Fearsome Frights EditionWelcome to /wbg/, the official thread for the discussion and development of fictional worlds and settings.Here is where you can share the details of your created worlds such as lore, factions, magic systems, ecosystems and more. You can also post maps for your settings, as well as any relevant art, either created by you or used as inspiration for your work. Please remember that dialogue is what keeps the thread alive, so don't be afraid of giving someone feedback!FAQ:>What is worldbuilding?Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch, all while considering the logistics of these worlds to make them as believable as possible. Worldbuilding asks questions about the setting of a world, and then answers them, often in great detail. Most people use it as a means of creating a setting or the scenery for a story.>"Isn't there a Worldbuilding general in >>>/tg/ already?"Yes, there is. However, that general is focused on the creation of fictional worlds for the intended purpose of playing TTRPG campaigns. Here you can discuss worldbuilding projects that are not meant to be used for a roleplaying setting, but for novels, videogames, or any other kind of creative project.>"Can I discuss the setting of my campaign here, though?"If you want to, but it would probably be better to discuss it on >>>/tg/ . We don't allow the discussion of TTRPG mechanics, however. If you want to discuss stats or which D&D edition is best, this is not the place.>"Can I talk about an existing fictional setting that is not mine?"Yes, of course you can!>"Does worldbuilding need to be about fantasy and elves?"Worldbuilding, as already stated above, and contrary to what many believe, does not inherently imply blatantly copying Tolkien. In fact, there are many science-fiction setting out there, and even entire alternative history settings which do not possess supernatural elements at all. Any kind of science fiction book has an implied setting at least, which involves a certain degree of worldbuilding put into it.Last Thread >>23859878
>>23945402Thread Questions:>What are the most dangerous and fearsome monsters and other adversaries in your setting? What makes them so terrifying, and how do people fight against them?>Who is the BBEG of your setting, and how does he pose a threat to the rest of the world? And how do you make do a BBEG right?>Are there any powers or abilities that deal with fear in your world? How do they work if so?>When including Lovecraftian horrors in your world, how do you handle them, especially if you're trying to make them distinct from Lovecraft's own stuff? Besides Lovecraft, what settings handle such beings well that you can look at for ideas?Extra Question:>Since we just experienced Halloween, and today is the Day of the Dead, are there any spooky holidays in your world? If so, what are they like, and do they have any supernatural significance and/or monsters associated with them?
>>23945402Reminder: Don't overthink it
>>23945405>When including Lovecraftian horrors in your world, how do you handle themOne thing I do is have the, but not elaborate on them. The closest thing I have to lovecraftioan entities I keep weirdly disconnected . They exist and affect the story but I ultimately try not to develop or expand on their existence.Think of it like Half-life G-man - you know he's responsible for a lot of things but you'll never find out the truth about him. He'll always be beyond the story's scope.
>>23945402How many settings do you have in progress at any given time?
>>23946676Too many
>>23945402In stories revolving around the idea of Flesh vs Steel, why is it that Flesh is usually treated as the villian? Pic is releated, from SCP with The Sarkic Cults and the Church of the Broken God, this even ranges from any setting that has a overwhelming bug menace that uses pure-bio-tech.Are there any stores that has Organic be the heroes, something like a biopunk action story.
It recently crossed my mind how strange it is that heroism is practically synonymous with altruism in the modern world, but in the ancient world the two had nothing to do with each other. A hero was someone who transcended the ordinary, someone who was extraordinary in almost all of his aspects, with an almost faultless record of honour and a great deal of glory achieved through epic feats, not someone who necessarily cared a great deal for the wellbeing of others as a thing in itself.
How can I optimize my use of generative AI for worldbuilding? I currently use it it in three ways>give me a list of names that meet these requirements>solve this math problem for me>give me a list of outcomes as for how XYZ factors might influence local culture>here is a premise. list arguments for and against its plausibilityAnd then I toss the entire response into a document and filter out any ideas I like which are then transplanted in my main document. >TQsSpace setting with no aliens, so it's all Man vs. Man and Man vs. Environment.Not really, its more about individuals. Large stakes stuff like that isn't for me, but if you wanted to do it right I think the main thing to do is to make such a threat inhuman. Being able to reason with the Ancient Evil gives you a chance to fuck up their characterization and make them look retarded.Not really, but this does prompt me to consider a psychoactive gas attack as a weapon. Weaponized bad trip feels like a decent warcrime.No. I kinda feel like "eldritch horror" is a little played out these days and want to stay away from it. I'm not sure you can do it well anymore, it always comes across as kitsch or missing the point of the originals.
>>23946758What stories are you talking about here?
>>23948040Flesh vs Steel stories. Think the Zerg vs Humanity. One uses wholly biological weapons and the other creates machines. I'm pretty sure a few mecha naime go a similar route with the whole monsters vs mechs thing. Pacific rim is a good example also.
