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>>24868365
Thread Questions:
>If you have any non-human sapients species/races in your setting, what are they? And do you tend to stick to ones you’ve made, classic ones like Dwarves, Elves, etc., or a mixture of the two?
>When making said original races, what advice do you have/what is the process that you use, and what races have you made with said process/resources? And how do you make sure that they’re distinct/non-redundant?
>What are your feelings on typical fantasy races like the aforementioned two, Orcs, Goblins, etc.? And how do you go about putting your own twists on said races/make them less generic?
>How can you tell when you have enough races and/or sub-races in your setting? And what do you need to consider when designing the cultures for the races and how they interact with each other?
>Were any of your races created artificially? If so, who did it and why?
>Lastly, how does creating science fiction races/species differ from creating ones for fantasy settings, and what are some common archetypes you’ve seen and/or used or would like to use for either? What about races in science fantasy settings?

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>>24868365
And a few extra thread questions from previous threads just to be safe:

>What kinds of magic, psychic abilities, and/or other powers exist in your world? And if multiple types exist, how do they interact with each other, if at all?
>If the different types can be combined, what is the result? And if not, what is the reason?
>How do people use/gain access to the magic? And what are the most important things to consider/remember when creating a magic system(s) or power system, and what mistakes to avoid? How did you make your own?
>Is there anything that the magic or powers explicitly cannot do, and if yes, what? And how much of the limits of the abilities are inherent versus a lack of understanding?
>On the subject of hyper-advanced technology, what exists in your world and what do you need to remember when creating/including it? What about magitech, or other tech that incorporates powers, what can you say on that?

>Do the people in your setting believe in any celestial beings like Angels or something similar? And do these beings actually exist, and if so, how accurate are the beliefs?
>How about Demons or similar beings, how accurate are their beliefs to reality? And how do you add your own twist to them, or to Angels?
>Are there any other categories of otherworldly entities in your world, like the Fae, Yokai, Ghosts and specters, Grim Reapers, Elementals, etc.? If so, how are they related to Angels, Demons, or each other, if at all, and what are they like?
>What about the gods in your world, what are they like, how are their pantheons structured? And what is their relationship with the other mystical entities in the setting (do they have any specific groups of Angels serving specific gods, etc.)?

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I've noticed an annoying trend in fantasy writing especially that for wide market appeal that I just realised is the opposite of speculative fiction or diverging cultures.
Remember how 50% of the jokes in the Flintstones were about cave people imitating modern life with non-technological gadgets?
How did they mow their lawns without engines and steel manufacturing? They used creatures that ate the grass as they pushed them forward.
How did they shower without plumbing? They used a mammoths trunk.
How did they shoot stuff without gunpowder? Mechanical slingshots.
It's all retroactive logic, which is played for laughs in the show or funny backdrop.
But modern fantasy writing does the same thing just retarded.
How do disabled people get around without modern manufacturing and healthcare providers? Magic glowing purple wheelchair and wheelchair accessible dungeons.
How did black people exist in European mediaeval society without mass migration? Enough travelling merchants to make up at least 10% of the population.
How did people enjoy modern comforts without modern technology? Magic just so happens to behave exactly like technology with research and colleges and inventors.
I call this "Flintstoned worldbuilding". It is working backwards from our modern expectation to a society and expecting it to always work like that in every society, time and technological level. It doesn't work off the assumption that a divergent path leads to different outcomes but that every path must lead to the same, ideal state which just so happened to be 2010s California. And every disruption of that conclusion must be the work of an evil influence which just so happens to also embody everything that people from 2010s California consider morally reprehensible.
It's basically the opposite of suspension of disbelief, like an upholding of expectation. That's because all current western art acts not as a commentary of human nature nor an exploration of alternatives but a declaration of ought-to-be. It is the demand that even in middle earth, there is an equivalent of a BMW cruising alongside the riders of rohan.
The result of " end of history" thinking. We have arrived at the conclusion of history and the only good change allowed from now on is convincing more people to our side.

