never achieve the completion of their own personal Opus. Thus, every House, and every member of a House down to the lowliest Novitiate, works towards the achievement of a Grand Opus. As the name implies, these projects are far grander in scope. House Göbeld, for instance, successfully navigated the No-Plane, the realm of negation and opposites (though nearly every member of the expedition went insane); House Minastre successfully erected a mountain range to protect Ludi from invasion; and House Vabbi, infamously, created the Golems, resulting in the slaughter of millions in the subsequent First Golem War.

>>53000633
Alternative would be to either ban mages from being player characters, or to make up some kind of "mage" class that functions as some kind of battery character.

A non-mage that heads off to the local wizard outpost, gets charged up with magic, and now can use spells just like a regular mage in a regular setting. The magic just comes from an external source, instead of being its own power.

>>53000633
I could definitely see how it would be unfun to play as a mage in this way. Luckily it's for fiction/a Quest, and not for an RPG. I think the only way to do it would be to take out some of the lore restrictions or just make it about extreme resource management---you have to plan ahead what spells you want to use, how many you can use, what types of foes you're going against, etc., because you can't really do it on the fly. Which isn't "fun" per se---people want to feel powerful. The Quest I'm going for is about "magickal espionage" and trying to undermine the completion of a rival House's Opus, which would create a race of "Golems" who can use magick at will, without any consequences or setbacks.

I just thought the idea of magi being short-lived rather than long-lived and extremely handicapped but also extremely powerful. I kind of thought of them as being glass cannons. Thus why they have to work together to really be successful.

>>53000673
That could work as well actually. Kind of like how in certain RPGs, you can use magically imbued scrolls and objects and such. Since one important Greater Canon is Artificing and the Limiter itself is a magickal artefact, I don't see why a magus couldn't have invented some kind of device to grant the user a temporary burst of Vitae that they could use alongside enchanted scrolls/weapons/whatever.

>>53000811
You could make it some accidental discovery from a project to create an artificial mage bloodline.
Instead they just discover how to give some limited magic to non-mages.

>>53000845
That's an interesting idea as well, definitely something to consider.Thanks anon.

I'll give it some thought. I think it'd be pretty cool to run a game in this setting so if I ever do I'll have to adjust accordingly.

If i want to present woods on a map not with tree-icons but a drawn forest, how would i go about that so it still fits with a hex-field? First attempt at adapting a very old world-map for an old setting to photoshop.

Human beings were emotionless, ambitionless, fleshy gardener-robots for God. Then God blew up and the divine spark of FREE WILL™ was cast upon the humans, and they began to so prehistory shit. Then the other gods came, and they fucked everything up. They made all kinds of demi-humans, and fought one another, caused terrible natural disasters, and the sapient inhabitants of the world understood almost none of it. The races of the world developed in utter turmoil, and still today they struggle against forces beyond their control.

My setting is not very developed.

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>>53001071
Just draw a forest onto a hex. Then paste the image over the whole area starting from the top to the bottom.

This way the tree trunks at the bottom of the image will get covered by the tops of the trees of the lower image.

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This app is pretty good. Does someone knows of other software like this? Preferably one where you can edit the output map.

Concept:
The PCs, who have been through a fairly generic medieval fantasy adventure or two, discover their entire known world is a biodeck on a gigantic space ark. Shenanigans ensue.

Lame 'plot tweest' or somewhat refreshing story?

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Please don't let this thread die.

Would it be a good idea to make this same general on/lit/?

>>53001569
Cheers man!

>>53002334
Maybe actually, could be a good idea

>>53002325
It always depends on how well (you) pull it off mate.

You can take the dumbest lamest idea and make it work - if you try hard enough.

>>53002600
What would you want your DM to avoid about this particular scenario?

>>53003017
Anything that devalues the sudden shock value of the plot twist, like dropping too obvious hints.

Or just stupid oversights, like having a magical fantasy world inside a typical scifi spaceship.

If the fantasy world has magic, the spaceship should have magic too.

>>53003612
Magic is fairly easy to dress up as sci-fi psionics or nanobullshit.

>>53001938

Forgot the link:

https://experilous.com/1/project/planet-generator/2015-04-07/version-2

>>52999421
>What was prehistory like in your setting?
Considering that the world is a spaceship with soil on top of it, there's no real prehistory to speak of.

The closest thing to that would be the age of dragons. The dragons had pretty much nothing to do, they were bored to death and created a bunch of landscape features, animals and artefacts out of pure boredom. This was still less than entertaining, so they decided to free a bunch of races from the world's sealed dungeons and play gods with them. This didn't end well.

I don't have much lore written for the age of dragons because of how inconsequential it is for the rest of history.

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>>53004688
Oh, this looks fun!

>>53004485
If you're going to pretend your magic is technology, you better run a campaign where magic is really low-key and all.

>>53004885
I don't see why this should be the case.

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'Okay, first fantasy campaign. Time to make the best fucking map ever.'


...

'Or just edit Europe on Paint.net and add your custom civs to it.'


I mean it's cliche fantasy and the individual places are interesting aside from dwarfland and elfland, I just cant be fucked with cartography.

>>53005124
If you cannot be fucked with cartography, just use a real map of the world.

>>53005206
That's what I've done pretty much, just changed a few land masses to better fit the cultures which i actually spent time on.

>>53005124
Why don't you just keep drawing formless blobs until you like one? This is an imaginary world with imaginary rules. It doesn't have to resemble real geography.

How would i possibly go about creating a surface like this in photoshop, not too fancy but still pretty and with the possibility of an hex above it?

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>>53005430

>>53005448
How did you get/make this? I would love to do/get something like this

>>53005498

Looks like Crusader Kings 2

>>53005551
Yeah, it's the Winter King mod for Crusader Kings 2. So far i was working on this map with topographic layers, but that just get#s too messy and autistic after a while, so i'd like to just do like this, use fields, hills and mountains instead of layers in 1000ft steps.
As a noob in photoshop it's a pain tho. Help really would be appreciated

>>53005358
>'Doesn't have resemble real geography.'

But then how will I know what the real-word counterparts of the various cultures are?!

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>>53005953
Using your imagination?

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>>53005976
>Imagination
>Worldbuilding General

Im not sure what questions to ask on how to improve my setting as it is. Any ideas?

>>53006048
What do people do for fun?

>>53006094
Thats good. Do i say what people in general do for fun or what these people just here do?

>>53006133
What do all the different cultures do for fun? How does one culture break up daily life and how is it different from another culture?

>>53006170

Well, they all have sex. Maybe it's easier to start identifying those thing all cultures do alike.

>>53006313
That's a bit broad.

What do, as a culture, they consider a good hero in a story?

>>53006342
ONe who has sex.

I posted this in a different thread yesterday but I feel like this would be the best place to get an answer.
So I'm working on a magic system for the setting of a story I'm writing (or at least trying to force myself to write). Explaining the whole magic system would be kind of hard (mainly because I haven't really defined its rules yet) but it's basically one where magicians cast spells by using the true name/magical name of certain things or concepts to force mana (which in this setting is something akin to the basic component of all of creation) to create said thing or concept. My idea was that people could learn these magical names by connecting their minds to some sort of dictionary of magical names, but I'm not too sure if I should remove that.
Now, I have two problems:
First, I don't know how to make it so people can't just learn the name of literally anything (this is why I don't really like the dictionary of magical names thing). The idea is that it should be harder to learn and speak the magical name of things depending on how complex they are (so, for example, every loser can learn and speak the magical name of "Fire" but learning the magical name of something like "Restore" is extremely difficult). I want to have some kind of process as to how someone can learn a concept's magic name so I also can explain why someone couldn't do it.
Second, I want to have magic be more of a wild and mystical thing in the setting's backstory. Basically, humans barely understood magic back when they were living in tribes and only got a true grasp on it after seriously researching it. The problem is that I don't see how this could make any sense considering my magic system doesn't leave too much room for wild magic-like shit.

>>53006826
You can only learn the true name of something through understanding it. And since everything is ever changing one person's true name for 'fire' is different from another; like someone could see it as 'burn' and the other as 'life'

So to understand something complex is super fucking hard, but fire is easily relatable and everyone can draw upon knowledge and experience of it.

>>53006048
"What will my players notice that I haven't thought of?"

Or general questions like "what else could make this quest better?"

>>53005124
>Crystalis Empirius
God gave you google translate and you shit all over Him.

>>53006909
I like that. It allows me have magic in my setting do more than just cast a fireball everytime you say "Fire".
I can also use it so the most dangerous and harmful concepts require you to either have delt with them a lot or be kind of fucked up to understand something like "Pain".

>>53006991

Implying my false Latin isn't better than real Latin

>>53006826
>>53006909
>>53007015
You could make it that it is easier to grasp the concept of something simple, but harder to grasp something that is vague or nonphysical.

Every living being is made up of the 4 elements, so connecting to them would be easy, as they are simple and relatable. And 'experiencing' earth is simply touching it, though further understanding (higher level spells) would take more effort. (like almost drowning or or burning to death to get a better spell)
But you aren't *made* of pain, or healing. As it isn't a physical, graspable thing or even an emotion. So you would have to experience it to learn it. Then again strength for example would be an extremely vague concept.

>>53006909
>>53007156
Thanks a lot, this will allow me to turn my magic system into less of a clusterfuck.

I've been considering what people use for money in my setting, with the main issue being that magic capable of altering and manipulating metal to a significant extent is relatively commonplace, meaning any currency system based on it is out the window. So I've started to consider an alternative like gems, something relatively precious, hard to obtain, and difficult to process into whatever the "currency form" would be.

Originally I had the cheeky idea of diamond cut into various sizes of coinage, but I honestly don't know enough about how they're processed or how well they'd handle being trimmed like that.

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>>52999620
>>53000166
Let's kick it up a notch.

The ritual doesn't just open a gateway that allows travel across the Earth.

It opens a gateway to some other plane of existence, that is influenced by the thoughts of people that enter. In the neolithic, this plane of existence manifests as dark caves. Following the bronze age and further, it manifests as a dungeon. A very complicated dungeon. The more people have entered this plane, the more the place changes.

Travel within this plane, and travel from Earth to this plane, back to Earth (in order to use a shortcut) is still possible, but it becomes quite tricky.

tl;dr as centuries pass, using the magical ritual for creating portals to other places on earth becomes more difficult

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My group is to play "Dawn of Worlds" tomorrow with me. The map under is what we will be playing on. Got any changes to suggest? Feels a bit empty to me. For those that don't know what "DoW" is it is pretty much gods creating the planet, shaping mountains, rivers, making races, magic and doing events to shape the world.

