Writing General: 'orcs, ogres and all things evil' (continuation) edition.Welcome to /wg/, the thread for all /tg/ related writing. Whether you're plotting your campaign, trying to come up with a character backstory, or just trying to write some setting fluff, this is the place to post it. You don't even have a campaign, just an idea you want to develop? You're welcome here. While the rest of /tg/ is arguing over monstergirl mating and which way rivers are supposed to flow, we're here to help you turn your thoughts into an actual finished product.As the successor to the Storythreads, we're also open to /tg/ related fanfiction (D&D, Warhammer, Battletech, whatever). In fact, if you've written any vaguely /tg/-related short stories, you can try them out here. We also have flash-fiction challenges from time to time.There's a discord for writers herehttps://discord.gg/6AwKHGFThe previous thread can still be found in the archive here>>92782854>>92711094 And finally an archive of /tg/ fiction can be found here:http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Storythread (dead link, but may be resurrected one day)https://2d4chan.org/wiki/Storythreadhttps://1d6chan.miraheze.org/wiki/Storythread
>>92786440That honestly sounds like a really good idea for a story. >>92786822Voidmaker, the bringer of nothingness.>>92786880I really want to say 'put a giant ape on it' but I don't think your players would be able to take it seriously after that.Kraken sounds good.
>>92799478What do you need to remember when writing inherently evil groups/factions? I prefer to keep that kind of thing restricted to more supernatural beings like demons or eldritch horrors, but a race that said beings have corrupted like orcs in LotR could work too.
>>92799708Give them a goal beyond being evil. The goal can just be to loot stuff, but don't have them going out of their way to make the protagonists' lives miserable like they have nothing better to do.
How would one go about defeating a Mary Sue caricature (with all the accompanying plot armor)? I'm trying to fill out the final villain position in my story, but I have no idea how my party of trash goblins would beat this one.
>>92799708Give them reasonable goals and don't make them cooler than the protagonists, but don't make them lame. Most important is to give reader a desire to see them lose or lament that things needed to be that way.>>92803458Your half-dead trash goblins get lucky and get the villain while they're monologuing as the gobbo is bleeding out.
>>92799478evil has more fun
>>92799478When writing demons, what advice do you have? And if you want each demon to be tied to one of the Seven Deadly Sins, what are some powers and features for demons of each Sin besides the obvious, like peacock feathers for Pride demons?
>>92814701Unironically research this shit or use chatgtp if you're too lazy to do it on your own.First you have to have an idea/framework on how the demons work/look/want/are inspired from.Then you have to decide on the culture surrounding the demons, the cultural mythos and reputations, habits formed by their existence and so on.After that, their servants if they have any with the same steps I've outlined before.Having got the demon and their cult, work on how the world receives them and how the demon&co. responds to that.
>>92814701>when writing demons, what advice do you have?make them scary and entertaining>if you want each demon to be tied to one of the seven deadly sinswhy would you want that?
>>92799683>I really want to say 'put a giant ape on it' but I don't think your players would be able to take it seriously after that.To be fair, there is a lot of kinda-silly stuff in the campaign. It is serious, but like, one of the NPCs is a friendly Lich which a ghost-head because he lost his real head, who lives on an island of zombies, dinosaurs, and zombie dinosaurs. The PCs stumbled into an underground alien ship that had somehow warp-teleported its' way into an undersea mountain and got stuck there. I don't know if I would want to just throw King Kong in there, but who knows.What I do want to do is build this chunk of the campaign to really flesh out the Aboleths. How does one engage with Aboleths? How do they exist as a structure and society? Do they build things? Do they live in ancient Cyclops ruins? Should I find a way to send the PCs into a giant underwater dungeon to fight them?
>>92799478Been a while (mental health went to shit), how is it going?
>>92819333Could be better, could be worse.