Bump

>>24868365
>Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch
No, it's not. 99% of the time it's the process of stitching together all the same tropes and archetypes that everyone else does and trying to add some quirky chungus shit to it to stand out. You people are completely delusional and even more uncreative.

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>>24868365
Perfect, I asked for help last thread but didn't get much, hopefully things go better this time. To sum it up, my races are all aligned with two or three of the six elements (Light, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, and Void, with humans being the Light and Void race), with the elements informing traits of the race like their preferred environment. For example, the Fire and Water race is the Naga, so their nation is on a set of tropical volcanic islands and they’re equally comfortable in the water and on the beach, and the Fire/Earth race is Dwarves, etc. To be clear, the idea was that the elemental alignments were the result of the gods of the respective elements being the primary contributors in the design of the race in question. So for dwarves, while they still have traces of the other elements in them (such as having liquids in their bodies instead of just being molten rock in a stone shell because they have Water in them, etc.), the mentioned elements, like Fire and Earth for dwarves, dominate the others. In addition, in some cases one element is "dominant" over the other(s), like Dwarves being a bit more aligned with Earth than Fire, though there are occasional exceptions, like Dwarves that tend more towards Fire. Things like a Dwarf with a Void affinity would be extremely rare, and usually the case of inter-species pairings (since the races were designed using the same basic "template", they can interbreed but the child is always, or at least 99% of the time, the race of the mother). That make sense? Humans would be the Light/Void race, before I forget. I just need some help with filling in some of the combinations, especially the three-element ones, and I can use some suggestions please.

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>>24868365
In my setting, I was thinking that the goddess of Life and Death wanted to retire, so she made deals with the god of the Day and the god of the Night to have kids with each of them. She had planned to split the two spheres between each respective child, but they instead they both inherited power over Life and Death, filtered through the Light and Darkness spheres they inherited from their respective fathers. As a result, both healing magic and necromancy have a Light and Darkness variant these days. For Light healing, I was thinking that it would be better at healing people in area-of-effect spells, both to tie into the typical depiction of a fantasy cleric and healing spells and to represent a lantern’s light. Darkness healing, at the other hand, is better at healing single individuals, including the caster. For necromancy, I was thinking that the necromancy would use either Light or Darkness as a replacement for the life force of the body, or as a medium to hit their foes with the essence of death. I would greatly appreciate any feedback you have, especially on the necromancy and undeath angle please. For instance, I was thinking that taking a cue from the White cards from Amonkhet in MtG, mummies could be one of the kinds of undead affiliated with Light necromancy, does that make sense to you? Healing magic and necromancy share some basic principles if one squints, but are separate disciplines save for perhaps the most skilled, those who can keep a soul from leaving the body until it’s patched up. I was partially inspired by Yin and Yang, but not strongly following it, if it helps.

>>24869907
What is the point in having all those elemental combination races anyway? Is it just spreadsheet autism or is there an actual purpose in the plot? And I mean a purpose that matters, not something in the backstory along the lines of how the gods of the primeval elements created all these races in the beginning of time and none have gone extinct since.

Like, if you like nagas why can't you just have nagas without having to determine the identity of the Water/Earth/Wind race and its place in the world?

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>>24868365
What are some “monstrous” races that we can include in our settings besides the classic werewolves, vampires, and constructs like Frankenstein’s monster? And what are some of the more obscure beings/creatures/entities from mythology, folklore, and/or cryptid sightings that could work as races?

>>24869907
You may be better off putting a god to each of these elements, and putting together a mythos for them. Fire God fucked Water God and Earth God, then tempered. These yielded the races of the naga and dwarves, etc, etc. It helps to narrow your scope of racest because it instantly makes your reader think about other combinations and speculate instead of appreciate.

>>24868367
I'm going for what seems to be a standard Tolkienian (very Tolkienian) fantasy world, but then going on to reveal the underlying science fiction and horror elements and have weird twists without betraying the Tolkienian roots. This may seem like an impossible feat, but I think it's entirely doable. My writing skills are the biggest obstacle. I'm planning to wait for the Tolkien Estate's copyrights to run out so I can really go full Tolkien without having to think up synonyms for mithril, etc. (This is a hobby and I'm not in a hurry.)