>>53007694
Uh if you're playing DoW, an empty map seems fine, I think.

>>53007694
It should be empty, considering the map should be a blank canvas for your players to work on.

>>53007723
>>53007739
What I mean is that it lacks landmass.

>>53007694
Lots of varyingly-sized landmasses > one giant blob + accompanying insulas

>>53000130
>Most powerful beings on the planet
>Can instantly teleport across the globe

>Having allegiance to anyone
>Being drafted against their will

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>>53006909
>Psycholinguistics is magic
I came a little

>>53007627
How about the good old salt? Or some sort of magic-enhancing crystal - ground, dissolved, and really diluted, so only big quantities are actually useful.

>>53008281
I think you replied to the wrong post lol

>>53008475

Eh. Salt is neat as a cool historical "Wow I can't believe that was really a thing at one point" factoid, but doesn't seem terribly interesting in a fantasy setting.

Just something I'll have to try dwelling on some more.

>>53008917
Various nuts (kola), beans (cocoa and coffee) and shells (cowrie) were also common. Edible currency is often some sort of drug/stimulant which keeps demand high and an exotic drug can add a suitably fantastic touch to a setting.

Really anything that has wide demand, high value for allowing portable amounts to be exchanged for lots of goods or services and is just common enough to see actual circulation will do.

Silver works well since it is shiny (demand) and sits in the sweet spot between rarity ensuring value/enough in the ground to mint the required number of coins. Metals also have the advantage of more uniform size and quality compared to many other currencies. Since metals in your world hold as much value as the magic it takes to alter them, focus on what demand exists for things that magic cannot supply. Alternatively since this is a high magic world then a universal magical battery substance could be suitable.

Gems are probably far too variable in size and quality for currency use, although a proto-currency which retained significant barter elements might work.

>>53008917
Magical bitcoins. Metaphysical 'nothing' crystalized and mined with magic.

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Does anyone has material regarding tectonic planes dynamics?

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what rivers do i get rid of

>flight in high fantasy

How do you handle it? I personally want to include it (solely because airships and aerial beasts of burden are cool) but I feel as if it would invalidate ground and sea based travel.

How have you handled it?

>>53010118
If you've got airships it's not exactly high fantasy (ironically).

I handled it by invalidating sea and ground travel. But I embraced the science-fantasy.

>>53010149
Although I also made underground warp-trains, for an alternate mode of travel.

>>53010118
How about making the Airships really hard to make, and You need some special materials (gas?) and tools to make it. Then have one City/Country/Empire produce that and make it super expensive so only very rich people have it.

>>53010118
Storm seasons. Asteroid rains.

>>53010176
Way too contrived. If you make them very expensive, do it so lots of people CAN make them, but only the very rich use them (for transporting perishables and shit -- strawberries through the winter!).
>>53010226
Much better, but only if you do it well (so there's a risk-reward system). And tie it to your themes or it'll be just as contrived as the above one.

>>53010118
If only we had some sort of culture to compare to. Some sort of culture that has the ability to travel by air very easily, but still uses ground and sea based travel...

Some sort of Earth.

>>53010118
Like >>53010176 said make them hard as shit to produce and mantain so at most you have a particularly rich noble having one.
Alternatively, have the production of airships in your setting be restricted due to some pact signed by different countries so that a single country can't have more than X airships.
Or just make t so that dragons attack anyone who tries to challenge their rule of the skies so they are impractical unless you have the forces to protect them.

>>53010118
Make it so they can't transport a meaningful amount of goods (no more than 300 or 500kg) so they're only used for transport of people. plus this >>53010176

>>53010118
You can take an airship but you are forced to sit in a cramped space next to a paladin who won't shut the fuck up about simiting evil, a bard who keeps playing his annoying songs through the whole flight and a particularly smelly berserker. The whole flight takes 20 hours and the food tastes like shit.

>>53010265
Yeah but it's not directly comparable.

We travel by land because air is inefficient and annoying. We travel by sea because it's cheaper for bulk transport. But neither might be true in Magicland.

>>53010267
>Alternatively, have the production of airships in your setting be restricted due to some pact signed by different countries so that a single country can't have more than X airships.
Shit. No one's gonna believe a bunch of nations would just agree not to make airships (and then keep their word).
>dragons
Cool, so long as you flesh it out (as with anything).

>>53010419
The nations would be spying each other and would take immediate action against anyone who breaks the pact.
Of course, nations powerful or crazy enough would shit on the pact anyway.
You can treat it like the whole nuke deal in our world.

>>53010445
>The nations would be spying each other and would take immediate action against anyone who breaks the pact.
Like I said, it's not believable. And that IS treating it like the whole nuke deal in our world. Plus these things aren't nukes, they're just airships.

Mutually-agreed medieval stasis will never not be tenuous as hell.

>>53010474
Also you don't even need medieval stasis. You have more than enough material to set your whole world in the twenty year lag between developing airships and airships becoming the dominant form of travel.

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>>53010042
>>53010042

Can anybody point me to a magitech system with actual cohesive rules and worked out mechanisms? Trying to find inspiration here, and I don't want to just put in a magitech system that's just "it's magic, it does everything".

>>53010495
None. What is the matter, desertfag? Afraid of a little water?

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>>53010606
idk, i feel like i have too many

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>>53010495

Hey /wbg/ I'm working on a setting for a west marches style campaign and I wanted this area of the world to feel like an older hub of civilization that only now is being reconquered by the empire. I'm doing this cause some of my players also enjoy big narrative chunks and finding out what the world is about as oposed to only getting in dungeons and getting loot. I've began toying with the idea of 4 kings in this area each one with a certain flavor, one a belligerant conqueror that later in his life sold his soul to demons and was undone by them. another a religious zealot that ended up culling the other faiths present and his kingdom was devoured by the more radical groups of his church. the third is a diplomat that valued peace above all else which ended up with her destroying other nations just so there wouldn't be any war and the fourth a magician that through her experiments doomed her kingdom. (cont)

>>53010655
>Make lake smaller
Couldn't it be an Aral Sea/Caspian Sea thing?

>>53010655
Thanks, also that's not a lake it's an inland sea, so should I make it smaller anyways?

>>53010682
to connect something with the players I was thinking of creating a old order of knights that saw to finding and sealing if needed theese ruined kingdoms (and also to find a way to give the players some maps and bread trails) but I'm kinda stuck into thinking up who were theese knights any help?

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>>52999421

Does your setting have Blemmyes, /tg/?

>>53010635
>>53010655
Start fusing rivers then. Mind you, don't remove the sources. Rivers have that fractal tree structure, remember.

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>>53010655
Im going to add on to my post and agree with >>53010606
too a degree.
Rivers irl dont give a shit how many there are. >>53010606
Pic is my state, Georgia. Top half of GA is mountainous, bottom is farmville. Ton of fucking rivers, in just this one state of America. Even more across America, dont be scared of rivers. Everyone is scared of rivers.
>>53010717
>>53010721
If thats an inland sea then add even more rivers or provide a side by side size comparison to something irl if im missing something.
And also this >>53010772

>>53010682
So what happened to the diplomat? The conqueror got fucked up by demons, the zealot by radicans and the magician by her experiments but how did the diplomat's kingdom met its end?

>>53010798
Looks like the Finland of the USA.

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>>53010798
Ok I changed the direction of some rivers and added a couple more. This is the scale btw

>>53010995
ok, i would definitely add some more. Just google river maps of countries and states for reference to see just how many rivers there are in the world.

So i'm doing d&d 5e and i've decided to take the languages and use actually made (not necessarily real world) languages so I can make decent names for them and their shit. Thus far I got
Infernal-Hebrew
Dwarfish-Khazalid/Swiss German
Abyssal-Chinese
Goblinoid-Mongolian
Sylvan-Sindarin
Common-English Obviously
Primordial-Arabic
But I still need celestial, draconic, giant, halfling, druidic, orcish, gnollish, deep speech, and undercommon.
Any decent ideas for those language analogues? Giant and draconic especially.

>>53011347
>Infernal-Hebrew
Oy fucking vey

>>53011383
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Infernal_language
Its infernal because hebrew can be both rough and guttural as well as smooth and flowing. The joke about jews and deals and devils is purely incidental but not at all lost.

>>53011347
orcish - russian
druidic - irish gaelic
halfling - lithuanian
giant - finnish
draconic - occitan
deep speech - portuguese
undercommon - spanish

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>>53011172
Ok so I made the sea smaller as you can easily see there, and tried to make the rivers look a bit more fractal-y, but I think I overdid it

>>53011509
>orcish - russian
Makes sense to be similar to hobgoblin. Nice and rough, full of piss and vinegar like they should be.
>druidic - irish gaelic
>halfling - lithuanian
Both sound good despite they both seeming like odd fits at first
>giant - finnish
Either this or Norweigen.
>draconic - occitan
Dafuck is occitan? Is it just a different subset of french?
>deep speech - portuguese
>undercommon - spanish
Fukkin moors. While I like it I think these may be just a touch too obvious for the group to figure out. Any reason why these two particularly?

>>53011684
looks great senpai tbqh

>>53010821
I was thinking that probably because she was obssessed with this notion of peace she ended up alienating herself fromher kingdom after some extreme measure (genocide or something like that) and she ended up being attacked by this order of knights.

>>53011347
>>53011687
I suggest you to use less know dialects instead of the main languages
Also, this channel may be useful:
https://www.youtube.com/user/WikiTongues

I also think you should consider the relations of these languages and the peoples that use them

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Hey guys, been running D&D for about a year using official settings. Just recently decided to get around to making my own and have done up a map for it, with help from an artist friend. Just wanting some advice on it, I feel like the top right hand corner is a bit bare. Any suggestions? also wanted to make sure i didn't break any rules with rivers or mountains or deserts and so forth.

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>>53011347
>Not making the Dwarves speak Greek
>Ancient, ancient Empire that's slowly fading
>Hiding mainly in huge cities whose walls have held firm for a millennia
>Hold extreme grudges against a trade-based ethereal civilization who wronged them in the past
>Their name is basically synonymous with wealth and gold
Am I talking about the Byzantines, or Dwarves?

>>53013037
The shape looks kinda nice but it's just hexes so it's a bit boring

>>53014363
what do you mean its just hex's? do you have any advice on how to make it better? what would make it more interesting for you?