>>23948102I think part of it is aesthetics, the “Flesh” sides in those stories tend to be more visceral, which puts most people off.
>>23946758People associate Steel with human creations and ingenuity.
Is it too derivative to make my esoteric university setting simply Miskatonic University?
>>23946758Avatar. The hot smurfs are the good guys, the mechs are the bad guys.
What software do you guys use to track worldbuilding? Is there any software that lets me basically host my own local wiki to keep track of characters and such?
To the people here working on modern/urban fantasy settings: what kinds of 21st century magitechs have you come up with for your world? Be as autistic in the replies as possible.
>>23949690I use Obsidian for my worldbuilding. It's more convenient than setting up an actual wiki, and definitely better than a document in a word processor. Use it or one of the other ones like it maybe.
>>23949690My brain
>>23945402What are some good resources for creating races for fantasy settings? If nothing else I would love lists of creatures and beings from myth and folklore that could easily be used as races, especially those that you don’t see as often, or just underutilized fantasy races in general.
>>23949690Libre Office.
>>23945402In the story I'm working on, all the races were created as collaborative efforts, since the gods are each tied to a specific element, and without combining with the god another element, or even two elements, the best the gods could do is an elemental or a divine servant, with traces of the other elements worked in because they use a base template, with some races having the two elements in rough balance, while in others one element is dominant over the other(s), representing which gods were most active in the process, the elements showing clear influence in the race's physiology and/or typical personalities. The elements are Light, Darkness, Fire, Earth, Water, and Wind. What are some ideas for what I can do for races here? I have the two-element races more or less figured out, like Elves being Light and Earth due to their long lives connection to nature, and ethereal looks that seem to glow so it's the three-element races I need help with, though I can't remember what I was doing for the Water and Earth race now that I think of it. For instance, a race for Light, Wind, and Darkness, someone else I asked suggested something wolf-based? I was thinking that the Wind, Water, and Darkness race might be something like Sirens, what do you think? Someone else suggested that a humanoid version of Carbuncles would work for the Fire/Light/Earth race, what do you say? My best idea for the Wind, Water, and Darkness was some race that inhabits underwater caves.
>>23949690word, excel and a comprehensive yet simple folder structure.i also use draw.io (website) to make family trees quickly
>>23950005take them from your people's folklore that you heard from the tales growing up.unless you are Anglophone native in which case you have none of those. In the latter's case, use Tolkien with personal tweaks, or study an other culture's (or cultures') folklore and adapt it (like Tolkien did)
>>23949919Magic and technology should be separate. If you make magic as mundane as technology it is no longer interesting. Magic is interesting because it is mysterious and rare. If flying carpets are as common as cars they would become mundane.
>>23951027Not that anon, but I always wondered about the anglophone have no myths or folklore of their own part. I know that stuff like King Arthur or across the pond the native myths got claimed or adapted at lenght, but isn't stuff like Grendel and Beowulf an original english myth?
>>23951204I might be wrong about this, but as far as I know Beowulf was an adoption from Nordic folklore with added Christian themes.All Anglic culture really retained from old was the story of Hengist and Horsa (and with them included the prominence of the horse as a sort of mythical spirit animal)The folk stories after the conquest of Britain are ones that were adopted from the Britons (like King Arthur) or ones that are also found across Europe (like the Wild Hunt). There are some named characters like Herne the Hunter or the Brown Lady, but there's nothing really comprehensive. At least when compared to other cultures in Europe.Why this is, I have no clue really.
>>23949690I make a document on google docs. Accessible everywhere, easy to organize and browse with headings, and simple to share with others if need to....I have 33 projects in progress right now.
>>23951703>...I have 33 projects in progress right now.What are some of these projects, and do you have any advice for writing/worldbuilding them please?
>>23952499I have various types of fantasy and scifi stories, and there are even a few contemporary mysteries with supernatural elements. And yes, I do finish projects too, they're not all eternally in progress.I believe the goal of documentation is to make that fuzzy idea in your head as clear and easy to understand as possible, and check if there aren't any glaring inconsistencies, contradictory elements, or other parts that just don't work before you commit to writing. All to save you from being blocked when the main effort is underway. So I would recommend approaching it from that angle from the start. Identify the parts in your project that you feel are most likely to cause confusion for you down the line, and put them into words, or sketches, or mind maps, or whatever works for you.Often just explaining a concept to yourself, as if you would to a stranger, helps immensely to flesh out things. Before anything else, I begin with a brief summary of the starting premise, answering basic questions: who is it all about, what is he/she doing, and why, and where? You'd think it goes without saying where things begin, that's usually the first thing you imagine when starting a story. But no matter how boring it feels, this is a mandatory step. It's the very first point where you can tell, "wait a minute, this part just doesn't work at all," and prevent many issues.When you have the main framework down, you can move on to the bells and whistles that really make your project unique.