>>92799478I'm struggling to come up with religions and cultural norms for a book I'm writing about two royal kids who end up stranded in a country inspired by Arabia as depicted in 'Azur and Asmart'. The country they come from (they were raised abroad for safety reason so they don't actually know all the stuff that happened there yet) mostly work by 'Fisher King' rules where the climate and ressources change drastically depending on the ruler (and as a recent development is basically dying due to the kids being unknowingly the only surviving royals and thus there's no legitimate ruler).Any advice beyond copy pasting islam for the arabia-like kingdom?The country the protags are in use Arab and Persian names while their 'home country' use Gaulish and Gaelic names if that helps.
>>92803458>How would one go about defeating a Mary Sue caricature (with all the accompanying plot armor)?Befriend them and convince them that the real villain is whoever is the most morally reprehensible guy from whatever kingdom send them after you.Play the Mojo Jojo 'I am oppressed' card.
Are there any good (and free) programs that can be used to sort of outline stuff? I have a story idea or two jostling around in my head but I want to try and pick at it to see what I might need to effectively get it running or what I'd need to actually get it to work. Maybe something with boxes and visual spots I can use to help ...visualize.
>>92824160Try researching Zoroastrianism.
>>92799478I’m writing a story where there are two factions of elemental mages, one aligned with positive forces, the other with negative forces. Besides just making the colors of their elements brighter or darker, how can I show that an element is either in its positive or negative aspect, and thus which side is using it, especially for the negative side of the equation? I was thinking that overuse of their magic might leave a mage more sensitive to the opposing force’s aspect, but that doesn’t help me much with the elemental spells themselves.
>>92803458It took me 4 days, but I finally figured it out: my trash goblins need to change the story into a comedy. The greatest weakness of power fantasy characters is slapstick.
>>92837069Light for good fire mages, burning for bad fire magesPlant growth for good earth mages, spiky rocks punching out of the ground for bad earth magesWater jets for good water mages, bog-like pools sucking you down for bad water magesFor good air mages evasion and air blasts, for bad air mages suffocation and cyclones.
>>92837069Consider the duality of things like fire and water.Fire can be a force for destruction. It can also be a force of creation, as in forging stuff or in controlled forest fires to promote new growth.Water can, again, be destructive as in floods producing destruction and standing water that breeds disease. Or it can be used as a power source.The use of elemental magic for maintenance of society vs military use seems like a good story focus.
>Wanna give my character some super special demon eyes>Cant think of any interesting powers that arent ripoffs of some anime eye powers that already existDamn
>>92841719Given them demon eyes in the first place is pretty gay to start with. You should just knuckle up and go all in.
>>92841758well technically they steal the eyes from a demon by dying and becoming a ghost and stabbing the demon from the afterlife and then nailing his demon eyes into his soul eyes but that felt a bit besides the point to go all in on that context.
Need help with my magic system:Magic comes from a dead god's essenceWorks mostly as DnD magic, only instead of spell slots, wizards have "Wells" that contain the magical energy they draw within themselves.Mages have to recharge themselves by a personal prayer/rite that they must do to channel the energies, however if not under the mages control it will mutate and twist its surroundings as there is no will commanding it.Spell slots or rather "Formulas of Aetheric Dispersion" are human tested amounts that are roughly consumed with every casting of a spell.Spells are physical manifestations of the will of the caster that they impose upon reality. Most wizards use the already tried and true spells because they require less effort to mold and to use.The issue for me is how to write it and make it feel more magical as the protagonist is a mage himself and not to make the magic casting too tedious or bean-counting.
>>92842252Gay
>>92844729>The issue for me is how to write it and make it feel more magical as the protagonist is a mage himself and not to make the magic casting too tedious or bean-counting.Honestly, I think that's just the route you've gone down. You may need to rethink the system if you don't want it to seem too rigid.