>>53014604
Just make it using any other software, i mean look at this >>53005124 or this >>53010042 for example, they're not great but at least it's not hexes

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Just shooting some ideas out there.

Science-fiction/fantasy world. The globe is divided into several climate 'blocs' by colossal, devastating wind patterns. These shifting megastorms isolate each region from one another for decades on end, leading to vastly segmented and dynamic scientific advancement among the disparate nations.

Events where temporary breaches in these megastorms allow cross-regional migration of people and ideas is considered generation-defining, leading to an adoption of an all manner of different social, cultural, and technological elements by all involved.

The last breach bridged two regions - one ruled by a retro-futuristic Empire based primarily on turn-of-the-century Royal Germany, and a more technologically primitive grouping of disaparate Asian-esque subcultures suffering under the effects of plague outbreak.

The setting would encompass the Imperial province under the rule of the Kaiser and his cabinet, several other allied or cooperative nations surrounding the seat of the Empire, and the newly absorbed remnants of the oriental farmer-kingdoms, who struggle to assimilate with western powers.

Meanwhile, humanitarian and progressive thinkers (especially youth) in the comparatively conservative Empire have begun to adopt aspects of the spiritualism, 'oriental flavour' and philosophy of the east, hinting at a cultural shift which could challenge the stable control of the Imperial lineage.

As well as this, scholars have begun to read signs that an additional breach is imminent - one with a much more technologically advanced power to the north which long ago is said to have supplied the Empire with the scientific knowledge to create flying vehicles, modern firearms, and robotics.

The PCs would be put in some position to directly affect the affairs of the Empire and its allies. Maybe an information bureau, like a proto-CIA?

Any settings that come close to this? Appropriate rulesets for a diesel-punk sci-fi espionage adventure?

>>53014624
I appreciate the advice but the hexes are for gameplay purposes, I was looking more for advise on the content of the map.

>>53012320
Then you could say the Order of Knights was founded after the diplomat destroyed the other nations to deal with the flood of demons, fanatics and other shit left by the fallen kings.
After dealing with so much terrible shit brought into the world by foolish rulers they decided that the best way to prevent the world from getting fucked up again would be to just seal the whole thing forever. The extreme measure carried out by the diplomat could have been the last straw in the camel's back.
So this order went, killed the diplomat and dedicated themselves to protect that land and prevent its twisted secrets to reach the rest of the world, protecting them generation after generation.

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>>53010042
Blue box: why do these rivers run in the opposite directions when they almost converge?
Red box: why does this river flow uphill?

>>53013272
I was considering something mesopotamian at first due to code of hammurabi but this might also work.

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>>52999421
Oh, what do you think of this idea. A civilization formed entirely of male elves, and female humans.

Think about it for a second, the male elves are way too feminine so the female elves all prefer the male humans. The male humans find the eternally youthful and attractive female elves superior to the human women and end up preferring them. The leftover human women and male elves don't have anyone to partner with so they get shunned or emigrate together and end up forming their own civilization.

>>53016061
Only if the female humans are /fit/ warriors who sodomize the male elves in bed.

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>>53016089
Wait, I've got an even better idea.

Female dwarves marry male elves. Female humans marry male dwarves. Female elves marry male humans.

Okay, now hear me out. As mentioned earlier in >>53016061 the female elves prefer the male humans and the male humans prefer the female elves. Now, the female humans, instead of turning to the feminine dwarves, instead turn to the next manliest (albeit short) thing, dwarves. Now, male dwarves don't exactly like female dwarves much, because they are very masculine, so male dwarves are very happy to take female humans instead. Finally, the female dwarves only have male elves left to partner with, and so they do, and as a result you have a civilization where female dwarven amazons are the warriors while feminine male elves play the support and women's role.

Any tips for giving my setting a more rich backstory? I'm mostly talking about different cultures rising and falling through its history.
At this point the only thing I know is that humanity takes its first steps as a lefit civilization by forming small tribes and that eventually the whole world is unified into a single empire where the events I care about take place.
I want to include some civilizations in between and flesh out the story of how the Empire conquered the world.

>>53016619
I forgot to mention that this is a high fantasy medieval setting with no intelligent races besides the humans.
Also the "world" is actually a single continent and no one knows anythin about the world beyond it.

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>>53016619
>>53016637
What technology level is the Empire? Keep in mind that if this is pre-gunpowder then there's gonna need to be some serious magic involved or something, a nation even as grand as the Roman Empire could never have reasonably held the entire world together.

>>53016637
Why has no one had the desire to explore further?

>>53016763
That's kind of hard to answer. I guess you could say they are pretty much trying to go from the Middle Ages straight into the Industrial Age.
Basically the Empire didn't really unify its rule over the world till aproximately 10 years before the events of the story. It was the biggest and most powerful nation in the continent and existed alongside a bunch of small nation and (let's call it) the Republic, which was pretty much the only nation that the Empire considered a serious threat.
Eventually the Republic formed a coalition along with the smaller nations and started a war agains the Empire for reasons that I haven't come up with yet. The Empire had arguably the best mages in the world but they were kind of stagnating so they found themselves in trouble when the Republic pulled some magitech shit that could challenge the Empire's mages.
Unfortunately for the Republic, the Empire proved to be stronger in the end, BTFO the coalition and pretty much anexed all of those territories. The Republic's capital became a huge crater but that was because of some shit the main antagonist did so it doesn't really matter.
The current situation is that even though the Empire rules over the whole world the territories that belonged to the Republic and the coalition haven't really been integrated and are on the brink of rebelling and trying to gain independence once more (there already rebel cells trying to fuck shit up but nothing serious so far). Also, the Empire is has spent the past 10 years trying to finally stop its medieval stasis by using the magitech shit they took from the Republic but there are many who aren't happy with it due to different reasons (conservatism, grudges against the Republic and everything related to it, the fear that they will fail to adapt to the new changes and lose their power, etc).
This is pretty much it. I don't know much about how IRL cultures developed so there are probably some things that don't make any sense though.

>>53016790
There were some attemps to find new lands in the past but they all failed to find anything new aside from sea monsters.

How do you make ship battles exciting without gunpowder? What do they even do besides taking each other aboard?

>>53017037
Boarding another ship to duke it out hand-to-hand sounds pretty exciting, bro.

>>53016955
Are there lands to find?

Is your world a sphere? Do the people know?

>>53017057
Well, i guess, but it get's repetitive and the outcome of the naval battle is dependent on sheer numbers of men on board rather then quality of the ships or strategy.

>>53017037
B A L L I S T A S

>>53017093
Longer-range naval battles get repetitive too. They're naval battles.

If boarding actions are the only practical form of combat on the high seas, you can be damn sure ships, weapons and other equipment will be tailored to these scenarios. Quality will be factor.

Very specific infantry tactics will likely develop, too.

I have no idea why you would think these conflicts just involve throwing bodies at the other ship, without any consideration for equipment or strategy.

Is it a lack of imagination?

>>53017071
It's a sphere but I haven't really thought about the rest. Considering the Empire didn't give too much of a fuck about any non-magic related research I doubt anyone knows. The Republic was more into that so it's possible their researchers did find out about it and said research could have began to spread in the 10 years since the Republic's fall though so far the Empire is more interested in dealing with its internal conflicts than in searching new lands to conquer.

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>>53017037
Fire arrows and ballistas. You ever seen the Battle of Blackwater Bay in Game of Thrones? Well, watch how Ser Davos prepares to fight the lone enemy ship.

Watch from 0:15 to 0:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxKzT7AzK1c

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>>52999421

Here's the rough map I'm working on, the "chicken's head", my version of not-england/holland

>>53017432

please rip the chicken's head apart with questions anons, they are the food upon which my improvising brain thrives

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Ok. So, I'm interested in laying the groundwork for a fictional near-future African Conflict, light cyberpunk elements. 2040-2060 range, so nothing ridiculous.

I was thinking something along the lines of South-African neighbor countries falling into total civil war.
In reality, Mozambique has a small-scale conflict between the dominant FRELIMO government, a left-wing party which overthrew the Portuguese government and created a communist state, which in turn was plagued by a counterrevolutionary insurgency by RENAMO, a right-wing anti-communist party created and backed by Rhodesia/South-Africa. In the 1990s, FRELIMO capitulated and ended the one-party communist reign, instituting a democratic multi-party system. RENAMO has accused the government of corruption and vote-fraud multiple times, and foreign observers have issued similar concerns, which has led to the resurfacing of the conflict in 2014~Present.

>>53017432
What scale is this?

Are the coastlines really that smooth, or is a lot of detail lost because of the scale?

>>53017534

Up close the isles are alot less smooth then you see here, with pebbly shores and lots of caves lining each of em.

It should be around the size of Ireland, I'm not fluent with non-km measurements, so about 84,421 km2.

>>53017432
It looks ugly as shit and unnatural as shit.
>b-but it's meant to!
Good job faggot now your map looks ugly and unnatural. Is that really what you wanted?

>>53017634
I would expect more fine detail, even at that scale.

I think your main problem is that this really looks like it was drawn in paint. A general shape that you've dragged a circular eraser through, with almost the same width everywhere.

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>>53017490
RENAMO has threatened to take six northern provinces by force, provinces which it had won support during the election.
So, here comes the fictional part. Let's say this conflict broils into an all out civil-war instead of a small scale insurgency. Intense fighting, town-sieges lasting months. South-Africa and Zimbabwe are in extreme economic and political turmoil, thus refusing to act in the war. The UN is also falling apart, completely deadlocked by West-East geopolitical hostility. In addition, increasing government corruption, the growth of 'dark-net' black market sites, and multiple conflict-zone profiteers (like that FarCry 2 Antagonist), has invigorated the African Black Market, allowing RENAMO to strengthen it's guerrilla forces with a surplus of arms.
The conflict starts spilling over outside of Mozambique, into Zimbabwe. RENAMO proclaims a multi-national effort against 'Marxist Opressors', as it begins cattle-raids and looting operations into Zimbabwe.

>>53017712
>>53017742

Adding more detail as I typ (well not really but you get the point)
Shows how Inkarnate looks at it worst eh?

Anyone have any good pictures or concepts for helmets designed for "humans with extra bits on them" races?

Stuff like Elf ears on the sides, animal ears on the top, etc. I don't know armor well enough to design any myself, and most I can come up with just have the ear spots seem like massive targets.