>>23950027>Libre Office.Why that specifically?
>>23952499>advice for worldbuildingNTA but your worldbuilding should exist for a reason if you are going to bother writing it down. A game, a story, something. Once you have a purpose such as "I want to write a story about pacifism" then you can begin considering your worldbuilding in regards to that goal. Something that might make it interesting, like maybe it's like the wild west, or its like the warring states period. Exploring pacifism could be interesting because everything is so violent and chaotic. Maybe you decide on sengoku style European fantasy and your focus is on 4 different religions and how they all interact within such a tumultuous environment full of daily violence. How do they all cope with it? The focus of your worldbuilding would then be able about those religions and events in the region that you are concerned with, maybe the most violent lawless region, and explore why it became that way.You can probably see how having a goal and narrow focus can let you dig real deep and create a rich setting. No plate tectonics and map making required. No 10,000 year histories, just "such and such event happened and all political stability went to shit, now shit sucks and has sucked for the last couple decades". Whatever fascinates you, keep focusing on that. A single town in this backdrop might be all you need.This example is not based on any project I have previously or am currently working on.
>>23945402I’m working on a story where mages are all elemental, determined by genetics like benders in Avatar, but with the twist that, the more they use their magic, the more it marks them. The first stage is always having the eyes change color to match the element and glow when the mage is casting a spell, but later stages vary considerably based on how much they use their magic and what spells they’re casting, among other factors, and I need some help coming up with ideas. There’s the hair changing color as well, or even becoming made of the element, like a fire mage with flame hair, and the skin changing color based on element, but what else is there besides water mages getting skin with fish scales and/or webbed fingers and toes, wind mages getting feathery skin, etc.?
>>23945402What are some powers and abilities that go well with each of the Seven Deadly Sins, or at least animal features demons of each Sin might have?
Do sci-fi settings need a 'Thing' that it focuses on.Starwars has light sabers, Alien the Xenomorphs, Generator Rex has the nanites, even cyberpunk as a genere has cybernetics and hacking as their thing.If it's just a general scifi story does it ever really go beyond the theme.
>>23945402
>>23953699Just stop. That shit's everywhere man
>>23954234Ha, I actually have stories for my worlds. And they have black jack and hookers
Bros I somehow lost my sound change list for my conlangs. Now I have to try and work backwards from the current words to connect them to the proto lang words. It's over for me>>23954234I write only in universe texts in my conlangs
The process - the action - of magic is a multi-part process that is simultaneously a learned skill, a grand art, and an innate talent one must be born with. A confusing concept for sure but not one that is impossible to do.Magic is done by harnessing the Essence of the world around you, unifying it as one and shaping it into a spell of your desire. The type of essence used/chosen is what determines the nature of spell. There are six major categories that describe the know types of essence: Life, Death, The Stars, The Elements, Light & Darkness, and Mind. A technical seventh category exists, and is the most abundant essence, know as Neutral Essence, a type that as no major unique properties of its own and is used to help fill up spells.Casting a spell is first done by gather a given amount of essence - either of a specific type from a specific source or from the general surroundings. If all of the essence is of the same type then it may be shaped into a spell but typically mages tend to fill a gathering with some Neutral essence to fill it up faster, so a process must be done that converts the gathered essence into another type - such as Neutral into Elemental. Once the gathered essence is made uniform it is then shaped into a spell of the casters choosing. Shaping a spell is very much a strange combination of art and math. One must get a precise "Shape" of the spell under a very specific pattern with very little deviation really allowed in it, but the action in it of itself has been described as though the mage was making a painting or writing out notes for a song. A feeling - a flow - just as much as an action. Spells have their own categories, sectioned into different types on the actions they do but this is more a man-made, scholarly categorization rather than a part of the nature of magic. (Spell types: Manifest, Summon, Ward, Manipulate, Augment, Analyze)
>>23951204American Anglophone myth is the cowboy. The problem with the natives is that no one learns their language.
>>23954949Are any types of Essence better for casting certain spell types? And do you have any specific spells written out yet?
How do vassals/government, nobility, navies, crew, empires, all work lol?
>>23954234> Start writing a story in the world> 10-15 pages in > A wild plot hole appears!> Patch plot hole so the setting is self-consistent > Half the setting is rewritten > Scrap the story so far
>>23955214Essence is magic, magic is merely the utilization of essence to do something. Kinda like mana but color seperated
>>23955326A story is a logical series of events. Don't force the events tho. If it can't happen you don't need to write it. Kill your Darlings
>>23955364So like Magic: the Gathering then? What more can you say on the kinds of Essence?