I think most of the time when people take pointers from Tolkien, they only copy the surface details and miss the heart entirely, resulting in a bland product. Tad Williams in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn shows himself an exception who has some actual understanding of Tolkien's deeper themes. On the other hand, Stephen Donaldson in his Thomas Covenant books does not adhere to the standard fantasy setting much at all, instead going for a more original sort of a high fantasy, but nevertheless is profoundly influenced by Tolkien on a deep level that shows even without the standard races. I think Donaldson of all authors has perhaps understood the heart of Tolkien best of all. Tolkien himself didn't set out to write Tolkienian standard fantasy either.

But, I suppose most people here aren't really taking pointers from Tolkien as much as from nth generation distantly Tolkien-derived video games, and I think that's tragic... I think it is important to be exposed to influences from a variety of sources. That way your imagination can develop.

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>>24871382
Okay, maybe I should have said this earlier, but the idea was that when the gods first came into existence and started forming and shaping the primordial world into something recognizable, some of their power escaped and became the first elementals. The gods, seeing this, decided to refine the process to create inhabitants for the world they were shaping, and whether by intention or accident they found that by combining their powers/elements their mortal creations were more adaptable/stable instead of just being more sophisticated elementals (which they also made as divine servants).

>>24870273
See the above paragraph, along with putting new spins on races everyone and their mother have used. And like I said, the elements that take prominence in a race's elemental makeup determine aspects of their cultures, with races that share a dominant element(s) tending to get along better than with races that do not, though this doesn't devolve into violence any more often than it would between different human cultures (save for humans, but they're a bit out of the ordinary there, with some saying that they were made first as an experiment between two opposites). I was even considering the idea that the gods made the two-element races first, and then decided to periodically create a new three-element race every few centuries, with maybe a few chosen mortals each time being granted the honor of seeing the process, and even influencing it, as repayment for some great service.

>>24871921
So dwarves and nagas get well along because they both have Earth, and if you have orcs as Earth/Void, then dwarves and orcs will like each other too. (Romantically? I somehow get the feeling that the story is probably going to be about the MC attracting a massive monster girl harem, one girl of each type, and that's why so many different races are needed.)

That type of spreadsheet autism still feels like it's a creative shortcut that makes the world feel too rigid.

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>>24872031
This is more prominent on a societal/cultural level to be clear, and despite the instinctive recognition of the shared element(s) members of the races with shared elements can and do get into personal disagreements, so it's not perfect. I wasn't thinking about that, but now that you mention it, lol...

Also, there 'are' mages who focus on elements outside of the ones that belong to the gods who were primarily involved in their creation, like a naga that might specialize in Earth magic for instance, they just tend to specialize in those because it comes a little easier. It tends to come up more in individuals with mixed heritage though, save for in humans. And the rigidity is part of the idea, the gods all used the same basic template when making the races.

>>24872653
>And the rigidity is part of the idea, the gods all used the same basic template when making the races.
Nagas and dwarves have a different number of limbs, though. That actually feels not rigid enough to me, unless the idea is that physical traits are related to elements, which it sounds like you aren't doing. For example, you could have it so that all the Fire races have tails in place of legs. Then if the Water element causes scales and fins, the Fire/Water race would naturally be merfolk with fish tails. The nagas would have to be Fire/something else though, and dwarves couldn't be Fire.

I think that sort of trait-first generation works much better with your system than coming up with types of creatures and assigning elements to them based on where there are empty slots in the spreadsheet. If you don't have a pre-existing fantasy race to match every trait combination, you just need to come up with some new names.