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>>53018008

>>53018018

I'm assuming the long bits sticking out the sides there are the ears?

This is kinda what I meant by "massive targets", one good swing with a bladed weapon that their armor manages to deflect, and it could just end up sliding down and lopping that ear clean off.

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>>53017887
>Those binoculars

>>53016619
>>53016935
Consider non-military and maybe non-magical developments. Domination and violence is certainly the flashiest aspect of history, but entertaining the other elements on the side can make all the difference between your standard run-of-the-mill high fantasy setting, and a believable, occupied world.

Religion is a big one, obviously, but you could go as deep as fashion, music, poetry - the arts, mysticism, rituals and ceremonies people carry out (spiritual or not). Are men and women equal in your societies, or is there a cultural divide? How prominent is worship? Is it centered around a single religious center like a church, or is it primarily carried out in the home every day? Are there any holidays that this belief entitles people to during the year?

What are the divides between your separate human ethnicities? Where do they come from? Why are they where they are now? Have there been mass migrations in recent history, and if so, why? Plagues, piracy, barbarism, famine, and environmental shifts all have just as much history-changing power as military campaigns do.

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>>53018041
It's more protective than not wearing a helmet with huge ear holes.

If I had to choose between losing an ear and having my skull cracked open, I know what I would choose.

>>53017964
Don't be afraid to get irregular. Remember, Italy looks like a boot, even though it doesn't literally look like a boot.
>>53018008
>ears
Just crush 'em. Uncomfortable, yeah, but hard cheese.

Horns are another matter.

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>>53018190

Will do.

Here's a small update on one of the isles reworked.
Not gonna spam this thread to oblivion with maps seeing as good discussion is going on here

>>53017490
2040-2060 range isfar away enough to imagine stable economies in central and south africa.

Just do GiTS:SAC in Africa.

>>53018130
Don't forget that art, philosophy and science typically are a few years ahead on political, societal and cultural changes.

>>53018173

Naturally something is better than nothing in this case, but it just seems like a race that's had to live with these features would've designed some means to protect them properly.

>>53018190

The issue there is, depending on their position and how much they have to be smushed down, it can start to seriously affect combat performance when they can't freaking hear anything.

All this has made me realize though that humans are lucky as shit that our ears are so easily worked around, and protection for them can easily be designed into just about any given helmet without affecting hearing that much.

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>>53018240
Randomly whipping your cursor around does not make for a good coastline.

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>>53018240
Don't pussy-foot your way around this irregularity thing. Change the whole island shapes, not just the coast line -- and think about maybe using only five or six main islands (each of varying sizes), strategically placed.

>>53018280
Look at that bearded guy with the helmet again. Most of his face is completely unprotected. I guarantee we had faces for millennia prior to the invention of that helmet.

People (and lizardpeople) just choose what is efficient based on the materials available and their level of skill at working those materials.

>>53018280
>The issue there is, depending on their position and how much they have to be smushed down, it can start to seriously affect combat performance when they can't freaking hear anything.
You think that's not the case with our own helmets?
>>53018240
Also remember that, in a "realistic" setting at least, people aren't going to have good enough mapping skills to figure out that a chicken-head shaped place is actually chicken-head shaped. And they'd name it after something else anyway.

>>53018280
Dude, if you wear any helmet that i bigger and more advanced than a leather cap, you will have a hard time hearing anything.

Doesn''t matter how big your ears are. Or how small.

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>>53018312

Yes, but we eventually figured out helmets that protected our faces too. Which is what I'm trying to conceptualize, because I seriously doubt a race capable of designing and crafting whole suits of armor would just stop at the ears and go "Oh well guess we'll just leave em like that".

>>53018320

>You think that's not the case with our own helmets?

No, but humans have a whole lot less ear to smush down in the first place, since our ears are just holes in the sides of our head with some extra bits around the edges of it. The more ear you're dealing with the more that gets crammed into a helmet, the harder a time they're going to have.

>>53018369
Droopy ears aren't that difficult to cram into a helmet.

Anything you conceptualize is going to be flawed in some way. We're human. That's all we have experience with. The only historical items you could base your reasoning on are designed for humans.

Hide the ear holes behind an imposing metal frill or something. Make it look like a triceratops.

Is it the perfect practical solution? Fucked if I know. I have neither the time, nor the resources to accurately simulate hundreds of years of armor development for a non-human anatomy.

>>53018369
It won't reduce hearing below human average. That might be a larger -reduction-, but only because a fox-dude's hearing is gonna be much better than a human's to begin with.

And, honestly, if hearing's that big a deal to them -- probably they won't cover it in armour. Did we cover our eyes in armour?

Jousting armour might be an exception, but jousting armour can have very heavy, otherwise-useless designs.

Since we're talking about armor development...

How many different levels of armor and weapon development would you include in your Generic Medieval Setting™?

How specific and finely-tuned would you stat these in order to preserve a nice balance between tech-realism and playability?

>>53018476
>>53018480

I'm probably just worry about it too much. My 'tisms pick odd things to focus on at times and this probably just isn't worth fucking about with.

>>53018539

Well I imagine you'd have to consider the different cultural groups you're dealing with, and the varying levels of quality and expense they're dealing with.

Just look at the usual Medieval schtick, where you can go as low as a heavily padded shirt, all the way up to full plate.

>>53018539
I wouldn't have a generic medieval setting.

Your level of armour would depend upon what part of the medieval period you were going for. High or Late Medieval? Or even Early, if that's your thing.

As for statting -- well, I just use Song of Swords.

>>53018581
No, details like this are what give your world the illusion of depth. You should definitely think about it, I just think your conclusion's fucked.

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>>53018369
>No, but humans have a whole lot less ear to smush down in the first place, since our ears are just holes in the sides of our head with some extra bits around the edges of it. The more ear you're dealing with the more that gets crammed into a helmet, the harder a time they're going to have.
Ears are soft flesh and bendable cartilage. A humanoid with big fucking ears might even not have any cartilage in the pointy long extremities of their ear.

I bet elven ears are super soft and bendable. Just some skin and a muscle for doing [wiggly wiggly] stuff.

>>53018629

>I just think your conclusion's fucked.

This is entirely a possibility yes. I'll gladly admit I don't know the subject well enough to come up with anything concrete myself, hence my originally asking here. I suppose I was just hoping for a more interesting answer than "Leave them out or smush 'em down".

>>53018539
Listen up mate. Just do whatever.

Matt Easton from Schola Gladiatora has a video on the wills of dead English soldiers from the late medieval period/early renaissance. Just regular soldiers, bowmen and spearmen etc.

When I say late medieval period/early renaissance, you think of plate armour, transitional armour, brigandine, bascinets, barbutes and sallets.

But that was new military technology. Expensive. You know what the common folk ran around with? Old mail, old skull caps, nasal helmets and even greathelms.

Common soldiers and bandits can just wear whatever. As long as anyone in an official function that derives their equipment directly from a lord or organisation has up-to-date equipment, it's all good.

>>53018661
That wasn't really the question.

The question is whether you go with a blanket 'Plate armor' item, or whether you specify different stats for everything from early breastplates to advanced, articulated and fluted full-body armor.

And how many different categories should there be in between?

>>53018673
You do the obvious thing.
>Transitional armour; early full plate; late full plate.
If you really want, you can wedge additional types inbetween there, but I don't really see the point.

Mmm, what about three-quarter plate and half-plate? I dunno.

>>53018673
It depends on your system you dongle. I specify everything, because my system specifies everything. If you're running D&D or whatever then you do whatever it is D&D does.

>>53018720
I change systems to suit my narrative needs, not the other way around.

>>53018776
So you're asking us to tell you your narrative needs?

>>53015344
That's great, thanks! It even explains why the order would carry so many magican weapons and armor. and given that they "sealed" this land they tried to kee it secrets inside. awesome! if you have any more ideas for the order, please keep them coming

>>53011687
This is a really late response, but still.
I haven't really put a lot of thought to each of those languages.
>russian orcs
Obvious memery.
>gaelic druids
Celts, duh. Irish sounds like a better fit since Ireland has this nice image of green rolling hills and meadows to it.
>lithuanian halflings
That language is a fucking living relic, seems like a good fit for a traditionally isolationist species.
>finn giants
Finnish is basis for Syndarin, it's quite unfamiliar for most euros and anglos, and can be metal as fuck.
>occitan dragons
It's a Romance language of Southern France, Catalonia, some regions in Italy, and Spain. It was the language of troubadours and poets in the High Middle Ages. I thought it would be fitting if dragons would speak the same language that glorified their slaying.
>Undercommon and deep speech - spanish and portuguese
They are associated with dregs in the US of A, were but both are beatiful and energetic languages, distinct yet related. Spanish was widespread in North America, while Portuguese was a trade language in Asia, Africa and Southern America.

>>52999421
>Thread Question: What was prehistory like in your setting?

Before anything, before time was ordered, before the creation of stone, sea, sky and stars, there existed Nothing. This Nothing simply was, it had no form or personality to speak of that is knowable to us mortals. No Gods, no stars, no matter to speak of. For unknowable eons, this Nothing remained, undisturbed, sleeping soundly in its blissful stagnation.

This would not last however. Some 100,000 years before the present time, the Nothing was awoken with a shock, as countless portals from a different dimension opened up all upon the Nothings' plane of being. Upon it's awakening, the Nothing cried out in terrifying agony as holes of impossibly bright light riddled its 'body'. The Nothing shook with violent intensity, conjuring goats of flame, ice and dust out of the void in an attempt to fend off its unseen foe. However, the Nothing could not stop the portals from tearing it asunder, and it ultimately bled out, its corpse ending up as host to innumerable spheres of uncountable varieties of color. The flame, dust and ice that the Nothing had created in its confusion being left to float in the void. Some of it comes together to form asteroids, planets, nebula's; others staying in place as sort of cosmic paintings, painted by a creator long since dead.

Such birthed the universe, the stars, matter and planetary bodies, some 100,000 years ago

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>>52999421
>What was prehistory like in your setting?

Prehistory of who? Humans'?

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This thread is so fucking derailed. Wasn't it supposed to be about fantasy cartography?

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>>53015490
The first one is for gameplay purposes, so maybe the players can just take a boat from the south all the way to there, then get off the boat and take another boat all the way to the North.
The second river isn't actually going uphill

I am in bit of a pickle.
I need some degorative terms for humans. Long story short, they had empire and were great at magic, but calamity stripped them of their magic. In modern times their population is low, and lot are nomadic/vagrants, sometimes get involved with crime/organized crime.