How do writers actually write lol
>>23955382Everything in the world gives off some type of essence, as the previously mentioned categories. A mage takes from those things, and what type they get correlates to the thing itself. A corpse gives of essence of Death with a tree giving essence of Life. While their can technically be sub-sections of essence - especially with Elementalist - the six major categories are the only real ones to exist.And in the world I have, the major school of magic has academies that specialize in a type of essence, especially since mages have major affinities for a given essence at birth
>>23955557I presume that some kinds of magic require certain kinds of Essence, like Death essence and Necromancy spells? I'd love to hear more about that.
>>23955631My magic is very much based on Warhammer Fantasy and it follows the whole colors of magic.Each category is a type of magic and when a mage fully goes down the path of their affinity/specialization they go under the name of the school of magic(two technically, the other being if they decide to go mad/evil).Spirit Tuner[Necromancy]- Essence gathered typically from corpse and death and is the path of the necromancer. Controlling the powers over death, souls, and undeath. Typically, these mages act as exorcists and mediums of both the living and dead, some even raise a body or two to help with menial labor. This order is an easy target for prejudice due to true Necromancers. Life Channeler[Biomancy]-The power of Life. Life Channelers are capable of gathering essence of any living things. Famously known for being healers, their control of life can greatly help in manners ranging from harvest fertility to even improving ones looks. But their control over life can be both harmonious and visceral. Ironically this school has the most skeletons in their closetsCelestials[Astromancy]-Magic of the stars above, of celestial bodies, zodiacs, and the fabric of space-time. The one with the widest array of abilities with their signature being the summoning of zodiac spirits to fight alongside them, as well as the ability to see into the future. They are also can open portals, teleport, alter the flow of time, control gravity and more. Quite the strange ones
>>23955708>cont.Mind Warper[Psychomancy]- Control over the mind, their essence is gathered from any minds around them as well as something they call "Mental echoes. Capable of warping minds their specialty is illusions, fooling the sense to near perfections. Psychic attacks, emotion manipulation, and tulpa handling. While not exactly frontline fighters - having little in the ways of spells that can physically affect things - they do have interesting talents of their own and secrets that give them an edge. These mages tend to be somewhat arrogant due to that fact while also being the least personally liked. Elementalist[Hydro/Pyro/Geo/Aero-mancy]- Classical power of the elements: Water, Fire, Air, and Earth. Each of them technically have their own unique essence but their nature leaves them able to be tied together, each elemental essence easily converting into the other. Their spells are straightforward and yet versatile, mastery of the four granting great power. However this school has some in-fighting amongst those that lean towards a particular element.Shine and Shade[Light and Darkness]- Like the four elements Light and Darkness have different essences, but it seems as though the true nature of the two are tied together. Those capable of controlling light can control darkness. Those capable of controlling darkness can control light. The essence of one very easily turns into the other. Light its the magic of illusion and energy, shaping light to create projections and concentrating it to burn foes. Darkness is the magic of shape and form, having physicality and even mass when needed, or even the lack of it if desired with absorbstion . They are also the only essence capable of fusing, Light and Dark essence able to be used simultaneously in a spell.
"System" = guarantee that the setting is dogshit. Immediate blacklist.
>>23956973>"System" = guarantee that the setting is dogshit. Immediate blacklist.Why exactly is that?
How do governments and vassals with lol? If you're writing about a world that's kind of based on another time or place, how close do you have to stay to the source?
New ideas for my storySo I'm thinking it takes place about 1,000 years from the mass Exodus from EarthI'm thinking of..and I don't know quite how this happens.. I've been workshopping a few ideas..but I want there to be like a successor to the Holy Roman Empire..I'm thinking when humanity flees to space, Germany, Poland, Hungaria, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, and Slovakia get their own state on their own planet. France and Spain get their own state. Russia and Ukraine get their own state on their own planet. China, North and South Korea, probably Vietnam get their own state on their own planet
>>23957811And then who tf knows what happens from there. Breakdowns in centralized power, hundreds of years of darkness, increasing scarcity of resources, nations and peoples cut off from each other, senseless killing and brutal savagery, breakdown in secular governance, grandiose leaders, Earth becomes a creation myth, and the emergence of religious authority
>>23946896>How can I optimize my use of generative AI for worldbuilding?I literally just talk to ChatGPT about what I am writing and occasionally ask it to summarize, create profiles, speculate, etc. When the memory is full it tends to hallucinate, but it's not the end of the world, just create summaries and profiles to plug into a new chat so as not to start from scratch.
>>23949677Perhaps, but I think that's the point.
>>23949677Making a reference like that once is okay, doing it three times is when you get unoriginal
>>23958204Oh I should start doing that. I've just been clearing memory when needed and making sure I didn't need anything else on the information I cleared. But if I just have it spit out a summary on everything it has memorized so far I can feed that back in whenever I want huh.Neat. Thanks!
