/wbg/ - World Building General

>>55049814
>>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
It's more or less modern, about three years behind us (it is starting early march 2014 after all)
>>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Depends on the country. The party is in the US so it varies by state but tends towards urban.
>>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Most people embrace it although elements of it are feared, especially in regards to power generation.
>>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
It is our world so no.
>>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Warfare.
>>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Both.
>>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
I wanted to so I gave my players the option of me making a setting in M&M (dieselpunk with magic and some magitech) or an altered DC universe. They wanted fate so we switched to Dresden Files.

>>55049814
What are some Hellenistic monsters I can add to my iron age setting?

>>55050720
What ones do you already have, what system, and what sort of roles are you trying to fill with them?

What are your favorite Chinese eras or aesthetics that really nail the feel for you?
Just anything you can think of that you like or inspires you.

>>55051330
Late 1800's/early 1900's China.

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>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Something like a fusion of mid 17th century style (Baroque?) on top of mid 19th century mechanics. All powered, however, by ectoplasm. They basically burn ghosts instead of coal. Cutting edge technology would be Any sort of moving machine, especially mechs.

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Most people live in urban areas as of the last 50 years or so. Overharvesting of ectoplasm has basically caused Global Ghosting, which has rendered vast swaths of the planet haunted as shit. Think WW1 battlefields, but the whole world outside of some safe zones.

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Most people are chagrined that no one noticed the Ghost problem coming soon enough to fix, though many put great hope in technology somehow being able to one day reverse the damages. Lots of folk are slowly turning to cults like the Church of the Broken Gear, who use technology to capture and destroy other forms of it, with the intent of annihilating civilization itself and allowing nature to heal the world. They're a bit nuts.

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>>55049814
>>55052032
>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Not really. I suppose Mithral and Adamantine would be interesting materials to work with though. I wonder what their real-world properties would be described like? Does Mithral have good/poor conductivity?

>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Warfare, definitely. Though transportation, basic lighting and heating also improved tremendously with Ectopunk technology (not the real name).

>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Um. Global Ghosting. So no...

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
I have, and it was fucking great actually.

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How does this look for mountain placement? I always have trouble deciding where they need to go.

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How often do you guys just reimagine contemporary borders to construct a new nation most /comfy/ to you?

Here's mine, "Adriatica", a "Parliamentary Cameralist/Georgist Republic with Elective Monarchistic Features", at least in modernity. It's a reformation and capitulation of a collapsing Venetian Republic.

I want the language to be some sort of a syncretic hybrid of most of the regional languages within these borders, so it would seem to be a "Mostly Romantic language with notes of Germanic Bavarian and South-Western Slavic influence."

The languages needed to consider are —
- Eastern Emiliano-Romagnolo
- Venetian
- Eastern Lombard
- Cimbrian Bavarian
- Mócheno Bavarian
- Ladin
- South Tyrolese
- Fruilan
- Carinthian Bavarian
- Slovene
- Istriot
- Serbo-Croatian

What the hell would that language sound like?

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First impressions for my map?

The scale isn't completely decided yet, but I don't want to make it too huge. Might post some lore stuff a little later.

>>55053297
Oh and obviously it's nowhere near finished

>>55049814
is there any questionnare/random gen for religions?

>>55053297
I like it so far, better than my maps.

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>>55049814
>>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?

This is my setting. Dragons have ruled over humans since the dawn of man. They have used them as pawns in their games. The only place humans have found freedom have been isolated in the wartorn borderlands between the two great powers.

A great was has been going on for five years now, and humans are seeing opportunities to rebel against their Draconic overlords.

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>>55053071

>>55053071
Mountains are the result of tectonic plates colliding with each other. They do not make 180° turns like that.

>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Since I'm working on a setting to accommodate a few RPGs and wargames I'm interested as well as my homebrews in a single universe, cutting age is quite advanced magitech, but setting in general is more or less medieval. I'm still figuring out a good way to maintain medieval stasis.
>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
It depends. World's pretty screwed up and rebuilding/reconquering all the time, so its hard to say.
>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Aside from a few factions, not too well. As a matter of fact, I'm consider a luddite deity a main force behind medieval stasis.
>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Probably. I'm sure I'll use words "ether" and "phlogiston".
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Warfare. Also entertainment. One of the minor factions will be a mechanical carnival / slaughter-fair.
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
I doubt they benefit from anything, its a crapsack world.

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
You mean Call of Cthulhu?

>>55050720
Stimphaian birds. The ones with iron feathers that rain them on enemies like arrows.
Weapons and armor made from those feathers could be much prized.

Tell me about gypsies. What should I know about them besides "uh muh so mysterious nomads whose women are all soothsayers and have evil eye and all men are thieves"?
Which settings have done gypsies well? I know about Vistani of Ravenloft and Strigani of Warhammer already.

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>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
It's ancient world up untill early medieval period in comparison to real life. I would suppose that the cutting edge would be the various mechanical or automaton statues and animals dotted around the imperial quarter of the capital of Nyhem. These animals and statues can then be made to move and make noises through the ingenious workings of the imperial engineers.

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Most live in rural areas allthough the massive and increasingly numerous latisfundia, i.e gigantic landed estates worked by slaves, have started to force the rural population into the urban areas in hope of finding work. This has in turn lead to large slums forming in the larger cities and a massive spike in criminal activity.
>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
There's a loose political party that is championing the rights of the commoners. They have as one of there most important agenda the breakup of the latisfundia system and the parting out of the land to the common people to work it as small landholders. Whenever a new territorial gain that is suitable for farming is made the party also makes quite a ruckus in favour of carving it up into small farmsteads.
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology?
Mostly in infrastructure as the rich people compete amongst eachother in building the most impressive public buildings and aqueducts etc.
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
They've benefitted greatly from the increase in availible water sources and health facilities such as public baths.

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>>55050404
What are the main features of your setting? Those questions don't answer much in your case
.>>55052032
Interesting.How are ghosts harvested? How was this ghost energy source discovered in the first place?
>>55053071
Honestly shouldn't matter unless you really really want realistic as possible geography. Though I feel that continent/island at the bottom have too many parallel mountain lines, and there's no one saying mountains have to be in Tolkien ranges.
>>55053190
I've done it a few times casually actually. It's kinda fun. But I know fuck all about languages beyond rudimentary understanding, sorry man.
>>55053297
I like the style? Do you draw much?
>>55053340
I could type one up, no guarantees that it would be good.
>>55053378
Is there a reason it has taken until the 1920's for man to rise up against dragons? What could mankind do now to make victory a possibility?
>>55054609
I'm still figuring out a good way to maintain medieval stasis
I've had a many difficult ponder over that myself anon. No good answers so far.
>>55054635
Do you mean fantasy stereotypical gypsies, or information on them historically? I know nothing of either, but you can always study historical gypsies as inspiration.
>>55054755
For some reason I read "latisfundia" as being giant floating estates the first time lmao. Tell me about the imperial engineers though.

I'm writing a PF setting. I have the cosmology and some history and the like, but no map yet. Is this thread a place to ask for criticism?

>>55055863
Yes, but no guarantee that someone will read all of it.

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>>55049814
Was trying to work to flesh-out an idea I had for a setting and was looking for help:

The primary setting's major Human civilization are refugees from a different 'prime material plane' that had begun to drift into the negative energy plane, resulting in their world being overrun by the undead on a 'zombie apocalypse' scale scenario. The gods controlling this plane created a means for those humans to escape into their world. Of course much of the precautions and preventative measures one might adopt in a zombie survival scenario (read the Zombie Survival Guide for reference) have become the custom and traditions of their society. things like always carrying weapons, shunning unarmed combat, the practice of decapitating and cremating their dead within 24 hours of death, etc... What I'm wanting to work out is how this might affect the function and organization of their communities. what kind of government would this society create? how autonomous would their communities be? would they form large nations? or autonomous city-states?

any suggestions?

>>55052032
>>55052051
I'd play in your setting Anon, that sounds rad as fuck. Are there different threat levels of ghosts? How are mediums perceived in this setting? Is ghostbusting a legit occupation?

>>55055643
>Interesting.How are ghosts harvested? How was this ghost energy source discovered in the first place?

Ectoplasm had been in use by Necromancers and other mages since time immemorial for various purposes. When this world entered an industrial revolution ala Iron Kingdoms, the demands for cheap and plentiful magic/energy grew. Eventually, a cabal of young, enterprising wizards, alchemists, and educated layfolk developed an arcane ritual that could quickly and easily draw ectoplasm from the Elemental Plane of Ghosts/Ectoplasm. They made a lot of coin off this discovery until the secret got out, and the race was on.

Later on larger Arcane Engines were developed to industrialize the process. The rest is history.

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Me on the right.

>>55057893
Yes, though I haven't crystalized a rating system. Something like Shade<Spook<Haunt etc.

Mediums are useful, though I'm not sure what all you mean by them.

Ghostbusting will be one of the main PC occupations in this setting.

>The not!Arabs have created airships to travel the northern straits so I guess thats the most high tech thing in my world. Though I guess Roman Empire tier infrastructure is cutting edge in my setting. My setting is most like late middle ages in terms of tech (with the exception of some magical applications where mages are). Mages are few and far between in the world outside of some magocracies though so that doesn't help much.
>Many people live in rural areas with a some starting to move towards the urban centers as they start to industrialize. While the rural areas rely on help from the central city government to aid their agricultural growth, the cities operate as centers of trade, commerce, and a connection to the outside world, which is more or less the main reason why people move there.
>Only the large empires are able to heavily industrialize but then they are to control their populace either through force or other means. a lot of states turn to military police as a solution to this, sometimes mage-centered MP units. Some magocracies intitally rejected industrialization in favor of "people's union" esque mage revolts. These would die out though as industrialized trade took over the market.
>More or less the same.
>Mostly transportation and manufacturing power, but some more trade-based empires have been able to establish communication infrastructure
>Some of the mage-states have suffered due to increased military pressure from the northern kingdoms but for the most part everyone has benefited.