Should I change the name of animals like utahraptors, andrewsarchus, and mosasaur in the setting or just keep them as they are?

>>53024495

You know, I'm having this problem too, but with other kinds of things. Like ideologies. Is the equivalent to christianism called the same in my world? Those kinds of things.

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>>53023403
>general
>dedicated to one specific topic

help with history pls
t.>>53023407

>>53023407
That's still not answering the questions regarding the counter-intuitive geography.

>>53024631
Ok then how do you think i could fix it

>>53024657
try making the blue box rivers farther apart, and change the elevation in the red box around the river to show that it cuts THROUGH the hills via a valley rather than just running right over it

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>>52999421
Is this shit fixable? I have no sense of scaling but I was kind of going for the east of the Mississippi

>>53024744
I honestly thought that was based on china at first

>>53023296
You pick one. Obviously people asking general questions can't factor in all the various worlds we have, so if you have some strange flow of time where there's multiple prehistories you just answer the question as is most reasonable to you.
>>53024495
It depends. If you think it'd make neat lore, and there's no reason for paleolithic exactness, I'd suggest inventing new in-universe names and letting your players deal with them purely in-character.

If, on the other hand, you do need exactness, or if it actually fits the lore better to use scientific names, I'd definitely stick with the real-world names. EXCEPT when it really sticks out, like Utahraptor. I'd give them some similar equivalent.
>>53024535
It depends on how similar your equivalent is to the real world. To use an easier example, I'd never call my not!Christianity "Christianity" if it differed from actual Christian theology, even if it occupied the same cultural niche.

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>>53024704
does that look slightly better?

>>53023407
I'm sorry, but the first case is still an absolute no in my opinion. The basic rule of rivers is that they always flow downwards. Their courses can change if they find a more energy efficient direction they can flow in, and they can even start to flow in an opposite direction after a post-glacial rebound. But they can't flow upwards. Since there's no scale I assume they run parallel for a couple hundred of kilometers, longer if all the white is supposed to show cold areas instead of just unmapped territories (which doesn't seem to be the case as there'd be ice at the equator).
Are you aware that boats can be rowed or sailed upstream and that riverine trade has flourished both ways for thousands of years?

The second case is okay if it's like the Colorado River on an uplifted plateu. But the first one is sure to raise plenty of doubts, as East and West can't both the downhill at the same location.

>>53023403
The worldbuilding general is about everything related to worldbuilding. OP also included a suggested thread topic, prehistory. If you want a dedicated cartography thread, make a mapmaking thread. Those do pop up occasionally, you know.

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>>53024787
What I meant was that they're close so you can hope from one boat to another in less than a day. But You're right I moved the Northern river a bit, is this Ok?
Also the white parts are just bits I haven't bothered making yet because they're not going to get used anyways. I'll get around to finishing them when I'm done with the important parts

>>53024584
>>53024787

Yeah, I didn't mean to be dense. I forget 4chan is not necessarily a mean place. I do want a fantasy cartography / map making general, but wasn't sure if this board is the one. Now I guess it is, so I'm gonna make it later today.

>>53023648

Well, how do they differ physically from the other races in the setting? The most immediate, visual differences are usually the simplest ways to break out the insults.

The way they walk or talk, their noses, ears, skin, etc. There's a lot to work with there but it all depends on everyone else more than the humans themselves.

>>53024825
Looks much better.

>>53024882
Mapmaking threads are quite a lot rarer and slower here because making custom maps takes a lot of time, so fictional map discussion tends to gravitate to /wbg/ threads that are usually a lot more active.

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What the fuck how do Swamps form????????

>>53025080
just like babby

here let me show you

>>53025106
Fuck off Shitposter

>>53025080
Dumb animeposter

Reminder to Report and Ignore shitposting.

>>53025080
Generally speaking, swamps form in temperate areas where the water buildup exceeds the drainage capacity of a given area. Certain types of trees and land features make this even more prevalent, such as heavy silt buildup in slow moving river areas with lots of mangroves, or hilly areas cutting off river deltas and creating a backflow of water.

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The babby's first map I made I based on this little tutorial I picked up from somewhere.

Just curious how accurate it actually is according to the folks who know anything about this sort of stuff.

>>53025189
post it

>>53018130
A bit late but thanks, you gave me a lot to think about.

>>53025348

I was referring to the info chart rather than my map, which I posted a thread or two back and still needs more work on it anyway.

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>>53025458
I don't care if it's shit I want to see it anon

>>53025189
It's good. But there are other things that one can come up with like:
>old, eroded mountains
>ancient trade route stretched through from civilisation A to civilisation B even if there is shittone of nothing between ala Silk Road
>cold and warm sea currents that can etiher make evergreen islands or generally fuck up climate
>difrent biomes like stepes or whatever
>latitude and it's efects on climate
>medieval ancap 101 aka how densly populated regions always will be de iure (HRE) or de facto (PLC) bordergore of countless feudal lords if there is not some really strong central power (France)
>relgion and how badly can it fuck up or elevate society that live in distance within a stone's throw

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>>53025470

Okay geez bro chill out just put down the gun.

I don't want no trouble.

>>53025458
Its a good start, compliment it with some info on the formation of rivers, lakes, etc and you've got a solid base for building a map.

Also, other fantasy maps have been ruined for me now. I can't look at them without seeing thier faults.

>>53025505
It's not so bad
Is 5 a city? Put that shit on a river or a lake or an oasis or something man

>>53025505
Not that anon, but purely aesthetically:

Looks pretty shit. It's quite regular, and it's shaped to the "paper" it's drawn on. IRL you do get islands looking like that, but IMO more organic shaped islands look better.

Also, be prepared to accept that there's a shitload more rivers than you've actually drawn. I wouldn't draw the non-major ones, but yeah, there'll be a shitload more.

>>53025539

5 is actually a group in a religious self-imposed nomadic lifestyle. The area isn't all sand, just a generally arid shithole. I need to do some actual research as to how nomadic groups live and survive, but its not a "proper" city.

For reference the circles are basically designating the "safe areas" that towns/villages/farmsteads are able to be in.

>>53025572

Oh don't get me wrong, this is nowhere near the finished product, this is literally a couple hours of me fucking around in MSPaint on my first attempt to design a map around the world and civ concepts I had bouncing around. I intend to expand it to some degree but I haven't really been able to decide how.

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>Nomadic frog people tribes migrate to the edges of the human lands around the Dankness Swamp during every rain season.
>Do we allow this, as a tribe?

Interesting hook, yea or nae?

>>53025959
only if their emperor is named Pepe

>>53025959
Yeah, but not the "do we allow this" bit. I'd do something like "we didn't allow this and now things're shit" (or vice versa, or something similar). Some kind of problem the players need to resolve, rather than a judgement they need to make.

If you still need to frame it as some judgement then you can just work out both and implement one or the other depending on their choice. Or you could work out some problem they need to resolve which they'll discover as they gather decide which course to take.

Basically, "things are shit: deal with it" works better than "do you want to do this or this", IMO.

>>53025959
It depends. How agressive are this creatures and what negative effect do they have on the people who live there? Do they attack humans? Do they overhunt the animals that the humans need to survive? Do they spam shitty memes?

Posted here yesterday '>>53005124' but is this a place to throw out ideas and have them judged by others, or is that bad form?

I got a Material Plane cosmology to hash out and I need some opinions.

>>53026007
xD

>>53026040
Yes please post everything you can

>>53026007
>nomadic frog people tribe
>emperor
wat

>>53026118
How about a Khan, or a Sheikh or whatever

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>>53026082
Not that guy, but rate this shittily put together map

>>53026147
Pepe Khan and his frog people invade the lands of Fourchania. The Anonymus Knights try to fight them off but they are powerless in front of their weird and wicked black arts that allow them to flood the whole nation with evil spirits known as "shitty memes",

>>53025959
Like every meme, it'll feel outdated within about three years.

>Isn't my race of pastoralist monglers that hunts for cocks is so cool? grinningman.exe

>>53026082

Okay

1st age of man. Fewer mages (like 10) = more powerful mages due to the nature of magic in setting which I won't go into. One tries to make life, draws upon human nature to do so but fucks up and draws on the bad side of humanity aka the 7 cardinal sins because they're fun.

Creates living embodiments of those sins which are essentially sentient orbs which can shape-shift. No one really knows about these.

Just wanted an opinion of what these orbs of pure sin are doing with their time.

Pride: Currently ruling the world's largest empire, likes to take the form of a 'perfect' human made of pure crystal.

Greed: Preferred form is a dragon, goes around 'collecting' things they like, which changes every century. Currently hording swords.

Lust: Changes based on what it's fucking that day. Hanging around in the elvish forest as a crow right now

Gluttony: Cast by the others into the Great Western Ocean. Is the reason no one has crossed the Great Western Ocean.

Wrath: Caused the total destruction that led to the setting being in it's 2nd age, only 1000 years ago. Currently asleep in its pure form an (orb of black fire) thanks to

Sloth: Who is technically asleep but also totally aware since it's very good at sleeping, has taken the form of a large cat

Envy: I don't know. It's entire purpose is to fuck over the others so I guess working to that end. Could easily make the plot around it's plans

>>53026194
It's not bad, but try to colour the water and also don't use real names
>>53026340
That's pretty good, though the Gluttony one is a bit weird

>>53026456
I figured the safest place to put something that exists to consume is the ocean since it's fucking huge and has a lot of things to consume in it.

>>53026477
Are there any big depressions? or inland seas, marshes, that kind of stuff? Maybe you could make it so if, say you die in the marshes or you get stucked or whatever, Gluttony sucks you in and eats You. Or maybe have Him inside Earth or something, trying to eat all of the Earth but not having a mouth big enough to actually do it.

>>53026340
Make it so Pride isn't just some emperor but also somer sort of god-emperor. Basically the dude created an entire cult around himself and made its subjects treat it like the living god it probably think it is.
Greed seems a bit boring to be honest. The whole dragon that hoards shit is cool but having it only hoard swords doesn't seem too interesting.
Lust is okay but I don't get why it took the form of a crow only the elves love to fuck those.
I love Glutonny and I'd suggest you make it into something like Charybdis, basically a hugeass living whirlpool that sucks anything that gets too close to it.
Wrath and Sloth are okay.
Regarding Envy, maybe have it manipulate Greed into attacking Pride's empire (because there is no better target for a greedy monster than the most powerful and rich nation in the world) and try to unleash Wrath again.
Sloth could be a neutral party that helps your players against Envy, not out of generosity but because it can't sleep peacefully if the world is getting fucked up.