>Start a YA novel semi-based on the Key and Peele sketch on an inner-city magic school. >Already have two "active shooter" incidents from students practicing dark magic beyond their understanding and unleashing demonic monstersKinda lazy, but whatever gets the story moving along I guess.
>>23959072How often do those things happen in the school? Are the teachers used to it by then or did those kids just REALLY fuck up.
>Have a story about a high school kid>Want to make it so that he can have fights/adventure/training across the world - or at least across North America - while also still attending school>Main focus of the story is a gaint creature that would take forever to transport anywhereAnyone got some help to give? I'm tempt to allow limited teleport to exist but I feel like that would cheapen a bunch of my story.
My world is a blatant rip off of the Dark Sun D&D setting. I like deserts
>>23959451It happens once or twice a month. Kids have the internet. Grimoires get download too.
>>23959760>>Main focus of the story is a gaint creature that would take forever to transport anywhereDoes the creature itself have wings, burrowing capability to enter the hollow Earth, or magical capabilities to transmit itself via leylines or other magical currents?
This is a risky question to ask here, but here goes: how do you think gender roles would work for a humanoid species that has little to no sexual dimorphism? Specifically, would they have looser gender roles, or would they be even stricter than us?I'm going to explain my thought process here. Imagine you have a species that is very similar to us, but different in a few aspects. Sort of like your typical fantasy races, they're almost like humans but not quite. In these guys' case, one of their differences is that they're incredibly androgynous, to the point having almost no sexual dimorphism. You can think of them as sort of similar to some popular depictions of elves. They still have two sexes, male and female, and reproduce just as we would, but beyond the genitals there is very little difference.Now, here's where I'm getting conflicting ideas on how gender norms should work for a species like this. On one hand, the lack of any differences in size and strength means that a strict division of labor between males and females doesn't make as much sense as it does for humans. On the other hand, because these guys still reproduce as we would, there is still a need to clearly identify which individuals are males and which are females. This creates a problem because since other than the genitals there is little physical difference between the two, if there is no separation of males and females based on social roles - if they use the same clothes, do the same jobs, are socialized the same, etc. - you could genuinely end up mixing up the two. This is obviously something that can't happen with humans outside of a few edge cases, which means that this race might actually have more of an incentive to come up with ways to keep the sexes separate than us. Or at least, that's what I think.
>>23959819>Incel downloads "Demonicus Eroticus">Tries to summon Succubus >hehehe, "suck-you-bus" >???>PROFIT!!!
>>23959851Have you read Engels' Family Private Property and the State?Go read Engels. Family structure produces gender in the human.
>>23959840Pacific rim rules. If its not personally moving it more than likely needs carrier transport
>>23960050>Pacific rim rules.
>>23959819I can only imagine what kind of absolutely deranged spells would be on a grimoire downloaded from the Internet. It's enough to strike fear into anyone who walks into a wizard battle and sees their opponent pull out a paperwork binder stuffed full of A4 printed pages.
>>23960184And as high school students, they definitely aren't prepared when it comes to raising the dead or summoning fiends from the pit. So whatever they do raise tends to messily take them out first before running amok in school.
>>23960113Do you think that if it had wings I would be asking the question?
Looking for military autism for a second.I got Autonomous Kill Vehicles (AKV) flying around bigass warships. Obviously they are better than torch missiles since they can be one themselves in a pinch, but they also have other guns, regular missiles, ECM systems, can take on basically every role a plane can for a wet navy, and so on. And of course have more delta-V than anything they would be hunting, bar another AKV with a design more optimized for dV. You get the point.I have some constraints worth noting>not fully autonomous, at best treat them as a well-trained dog in terms of utility>typically deployed in pairs where one handles all the active and passive defense calculations and the other focuses on all the offense-related calculations>this means if a pair loses one half, they don't just have half as many tools, but are half as smartMy big concerns right now for these are>other than anti-missile laser batteries, ECM systems, and the high dV budget, how do they handle anti-AKV tactics like missiles, danmaku, and other AKVs? Flares to trick thermals or x-rays seems impossible when you're in the megawatt ranges for thrust.>for planets with atmospheres, should they be able to do anything besides spitting slugs down with a railgun? Is it worth using low-IR lasers as standard armaments just so they can use them against a planet from low orbit, and suffer not having UV lasers?>how bad is the risk of cyber warfare? should they be upgraded to a triad to have a third lobe handling cyber warfare? they need to be able to receive orders somehow, limiting them to only laser comms is pretty secure but really limiting if you want them to range far ahead for any mission.>each one in a set has to be able to communicate and coordinate with each other constantly at the bare minimum (let alone human captains back on the mothership), so how should I approach comms, encryption, resistance to jamming, hostile ECM in general?
>>23960989You'd be surprised.