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
Fuck yes, I would love to play a war-based diselpunk mech game with psionics piloting the mechs evangelion-style. Put a bunch of mechanized warfare in there for good measure and some war crimes in the name of the empire.

>>55051330
Han China wuxia mystical martial arts with fighters zooming through the trees in the bamboo forests of ancient China. Though the Chinese Revolution in the 20th century is pretty good.

>>55058072
>Luca Turilli
Are there really Chads with that good taste ?

>>55051330
Ancient Chinese warlords zoomin around with sick-ass war-chariots before anyone else has even thought about wheels

So I'm making a rating system for the holy relics that are a big feature of the world I'm making, what do you guys think of this system?

>Heretical Relic: Relics imbued with powers of the Forgotten Gods, which have lost all of their power more or less.
>Old God Relic: Relics imbued with the power of the Old Gods, which are still worshiped in some places by the commonfolk. Very powerful and rival God or Er'torath Relics in power. Most of these relics were taken during the Inquisition War.
>Noble Relic: On par with the Divine Relics in power and given to the original twelve holy houses.
>Divine Relic: The most numerous of relics and either held by the church or given to the Royal Family or their close relatives.
>God Relic: Some of the most powerful relics known to the public and only given to members of the royal family.
>Er'torath Relic: The most powerful relics in existence, who's existence is only known by higher ups in the church. Kept under lock and key.

>>55058072
>only posts in /wbg/ to critique others
Yep, that's me!

>>55054616
Stymphalian birds actually have bronze beaks and feathers, magic bronze.
>>55055643
It's the Dresden Files universe with some minor alterations (most just mean that what we've heard from Harry, especially about Boston, is a bit off). It's basically our world with some magic and mythological things added on as something pretty much nobody knows about.

>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting?
Not very. Most organized "nations" are really just groups of barbarians with loose governments and structure. The only thing close to a real nation was destroyed in a magical explosion cause by the equivalent of a mage's nuclear cold war.
>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Mostly rural, but there's enough trade going around for there to be cities and city states. Around the cities, rural areas are mostly farmland. Outside of these regions, it's mostly nomadic tribes.
>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Industrialization isn't much of a thing, but there is a trend of many member of nomadic tribes coming into contact with these city states and some assimilating, some just sieging the cities for loot.
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Mostly warfare and utility. And by utility, I mean farming practices and equipment. Transportation is also improving as one of the city-states rediscovered paved roads from one of the fallen empires.
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Mostly improved, although I guess advancements in warfare make it easier to kill each other.
>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
Tried something similar before. It was fun if the setting was rather under-cooked.

How would you go about arming an airship, let's say they're kept aloft by magic. They're primarily made of wood, and metallurgy hasn't advanced to the point having cannons, but ballista are common. So would the logical thing to do for air to group attack be having ballista with a natural low angle or would literally dropping explosives over the side or opening a trap door be better?

>>55059001
Dropping explosives sounds like a good strategy. I would assume ballista would be for air to air combat. Though if its kept aloft by magic maybe using magic for ground assaults is a good idea. And then there's the question of how low it can get or wants to get. Is this a high altitude airship or a low flying one?

Open ended questions:

-Is it optimal to follow the standard cardinal direction layout found in most fantasy? North is cold, south is hot, west is occidental civilization and/or new world, east and far east is asiatic. Does it trip you up for the 'far west' to be the mysterious orient?

>>55049814

>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Feudalism, in space, with magic enabling knights to keep existing. Cutting edge is the tech of the lords, restrained from the masses it powers allow them to cheat physics
>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Urban mostly, coruscant types or hives a common, but there are rural worlds, and worlds that aren't fully urbanized either
>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
The farmer caste typically bitches about it as hard as possible, people have a bit of dislike of cyborgs because the elite have used to further the power gap between noble and peasant.
>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Our materials exists, but some fictional material exists too
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology?
Most of them.
>Entertainment?
Magic has opened a few magic circuses as well some theme parks.
>Communication?
Magic enables comms over FTL distances, meaning you can shitpost with other planets
>Utility?
I am still thinking of some.
>Transportation?
There are public teleporters, then transport em masse, better than a bus, but you gotta pay
>Warfare?
Knights are literal supermen, but on the other hand, the peasantry doesn't die in droves
>General Consumer Goods?
Again, thinking of some of them
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
I'd say its more inclined to suffered, the elite now truly have an iron grip over the masses, no revolt is going to work. But on the other hand, they aren't many lords who sociopaths, some who are assholes in general tend to fuck up the lands they rule over.

>>55059049
Lets say low, like 100ft low

>>55060114
Archers or ballista should be fine then. Mages as well if there are enough of them. Might even have paratroopers if military is sophisticated enough.

>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
It varies in different parts of the world. Some areas where Mages have more power and magic is still common are not quite "technologically" advanced, but those with access to Mages guilds live quite comfortably. Elsewhere, however, technology is effectively shifting from mid to late 17th century, and the Scientific Revolution is just coming to term. Many Mages are fearful of what this age of discovery will entail, as magic in this world is highly dependent on the sense of "wonder" of those affected by it. A man who knows an outside force will not move unless acted upon, for instance, cannot be affected by psychokinesis.

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Rural, though cities are growing.

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
The Mages, as Industrialization is taking away from their monopoly of power.

>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Not really. There's some specialized alloys and metals that can be forged via magic, but they are rare and not necessarily better than anything else.

>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Transportation has seen the biggest boost so far, with manufacturing in second.

>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Net benefit.

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?

I was in one once. Kind of a Shadowrun in Lost Generation Paris. It was interesting.

>large worm-like semi-aquatic creatures
>roughly the size of a cow or horse
>tameable and mountable
>race of people who live in a swampy coastal environment who are also semi-aquatic
>worms survive off of basically any plant material they can get their hands on, everything from moss to leaves, to grass

What advantages do aquatic mounts like these have to a society in terms of military and economics?

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So, I've got an idea in mind for a fantasy setting with a superhero leaning. It's a city, one that's sort of a combination of various European locales and NYC. It's a coastal cultural hub with a long history of various religious traditions, lots of immigration, and control of trade routes. In fact, I think it's actually a city-state, having maintained independence through the ages because of its control of these trade routes. And ages have indeed passed; the tech level of this setting is roughly at the level of the 1980's.

My question is, given a similar amount of time and progression to our world, how plausible is it for a single city to remain independent up to the modern age, where fighter jets, advanced logistics, and communications technology all exist? And what if there's a similar political situation to the Cold War, with two (or perhaps several) superpowers vying for global dominance?

It should be noted that magic is present in this setting, at least of the spiritual/faith variety, and that deities (or creatures awe-inspiring enough to be considered such) exist.

>>55060696
It would be possible if some sort of cloaking magic exists. If not, I don't think so. It's extremely difficult to remain isolated and hidden in a world with satellite and radar technologies, jet planes, and all sorts of efficient modes of transportation.

>>55060696
Its possible they exist in a switzerland status

>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Magic powers a vast array of technology in the world, powering everything from modern plumbing to condensed mana rifles.

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
It's half and half, the cities are dense but there are many smaller villages. Rural areas have lower grade tech and less trading but also reduced crime. Urban areas have better defenses against organized attacks though.

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Technology has been around for generations, so nobody is very alienated by it.

>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Most machines and equipment are made from titanium, and gold is a commonly used conductor.

>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Utility saw the greatest improvement alongside potential warfare, but there have been no wars since the technological leap.

>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Due to the replenishable, clean, equal access to power, there has been almost nothing but benefit.

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>>55060898
Well, the city isn't isolated or hidden. That's the whole point; it's a known player in the international community, similar to how pretty much everyone has heard of the Big Apple. What I meant is that it's independent, with its own cultural identity unbeholden to any other nation.

>>55060975
That's an idea. Perhaps all the major players of the world have invested in the city's banks to the point where trying to disrupt that would have grave consequences for all involved.

What are some real-world materials that could stand in for fantastical ones? Like mithral? Or adamantine?

>>55062197
Aluminium and Titanium maybe?

Carbon nanotube alloys? Superaustenitic stainless steel?

Running a Traveller game (with certain SWN elements included) for some friends who play a lot of Paradox vidya games (think history sim games). What do you guys think of various worlds throughout the system being home to a conflict that very closely parallels an old world conflict, war, or just major point in history, except with more of a sci-fi twist? For example, I'm considering a world that takes place during the onset of the neo-Spanish Reconquista. The Spanish ethnostate and the various sects of neo-Islam are about to wage a massive war for a large sect of land resembling old world Iberia.

The idea itself could use a lot of work, but I like the idea of taking bits of world history, and imagining how it would play out after man has colonized space.

>>55062404
Obvious parallels to be drawn with the colonization of the New World (large nation colonizes smaller planet with native population). Stuff like the warring states period of both Japan and China. The Tale of the Three Kingdoms. Stuff like the Crusades just begs to be put into a sci fi setting. The colonization of Africa is great as well. The imperial conquest of india as well. The industrialization of England.

>>55062591
Yeah, I definitely need to flesh it out more. It's just an idea I had on the train to sort of throw a bone to my most historical setting playgroup. Granted, every world won't be a direct parallel to an old world conflict or point in history, but I'll have them scattered here and there throughout my game's universe as a "thanks for trying something new, guys" for my players.

>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
About as much as our own. Quantum computing, CRISPR/CAS, caseless guns etc.
>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Rural. Rural places are shitholes populated by untouchables in most nations, towns have some semblance of modernity such as hospitals and schools and the elites live there in fortified mansions.
>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
With blank stare of an opium addict. No luddites.
>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Less plastics due to relative rarity of fosil hydrocarbons. Cars are rare as untill recently, batteries weren’t good enough. Ships almost unversaly relly on nuclear power. Jet planes are military use only, large civilian plane are atom powered and use propellers. (nuclear powered jet plane is possible, but never caught on in the civilian sector)
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Transportation and goods, duh.
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Bednefited, prices of vodka and opium dropped.
>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
No.