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>>24868365
I’m working on a setting where the forces of Heaven and Hell are in conflict, but are prevented from waging large-scale battle in either of their two realms. As a result, they use the mortal world to get around this. That’s not the issue at hand though, I’m running out of name ideas for both sides that aren’t just the names of angels or demons from the Bible or religious folklore (I was thinking that they’d more powerful/established demons compared to the ones I’m focusing on), and could use some suggestions, and I would love to hear how you name your own angels and demons as well. I want the names to be meaningful beyond just slapping “el” to the end of ordinary names for angels, which of course makes it harder on me…

One idea I had was that succubi and incubi, especially the former, mainly take on the role of spies in the mortal world, so I could use some names for that kind of demon in particular. Lilith as their queen is a given, and names of historical women associated with lust (like Helen because everybody in Greece wanted to marry her) could work for some of them, especially if the rumors are true and said women become succubi after death, but I can only think of a few (any ideas there please?) and I still need some more ideas for succubi that weren’t ever human, thanks in advance for any help you can give me! Previous threads suggested I take a page from the book of Journey to the West where the animalistic demons have titles instead of names, and that I name angels after virtues and demons after vices, which is a start at least, what do you think? Another suggestion for angels was having their names start with A and end with Z, but does that mean demons are the inverse?

>>24868367
>If you have any non-human sapients species/races in your setting, what are they?
Greys, Reptilians, Annunaki, Yetis, Faefolk, Demons, Archons, Machine Elves, Personoids, Vril-ya, Chimeras, Dolphins, and more.

>What are your feelings on typical fantasy races like the aforementioned two, Orcs, Goblins, etc.?
I don't like them


>How can you tell when you have enough races and/or sub-races in your setting?
I am against this sort of thinking. There needs to always be some empty space.

>Were any of your races created artificially? If so, who did it and why?
Most were artificially created. The different human races were created by aliens during prehistory to be slave races. Chimeras were created in labs controlled by Majestic 12 where Grey Aliens and Human scientists collaborated. Personoids are synthetic humans with holographic brains created by the Soviet Union to be disposable and cheap bodies.

>>24871432
To go into more detail about the races, Elves and Dwarves both know about advanced technology, especially the Elves. The Elves stagnated a long time ago and are now slowly declining in numbers and tech level. Some groups have preserved the old civilization better than the others. These days Elves mainly concentrate their efforts on magic such as illusions when they feel like applying themselves, which is increasingly seldom.

All the races are derived from humans, though some are so far diverged that you wouldn't ever suspect that. Elves are descendants of genetically-enhanced space humans. Their immortality is a magical alteration of their true nature. The Elves are gradually coming to realize that accepting the "gift" of immortality was the turning point that doomed their civilization as well as all the individual Elves.

Orcs exist halfway between life and undeath.

The High Elves have a slave race that is basically shoggoths but rather good at mimicry. They are each artificially created.

And so on.

>>24874125
As you can see, I have a big death theme going on. The Elves are practically a dead race that just keeps hanging around and acting like they're alive. Elf children have mostly stopped being born, and that is even though the Elves were granted an improved type of immortality that allows for reproduction.

Then there are the actual undead. These all tend to be more or less vampire-like. The ones closer to life such as the Orcs do not subsist on blood only but can eat meat too. The Dark Lord sees it as just and proper to turn bad people into Orcs under his command, as a form of righteous punishment. The Dark Lord can put disembodied spirits into Orc bodies too. The Dark Lord is actually remarkably concerned with (his idea of) moral behavior in comparison to the other powerful entities in the setting who mostly have fallen into complete decadence or have little to no care for the well-being of others. It's a pretty bleak setting where a lot of tragedies happen and the Elves are all effectively lost souls who have lost their connection to the true divine in exchange to bowing to some pagan god LARPers who had the power to grant immortality. ("Thou shalt be as gods.")

Writing a lore dump like this makes it all feel so lacking. In actual story exposition about these things would be dropped piecemeal and in some cases never said outright in favor of just letting the ideas silently influence the plot.

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>>24872786
Well, even races with more atypical body plans like the nagas still have some morphological similarities to the basic humanoid forms, but when I say "template", I'm referring more to the idea of a mystical template, which allows the races to have enough of all the elements in them to function as biological beings while still having two or three dominant elements. Maybe I should refer to it as a base RECIPE instead; and the different races are variants on a dish that changes depending on the dominant ingredients, like different meats and veggies. That make more sense?