>>23945402In the setting of my story once every hundred years mages of all kinds compete in a grand tournament to see who succeeds the head of the Mage’s Union. I’m just trying to pad out the list of magic types for said tournament. There’s the different kinds of elemental magic of course, demonic magic, holy magic, healing magic, divination, runic magic, summoning and banishing, golems and other enchanted items and/or magical devices, warding spells and barriers, soul magic, necromancy, and blood magic, am I missing anything else?
>>23961676Do you consider alchemy magic?
>>23961676Would cultivation be considered a magic. It can be described as punch wizardry
>>23961736Cultivation is definitely its own system and not suitable for mixing with western occultism. Completely separate tradition with huge overlap.
>>23961693Alright, there's alchemy, thanks, is there anything else I'm missing?>>23961736Yeah, not really what I was going for, like the other anon said, but thanks for trying anyway.>>23961787Do you have any other ideas, or at least more information on how cultivation works versus more western occultism? There's an idea that's in a "tip of my tongue" situation, and I'm hoping that that'll jar it loose.
>>23961852Big theme of cultivation is removing impurities and challenging the heavens or whatever. Basically you refine your physical body so much with drugs and magic you eventually ascend. That's the very short version of it.
>>23961676Biomamcy/flesh shaping. Like the very visceral kind.
>>23961676Tantric sex magic.
>>23961980Thanks, got any other suggestions please?>>23962048Not really what I was thinking, but thanks for the effort.
>>23961857NTA, but what’s the longer version please?
>>23962535First of all, I'm not chinese, I wasn't raise in China, and so my perspective on this is limited to what I can pick up as an observer.Basically, in cultivation (technically a subgenre of xianxia) the hero and every other practitioner is trying to become an immortal, or transcend their mortality more like? They do this through cultivation which involves ki circulation techniques, physical training, sometimes drugs and magic potions or pills, sometimes sex. As I understand it this is a Taoist concept so don't get it confused with Buddhism or any other Asian philosophy.There are a lot of tropes in the genre, like how Young Masters of great houses are often arrogant and lusty, and will often be defeated by the hero because their foundations are weak, often in a noodle shop brawl. Usually people use swords but not always. There's the usual chinese emphasis on how luck (specifically Heavens-defying luck) is essential for advancement in your cultivation. There is usually very strict powerlevels, where someone of one tier is incomprehensibly more powerful than the person below them. Tiers must be "broken through" and depending on the writer this involves either amassing enough ki to purify yourself of some human flaws (the process is often disgusting, like pissing and shitting and oozing pus out of all your pores and arising as a more physically perfect specimen) or achieving another stage of enlightenment by contemplation of some truths about the Tao.Cultivators are often martial artists, but don't need to be, and often live in their own secluded parts of the world away from mortals, tall mountains or magic forests. Technically mortals can prove themselves by risking life and limb to arrive at such a place and get inducted in as a trainee, but most die (luck is important remember!).There's a lot more, but you can absorb the basics by reading some. They are all basically the same, and not very good. Once you've read 2-3, try some western parodies like Beware of Chicken or Virtuous Sons to see how someone might transform a VERY Taoist and Chinese literary tradition into something more internationally palatable. Warning though, the average Xianxia is really long.
>>23961654Most I can say is that sometimes hacking is just an weakness that one has to live with. You can have a small group of drones that handle counter cyber attacks but have the, somewhat seperated from the others. As for comes have a single pair be responsible for communicating with the captain, a relay bot if you will. If taken out one will be reassigned
>>23963047Yeah, my concern with hacking is having a system resilient enough that someone seeing it wouldn't go "wtf this is retarded".Decided to go with encoded inter-triad comms via laser, encoded radio from the mothership. Then store the data in quarantine, all three members compare to ensure they all got it and if not it stays in quarantine, the data needs to match the encryption key or it gets flagged as enemy transmission and sent to mothership to crack in case its useful, then the order gets checked for the right signature, then gets a logic check for signs of coercion or treason (validity) and the triad votes, then the order gets executed.In this way sending junk orders is probably a better strategy than actual hacking and getting control since it ties up processing power, but once a certain signal is determined to be giving false orders it can be ignored, so frequency shifting and spamming becomes the next strategy, etc. Having the third member there to handle this e-war and only needing a "yes/no" from the others in some trivial calculations should make the strategy only marginally effective. I figure by this angle hacking and jamming and spamming e-war is addressed thoroughly from multiple angles and there is enough coverage that the average autist would be satisfied. It felt important to add multiple layers and systems and responses to those systems so it felt like a "real system" that people had been using.You know?