>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Depends. In the countryside, the middle ages abound. In the city, people are flying cars into buildings and creating automatons out of school desks

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
It's about 50-50, but there are only like 2 cities

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any Luddites in your setting?
There is a very small vocal minority of Luddites, but most people just roll over and go "technology is cool yo". The government is fairly afraid of technology because it's something it can't exactly control or legislate easily.
>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
No, fairly typical materials, except for random artifacts left behind from... something sometime in the past.
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Weapons and general warfare are a mixed bag. There are elephant rifles, but also flamethrowers and cryo guns. Consumer goods aren't any different from the 1920s and are of relatively the same availability, except cars are nonexistent and people rely in lizard man slave power. Communication is slowly becoming more effective, but at a much slower pace than Earth.
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
This is also a mixed bag. The government's repression of technology has led to strife between the tech-liberal southern bits of the capital and the tech-servative north and west. There are occasional incidents causing more strife.
>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
100% I would do it in a heartbeat. Dungeons and Gatsbys for the win.

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>>55055643
>Tell me about the imperial engineers though.
I haven't fleshed them out at all. Basically I'm thinking that they are a bunch of knock-off Archimedes belonging to one of the myriad cults of Civilisation set to work on any number of tasks that the imperial government is currently underway with. Perhaps this particular cult have blossomed into a prestigous school of Engineering in which prodigies from all over the imperium, and some from beyond, get an elite education worthy of aiding any royal establishment.

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reposting from last thread, I revamped my eye genetics system

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>>55063753
and I'm working on a different version of my map that looks like a map, only the relevant cities will be labelled on this one

jpeg artifact because the png is 42mb

>>55063785
Mmm. Nice details, but the whole brown-on-brown thing kinda hurts to look at. Great as an in-universe tool, not so great for outsiders wanting to see what your world looks like.

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>>55064314
I know, this is the reference map

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>>55064432
Oooh, I see. Yeah ok. Still, a little more contrast would help some people.

Like pic related, which I'm still looking for a good name/font to work with it.

ok guys i need some help. might not be 100% related but i figured you guys might be the best people to ask. basically i want to run a low fantasy campaign in my homebrew setting with each of the players being from a noble family. in the lore, each noble family has a magical relic. so here are my questions

1. which system would be best for running something like this?
2. what sort of reasoning would the pcs have for teaming up/meeting?
3. what sort of premise/plot would the best for this sort of campaign?

>>55064948
>do all my work for me
Pathfinder. It's basically an item-crafter's wet dream already, so you have the best base to build from.

Ask your players.

Travel to ancient wayshrines to purify/unlock the power of the relics before DOOMFUCKER THE RAPEGOD OF HELL shows up, as was prophesied.

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I'm looking for feedback for the backstory of a class of mine. I'd like to see it sounds reasonable.

>The Tribe of Erem, also known as the Smoke People, are a reclusive group with a reputation of being some of the top mercenaries in the land. As one of the six druidic tribes in the world, Eremi possess the ability to manipulate fire and all its attributes, however not to the greater extent of their kinsman (the Zulon in woodlands of Sidero for example).

>Once a nomadic people thought to have lived in the interior regions of the Hush Desert of Garmuun, the Erem are now encompassed in the territories of the Southern Dwarvern King Borvuk. After forcefully aquiring their traditional grazing lands King Borvuk enslaved the tribe to fight as his army, with the chieftan as their commander. Many scholars debate upon what transpired that made the Erem to submit to the king as there are little to no records of the account. However people have speculated it had something to do with a powerful force, likely magical in nature.

>>55065098
The Eremi is characterized by their highly militaristic behavior, sparseness with words, and show little expression. They are highly agile and dexterous while also hard in endurance from the extreme conditions living in the desert. Children begin training at the age of five and are officially considered enlisted at fifteen. Their fighting style is known for quick, strong kicks and succinct strikes with large amounts of acrobatics. The weapons of choice include a guardless curved longsword, (similar to a yataghan without the recurve at the end), a khyber knife, daggers, and chakrams. Pyromancy is used primarily for shock and awe tactics, however Eremi tend to favour unseen guerilla combat if possible. Conventional armor of the region is eschewed for a tight bodysuit consisting of a special red leather harvested from a fantastic creature known to them in the region.

>Eremi have been known to be strongly associated with dragons, one of the five ascended beasts in the world. Dragons are one of the most elusive of the beasts, second to the Leviathans. They've been known to be hostile when discussing about them. It's been speculated that the tribe protects the location of the creatures' nests. Much of the parties involved in the slaying of the two recorded dragons in the region were shortly killed, and while it was likely perpetrated by Eremi tribesman little evidence was found to convict them.

>>55065113
>a khyber knife, daggers, and chakrams
Approval.

>Almost fell for the map meme and lost interest in my setting.

I'm swearing off maps forever.

>>55065198
Thanks! A lot of fantasy influence came from the Sheikah Tribe in Zelda and the Adem from The Kingskiller Chronicles. All of the real life inspirations came from the Spartans, the Ghilman, Sub-Saharan pastoralists, Capoeira, Thai fighters, and Indian Kalaripayattu practitioners.

>>55056333
completely ignored for 13 hours strait; I didn't think my ideas were all that boring.

Aside from a map and a description of cities, what helps a setting come alive?

Like, I've got tables of history and pantheons and demographics, but what else?

>>55067450
What do people eat and drink? What is their music like? What is their clothing like? What forms of entertainment are popular? How do they treat strangers/foreigners?

Think about what people do in their everyday lives, especially the people your players would come into contact with.

>>55067450
In the pastebin, there's Dr. Zahir's Ethnograpnical Questionnaire.

Answering at least 50% of the questions helps a lot. Even just reading through the questions helps.

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>>55064432
>Eltarus

>>55064948
>2. what sort of reasoning would the pcs have for teaming up/meeting?

Without knowing anything about your setting here are some suggestions why they would meet:

Meeting of the thing, shenanigans ensues.

The Great Jousting Game have been called together where knights from far and wide test their mettle and the noble houses conspire and form alliances in secret.

The land has recently been invaded by a powerful enemy and in the peace deal the foe have demanded hostages from the noble families to make sure that the peace is kept.

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Any shadow-emperors/kings/presidents in your settings?

>>55067157
Don't worry, it happens. I personally like the idea.
Can't offer much advice at the moment, though.

>>55069864
Can't remember the names nor the details but I have the mother of the underaged King of Kings basically extending her regency well into his coming of age.
I also have a kind uncle who basically invades his homeland with a foreign army to safeguard his young nephew's rule. He manages to expel the homegrown threat. Unfortunately the nephew succumbs to an illness later on, forcing the uncle to himself take up the mantle of King of Kings.

What would a world without insects look like

>>55069864
Not really shadow-rulers, but due to the knights of my setting being off to fight most of the time, the admin caste is doing the paperwork, even tho their main role is get fucked.

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..../wbg/, I come to you in a moment of crisis.

<---- I made this in Google Spreadsheets for a PF setting I'm writing.

Should I burn this and pretend I never made it, or use it as an interim draft/plan while I write up the areas of the setting, and turn it into a real map later?

>>55070727
If you want to still follow evolutionary logic, some other class of animals would undergo convergent evolution and fill in the evolutionary niche, meaning that there would still be insects in anything but name and perhaps superficial physiological traits.

But if we want to just speculate...
The main problem with a world without insects would be pollination, honestly. Most plants rely on them, so you have to figure out a way around it. Either you dramatically alter the physiology of plants and their reproduction habits, or you figure out some other class of animals that would serve that purpose. Armies of little tiny humming birds would do, I guess. But those don't do well in colder environments. Plants would perhaps have to fire their pollen into the air more actively (meaning a lot of "exploding plants" that fire off clouds of colored dust, or perhaps plants that release their pollen with little balloons that ascend very high into the air before releasing the pollen particles in the atmosphere).
Or maybe fungi and algae would just take over most of plant niches.

Another problem would be food supply for smaller carnivores. Perhaps the world could be a little more similar-size-predation oriented, with even smaller animals all being more aggressive as they can't find smaller prey and have to fight their scale equals for nutrition.

How do you guys stick with and create in a world? Every time I start fleshing out a setting skeleton I think of new high concept cosmology shit that's incompatible with the current setting.

>>55072171
Sunk cost fallacy.

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>>55072171
I rooted my settings in "realistic/real-world-like" cosmology and physicality. Cosmogonies and cosmologies of fantastic nature, pantheons of gods, mythologies etc... are all - much like in real world - inventions of those who inhabit the world, not objective part of the universe. Makes it far more interesting to actually world-build, because you are not nearly as limited and restrained by the arbitrary fictional laws stemming from your arbitrary cosmogony. Religions behave like real ones - mix, match, merge, splinter, diffuse - myths exist in variations (none of which has to be more "true" than the other ones), things can be much more layered and complex from the standpoint of possible philosophies and views.

Of course, the disadvantage (and something most people around here will find worth immediately rejecting the settings) is that as a result, magic and all those classic fantasy tropes and clichés are not readily available. The actual stories within the world have to be "realistic" to match the laws of the universe. You don't get away with stereotypical dragons, goblins, rigns of power and magical mcguffins and angry gods anymore.

But it does make things more interesting for me, and for my presumably very niche audience, who mostly grew sick of classic fantasy.

>>55072171
I don't think of high concept cosmology at all. If I do it's just barebones mysterious shit to help with something I'm doing on the planet. All the gods are either physical, physical in some accessible planes, a name for a magic or physical force, nonexistent or dead.
Planes are made up as I go along and the only rule is that none of them are made up of elements. If I want an "elemental plane" type of plane then I use abstract concepts like fear, freedom or pride instead.
Also keeping an air of mystery helps keep me interested in my own setting because the possibilities for things you don't know the extent of are endless.

>>55071224
This looks great.

>>55069754
If it would help you out, I could tell you about my setting. Is there anything specific you would like to know?