>>53025182
but it still has to drain somewhat right? or else wouldn't it just become a lake

>>53026525
I have a big depression

a marsh could work, though It lives to consume so anything where It was unable to regularly wouldn't be worth It's time. Hence why I figured the ocean would work since It would have ample access to food without devouring entire continents which is how it would work on land.

>>53026617
You've hit the nail on the head for Sloth and Pride. Sloth is chill as fuck and just wants to nap in peace, Pride is a total egotist and his empire is pretty much a cult.

Lust just wants to fuck crows this month. I wanted to stray away from 'lust is a attractive woman since humans are the only things which have sex', cus that's not true and why would a being of pure sex limit itself to one species.

Charybdis is one idea i was toying with, though I need to work out if They can take more metaphysical forms like forces of nature or just physical ones. They're 100% Material beings so not at all Gods.

As for Envy; releasing Wrath seems a bit too easy, I think Envy is much more vindictive than that. They want to see everything crumble, Wrath would destroy it all with no class.

>>52999421
What music do you guys listen to while you worldbuild?

>>53026755
So what's Envy's endgame? Does it want all the other sins destroyed? Or does he want the world to turn into a complete shithole?
I could suggest some plans he could carry out but I need more info.

>>53026845
the entire human after all album by daft punk on repeat

>>53026845
I was just listening to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSXtXLAVgkE&

>>53026909
This is the problem. Its end game is just to be an almighty dick to the others and I suppose take away everything they've got so it has nothing to be envious of. Total annihilation doesn't really have that cathartic element; I may work out more specific plans it has for individual Sin. Ruining Greed is different from ruining Lust.

>>53026755
>>53026909
Chiming in here, seems to me like envy would have much more interesting involvement in the plot if the main targets of their schemes were humans themselves rather than other sins. After all these sins seem like higher-order beings, right? Yet humanity has the gall to act like it's the dominant species that dictates world progress right now. Envy doesn't always flow towards superior beings after all, but also as spite towards ones that the envious feels are beneath them and need to be put in their place.

So maybe they just want to screw over the actual foundations of human society and have them devolve back into cavemen, rather than simply wipe them out like wrath. To that end, it would put them in direct conflict with Pride who would rather raise humans to build an entire civilization solely to worship, entertain, and support him with a life of leisure and adoration.

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>>53013037
updating in the hopes someone might notice me
I decided it would be cool to have some marsh land in my map but now i'm worrying that its generally to arid? if anyone could give me some advice i'd love to heer anything you have to say.
Things i'd like thoughts on specifically though are...
Does my map follow rules of nature and so on?
and
Does my map create an interesting world at all? i feel there may be far too much empty space

>>53027129
You could have both. Basically Envy's goal would be to bring the other sins's ruin in a way that also fucks up humanity.
For example, ruining Pride would cause a huge power vacuum, shit on the region's politics and probably start a war and ruining Greed would cause an economical crisis.
The problem comes with Sloth, Wrath and Gluttony. The first doesn't have any huge ambitions and her actions don't seem to have much repercussion in the world at large, maybe Envy could expose her true nature and have the humans unleash a massive "witch" hunt where they accuse random women of being Lust in disguise but that's all I can think of.
Wrath and Gluttony seem to be forces of nature rather than human-like individuals so it seems hard to do anything to them besides somehow depowering them so Wrath ends up being a weak and impotent wimp and Gluttony dies from starvation.

>>53026617
>Make it so Pride isn't just some emperor but also somer sort of god-emperor.
Making a reference to Pride without the capital P should be a capital offense (literally).

>>53027329
Saying Pride's name should be an offense too since there is no being in the entire world worthy of using His (Its?) name. He would probably have a 20 kilometer long list of titles and alternative names for people to use.

>>53027319
*economic crisis

>>53027362


They're all non-gendered. Which is entertaining given how people assume gender to Elemental Sins and Lust is always female :P

>>53027129
>>53027319
These are good. I didn't consider Envy's involvement with humanity, but I suppose it would want to fuck them over too. Like i said before, I think it needs to be on a Sin by Sin basis, while also ruining humanity's day as a side goal.

>>53027329
It could even be the origin of the term.

>>53027362
I guess it depends on whether you frame pride as more of an egoist or a narcissist. If the latter, then he'd want people to use it as much as possible and be offended when they don't. Probably has their visage emblazoned everywhere on pretty much everything. Like instead of getting a stamp or wax seal on your postage, your mail "becomes proud" by getting the official glorious headshot of God-Emperor Pride placed onto it. In a day-long process with multiple color screenings involved no less, because having a caricature that is too simplistic just will not do.

>>53027429
so then
wait a sec
what you're saying is
hol up
you're telling me lust is

>genderfluid

As far as cliches go, I'm not a big fan of always displaying Lust as a being always obsessed over sex. There's other ways to spin it.

>>53027528
Genderless

It fucks what is wants to fuck how it wants to fuck it.

>>53027578
I agree to some extent, but this Lust is drawn from human lust, which is sexual. Lusting after other things is covered in the other Sins, all of them are based on want, Lust is sexual want just like Gluttony is food want.

>>53027303
Seems to be broadly ok. Rivers are a major area that many people screw up but aside from the densely forested northern portion (and those are fine) you havn't added any yet so no comment there.

Deserts are ok, mountains blocking moisture laden coastal air. There's nothing wrong with an arid setting and in any case it only takes up maybe a third of your landmass so no worrie there. There's nothing stopping marsh formation in the desert, just stick it along the course of a big river ala the Nile or Tigris to keep it hydrated. Iraq has an extensive network of marshes which might be of interest to you.

Aside from adding rivers, the only thing really missing are the cultures to bring the setting alive. It will soon fill up and not seem quite so empty. Sprinkle some interesting landmarks (which don't show up on a map that scale anyway) and you are done.

>>53027834
just wanted to say thanks a bunch for taking the time to check it, i'll get to adding rivers and such

>>53027924
No problem, it's supposed to be the point of the thread after all.

>>53026845
>What music do you guys listen to while you worldbuild?
One of my personal favorites, as my settings are heavily Naushicaa/Shuna inspired. ¨
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZUppxT38Zk
Since I generally work a lot with central asia inspired themes, I tend to listen to shit like Mongolian throat singing. At times I end up cycling through various folk-inspired music, Percival's Slava and Laboratorium Piesnie seem to pop-up in my playlist quite frequently.

Trying to write info dumps for various setting details, but I can feel myself constantly flipflopping between casual basic infographic style and trying to write it in a more flavorful in-universe style.

Makes them read a bit weird.

>>53028573
Have a look at 'The Riven Codex' which David Eddings did for The Belgariad. It's a good balance of stats and stuff alongside in-universe lore stuff.

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Toughts? It's mostly desert btw

>>53029158
I like it, for some reason. The coastline could do with some second passes (the jagging seems a bit uniform in some regions, like the larger peninsula east cost. For mostly a desert, it has quite a lot of major rivers, many of which originate in fairly low regions, which makes me wonder: what fuels them, because it's probably not going to be snow or icebergs. The mountains could do with a LOT of work - but don't they always, when you are doing topographic maps?
Finally, the odd one mountain/blob thing that has a river nearly encycling it and like six or seven rivers springing from it looks unnatural as fuck, but perhaps that was an intention?

Otherwise, I think what I like it is that the rivers feel fairly natural (not being sure where the water sources are aside) and create a fairly neat pattern. The topography could be further neatly modeled around them. They give the whole map the neat "near fractal" like quality that real-world topography tends to have. It does a lot.

>>53028573
You could make it so a character from the setting is giving the infodump and trying to be all formal but from time to time he goes full purple prose because he can't contain his inner poet.

>>53028573
>nfographic style and trying to write it in a more flavorful in-universe style.
Just clear up your mind about what exactly are you creating the text for. Your own convenience and your own reference materials? Or is it something you are going to give other people to read through? Is it for illustration, setting up mood, or is it supposed to be thorough and encyclopedic?

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>>53029690
Well the weird blob is supposed to be a big plateau so supposedly most water would just fuck off down. And You should ignore most rivers since they're pretty tiny, it's just that i can't make them any smaller. If the people living in this peninsula would make a map they would probably only draw the ones I marked.
Also do You have any suggestions to make the coastline look a bit better? Maybe make a little drawing for me

How big can a habitable/earth like planet be?
Where life can exist as on the earth.

So, I just started DMing a campaign set during what's essentially the world's Early Modern period. I want to have the history of the world advance regardless if the players try to impact the world's politics or not. So for example, if the players do nothing, one side is gonna start using chevauchée tactics against the countryside, or another Kingdom might embargo the one of the combatants, leading to increased prices for gunpowder or decent steel or luxury goods. A city might change hands, and the new government might be Roundheads who execute the player's contacts in the nobility. The question is- will this be any fun for my players? I want to portray the fact that this world has a real history that's constantly happening, regardless of if they hero through it or not, but I feel like it's gonna just make them mad.

>>53030239
Do it but give them hints or outright warm them about some events so they can actually do something about it if they want to.
If you let them know that if they don't take part in a certain conflict then X city might change hands and their contacts in the nobility might be killed, then it's up to them to do something about it or not.
If you suddenly inform them that X city fell into new hands and they lost all their contacts in the nobility then they'll probably get mad.
Of course, there should also be events they can't influence but those should be few or otherwise they might feel like they are just background characters in your story.

>>53030305
See, I was gonna give them a bunch of in-game warnings (stuff like merchants packing up and leaving if an army's on the way, or being able to hear which cities and principalities are taking which side). But when I gave them a warning in the first and second session about how there's a succession crisis in the kingdom they're currently in, which is gonna lead to a war, they pretty much said something like "Who cares lmao".

So I don't wanna punish them for not being interested in politics, but at the same time I don't want to give them game the feeling that politics are just stagnant.

>>53030424
It's not punishing them. If they are told something will happen and they decide to allow it to happen anyway, then they have no right to complain when said thing happens.

>>53030424
The other thing is to make the players actions have a real impact, potentially out of proportion of strict realism as a concession that they are the protagonists of the story.