>>92844732
I don't know if anyone remembers, but in later Dune books, long time after the Exodus, a group of people led by some twisted version of Bene Gesserit came to the Known Universe, seemingly to wage war against Gesserit, but in fact it turned out they were running away from the greater threat. But it's not about it.How could I write humans returning from their exodus to wage war with the crumbling empire that forced them out? What would be their motivation other than revenge/spite or other general hate? Should be it portrayed as a faction more evil than said empire? Or an actual hope for a change for better in the galaxy/universe devoid of it?
>>92848456Isn't the whole Battletech universe based around that idea? Mechwarrior and all that stuff. Pretty sure the main antagonists are the remnants of the pre-Dark Age military who left when the galactic republic collapsed and came back as a bunch of eugenics psychos looking to overthrow the neo-feudal kingdoms and restore what they think the old republic was.It's also pretty much the core of the conflict between Eldar and Dark Eldar in 40k. Eldar are the puritans who exodus'd out of their society because it had gone full Marquis de Sade, and the Dark Eldar are the ones who stayed and survived the cataclysm. I think it works either way. You can play it as a bunch of nut cases who got banished for being weird and now want to impose their psychotic ideology on everyone, or as the last pure remnants of the Golden Age coming back to set everything right.
>>92848611I'm not playing BattleTech, so I didn't know the context.And typically when I associate lunatics on a murder spree I mostly associate it with convicts sent far far away to die, but they eventually endure, survive and develop into a murderous war machine, just like Killzone's Helghan.What seemed in the beginning for Dune's case, was that Bene Gesserit's vision of Kwisatz Haderach backfired spectacularly with the new force ending their ways. And I was thinking more about "You can either stay here and eventually die in stagnation, or dare to claim new universe, which won't be save" idea given by a specific group or person, later being confronted by those who listened to the exodus suggestion, but in fact they feel deceived, and want their revenge. But should they really have only revenge on their mind?
>>92848727I think the desire to take back what they believe is rightfully theirs is a more likely motivator.Not to get too political on a non-political board, but if you look at Israel you can see certain parallels.
>>92848861Exacting their revenge and claiming their birthright in the form of their original home. Seems pretty right.Now, should they be even more evil than the empire that caused their exodus, or maybe be an actual alternative to it?
>>92848892I think that comes down to personal preference. It works equally well either way.
>>92829107I'll try that, thanks for the advice!
>>92799478What are some novel ideas for spells that a darkness mage can cast, since that's what I want my orcs to specialize in and I need ideas to keep my orc mage from just spamming the same few spells.
>>92853833Shadows/darkness are classic stuff. Shadow dagger, shadow step, shadow arrows etcYou can move onto more esoteric elements if you want to keep it in the same ballpark. Corruption, Aether, Soul energy, Cosmic aspects (Black holes etc)
>>92799478I know this isn't /co/, but has Soleil released a new Orcs and Goblins issue, yet?
>>92840247Well, that would make it more difficult for positive elemental mages to defend themselves and others from dark elemental mages, but it's still an idea, thanks.
>>92861004>AetherWhat exactly do you mean by that in this context, and what besides black holes would work for the "cosmic" angle, because I'm drawing a blank.
>>92865991You want me to come up with everything for you man? I dont know your story context, get creative!Cosmic can be anything slightly spacey that isnt suns directly (since you're going for "darkness" as a theme) - constellations, comets, meteors, pulsars, dark matter/energy,
>>92868094Sorry, I was mainly asking to clarify what exactly you meant. Especially for the Aether part, that's got a million and one definitions in fantasy.
>>92799478How the heck do I describe clothes, folks? I have a block every time I want to describe something fabulous and complex. I have no idea how.Any tips or *cheat*?
>>92872780Aether was just an example, you can come up with anything you want for it. Something like soul manipulation, illusions, folding the space between worlds to hide in shadows and stuff. You can just come up with what you want, dont feel restrained by what other people have done with "aether" in their fantasy.
>>92874072Well, thanks for clearing that up, and I apologize again for any misunderstanding.