>>55049814
I need to inject some thoughts other than mine into my worldbuilding. Id appreciate it if people gave me suggestions for all of the following (if you do at least a couple Ill read/review/give suggestions for your shit).

My setting is bronze-age-y and I need:
>Reasons people in an area would be known as "Silent Folk"
>A vaguely indopersian name for a king. Something long.
>A colloquialism for weird albino demon worshipers living in a rocky peninsula known as "the spear".
>An ostentatious name for a brutal fortress-city owned by the last remains of a sorcerus empire and run entirely by chattel slavery.
>A name for a metal which absorbs sunlight.
>A name for a desert.

Id do it myself, but I find that worldbuilding is easier when you relinquish control of some aspects and let the world breathe. As this is all bullshit and the world wont invent names on its own, I figured Id turn to /tg/.

>>55072171
I tend to come up with a theme that runs in the background that keeps me centered. Examples from other settings.
>Nothing is new.
>Things can always get worse.
>Men are parasites.
>Words are powerful.
This also prevents you from getting into settings with a moral or some garbage. Its not that every single decision should revolve around your chosen mantra, but whenever you are stuck for "how should this be different from real life?" you can turn to it.

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>>55071224
It would be so much easier to do that in a drawing program. If you're concerned about having hexes/squares for scale, you can take an image like pic related from google (get a png) and paste it into a new layer above the map then adjust the transparency.

>>55058072
Standing up is actually very benefitial

>>55071224
I do something similar to this. I draft maps on graph paper at low scale, then scale up and add detail, then diagonal lines, then scan and trace over and make it into a map. An iterative approach is the best way to get good maps.

>>55072993
>Reasons people in an area would be known as "Silent Folk"
They are descended from a once-enslaved people. The concepts of "Be seen but not heard" and "speak only when spoken to" became a pseudo-religion during the slave times. Though now free, they still hold a great reverence for the spoken word. Only the patriarch (or matriarch) of a family is allowed to instigate verbal conversation, and this is seen as a holy, deeply intimate act. They are uncomfortable speaking with strangers, and so foreigners will be guided to the head of the family if they wish to speak. Despite this, they are well known for the quality of their written poems and epics, and their written "debate" papers are the standard for intellectual scholarship. They also invented sign language.
Or, you know, True Name magic and shit. That would be a good excuse.
>A vaguely indopersian name for a king. Something long.
Artacerex ib Amidelphi III
>A colloquialism for weird albino demon worshipers living in a rocky peninsula known as "the spear".
Crackers.
Blueveins (since you can see their veins?)
>An ostentatious name for a brutal fortress-city owned by the last remains of a sorcerus empire and run entirely by chattel slavery.
High Alysidopolis (poorly translated City of Chains)
>A name for a metal which absorbs sunlight.
Phosphage Steel
Mandulux Steel
(light eater, or eater of light in shitty translation of Greek and Latin, respectively)
>A name for a desert.
Glass Sea
Because it's so hot the sand sometimes melts into class, and the mirages are so bad it looks like an ocean

>>55072993
>>Reasons people in an area would be known as "Silent Folk"
They believe that ghosts and demons wander around in that area, which are attracted to the sound of words.
>>A vaguely indopersian name for a king. Something long.
Jahanardal Shah Jingalbarbuk.
>>A colloquialism for weird albino demon worshipers living in a rocky peninsula known as "the spear".
Spearheads.
>>An ostentatious name for a brutal fortress-city owned by the last remains of a sorcerus empire and run entirely by chattel slavery.
The Greatness.
>>A name for a metal which absorbs sunlight.
Engalf.
>>A name for a desert.
Khor.

>>55073240
that should be "melts into glass"

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Something I started for fun earlier. Supposed to be a small area equivalent to the eastern med sea in size, a hellish place, surrounded on all sides by scorching deserts, and populated by bronze age city states vying for power through maritime trade, byzantine politics and small-time warfare. Obviously nowhere near finished.
What do you think?

>>55073642
Not bad. Decent enough coastlines. However, it all comes down to where you put your cities. That'll dictate how much any of that geography actually matters.

>>55073661
Where would (You) put cities?

>>55073661
Too bad inkarnate fucked up their marker symbols and you can't scale the city/village/fort icons to less than 35 percent. They used to have those nice dot markers that I could have used to represent cities of different sizes.

>>55073692
Obviously at the mouths of those two rivers, as well as one farther inland off the map that probably served as some big-brother state that everybody in the region were clients to. After that Id probably throw a weird one at the the western peninsula, one more on the east side of that inland lake, and one more faded from glory out in the desert to the north east.

>>55073714
Yeah, what happened there? They fucked up everything. The new mountains suck, and all the stamps are garbage. I thought they'd put all the good stuff behind a paywall but I cant find one.

>>55073742
No idea, also all the older stuff that I made is now incompatible and can't be edited.

>>55073756
Yeah, its a real clusterfuck. Id go back and check the changelogs but that would be work.

>>55072171
I start with deciding what I want it to be. Like, for example right now I want some knightly actions, weird druidic tribes, merchant republic and the machine that ends the world. Or something. So I go further and further back until the very creation (or until I no longer care) to justify what I want. Then see what outcomes to expect and make sure they all align.

It's not practical to start with cosmology, star with your end goal.

>>55076209
I dont even know what ACK is, but force spells are neeto. Just make sure you copy as little of D&D as possible: you may catch leprosy of the brain.

>>55067157
The general is misleading. There isn't actually any world building in /wbg/. It's really just /map making general/ with delusions of grandeur.

>>55076589
The problem is people write novels and want to be jerked off. They're not coming here for advice they're coming here for validation. People who ask quick questions and give information in a brief and readable fashion get their answers and leave.

>>55076734
This. No one runs games on /tg/, especially not on /wbg/. People don't care about building worlds or helping others, they just like to jerk their own settings that they will never play in off. Its fucking disgusting.

>>55076963
/tg/ really is thick with trolls these days.

>>55076997
You have an extremely liberal definition of troll.
That or you're new.

>>55076997
It's not trolls. /wbg/ is inherently a flawed format and it always brings up a lot of insecurity and all kinds of whining.

>>55077016
"person saying things with no illusions that it will be constructive" tends to be my baseline.

>>55077040
Im not sure how you come to that conclusion. I think the problem is that too many people treat wbg like a blog and expect people to give a shit.

>>55059085
Messing with the standard cardinal direction layout is a good way to make your setting to feel unique. For example, Dragon Age has pine forests in the south and jungles in the north.

>>55077040
Nah I genuinely believe that /wbg/ can have some good things. Those good things being collaborative worldbuilding and assisting people with their settings for one.
>>55077119
> I think the problem is that too many people treat wbg like a blog and expect people to give a shit.
Basically this. People will reply to the thread question and no one will ask them questions about their settings or even help people that have questions. So it just leads to an echo chamber where people are saying a lot of shit but nothing of note is ever happening.

>>55059085
Its not helpful unless its really clearly established, or the world is heavily bounded. Otherwise characters may reflexively go north to flee a bad summer or something only to find themselves in a nonsense-desert.

>>55077119
>Im not sure how you come to that conclusion.
I've been around these threads for quite a few years, that is how. The concept is flawed because the format isn't very well suited for the purpose, as world-building is something that is inherently quite difficult to convey even if you have more space, and with the very limited space and even smaller attention, most ideas here will be largely lost - either by not coming across as interesting (even in cases they are) or because people aren't going to be patient enough to read and give it a thought.

Which is not to say that I'm against these threads. I'm just pointing out that they are inherently imperfect, that they also attract a lot of bitterness in the process.

>>55077180
>Nah I genuinely believe that /wbg/ can have some good things.
And I agree. Though I don't see much point in collaborative world-building (and also that is something we have entirely different set of threads for). The assistance thing more often does not work than it does, but just because it's far from ideal is not enough for a reason to dismiss it out right.

I'd even argue that the large dumps of info have their use. If nothing else, it forces the author to think his concepts and formulate them, which is often useful even if you don't get any feedback on it.

I was just saying that people throwing tantrums about these threads are common and most likely genuine, not trolls.

>>55077268
Id say they are trolls in the sense that they're saying things because they want other people feel bad, even if its only as bad as they feel themselves.

>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Early middle ages, black powder isn't even a thing yet. Most cutting-edge tech would be segmented plate, though it is only afforded by the most elite of the elite.
>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Mostly rural. The differences between rural and urban areas is that in the rural areas everyone is kinda the same, whereas in the few cities that exist, there is a clear cut difference between working class and nobility.
>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Not much industrialization, so no one really gives a damn. Even if there was, no one would notice, too busy tending to their crops and fighting off gryphons.
>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
They are nonexistent, I get the feeling that you have a big hard-on for industry, and I don't blame you. Personally I love me some dieselpunk.
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Mainly military progression, metallurgy and such. Farm tools are getting slightly better too.
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
I guess they benefited mostly, but then again a lot of people now die to these unstoppable full-plate knights.

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
Definitely. I would run anything if it was properly prepared. Heck I have run most kinds of settings, perks of my players always wanting to do gurps, but not caring what the setting is.

>>55077359
Oh. That is a very old-school view of the concept of trolling. I long since accepted the "new troll", who is much more "I'M just saying bad shit because that is how you get attention", and consider the genuine people who genuinely come here to talk about something that hurts them more of tragic case of honesty.

But under that brand of trolling, I agree. That is what most of these posts are. I think they are largely two kinds of people:
A Those who made something, did not get the attention they wanted, or got some negative or useless feedback, grew resentful, and now feel like they have a beef with the whole thread concept.
B Those who never participate, or even world-build, but the fact that other people are putting effort into such activity is making them mad anyway for some arbitrary, stupid reason.

They pop in these threads regularly, but barely affect anything.

>>55077180
As much as I like the idea of thread questions, they really are pointless. The whole idea was to generate discussion, but it rarely ever does.
The "thread questions" should really just be a reminder for posters to ask for specific help.