As for physical traits being related to elements, I was thinking maybe a little bit, like Dwarves having a little bit of a "rugged", almost stone-like look to them in the right light, and maybe a tendency for "firey" hair and eye colors, stuff like that and Elves almost seeming to glow because they have Light as an element, stuff like that, a little more on the subtle side.

Also, I just had the idea that maybe the three-element races, instead of being created by the gods directly, arise as a result of interbreeding between the races; normally the pairing of two different races produces a child of the mother's race like I mentioned before, but in very rare cases sometimes a new mutation emerges that results in a new race entirely, what do you think?

>>24874791
>in very rare cases
That sounds like a custom plot device to explain why the main character is so special and powerful and perhaps also why the main villain is such a threat. I wonder if it would be possible to achieve a six-element individual through hybridization and whether that person would turn out to be the most OP of all or just an unfocused generalist or someone who could develop in any direction?

Overall I think you need to think about your system more to justify its existence compared to a situation where there just are a bunch of fantasy races in the world that may differ in preferred type of elemental magic but some of the different races may have the same preferences and other elemental combinations may not necessarily be common with any race.

Is everyone here focused on writing fantasy? I've been spec'd into sci-fi pulp with my setting.

>>24868573
> demand that even in middle earth, there is an equivalent of a BMW cruising alongside the riders of rohan.
Middle Earth had clocks and guns so why not a Model T Ford.
> is working backwards from our modern expectation to a society and expecting it to always work like that in every society, time and technological level.
I had that experience with the time travel book from the Station Eleven bitch. 300 years in the future we have spaceships and moon bases but everyone talks like they do now, about issues that are the same (literally whining about patriarchy), nothing really changes. Nor did the 200 years in the past section change, people talked the same all over I guess and thought like we do because it’s hard to use your imagination or worse still do research.

But perhaps worst of all, given time travel and a time travel agency the way it works is not thought through at all and they immediately break time travel “rules” repeatedly. Despite being unqualified and breaking rules they let the protagonist dipshit continue using it after a couple of weeks training.
The only defense I can imagine someone giving is that “it’s not important” because the book is actually about the half baked shitty romance plot. Given a readership that doesn’t care, why try harder?

>>24868365
worldbuilding is a bullshit way to pretend you're being productive when you're not working on your actual story

>>24876688
I have some science fiction elements, such as the Elves having spaceships and knowledge of nuclear fusion, and some of the plot takes place outside Earth and also in massive caverns inside Earth. I have pretty significant pulp influences too, though more from the fantasy/science fantasy side, not that pulp sci-fi was ever really that strict about scientific accuracy. I suppose the world could qualify as a really soft science fiction world in which amazing things are possible with psychic powers innate to all humans and ancient super science developed by a lost civilization.

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>>24875106
Oh, I forgot to mention that I did think that the Nagas would have some fins like in WoW. Also, part of the reason I chose Nagas for the Fire/Water race was the "Naga fireball" phenomenon, I wanted the elemental association to partly reference actual myth/folklore.

Okay, how about I make it so that every few centuries there's a change in the flow of the ambient elemental energy of the setting, like a surge of some kind that can cause mutations, and that's what causes the new races?

Well, I do have some other ideas and shit, I'm just focusing on the race list right now, one thing at a time. BTW, thanks for making me think on things, and if you have any suggestions for the different three-race combos that you can think of but haven't said already I'd love to hear them please.

>>24877607
Given that you probably aren't being very ambitious and just need some races, you may want to take a look at:
https://www.d20srd.org/indexes/monsters.htm

None of those are part of the D&D Product Identity, so you won't be sued for using them. People may judge you unoriginal though, and you'll need to assign the elements on your own.

>Okay, how about I make it so that every few centuries there's a change in the flow of the ambient elemental energy
If it's just some random natural phenomenon that generates random new races, you are liberated from trying to build coherent personality profiles for the gods and are free to go with whatever for your races as long as it somewhat fits the logic of the setting. Yes, I can see how that would make things easier.

>>24876688
By now it's clear we aren't going to get a cool future, if I was going to do sci fi it would need to be something like Star Wars where there never was an Earth and at that point it's more just fantasy in space.