Sure, by ignoring the warnings some contacts got swept up in the purge but the effect of their raiding on the enemie soil or other daring escapades snowballed (a general got captured, prompting military collapse and the threat of internal rebellion back home) into forcing the enemy to the negotiating table with the roundheads forced to recognise our heroes as a major factor in that outcome.

The world continues to run even when they are not looking, but the players still have a large impact and hopefully avoid feeling like nothing they do matters- and that perception of a lack of agency regardless of justification is what often kills interest in games. Obviously if they sit in a cellar sticking carrots up their noses there is only so much you can do though.

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>>53024965
That's an issue I suppose. It's very hard to come up with something, it's not like there are differences, but making something insulting-sounding by default is difficult.
Lot depends on how you say it and in what context, of course.

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more hand drawn jungle to feed my oncoming carpal tunnel

>>53032311
Is that thing in the middle supposed to look like an angry face?

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>>53018008
>good

I don't know have anything like that, but I do have a concept for like an elven headdress with covered perforated flares on the sides custom formed to each elf who has one commissioned (lords and triple OG kingsguard and shit)

>>53032459
the filthy mud farmers that live in that humid shithole think it's supposed to look like an angry face, but thats mostly because apart from avoiding the venomous fauna (read, all of the fauna), the only thing to do is star at the ground.

eventually people realized that it kinda looked like a face, someone said it was the angry god who put them on that shitty little deserted island/pseudo-penninsula thing, and before you knew it there were ziggurats and little virgin girls getting stabbed over copper bowls.

>>53026194
Wrong horde, unless it's a big pile of red stuff.

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>A world on the back of a giant snake
>Tall valleys, snowy peaks and dense jungles all grow and hug to the scales of the serpent like mold
>Each time the snake molts the people living on the surface go with the shed skin, society collapsing as the ground under them begins to die from losing the heat provided by the serpent. Necromancers and other dark forces flourish on these 'Skin worlds' as people run out of ways to grow food.
>Occasionally, the serpent will bump into one of its old shed skins - giving former inhabitants a brief period where they can travel to the new world through the point of contact.
>Some cultures near the head of the snake have managed to live on through multiple skin cycles through migrating *during* the molting itself. Moving from from the shed skin to the fresh head of the snake during the brief period allowed.
>Only cultures who existed from previous cycles would know of the nature of the molting, the vast amount of time between sheddings giving no reason for concern for the people who live near the tail.

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>>53018008
I actually did some time ago. I couldn't find them... I am shit at armor design, though.

What is a good way to classify different biomes?

how the h*ck do steppes form

Should Lizardmen or Kobolds or something live in your Sahara equivalent?

>>53033125
Kinda cool. Do people notice the shedding, or do they go "lol stars changed", "oh snap it's a fifth shitty harvest in row!", etc?

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>>53026022
Isn't there always some judgment involved?
Actions have consequences, this isn't just about some frogmen as sources of XP and loot. You need to decide whether the harm they cause is worth risking some of your warriors. And should you worry about retaliation, either mundane or supernatural?

>>53026032
The frogmen of the Dankness swamp are known to forage and hunt extensively during the rain season. Even though they do not actively seem to hunt people, conflicts do arise when they attempt to raid livestock from outlying farms. Winters are often harsh after a particularly active frogman season, since you still rely on hunters and gatherers to supplement your food supply.

>>53036875
Have there been large conflicts between the frogmen and people living nearby?

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>>53037024
Frogman-induced scarcity takes the lives of some of the more vulnerable humans, that is infants, the ill and the elderly, every winter.

But the last actual large conflict between humans and frogmen is something even the eldest only recall from stories told to them.

This nearly-forgotten conflict began as human settlers began colonizing the lands bordering on the then much larger Dankness swamp. They cut down forests for farmland and reclaimed some of the outermost reaches of the swamp. The frogmen retaliated, and a series of bloody battles determined what has been the border between frogman and human lands ever since. The regions bordering on frogman lands are still sparsely populated.

>>53036875
Yeah that's what I'm saying is a shitty hook. "Deciding" can be done in like ten seconds -- give your players an actual goal to work towards, which allows them to weigh their options as to how to get there.

>>53037573
I figured that the overarching goal here is survival. Regardless of personal character goals or even a 'main quest' goal, the PCs have a vested interest in helping their community prosper.

No man is an island and all that.

>>53030185

My maps always tend to be smaller than Earth. I wonder this same thing also.

Anyone who builds a fantasy world with real-world physics is a fucking idiot. This includes globes in space. This includes tectonics. This absolutely includes atoms.

Fantasy means FANTASY. If you do this...I lose a lot of respect for your worlds.

>>53039380
You are a moron, who does not understand what fantasy means at all.

>>53039408
Lemme guess: you think Malazan is the best thing to happen to fantasy.

Unless you're triggered by the "globes" comment, in which case you should know it's specifically PLANETS I'm talking about. Globes in general are fine, especially if geocentric. I thought I made that clear with the space thing...

>>53039380
This. And evolution too. Don't get me started on those people who start with the map and then "ork out" their world.

>>53039380

What a stupid thing to say. A fantasy world can very well be a plausible alternative world, that is, that follows conventional physics.

>>53039429
>Lemme guess: you think Malazan is the best thing to happen to fantasy.
Nope. Honestly, never really even read that.

>in which case you should know it's specifically PLANETS I'm talking about. Globes in general are fine, especially if geocentric.
This makes even less sense and shows that you have even less of a clue what the fuck are you talking about.

>>53039452
Only if you lobotomise fantasy until it looks like "superpowers but with elves". You are the cancer killing SFF.
>>53039460
Globes are plainly fantastical, because many ancient peoples believed in them and made myths about them. Planets in fantasy are just dumb scientivist wankery, and only a STEMlord could mistake it for good writing.

>>53039472
>You are the cancer killing SFF.
Actually you are the moron lobotomising fantasy by imposing arbitrary categorical rules without having any fucking idea what the whole exercise is about. It's a textbook case of "I like thing A, I don't even understand why and what makes it good but I like it and therefor I'll make a global rule that anything that does not mindlessly adehere to the exact same model as the thing I liked is BAD."

>>53039472
>and only a STEMlord could mistake it for good writing.
If you think good writing is determined by adherence to your own completely arbitrary fucking calls on what is "GOOD GENRE FICTION" based on formal restraints, you can't tell good writing from a bad one if it hit you in the face.

>>53039472

What if I don't include elves or superpowers in my world? It still is fantasy, as in an alternative world, just not your kind of fantasy.

>>53039501
Or maybe, maybe I know mindlessly aping the real world for no reason scalpels out any creativity your world might otherwise have.

Name one piece of good fantasy which is set on a "real" planet. Go on.

When you can't, think about WHY that might be. Think about WHY every good work of fantasy is either explicitly NOT realistic, or just doesn't give a fuck about such irrelevant nonsense.
>>53039510
Fantasy doesn't mean alternative world you retard, otherwise capeshit's fantasy isn't it? And so's fucking Star Wars.
>just not your kind of fantasy
Because I don't associate with steaming piles of shit.

>>53039646
Middle-earth fucking IS Earth in the later ages.

>In b4 "hurr durr tolkein isn't even good u pleb"

>>53039646
You literally don't know anything. Not about fiction, or genre fiction.
You see, the problem here never was in "applying real world" (which by the way, you are just as guilty by demanding that the logic mindlessly adheres to ancient mythological archetypes from real world instead): the problem is always, exclusively, in the "MINDLESS".
Because THAT is the only thing that matters. If you create any kind of fiction mindlessly, without without consideration of the structures of meanings and symbolism you build up, it's going to be shit. And it has absolutely nothing with whenever you decide to use contemporary speculativism or archaic mythological foundations for your fiction:
Either its symbolically relevant and interconnected, or not. It's never about the form, it's never about the actual genre conventions: it's about having a purpose to every element that you use.

>>53039646
>Name one piece of good fantasy which is set on a "real" planet. Go on.
Borges's Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tetius? Chiang's 72 Letters? Virtually any short story by Ray Bradbury? Anything by fucking Lovecraft? The fact that you know fuck all about fantasy isn't my problem.

>>53039755
Are you seriously trying to imply that Tolkien thought about plate tectonics when making his world? This is the shit I mean when I say "doesn't give a fuck about irrelevant nonsense". Are you going to argue Demonland obeys real world physics just because it's """set""" on Mercury?

Of course Tolkien is good you retard.

>>53039784
Stop moving the goal posts. If he based it on earth, he based it on a real planet.

I don't give a shit whether he went full geologist on every square mile.

I'm going to write a riveting story about non-Euclidian object-gods interacting electromagnetically in a universe that's basically a Penrose triangle.

There won't be any environments, events, characters or even living things that are recognizable to a human reader but that just means it's THE BEST FANTASY.

>>53039867
I don't think anyone actually said anything like that.
That said, Flatland already exists. So does Alice. So yeah... you would not be the first one to attempt something like that, and some of it succeeded too.

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Is it possible to write a world conquering empire as not really that evil?

Like, obviously they are just taking over everything which I guess is kinda bad, but the idea I had was they are doing it just because they can/they feel like it's their right/whatever, but everywhere they conquer ends up better off. They don't take over kingdoms and leave them to rot or murderrape everyone, they actually improve upon them.

Is this dumb? I mean it sounds kinda dumb, but I like the idea of this war machine taking over everything and making it all better yet people are upset because MUH FREEDOMS

>>53039814
I'm moving the goalposts by quoting something I'd previously said?

Perhaps you should think about that for a moment. Then you can respond to me properly.
>>53039782
And you see above. We're talking about building a world with real-life physics, NOT setting the world on Earth (unless you're doing something weird like Tolkien). Obviously some good authors have set a certain kind of fantasy on Earth (you only named one btw).
>>53039867
It's been done. Too gimmicky IMO, unless the gimmick is the point a la Borges.

>>53039954
You'd have to actually think it through. It's a cliche, so you'll have to make sure you're not lazily relying on its various conventions.

Personally speaking this whole "the empire accidentally makes things better" thing is pretty unengaging. I'd find it more interesting if you linked it to some kind of deliberate philosophy, like Communists who want to eventually unshackle humanity, or Legalists who just want to give peace a chance (through bloodshed).

But whatever you do, do NOT make it some shitty aesop like
>this war machine taking over everything and making it all better yet people are upset because MUH FREEDOMS

>>53039955
>And you see above. We're talking about building a world with real-life physics,
No, we are not, you god-damn idiot. We are talking about building a good fiction. Period. It does not matter if it takes place on Earth, alternative Earth or pseudo-earth, or a completely fictional world like Tlon, which is explicitly stated to take place on a different planet. What people are explaining to you, you god-damn moron, is that is not what ever matters.