I see questions asked by posters get answered on a somewhat regular basis, and I believe it has a lot to do with their asking for something specific. "What do you think" questions don't get replied to all that often, but asking about mapping stuff, or how mountains work, or asking what type of government would best fit such and such intended scenario tend to do alright.

Just last thread I asked if a warrior group I was designing was coming across as too edgy. I ended up having a very nice conversation with an anon that led to my developing them in a way I hadn't considered before. Then I got to see the new maps that anon was working on and I like to think I at least helped him a little.

>>55058072
what would the wizard worldbuilder look like?

>>55077847
You're living in his world right now.

How advanced could a fully aquatic society get? What can you actually build underwater that will last? What about a semi-aquatic society limited to living right on the watefront (say they need to remain damp by soaking in water every hour)?

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>>55077847

>>55077802
What can I say, Im an old dude.

>>55058426
chad here. I listen to luca turilli and rhapsody all the time

>>55077872
I doubt it could get very advanced at all. Human civilization developed thanks to a number of factors, but chief among these were fire and agriculture. Neither of those would be easy under water.

Oh, and it's also really fucking hard to raise young under water. Very few species are capable of doing so to any degree, an arguably the smartest non-mammal in the ocean, the octopus, doesn't even bother trying. Most sea life attempts to continue existing through quantity of offspring. Actually raising ones young is a land thing, though a few critters did end up taking it back to the water later.

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What would be the sort of challenges, quirks, and eccentricities you'd find in a fishman-populated city borough like Little Innsmouth?

>>55077989
depressions, aids and incest?

>>55077989
More schools.

>>55077989
>People tend to have scarred fingertips from mishandling hooks.
>Standing in the wrong area at the wrong time of day can evoke ire as it may interrupt the flow of goods or merely block access to a good fishing spot on a dock.
>A thriving amber-craft cottage industry.
>Lots of rope and knot related jargon used as euphemisms.
>It is considered rude to have somebody over for dinner and serve fish.

>>55077812
Thread questions only work if it functions off of a "post your setting then ask questions about another anon's setting" mentality. Which just plain doesn't happen in /wbg/. I joke about how /wbg/ is just /mapbuilding general/ but it really is true. Like 40% of the posts here are about geography or maps, when they should instead be about worldbuilding. The problem is that not no one asks or answers questions.

>>55078046
>It is considered rude to have somebody over for dinner and serve fish.
Why?
Fish eat fish all the time. Hell, there are humans who eat monkeys.

>>55078066
>The problem is that not no one asks or answers question
Disproven by the posts above yours.

>>55078089
Bullshit. 90% of /wbg/s are filled with setting self-wank. If you've been here for more than a week you would know that.

>>55078077
Yeah, but they eat it all the damn time. The sea's right there, they could get fish themselves. If you're having people over eat something else.

>>55078077
>Fish eat fish all the time. Hell, there are humans who eat monkeys.
His point is that serving fish suggests that you either don't have anything more special at home, or you have but don't want to share it.
So it basically makes you look either as a poor person, or a cheap-ass.

If you have people over, bring out the good stuff, not the same shit everybody is eating every day.

>>55077126

Yeah though I question whether the unique is good or bad for reasons >>55077183 mentioned. I am opting for northern hemisphere but hitherto my oriental India/Indo-China/China was in the west. I flipped the map and found it didn't look as bad as I thought it did earlier. It's kind of that pull-push of "A setting is trite and uninspired to have the near east and far east be the real world's near east and far east" but also "A setting is odd and snowflakey and jarring to have the near east suddenly be where Europeans are and the far east be where Aztecs are".

I guess it depends on the world you are doing. The standard inspired by real life like Hyboria Faerun is better off imitating the real world cardinal layout but a more pure fantasy angle like Sanctuary in Diablo or Azeroth then you are more free to go off the rails.

A few question for any world builders here:
What happens to people in your world after they die? Is there an afterlife? What is it like? Do the people know what it's like? If so, how do they know? If not, what sort of afterlife do your different cultures believe to exist?

I'm still working out what to do in my own setting, but since living heroes visiting the afterlife to perform fantastical feats is exactly the sort of thing that will inevitably happen in it, it's something that I need some ideas for.

>>55079752
The same as in real life

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>>55049814
>/wbg/ - World Building General

Alright, yeah, I've got a thing to share:

I've been making an effort to 'naturalize' some of the weirder or more unusual monsters- contextualizing them in a setting that has less people n' how they go about their business.

Part of that is making these little "life-cycle" cards on how I personally figure they reproduce or otherwise make more of themselves.

>>55080630
>Flumphs parasitism Beholders

HARD

CORE

Need some brainstorming help. I have a scifi setting I'm working on, and I'm having trouble justifying one point.

Humans in this scifi are natives of the Andromeda galaxy. Millions of years ago they sent a fleet of terraforming ships to the Milky Way to prepare it for their colonization by seeding life everywhere that would be compatible with them (gotta make sure you can eat the plants and animals safely). Due to interference from another alien force the terraformers started allowing newly seeded worlds to develop Intelligent life, such as Earth, and the colonizing fleet was delayed.

Trouble is, as one of my players pointed out, why couldn't they just set up biomes once they got here? I think he's being needlessly antagonistic to one bit of setting lore, but I can't seem to convince him to shut the fuck up about it. How can I better justify the decision to genetically alter a galaxy-worth of worlds to be habitable before colonization?

>>55081378
Say that only some take, so its necessary to get the process started way ahead of time to make sure you've got enough livable space.

Did they go intergalactic via FTL?

>>55080630
You're a pretty good artist.

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>>55080630
That is some pretty good shit, anon. Got a blog or something?

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>>55081597
>That is some pretty good shit, anon. Got a blog or something?

I do indeed, Anon! You can check it all out over here: http://spaghettiart.tumblr.com


Over on the blog I'm doing the life cycle cards twice daily ('till I run out of course) as a part of a series I've been calling, "In a Vacuum"!

>>55081559
>You're a pretty good artist.

Thanks much, anon! That means a lot to hear since I used to be way worse!

>>55049814
>>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Just pulling themselves out of a dark age. Books are pretty snazzy, Soap as well. Feudal European mostly.

>>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Rural. Farmers need to produce or the kingdoms go hungry, some of the more wealthy areas will have larger city that produce refined goods. Citys are shit but slightly more bearable than the country sides due to the richer living there.

>>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
N/A, need to get most people above the 'hungry as fuck' before shit can pop off.

>>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Iron, bronze, steel are the mainstays. A substance called "Mages Gold" is used in the production of new magic items, repair of old items.

>>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
Utility, as civilization claws back from the darkness, functionality is paramount over most everything else.

>>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Peasants are doing better, soap, medical knowledge, magical arts etc. are improving life quality. Even if this is by little steps.

>>55081519
I'm keeping FTL speeds relatively slow, to let the galaxy be a big place. Intergalactic travel takes an extremely long time even for advanced races. The terraforming fleet could have used a system of short FTL jumps in between long relativistic cruises. Whatever justifies a loooong ass time so Humans can evolve on Earth.

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Hello there! This is the first time that I've been to one of these threads but I feel like I might ask you guys a few questions about the world I'm looking to build/plan out for a game that I'm hopefully going to DM.

I'm kind of a historical weeb and so I want to run a game that's semi-based around the Boshin War of 1868. The big change that I want to make between history and the game would be a magical/spiritual undercurrent involving a bunch of Shinto gods. I kind of want a similar vibe to Princess Mononoke where the gods and humans live out their own days relatively separately unless one side starts to fuck with the other and messes with the balance. Obviously, with the coming of the West and the unequal treaties which allow them access to Japan, shit starts to go down and the party's going to go on a quest to try and fix whats going wrong.

One of the ideas that I've had about the setting would be that "magic" would be incredibly limited by ones surroundings due to a need to contact one's god via shrine. So if someone wanted to cast a water spell they would have to find an area (or make one) that pleases Toyotama-Hime (or another water god, there are tons of water gods in Shinto) and pray to her with an offering. If you please her she will take favour with you and allow you to cast your spell.

I kind of hope that this will be a way of letting magic play a part in the setting while also limiting it from being able to solve every problem instantly. I was also thinking that if someone wanted to be a priest they could carry a portable shrine on their back (think pic related but way way bigger) that they can use quicker.

Anyways, thats some of the ideas that I have written down. Could I maybe get some feedback/questions regarding things in the setting? I would like to think about what I need to add/rethink in order to make my players happy.

Thank you!

>>55081728
You could say that they started the terraforming mission half-halfheartedly then got into a war or something that stole their attention. Like they thought it was a logical next step for their civilization but then there was a schism over who would get to go and it took them a while to get to the point that their neck of the galaxy was safe enough that people would put themselves out in the open like that in intergalactic space where they'd be sitting ducks.

>>55081765
What system are you going to use?

>>55081378
>Trouble is, as one of my players pointed out, why couldn't they just set up biomes once they got here? I think he's being needlessly antagonistic to one bit of setting lore, but I can't seem to convince him to shut the fuck up about it. How can I better justify the decision to genetically alter a galaxy-worth of worlds to be habitable before colonization?
Logistics. It was way easier to sweep the whole galaxy at once than cherry-pick worlds to colonize one at a time for the whole galaxy at the same time they're trying to colonize said worlds.

Logistics. They wanted to plan out everything super-efficiently for a galaxy-wide settlement, so they wanted to make sure everything was perfectly prepped and mapped out before they started plopping shit down and hoping it worked.

Aging. They didn't want carbon copies of Andromeda Prime, they wanted Andromedan-compatible shit in its own varieties of exotic fluff. So the terraforming needed time to develop and age like a fine wine, to ensure each world had its own unique flavor and style.

Culture. They're a spacefaring empire with the power to terraform and then colonize an entire galaxy, they ain't gotta explain SHIT. Imagine trying to explain religious schisms to a caveman, baffled as to how this gets you more meat or better cave. That's what it's like hearing the Andromedans try to explain to you why they didn't just terraform when they got here. Some of it is shit so advanced you haven't even considered it, a lot of it is just bizarre problems they've manufactured for themselves.