>>24869907
God do I hate you, you lazy, repetitive mother fucker

Make your own shit. Go stupid with it even. it only has to minorly make sense.

BE CREATIVE

>>24876688
Most of my stories are westerns. A couple of them are set on lost space colonies or decaying arcologies.

>>24876750
My actual story involves the characters traveling all over the setting while massive political events take place. Worldbuilding becomes a necessity to keep cause and effect functioning as they should. Some of the characters learn how to use magic, and one becomes undead while remaining a main character, so the magic system and the mechanics of death and undeath need to be thought out too.

>>24878053
>By now it's clear we aren't going to get a cool future
How could a alternate history setting fix that?

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>>24877882
Yeah, like I said I've mainly got the two-element races down (though if you have any thoughts that might make me reconsider I wouldn't turn them down), but I'm stuck on some of the three-element ones. The link is a big help, thanks, I'll take a closer look tomorrow, things have been crazy today and I'm so exhausted I nearly missed your post.

I was thinking that the gods would still exist though, just more divorced from the process of race creation after the original two-element races, is that a bad idea?

Why the fuck are you stupid retards posting your ideas up here so they can be easily stolen by others? Are you fucking retarded?

I'm stealing all this dogshit and publishing it under my name and you'll deserve it.

>>24870820
There are lists of these things on Wikipedia.

>>24868573
>an evil influence which just so happens to also embody everything that people from 2010s California consider morally reprehensible.
Such as?

I worldbuild better when I am horny, even if the things I worldbuild about have little to nothing to do with sex

>>24876750
I don't care, it's fun

Why are most fantasy settings inspired by the middle ages?

bump

>>24880559
>Why are most fantasy settings inspired by the middle ages?
LotR's influence is a big reason.

>>24881760
There are also fairy tales and Arthurian myths. Those have a big influence even if that influence is buried several layers deep in the chain of authors.

But I think the core reason is that for people wanting to write a story with magic and without modernity, going back a minimum amount of time in their own culture's history is simply the easiest route that requires the least research and the fewest explanations for the reader.

>>24882130
Stone age fantasy is really rare. I remember having read one obscure novel that was set during the paleolithic age and had supernatural elements in that the main character died in the beginning and hung around in spirit form. The Land in the Thomas Covenant books is pretty much neolithic in tech level too, only with widespread high magic that changes the entire equation. They don't need metal tools because they have better ways to shape stone and wood that anyone can learn how to use. For some reason other authors don't seem to have followed the same route even though I think the worldbuilding in the Thomas Covenant books is very good and interesting.

>>24882432
>I remember having read one obscure novel that was set during the paleolithic age and had supernatural elements in that the main character died in the beginning and hung around in spirit form.
What was this called?

>>24883616
I have completely forgotten both the title and the author. It was a long time ago. I don't even remember thinking that the book was anything special, just that the topic was unusual. There weren't a lot of stone age books around in the first place but I read everything I could find. Clan of the Cave Bear has slight supernatural elements, but not really enough to qualify as fantasy.

Basically imagine just your standard stone age life in a small hunter-gatherer tribe, but the main character is a boy who died (a hunting accident, if I remember correctly) and the other characters consider him a protective spirit and sacrifice food to him, the flavor of which he is able to enjoy through the smoke. There was this other tribe too with whom the main character's tribe exchanged daughters to avoid inbreeding but they didn't really like each other and the tribes ended up fighting each other in the end. There were no overt fantasy elements visible to a skeptic time traveler.

I really think branching out of the standard fantasy box is helpful when doing worldbuilding. Fantasy is not supposed to be limited to a small subset of its possibilities.

>>24883883
>I really think branching out of the standard fantasy box is helpful when doing worldbuilding. Fantasy is not supposed to be limited to a small subset of its possibilities.
Fair enough. What are some other examples of fantasy that does this well, the Cosmere?