You are still completely missing the point, focusing on superficiality and arbitrary rule that does not even fucking work for yourself (as you just fucking proved with the whole Tolkien Debacle). You have no clue what makes a fiction good.

Also, what the FUCK do you mean I only named "one". One what you moron?

>>53039954
>Is it possible to write a world conquering empire as not really that evil?
You mean like most empires were, or at least viewed themselves?

>>53040022
>We are talking about building a good fiction
Strange, I thought this was the worldbuilding general. And I thought I said, in my very first post, "world". Don't think I ever mentioned fiction.

I don't see much discussion of narratives, or character. In fact, it's pretty much just worlds. Don't try and defend your shitty world with the works of authors much better than you.
>One what you moron?
One good writer you fucking idiot.

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>>53040034

I suppose. I guess I'm just looking too far into video games and generic fantasy shit where all the EVIL EMPIRES CONQUERING THE WORLD are all mustache twirling villains sitting in dimly lit rooms laughing about how they're going to rule the world.

Oh well.

>>53040022
Not that anon but he's right he was talking about worlds. Still badwrongfun faggotry

>>53040050
>Strange, I thought this was the worldbuilding general.
Yeah. And this might shock you, but world-building is a form of fiction building. And your ENTIRE argument is that employing certain kinds of strategies of world-building makes them BAD. Since world-building IS EXCLUSIVELY fiction-building, you said that these strategies lead to poor fiction.
So yeah. The discussion is, and has been from the start, about what makes a fiction (specifically narrowed down to the type of fiction we call "world-building") good or bad.
Simple math, really.

>Don't think I ever mentioned fiction.
Are you actually brain-damaged? Did you think we were talking about non-fictional world-building? That this is a thread for actual, real demiurges and their completely non-fictional, existing, real world creations?
Dude, get your shit together, this is sad.

>I don't see much discussion of narratives, or character.
Fiction, my retarded friend, is not defined by characters. And narrative is literally the broadest term in narrativistic theory. Of course we are talking narratives. If we communicate ideas of fiction, we create narratives. That is what creating communicable messages and ideas mean.

>One good writer you fucking idiot.
First of all: if you can't even fucking put together basic sentence, maybe don't call others "idiots". Its literally impossible to decypher what you meant in that post.
Second of all: out of Borges, Bradbury, Chiang and Lovecraft, you are going to claim only one is a good author? Is this a joke?

I know for a fact that since you already mentioned him, you refer to Borges. What you don't know, however, is that Borges himself valued Bradbury on par with Wells and Lovecraft on par with Poe and above Hawthorne. And Chiang is pretty much the best contemporary speculative fiction author in the world.
So yeah, you really, really don't know shit about anything. You are painfully fucking clueless.

>>53040170
Now who's changing the goalposts, huh?

Let's not pretend worldbuilding is the be-all-end-all when it comes to fiction. You can write good literature in a shit world. But this is worldbuilding, so I'm talking about building bad worlds.
>specifically narrowed down to the type of fiction we call "world-building"
Good fucking job.

>Fiction: literature in the form of prose, especially novels, that describes imaginary events and people.

Dumb.
>Its literally impossible to decypher what you meant in that post.
For you, perhaps.
>Borges himself valued Bradbury on par with Wells and Lovecraft on par with Poe and above Hawthorne.
Yeah and Nabby thought Tolstoi was better than Dostoevsky, and Tolstoi thought Shakespeare was trash. What's your point?

Did you ever even have one?

>>53040415
>Now who's changing the goalposts, huh?
You. It's still you, and literally nobody else.

>Let's not pretend worldbuilding is the be-all-end-all when it comes to fiction.
Yeah, nobody is doing that. MOVING GOAL POSTS, YOU MORON. YOU LITERALLY JUST DID IT. World-building is not be-all-end-all when it comes to fiction. In fact, fiction can be created without world-building entirely.
However, you can't world build without creating fiction. That is because world-building is only a specific TYPE of fiction-building. As I clearly stated in my previous post: you can build fiction without world-building, but you can't world-build and not be creating fiction, unless, once again, you are actually a fucking demiurge who can create worlds - literally, planes of physical existence out of nothing. World-building literally means "creating FICTIONAL worlds". Unless you can make an argument about creating fictional world not having to be creating fiction in itself, you can go fuck right off.

>Good fucking job.
The fuck? I'm just stating shit that everybody except you has already fucking figured before this discussion started, you moron. The fact that I even need to clear all these most basic understandings of the exercise to you one-by-one is baffling.

>Fiction: literature in the form of prose, especially novels, that describes imaginary events and people.
Did you just get that from a free on-line lexicon, or just pulled out of your ass. It does not matter that much, both have the same value. Pro-tip: free on-line dictionaries are do not have authority or prescriptive function, moron. Learn and read basic literary theory instead.
You just defined all fiction as prose, especially novels. So... Movies are not fiction? Epic poems are not fiction? Short stories are apparently probably not fiction either. Amazing, really. I never knew!

>What's your point?
That you are dumber than all of those people, so you don't actually get to be a judge on these things. At all.

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>>53040170
>>53040415
>>53040480
I love these

>>53039380
This is an incredibly limiting, creatively bankrupt, and generally stupid way of thinking.

If you're getting started on world building, go read this chain of posts. It's a great example of how not to think.

>>53039954
>obviously they are just taking over everything which I guess is kinda bad
You need to ask yourself why this is bad.

Peoples historically subjugated and eradicated other peoples. Another 'tribe' of humans could be thought of as inferior for any number of reasons. If someone is inferior anyway, what's bad about killing them to make room for more of your own tribesmen?

This mentality may still be prevalent in a fantasy world. Sure, we would probably consider it evil in the extreme, but that doesn't mean we can't reference it in fiction.

Why do you think orcs, goblins and the like are advanced, intelligent or human-like enough to form tribes, but still inhuman enough to slaughter when they become an issue in most game worlds? Maybe the writer considered staples like orcs and other inhuman races an absolute requirement for fantasy for some reason. But more often than not, they're just a stand-in for other humans. The writer wanted to include conquest over other tribes in his narrative, but he didn't want to explicitly refer to subjugating other humans so as not to offend modern sensibilities.

This is one approach to basing your fiction on history. You can just pick the aspects that you like and 'clean' them up a bit. This is not objectively wrong.

>>53040480
So mad about being called out.

Let's not try and hide what you've been doing: I talked about worlds, you brought up a bunch of other guys who don't even do worldbuilding (with the kind-of exception of Borges), and then claimed that this was relevant because it's "fiction". But we weren't talking about "fiction". We were talking about worldbuilding.

The dictionary may not be exact or technical, but it does reflect common usage. And, anon, this is a decidedly common conversation.

Besides, we both know that debate is meaningless distraction on your part. How about we concentrate on the actual argument, i.e., that real physics in fantastic worldbuilding is lazy and bad?

Perhaps now you see why you're moving the goalposts.
>>53040606
Do you wanna tell me why you would ever want to use real physics? Because, I ain't seeing a lot of arguments here.

>>53040606
There is actually a grain of truth in it. Or at least a sentiment and intuition that is kinda partially related to something that might be true.

It is true that there is a general problem with people mixing speculative and mythological narratives without any regards for how each of them work and whenever the compliment each other and move the story towards becoming a more meanigful concept.
It's true that a lot of people cripple both their own creativity and their fiction itself by wasting time on speculations and automatic adoption of real-world-like physics in cases and narratives where they don't really belong. It's the "what are the genetic origins of elves" or "how does centaur dietology work" cases. It's less of a problem when it comes to things like map-making, where actual understanding of tectonics or river hydrodynamics don't serve so much narrative function, as aesthetic, by helping to create maps that look belivable, and thus are generally more aesthetically pleasing.

The guy screams against something that annoys him intuitively and for understandable reasons. He is just completely clueless about what it really means, and why there is a problem.

>>53040642
>use real physics? Because, I ain't seeing a lot of arguments here.
Because it's our entire frame of reference on all of existence? Hey guess what, unless you're playing a game where sentient color wavelengths solve abstract conceptual puzzles in a Salvador Dali mindscape, you're probably incorporating physics into your game.

Either way it's not about whether or not you should. It's the fact that if you're so incapable of making something creative or interesting out of something as basic as a "realistic" world, you're a hack that really shouldn't be trying to pass hos own limitations off as advice.

>>53040680
Anon, literally all of that is what I meant. Of course I know what it really means, and why it's a problem. What did you THINK I was saying?
>>53040775
>Because it's our entire frame of reference on all of existence?
Oh, you're one of THOSE autists. No, anon, the effects of our physics might be, but not their mechanics. Do you think we cannot understand ancient, or even just OLD stories, even though they do not use real-world physics? Don't be absurd.

>>53040801
Oh btw I also have zero sympathy for anyone who uses name generators. But I think we all know why that's bad.

>>53040642
>So mad about being called out.
I'm just going to keep this hanging here, so anyone else who may have been following this discussion to appreciate the insane irony here.

>I talked about worlds,
Which, as we established, a FICTION,
>you brought up a bunch of other guys who don't even do worldbuilding
You literally asked me to name good fantasy taking place on a real planet. Refer to you own post >>53039782 here. Again, who the fuck is moving the goal posts?
>But we weren't talking about "fiction".
Since all world-building is a fiction by definition, we were talking about fiction. You even declared it "shit". You can't declare something shit and not talk about it as about fiction: it's the fiction and only the fiction that can be judged.

>We were talking about worldbuilding.
And for the last time, the two are the same thing, for the purposes of this discussion, because gain, all world building is a fiction (even if not all fiction is world-building).

>but it does reflect common usage.
First of all, it does not. second of all, this isn't common usage, really. And if you can't keep with more exact terminology and discussion, do not pick up arguments about specific and largely academic subject matter. Because you clearly lack the actual education, knowledge, experience and authority on it. Which by the way, is ultimately my point: that you have absolutely no authority or knowledge or experience to pass the kind of judgements that you did.

>that real physics in fantastic worldbuilding is lazy and bad?
That actually still is the ultimate subject matter here. Specifically, the proof that your opinion that they are is completely unjustified and unsubstantiated. Which was proven by proving that you are not even using the terms right, much less understand their relevance in terms of literary evaluation.