All that said, this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to justify space opera style everything-is-edible-and-fuckable-and-breathes-the-same-air-as-humans with hard science fiction. I think your issue demonstrates nicely why I don't like that approach; once you try to chain the two together, you open up the whole thing to an infinite chain of "...but isn't THAT thing incredibly stupid?"

>>55081786
Legend of the Five Rings. I've never run it before but a friend suggested that it was good for doing samurai stuff.

>>55081832
Thats about right. Good luck.

>>55081832
L5R is very connected to the setting it is set in, which is very not historically "realistic". I would recommend something else instead.

>>55081911
What would suggest in its place?

>>55081378
I'm not sure what your player's problem is; it all sounds fairly solid to me.

You could say the terraforming process takes hundreds, if not thousand of years to complete. Only a (relatively) small crew would go along with the initial ships to keep a watch on things, just enough people to maintain a small, viable community until the colonists show up. It would be reckless to keep millions of colonists on ice for that long (and it would be impossible to store enough food for 'em all), even with their longest-lasting tech, so seeding groups were sent out long before they would conceivably be needed.

"In a thousand years overpopulation will destroy us."
"Two words: Space Australia."

Maybe the terraformers were penal colonists?

Anyway, since it was such a far-reaching, foresighted plan, there were a thousand years for shit to go wrong back home. War, expenses, entire governments and nations rising AND falling in between... in fact, in later centuries, the plan was seen a foolhardy. Others said it was simply a plan to get rid of unwanted people.

That sort of thing.

>>55081966
As far as grounded feudal Japan goes Shogun is pretty gewd iirc.

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>>55081774
I like this. A one-two punch of not-giving-a-fuck and suddenly dealing with shit.

>>55081814
Kek, those all seem pretty great reasons to be honest. You got me on the "human-friendly galaxy" thing though. I want the galaxy to be teeming with life, so an outside force MAKING it so seemed reasonable. It's also good mechanically speaking, since few games really allow for non-humanoid player characters. I have one player that would try to play something weird for the sake of it, and this nips that in the bud nicely.

>>55081985
I honestly don't know. He seems to think that this plan is similar to building a house before you have land to put it on, which is odd considering this is more (to me, anyway) like MAKING the land in the first place before you waste time on building a house.

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>>55082055
>I saved an ant's pic
Fuck.

>>55080630
I remember one idea for the grell is that they are actually the result of some sort of disease that afflicts mindfayers. They catch the disease and their brains get so weird that they pop out of their own head and they die but a new grell is born.
I thought it was interesting.

Could we survive a spaceship roughly the size of a continent crashing into the Earth?

I know we definitely couldn't if it was coming in at a very high speed, but say the ship slowed down quite a bit before entry. How much damage would that cause?

I'm looking for a near-apocalyptic event that would cause a lot of panic, worldwide disaster, government shutdowns, etc, etc , but not kill literally everyone. I know a spaceship the size of a continent crashing into the earth and not killing everyone is probably a really large stretch, but I just thought I'd ask.

Working idea is that it's a ship holding space refugees that are attempting to escape a galaxy-wide war (The ship being chased by both or multiple sides) and crash-landing onto earth, a sub-FTL civilization which contact is highly illegal, to escape by some galactic legal loophole or something.

>>55083912
>https://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/

This should help you out, man.

>>55083912
How fast and what weight/mass? That's all that matters in terms of physics.

>>55083912

>Could we survive a spaceship roughly the size of a continent crashing into the Earth?

I don't think so, if something australia sized crashed it would kill us all, plus its gravity may ormay not fuckup or ecosystem even harder.

>>55083912
>>55083956
Just ran this myself bro. Nah. An object the size of a continent would kill everyone, just through the radiation damages, if not the ~3-5 mile crater that'd probably be created.

>>55083912
It'll work if you teleport the ship almost onto the planet's surface. From 1km out, you can drop an America made of iron and it turns out relatively okay (negligible destruction according to purdue). Everything else plays out like SDF Macross.

>>55060696
This happened in the real world, look up Monaco!

What's the most amount of mysticism and magic you are willing to put in a scifi setting?

Telepaths ala Starship Troopers? Bene Gesserit from Dune? Jedi? Warhammer Psykers?

>>55084484
inbetween the jedi and 40k psykers, my main gripes with SW is the way the force works and that is its not really prevalent

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Can the software and ressources in the pastebin be useful for making the map of a building? I want to make the map of a huge stadium reconverted into a big settlement for a post apo game
Also other than the fields and the seatings what are other places of interest in a stadium (with roughly 100 000 seatings) ? There are the changing room but a structure this big probably have a shitload of room
>pic related is how big it will probably be, I never went to a stadium (let alone this big) and I wonder what there inside the red/orange structure

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>>55080630
>>55081673

Wanted to post another piece of art work I just finished.

Ironically, before I did my "In a Vacuum" exercise I didn't give two shits about Grells, but now I kind of love them.. Mind you, I'm mostly just making shit up about them and re-purposing them.
I figure they outta be psychic brain-shaped space squids: using their psychic powers to gently float through the vacuum of space in search of aliens to eat. They constantly grow throughout their lives (so long as they remain in space), eventually the psychic field they generate around themselves grows powerful enough to draw in matter, atmosphere, and a pressurized 'bubble' is created which can host life.

The back of a Grell is climate controlled, but it's still a little chilly, so bundle up!

>>55085945
So, why they don't their own produce?

>>55058426
A Chad showed me about Blind Guardian in the dirst goddamn place. Then I countered with Rhapsody, his answer was Dio, mine was obscure slav bands and serbia strong tier stuff. Stopped frequenting because gym closed regularly promise a drink each other but never go from there.

>>55082002
I'm not sure if you're still around but if you (or anyone that knows) could point me in the right direction for finding Shogun I would appreciate it. When I type it into Google I get a shit ton of other things called Shogun.

I can't avoid thinking "alright I will put this monster in this part of the forest for X reason" without thinking "what does he eat? Who is the prey?", and then "what does this other animal eats?", and so on.

How do I turn off my brain when dealing with ecosystems?

>>55083956
>>55083973
>>55083989
>>55084139
Thanks my dudes. I'll play around with the purdue and see how it works.

>>55083960
I'm not very good at judgung that kind of thing, nor am I very good at math.

Inkarnate lagging as hell and not loading for anyone else at the moment?

>>55077812

The thread questions are not so much questions as reminders: "You may not have considered these aspects of your setting. Do it now and write it down."

Sometimes the answers catch interest and start a discussion, but that is more of a side effect.

>make a map
>looks good
>kinda consider it a final version
>walking to kitched to steal a feed glanse at a print of antique map of africa on the wall
>it has more detail in one small bit than I've got in two continents
>more moutain and hill ranges, plains, swamps, settlements
>scrap my maps start anew with every Inkarnate map being just a tiny bit of greater whole
fuck. i really need a sense of scale
world is bigger than i thought

>>55087899
Look up Segoku Fuzon. It's the best resource on running a culture similar to that era of Japan.

>>55088709
or you could stop using a shitty online software like irkarnate and instead use one of the many tools available for download

>>55089281
or pencil and paper

>>55088709
Scale is probably the hardest thing for a wordbuilder to get right, be it in fantasy, science fiction, or even a contemporary world. Few people can really understand the size and scope of a world, even the one we live in.

How many cities, towns, castles, forts, hamlets, and villages in such and such area. How many people can be supported by so much arable land. How many soldiers such and such type of civilization with such and such technology and government and castes can realistically field (for Medieval European, fielding even 4% of your total population in one battle could potentially bankrupt your nation, for example).

And that doesn't even get into space shit.

It's a fucking rabbit hole, so you have to decide how anal you want to be about getting stuff right/believable.

On one end of the scale we have guys like Tolkien and Asimov, who thought that shit through like it was going out of style. There's a reason it takes so damn long to walk to Mordor, after all. And Asimov explicitly explains that his city-planet only survives due to the dozens of farm planets solely devoted to supplying the planet (via several tens of thousands of ships arriving daily).

On the other end you've got Christopher Paolini, the guy who pulls 100,000-man armies out of his ass whenever his characters need to go up against a tough opponent.

According to Aristotle, virtue is found as a happy medium between two extremes. Courage is halfway between foolhardiness and cowardice.

You need to find your happy medium for scale and detail.

>>55089510
Both can be good, by the way. Like sure, Eragon sucks, but The Worm Ouroboros has an equally total disregard for anything resembling rigour and it's one of the best fantasy novels out there. But The Worm Ouroboros substitutes hard facts for an all-encompassing epic feel.

>>55081765

A question sure to come up: will the West be all tech or bring their own (Christian?) magic?

>>55089281
hm, sounds good, since inkarnate doesn't load for me right for some reason
which would you suggest? is there anything similar to inkarnate's aesthetic?

>>55089663
>is there anything similar to inkarnate's aesthetic?
How come you want that aesthetic? It seems pretty ugly to me.

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>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?

Only the American Empire. Everything else is either magically corrupted or ash

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?

That Depends on the location most remaining settlements in the europe deadzone are simple city states since monsters and demons patrol those places. Meanwhile the Americas Have cutting edge techs and sprawling cities.

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?

Most People Desperately cling to technological advance due to the already dangerous wastes.

>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?

No Since it is our world. But sometimes dwarves or elves cross through the dimensions and bring golems or machinery of their own.

>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?

The Americas Are literally the beacon of civilization since most other places are either warzones or Filled with Nazis and Soviet remants.

>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?

American supply Drops are the only thing that keep Citizens in Europe alive.

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?

Probably.

>>55089592
Okay, fair point. I guess when it comes down to it, the overall quality of the work dictates how much people will care about mistakes, inconsistencies, use of tired tropes, or being too obvious with symbolism.