>>23963254You could make it so that triad and dual minds both exist and have it be a cost-benefit thing on whether they're on a given battle zone. Tri-minds would be slightly more costly computer wise and could need some specialist to make sure they have good enough hacking programs in them. With dual-minds they require less strategy, get set them on orders and they should be fine
>>23959851>You can think of them as sort of similar to some popular depictions of elves. They still have two sexes, male and female, and reproduce just as we would, but beyond the genitals there is very little difference.Hard sexual roles would still restrict and institutionalize similar gender rules in this case. If they were hermaphrodites, or switched sexes in response to social hierarchies (like fish), or both sexes lactated, or even if they laid eggs, you could have a greater degree of encultured gender differences, but them being devoid of secondary sexual characteristics (probably) wouldn't change anything. >which means that this race might actually have more of an incentive to come up with ways to keep the sexes separate than usThis feels like the take. Androgyny would incentivize stricture visual sexual displays. Ecologically speaking, they might also be infinitely more enclined to homosexual activity.
How would riding a centaur differ for someone who has ridden horses before?I was thinking the centaur would require the rider not wear spurs while riding. There'd be no need for reins so I suppose that does make it a little easier.
>>23965209Have you ever rode the back seat of a motorcycle? I think it would be something like that but with a bit more room. And with the potential of being even more homo-erotic.
For anyone writing a scifi story: What is your piece of technology/scifi concept that your story focuses on.For example for me it's something I like to call Fold-Tech. It's technology that's akin to those cartoon machines that starts small but then opens up and transforms into a bigger machine but I play it a bit straight. A bunch of complex machinery and parts kept in a smaller storage block, done so by the tech disassembling it, putting the parts in a seems energized stated, and sliding it all into the storage block.The best example of what I'm talking about are the vechiles from Tron.What do you guys have?
>>23965498Micro wormholes. Figured out how to stabilize naturally occurring ones, and even move the mouths around, but not how to make em bigger. It's cool tho, sending them off at relativistic speeds to other places let's us keep communications between these far off places "instantly" by beaming data through since they are just barely large enough for some EM frequencies. Also got non-orientable wormholes out of the deal, so that's the source of power for interstellar vehicles, F=very big so relativistic speeds are trivial. Life extension pushing life expectancies up to around 150-200 years means a lack of FTL doesn't fuck people over too bad, but most starfarers are either loners, or clans that stick together on their ships their entire lives. Oh, they don't use the NOWs for general power production on planets because containment tech isn't there yet to make it convenient. Guiding matter-antimatter annihilation events out the back of a ship to mix with propellant = feasible, actual containment and boiling water with superhot plasma and radiation from this event = not yet feasible. Not a plot hole.
>>23949677you can do a lot better with a name than 'miskatonic' which has to be one of the worst word inventions of hp
>>23949690i am beginning to add my eight thousandish 4x6 notecards to obsidian which seems like a wiki. searchability is nice over notecards. i like its graph view too, but i can't say it's been useful. i think i'd like it to 'make connections' for me or suggest plots or do some function that i haven't thought of but it hasnt seemed to do anything like that yet
Does anyone here have aphantasia?
>>23966399It's been awhile since I've been to Olive Garden.
>>23965498This reminded me of this music video with a robot. I also remember Tobin mentioned bieng interested in the idea of little machines that become more then what they originaly where, so he liked the concept for the video. Is it at all like what you're thinking?https://youtu.be/CdcZyOY4Z1E?si=clvY0lgnrl0XErX_
>>23967122Eh somewhat. It's more akin to a transform and a Tron baton. You can see it it be built from a block. A good description of what I'm talking about is by looking at a gun. There's a good amount of empty space in it, if you were to melt it into one solid material it would be a small block. If you were to disassemble a gun you would be able to package it better than if it was whole, especially with gun meant for that.What fold tech does is "Unfold" a given piece of tech(think a transformer, a toy even), packs it in a bit, that causes the matter to enter a semi-energized state to pack it in even more (like in tron). But one of the things about is that the size of the tech matters. A car isn't going to fit in a packet of gum. A motorcycle could fit in a basket ball, but only of both parts were advanced enough. The larger/more complex machine you want to shrink you would either have to deal with a large block or be will have spend a lot or resources and time making a more advanced piec of fold tech.
The best sort of power system is highly complex where even the strongest/most adept characters are not immortal continent busters. The instant you open your world up to the notion of having DBZ levels of power you invite so many questions like, how have they not blown up the fucking planet?
>>23968573Do you have any examples of this done well?
>>23950005a lot of properties have wikis specific to them these list and describe all the races
>>23965209In my story, they used stirrups, so the rider could stand and look around better when needed. They don't really use saddles, but a kind of belt for the stirrups.
>>23945402Shit, help me make a good yakuza setting for a chatbotJust nudge me in a good directionpoint is to have wild adventures with your crazy yakuza wife who dislikes you initially
>>23969791Okay, what do you need to remember about the Yakuza then?