Case in point:
Man of Steel gets a hell of a lot of flack for its Jesus imagery, but no one bats any eye when Robocop (1984) has its Jesus character literally walking on water at the end of the movie. The difference? MoS is a miserable slog of a film taking itself too seriously and Robocop is fucking awesome that just has fun with it.

>>55089638
Thats a good question which I am sort of starting to debate in my head. I had originally thought that a cool function of the world would be that Japan had become so separated from the rest of the world because it was the only place with magic and gods and stuff. The idea was that the gods had protected Japan from Western invasion but that the West's tech was starting to outpace the gods so they could no longer simply call up a typhoon to stop a fleet of ships from invading.

What's interesting about the Boshin War in general is that it's essentially a civil war in Japan over what is the best way to keep Japan from becoming what China had become after the Opium Wars. I kind of wanted to have there be two sides that are each arguing about whether Japan needed to embrace the West's tech so they could us it against them, or whether they needed to double down on the gods and use their magic to repel the barbarians.

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>>55049814
Im bbbaaaccckkk

>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
What you would imagine for medieval low fantasy type shit, as that's what makes up the vast majority of the world.
For the 99%, cutting edge is like, high tier brigadine and plate male, certain farming and milling equipment.
The 1% are using like, telekinesis and golems as robot servants and shit

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
Rural. Dirt farming peasants and the like, living in squalor in the fields where nothing fucking happens ever with the only 'metropolis' is just a sprawling ghetto where they cut down all the trees and flattened the land out in to gravel fields to crowd around an inn.

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Most people just wish it would speed up and get to them because they're about done with this farming trash. Some people pride themselves on having hard lives, but most people make for the city at some point in their lives.

>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Not really, unless you're the 1%. (not trying to be "it depends" but the contrast between vast low fantasy and little pockets of high fantasy is something I'm actively trying to juxtapose

>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
>Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare?
You got it bud, folks are good at killing and most other tech piggybacks on that (sorta like america)

TBC

>>55049814 (OP)
>>55090025
>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Benefited, but you could argue that there is a great unnatural strife associated with city life, and that living in the woods where you can just fend for yourself and live in solitude is the only true way for a man to be raised, venturing into the city to become a man and then taking his wife back with him to solitude to raise another strong son unfettered by the unnatural nature of city life.

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
Hell yeah

>>55063753
doesn't this seem a tad unnecessary? I mean I get it if you've fleshed out every single main aspect of the world before this, but . . .

>>55090856
Well I have to be able to calculate what eye colors are present in a region and what eye color distribution will occur in a family, can't do that by approximation, especially if it is undefined what color possibilities there are when two people with light violet eyes breed.

>>55090980
okay, now i know i'm not too anal about my worldbuilding, there are even more anal people than me

>>55090980
It's bad worldbuilding.

>>55090980
for the amount of effort that takes, it doesnt seem to actually add much- surely youd be better off putting your energy into more important aspects of adding depth to your world?

How do i make an alien jungle environment without ripping off Morrowind?

>>55091462
1. why do you want to
2. start with some sort of hook (e.g. all fauna ultimately subsists on sap within trees) and follow it to its logical conclusion.

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we redrawing t h e s w a m p

>>55091462
Start with Catachan or Pandora and tone it down from there.

>>55090980
This is insane.
Will you describe every characters eye colour? Doesnt that seem pedantic? Will any play ever ask aboit their eyes otherwise?
There are also so many other factors you would need to consider. The genetic and history of eye colour alone would take hugely detailed calculations, that ultimately no one will care about

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>>55088709
draw it by hand boy, you just gotta draw every little detail

look at all these little bits that you just cant help but notice because its what gives the landscape its texture.
Individual rockslides, trees, lighthouses, palm trees, all kinds of shit just constantly doodle it.

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>>55049814
Auntie Freon: leader of a hag coven, old and powerful spell caster. Auntie freon controls an iceberg crafted from the wreckage of ships she has destroyed. Auntie freon uses her and her covens power to control the weather in a local area. She uses this power to prey upon small islands by using storms and cold weather (including blizzards and hurricanes if the weather is favorable) to freeze crops/people/supply ships and starving out out the population before sending her monsters (orcs, gnolls, goblins, trolls) to kill and raid the survivors. She stays as far away as her magic will allow and will conceal hersef and her iceberg with her magic. She will employ divination magic defensively and offensively preferring to use subtly and tact rather than raw power to achieve her goals.

Decent villian tg?

>>55091711
thats fuckin cool, sounds like naval combat is going to ensue

>>55091781
In game for sure its a aquatic setting. Autie would probably avoid it unless it was going to be profitable

>>55091677
How do you get your perspective so clean?

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Are there any good worldbuilding communities outside of here and the subreddit?

>>55093025
The /wbg/ discord is surprisingly good.

That Redditor's right about Gypsies btw. It's just...weird. Like you're using an actual real-world ethnicity as a class or something. It works in comedic settings, but it's very strange in something like Gee Dubs' Titan.

>>55093118
>The /wbg/ discord is surprisingly good.
That is actually shocking, I'll post a bit and see how it is.

>>55093025
> the italics at the end
Dear diary: today I read a first-hand account of a real life special snowflake

>>55093025
But mana is Polynesian? It's different from manna, which is sky bread.

>>55093290
Eh, I know how he feels. I'm similarly genetically tangled, and it's honestly pretty cool. Even though it has zero hold on you as a person.
>>55093355
Mana is a whole other (ridiculously interesting) thing to do with honour and reciprocity though.

>>55092339
dunno, just been drawing this same shit for like 3 years

>>55093118
the /wbg/ discord is even worse than the general on /tg/ It's just a place for people to jerk off over their setting with no actual discussion going on

>>55094533
Now that you mention it, the Discord does have a lot more discussion than the threads. I wonder why that is.

What's a better day/night mechanism for a hollow earth setting?

No night: the sun sits on the center of the world, ever-burning. There are no nights, and only the occasional storm provides cover from it.

Simultaneous nights: the sun's light varies during the day, and at night there is no light at all. If you look to the skies you can see "stars" - distant lights from cities on the other side of the globe. Every place on the planet shares the same timezone.

Rotating nights: the sun's intensity never changes, *however* there is some regular mechanism that causes night to fall upon different places at different times - perhaps a giant half-sphere of magical darkness that rotates around the sun, keeping half the planet in shadow and the other half in light.

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>>55095092
>Simultaneous nights

This would probably work best. The problem with rotating nights is that the sunlight is still going to be cast on the other side of the sphere, so you won't ever get a real night. Plus, the idea of seeing very distant city lights as stars during night is really cool. I might have to steal it if I ever make a hollow earth setting. I really like it.

>>55095163
>The problem with rotating nights is that the sunlight is still going to be cast on the other side of the sphere

oh shit you're right. simultaneous nights it is.

>>55085945
So there could be a homestead on a medium-sized one or a hamlet on a large one?
I like the idea of a watered down twin peaks where some moderate paranormal phenomena take place in one such hamlet because of the psychic field.

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>>55095092
>What's a better day/night mechanism for a hollow earth setting?
This mechanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RHFFeQ2tu4

Whatever the fuck it is.

>>55090980
Yulillillia, is that you?

>>55093025
When your bloodline is a Gordian knot, the best thing to do is to have someone cut you up. The Klan is doing his family a service.

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venice 2: stinky water edition

>>55096935
That looks creepy. Are those waterfalls magic?

So I'm thinking of this idea where the players are part of the last survivors of a dying world, trying to find another new, safe world to flee to. There's millions of refugees to help.

And they're fleeing this giant fuck huge nightmare army. Something that is nigh-unstoppable, it has snowballed out of control, all of the world's Gods have been devoured by it.

I've got some ideas of my own, but what kind of overwhelming enemy should this be? Undead? Robots? Demons? Devils? Edgy self-harming Humans? Drow? Angry Dwarves? Bugs? Knockoff Zerg/Tyranids? Advanced tech armies from the future?

It should be an enemy that can't really be negotiated with and presents a complete and total threat, something that will kill just about every thing it can touch. It doesn't really need to be overcome, just fled from. But it should be capable of, "seducing," and corrupting people to join it, acting as traitors and turncoats.

>>55099816
politics

>>55099816
Well, you can have the undead, I had a similar villain, called the king of the cucks, he had an army of robots and edgelords. Personally, the promise of eternal life as a sentient zombie and ruling people seems like a neat oportunity. My point is, be enough of an asshole and some people can pull a 180 and join him at any given moment, simply by shouting in the sky is enough, so not only running, but bonding and making turning coat not desirable.

>>55099816
Don't make the mistake of modern game makers and don't define them. They are evil forces, that's it. Medieval people didn't draw much distinction between demons, undead, fair folk, etc. Toss in some robots/golems/constructs, and you're good to go.

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>>55049814
>/wbg/ - World Building General

Got a quickie I could use some help with:

I'm putting together a really fucking cheesy, minimum-effort, nonconsequential, super-generic-western-fantasy, "pocket/painted world" kind of setting:
I'm calling it Yotunheim and it's a temperate, sky-island just a little larger than Australia and the whole place basically looks like one giant Albert Biersadt landscape painting after another.

The big deal with the place though is that it's absolutely loaded with fucking Giants (hence the name), the fluff is it's basically a realm made just for them and the place is LOUSY with um': Minotaurs, Ogres, Hill & Frost Giants, Cyclopes, Trolls, even a few Bronze Colossi with the smallest giants being 8-10ft tall and the biggest being 30ft tall.
MY question is: How do normal people survive? Dwarves, Gnomes, Half-Elves, but mostly Humans and Orcs, how would they.. avoid just not being sat on or squashed to extinction?
If it helps context-wise, the most aggressive ones are the smallest: Minotaurs & Ogres (8-10ft), Hill & Frost Giants (12-15ft), with the exception being Trolls who will grow until they're too large (typically 20-30ft) to hide from the sun before petrifying and crumbling.

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Hey i was hoping you guys could help me out with something.

I'm trying to come up with a list of tech levels for my own personal notes about countries.

For example, it would be something like this.

Country A - Tech Level: Rennaisance

Country B - Tech Level: Medieval

Country C - Tech Level: Information/Current/Modern

What should the tech level categories be? I'd like for each to be one word long if possible.

Lets say the most advanced level of technology is like the type of stuff you'd see in the GitS universe

>>55100521
Are the giants intelligent?
If so, the people merely negotiate with them.
If they aren't, then they're like giant beasts that cause regular problems.
Do they eat people?
If so, I'm reminded of Attack on Titan and that whole situation.
Otherwise, I'd imagine people just try to keep to themselves and live peacefully among the giants, and deal with the minotaurs and ogres.

>>55100627
This is not an entirely accurate list
>Prehistoric - cavepunk
>ancient - sumerian and egyptians, charriots
>classical - massive armies and shield/spear formations
>low medieval - chainmail&surcoat, simple castles
>high medieval - some degree of plate, but no bling armor, somewhat bigger castles
>rennaisance - stylish armor, pikeman and shot
>modern - mass musket and bayonet formation
>steam/industrial - early technology, perhaps something ww1 or earlier, the automatic rifle is a futuristic idea here
>60 years ago/when your grandpa was your age
>contemporany/now
>future

Take in consideration some civilzations don't take a dip in evolution like europe, the early middle ages isn't a step above classical ages, some may evolve in different turns

>>55099816
Maybe they're like the Gnosis from Xenosaga or that one visual novel series Muv Luv?
Just mysterious lifeforms with an unexplained hostility towards mankind.

>>55100709
Yeah that's the basic gist of what i'm looking for, thanks.
Although, I'd need good names for
>60 years ago
>contemporary
>future

I would even omit future, i imagine that would fit the current highest level of tech in my world, that being GitS or cyberpunk, but not too much cyberpunk aesthetic.

>>55100737
>>60 years ago
Atomic age.
>>contemporary
Information age.

>>55100737
Well, you said your setting is based on GitS, so future represents just that.
>>55100744
So, Atomic age and Information age?

I've heard a lot of weird names for ages so I didn't know what exactly to place it there, thanks. However, my idea for "60 years ago" was pre-cold war era, like the greatest generation era or something, but its fine.

>>55100776
right, it's future for us, but in that world, it's not future.

>>55100776
Pre-end of WW2 is a bit weird I think, and gets often lumped together with WWI into the industrial age, which also started around 1760.

>>55100817
I meant the interwar period to end of WW2 period and yeah, didn't know about the industrial age thingy. I was just plastering ranks of soldiers with single shot rifles when it became mainstream, warfare wise.
>>55100813
Ah, perhaps the machine/cybernetic age?

>>55100907
cybernetic is great, thanks
i just need a word now for age of exploration/colonial (though maybe colonial would be fine)
that early 1900s shit (i might just use atomic)
and the cold war/information age.

>>55100959
Wait, is the cold war the info age? then what is the name for post cold-war today's age? I thought it was the digital age or something. Hell, is the nuclear age a thing? not atomic, nuclear

I'm already using Sumerian names for regular gods, so what names should I use for Lovecraftian gods?
I really dislike the "cat jumped onto keyboard" style of names.

>>55100972
sorry, you're probably right, i should separate those also.
boy we really advanced quickly in the later years didnt we?

>>55100993
yup
it actually makes some mathematicians question whether chronology we use is correct, as the rate of progress looks really weird

>>55101012
>>55100993
I feel like we need a chart with those ages

>>55100521
>Yotunheim
It's spelled Jotunheim

>>55100521
>How do normal people survive?
The same way that our rodent ancestors survived in the when the dinosaurs wee around - by hiding in caves and being fast and small. That's also how they survived the meteor.

How would you justify gods of things like love and war existing before mortals were created and love and war became a thing?

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>>55102081
>gods
>existing
on a more helpful note check out the aeons in gnosticism

>>55102081

The gods are still capable of loving and warring with each other.

>>55102081
Maritals quarrels between the gods taken to the extreme.

>>55102081
Once the gods come into existence, their existence propagates backwards and forwards in time, so that they have always existed.

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>>55102081
humans' belief made the gods having always been. retroactive creation.

>>55102179
that pic is so unconclusive, i think it caused a a aneurysm

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>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?
Depends on where you are, since it's a solar system that was colonized by (unprepared) humans a long time ago.
The worst you will find are literally people who go oingo-boingo at each other with sticks and rocks. The best might be the outer World, where they managed to maintain a high level of technology and are still the most advanced civilization around. The only stuff more complex might be relicts from the old, now derilict and lost, colony ships. Cutting edge are laser rifles and working thorium reactors.

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?
See above, but since the local Fauna tends to get quite large and territorial, most settlements are tight knit and usually fortified.
Living in rural areas for a long time is hardly possible, if not impossible, you need to keep moving and there are few people who aren't nomadic or living in settlements.

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?
Actually i didn't think that far because the whole thing is supposed to be more S-F pulp, but if you ask i think that the Midworld could have those, since electricity starts to become a thing and they have the most people, so unskilled labour is cheap.

>Are the materials people use to construct machines in your setting different than the ones of our world?
Fundamentally, the materials are the same but some materials of the Fauna show interesting properties, like high metal amount, natural bucky tubes, etc.

>>55103572
>In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology? Entertainment? Communication? Utility? Transportation? Warfare? General Consumer Goods?
That would be life support, agriculture, and warfare.

>Have the people of your setting ultimately benefited at the hands the advancement of technology or suffered?
Kind of both, the populations isn't a monoculture on each planet so there are wars, but as i said, they campe unprepared for the situation they found on the planet so technology keept them very much alive.

>Would you ever run a fantasy game set in the 1920s?
Fantasy as in tolkien fantasy? Nah I'm more of a sci-fi GM.

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Going to repost this for the first time in a long while since my group is just now starting to organize.

How realistic does this look? Each hex is a 24-mile hex which would make this map approximately the same size as the US state of Minnesota. The world was fucked over several millenia ago by a massive "fuck you" wizard war and this region is about the quietest little neck of the woods in the general area. The southern sea is a water way that would be about the size of the Caspian Sea with most of the settings actual "nations" on it's southern coast. This region, known as "Vathiel" is just starting to get it's shit together and the petty kingdom (outlined in red) is seeking to expand outwards.

Going for fun first, realism second but want to know if there is anything that screams "BAD" up front.

>>55102081
Plato's theory of forms you nigger

>>55103987
Looks pretty good sofar.

>>55106123
That's good to hear. I put a lot of effort into it and didn't want it to come off as bad right off.

>>55106137
Well, the map is decent, but some sort of glossary telling what each icon means is neat, also some sort of lines showing mountain ranges.

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>>55106278
I have a big list of locations on my laptop but each spot with an emblem does indeed have something going on there.

General specifics would be that the area within the red line (the kingdom) is fairly safe) but as you move further and further out the dangers grow and grow. You'll sometimes find some respite in a goodly village or hold, but you're more likely to find trouble as it tends to be a lawless, monster and bandit filled waste. One notable exception would be the castles at 12.09, 23.10, 32.12, 19.21 and 16.14 which are ran by the Knights of Gy (led by Commander Gax) who are trying to force back the wilds some but to little avail. The immediate areas around their respective castles are fairly safe withing a single hex or so, but beyond that it's danger all over again. And yes, I named them after Gygax.

Honestly, I drew a lot of my inspiration from the pdf I'm linking for ideas, though I took some liberties with it of course.

>>55102081
The gods themselves ought to be capable of love and war.

>>55103987
Is that 24 miles the long diameter, or the short one? Sorry, don't know a lot about hexes.
Either way though, that's a pretty big kingdom.

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>>55108863
See the red line

How much land does one person need to eat, if he can cultivate it with medieval tools?

>>55108863
And yeah, the area is about the size of Minnesota but the actual kingdom (in the red line) is only about 24x20 hexes (at best) so about 11520 miles^2 or a little larger than Massachusetts. Not really big per se (about half the size of the actual Kingdom of Wessex at it's height).

>>55108970
OK that makes a lot more sense. Thanks m80.

>>55108999
Depends what they're eating.

>>55109267
No problem, happy to help.

What's a good aspect for a series of underground tunnels which are home to homeless people, supernatural beasts, portals to another world (one which can be reached from anywhere with the right abilities), and an underground city almost as large as the one on top of it? I also need an aspect for the underground city itself.
Aspects defined here:
https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/aspects-fate-points#defining-aspects

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>>55049814
>How technologically advanced is your setting? What counts as "cutting edge" in your world?

Depends on where you live, really. A lot of kingdoms tend to be highly isolationist short of occasional wars with each other, or in the west in particular, having to come together to force the fucking Summer Fae back into their fuck-off forest. Most places you could probably say rest safely at a medieval level, with some cities having some quality of life stuff they got "from Arcdust", where the ruins of a spacefaring Human civilization lies, and scavengers have formed into groups that mostly just see how much fun they can have with scrounged up tech before something blows up (which is regularly) and sell what isn't fun to the highest bidder. There's also a mobile weapons platform that acts as a city that a particular group managed to get up and running about two hundred years ago, but they've created their own air of mystery around them that most people don't believe it exists, which the leaders there prefer.

>Does most of your population live in urban areas or rural areas? What are the comparisons between the two?

Not particularly no. There is a serious urbanization problem in most countries, with villages being few and far between, creating the aforementioned isolationism via it being much too difficult to communicate with other places.

>How do people typically react to the encroaching industrialization of the world? Are there any ludites in your setting?

By the gods, fear the clanking of cogs. More seriously, they are slow to accept change, but a lot of places could really use the help. Of course, there are always those grumpy old timers who prefer their way of doing things.

In which area has there been the most noticeable improvement from the use of technology?

Mostly keeping people entertained and assisting with consumption of resources. Those groups of scavengers rarely let anything resembling a car leave Arcdust.