>>23945405>Who is the BBEG of your setting, and how does he pose a threat to the rest of the world?My setting has had several over the ages, some more of a threat than others. Most of them have been Elves. Some have been groups or civilizations rather than individuals.One was a Dwarf, albeit working through an Elf who was his thrall. The chain of events leading to his overthrow and death inadvertently resulted in the world being poisoned by magic (magic here is an entirely unnatural force, before this only being wielded directly by Elves and certain humans whom the Elves granted it to, as well as indirectly by the Dwarves in their crafts and runes. After this, the entire planet is magical; magical creatures 'evolve' and magical abilities become fairly common among humans).
Would "Rudolph-class laser destroyer" be too on the nose (heh) for a space ship that has a giant laser as its main "gun"? Or is that funny enough to let it slide? Like, that the story would endure long enough for someone to make a reference to it. I mean, we reference ancient Greek and Roman culture and terms today so... it's probably fine?
If the UN expanded to include both Heaven and Hell, would it still be called the UN? I'm thinking it may be renamed the UD, or the United Dimensions. I have no idea what would be their symbol. Maybe like three overlapping circles?
>>23971934The United Realms sounds better
>>23971583Depends on the setting. A Gould idea would have the inventor/named of said ships be a bit crazy and weird so a lot of things have similar names. Have a spearing ship be call a narwhal, smaller fighters carft be call tinker bells, etc. Sometimes weirdos get put in charge of important things,
>>23951027What are some good places to look for these ideas besides just Wikipedia or Google?>>23969396What are some properties besides D&D that you feel handle their races (especially ones that are less common than the typical fantasy races, namely Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs) well? I personally was looking for ideas more along the lines of folklore and mythology, and I certainly hope that you guys have something there, but if it helps I'll take it no matter what it is.
anyone know of books where it's eldritch horrors vs modern spec ops units?
Does anyone have ideas for a modern-day American fantasy setting? I don't mean dragons in Chicago like in The Dresden Files, I just mean modern equivalents to fantasy tropes.>Instead of magic characters have psychic powers>Instead of kings and nobles we have corporations ruled by cut-throat executives.>The monsters are cryptids and aliens like skinwalkers and greys.>The main villains are the CIA and Church of Scientology.>Instead of dungeons we have abandoned subway stations and Cold War bunkers.Any other ideas?
>>23971583We have silly-sounding weapons in real life. Look at Fat Man and Little Boy, for example.
>>23972774Why did people call them that?
>>23973964The first atomic bomb prototype was called Thin Man, but it never worked so they scrapped it. The second was called Little Boy, because it was smaller than Thin Man. The third was called Fat Man, because it was bigger than the first two.
>>23973964When you look at how the bombs looked, "fat" is pretty much the first word that comes to mind. And a funny guy would of course want to be ironic and call the thing just "little". Simple names.
>>23972774Or Tsar Bomba.
>>23972549Maybe the Laundry Files? Why do you ask?
Had a ChatGPT glitch erase some of the world-building I had done on a side character for my novel. Always remember to back-up your back-ups people!
>>23977167How do you use ChatGPT for your world-building?
>>23977765I use it to generate names.
>>23977765Brainstorming.>give me a list of slavic folklore monsters, prioritize ones that live around lakes and rivers and include a one sentence description of each>I like [option], provide links to books discussing them in more detail>I want a list of given names that suggest a martial background, with roots in the middle east>what are some folk tales that focus on [theme]? what are the major symbolic elements of that story?>here is the profile of a character. I want you to roleplay as this character until I say [code phrase], and try to respond in ways you think they would.
>>23978189>Jarvis, write my fantasyslop for me, I'm creatively bankrupt
>>23978387Unironically, how is this different from a Google search to you?
>>23978563When you do your own research and think about the method and not just the end result, there's a chance that you might learn something, obtain beneficial know-how, and grow as a person.
>>23977765>Write a few sentences on my characters, background, age, abilities, personality, etc.>ChatGPT drafts paragraph after paragraph on the implications of such, what I might want to consider, and how it affects what I've entered before about the setting. >Would it be too far to give this character a crush on that character? >Not at all, and it feels only natural because of such and such and this and that, and etc. >What have we determined about ghosts and spirits in this setting?>ChatGPT writes paragraphs with different classifications and writes out attributes and limitations expanding on what was mostly implied before.And so on.
>>23950644Sound fun anon, really nice ideas on the combinations of elements.I would make humans being made up of roughly equal light and darkness parts.
>>23980392That's what I was thinking actually, great minds think alike I guess. What about other combos, got any thoughts there?
What's a good monster if I want a ravenous horde for the heroes to fight? Insects are too obvious. Maybe boars?
>>23977789>I use it to generate names.How exactly?
>>23982354If I want a Slavic name I ask it for a Slavic name, for example.