>25th century, Man has expanded to outer space and billions live in space colonies on Mars, the Moon, and in space cylinders across the Lagrange Points in the Solar System
>Fusion Power is now obsolete because matter-antimatter annihilation can produce over a hundred times more energy.
>The Earth is unified under the United Nations. The US, PRC, Russia, and most other countries have collapsed and become subdivisions of the international system.
>Spaceships bring goods to and from various asteroids and planets to manufacturing plants closer to Earth.
>A Dyson Swarm of Black Hole generators is officially created in the ear 2409 to trap ALL the energy produced by the sun, store it, and then beam it to various solar systems.

The last officially begins The Great Expansion, as the first unified humanity officially sends the first ships to colonize other solar systems with their first true FTL ships.

In the next 300 years, the first human trade conduits between the closest systems in around 50 light years of the Solar System will be established, and humanity will officially begin its path to becoming a Kardashev 2 Civilization.

But first! A full scale civil war between the Space living colonists and Earth over who gets to rule humanity.

>Bronze Age Collapse happens. Demons involved.
>Refugees flee to Anshan.
>Create floating city. Plant Sacred Cypress to sanctify it.
>Deluge drowns the demon kingdoms in Near East.
>Mages now control all of Asia.

I need a cool Legendary King who could fit the myth model here. Someone who forms a new Kingdom after his people's legendary ancestral home is destroyed.

>>24885179
Aeneas and Rome. Also Joshua, the Prophet who led the Hebrews into Israel after Moses died on the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.

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>>24868365
Besides Dungeons and Dragons books and Wikipedia, where do you look for ideas on races to include in your setting? And what are the key aspects of a race in your opinion?

>>24879399
Watch Korra.
Or DA Veilguard.
The rings of power tried to make Sauron seem like this warmonger who enslaved the poor orcs who just wanted to stay with their families. It wasn't evil enough that the orcs were twisted beings that sought the evil of their dark master and thus flocked to Sauron after Morgoth's defeat, he had to enslave them and be mean to them. I was impressed the writers held back on giving him a white suit and a southern accent to drive the point home.
Sanderson tried to depict feudalism as this universal evil and anyone who practises it must be the big bad, rather than a system that established itself as a means to organize labour and military to stabilize society and then just became more and more corrupt over time.
I guess such writers can't see corruption / evil as a thing in and of itself, a force that drives away from a singular vision of good and towards a selfish desire. They see evil and good as labels as established by ideologies and good things are those that are good for this ideology and vice versa. There is no "goodness" as a thing but only "things that are good" and "doing good things".
It reminds me of how many people who discuss Tolkien think the ring represents power (because power corrupts and the ring is powerful, that is true) when in reality the ring represents corruption. If power was evil in Tolkien's work, then the central good guys wouldn't all have been of nobility (although Sam, the only outlier, was the lynchpin that saved the day) and Aragorn wouldn't have taken the throne but turned Gondor into a democracy.

>>24884369
I think finding a different viewpoint is easiest in earlier fantasy before the standardization took over. For example, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories present a non-Western-styled fantasy world quite far removed from the current Californian sensibilities. The stories are short individually and unconnected to each other, but reading them together gives a sense of a world.

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson may be difficult to read and has its flaws, but the worldbuilding of the sunless world, first appearing in Chapter 2, is unique and compelling.

For something newer and of a different sort, something like the Earthsea trilogy (I personally think the subsequent sequels are best treated as not existing) by Ursula LeGuin could be mentioned. Patricia A. McKillip has some interesting but lightly-detailed worldbuilding in short books too.

Tolkien himself is very much worth reading too to see how he compares to his imitators and how much depth has been lost following the standard formula. Most authors not in the vein of Tolkien don't really worldbuild that much, but you can still get valuable different perspectives from, say, the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, which have mature and often religious themes as originally written, not as adapted by Disney or the like.

I have read some books by Brandon Sanderson but haven't touched the Stormlight Archive series. I classify Sanderson as the guy who develops really neat magic systems.

>>24885179
Noah? Uthnapishtim? An original name because you're doing so many changes anyway?

I'm a bit confused about that Bronze Age Collapse in there before the deluge. Is it meant to be the same Bronze Age Collapse that happened in the real world? If not, will the world go on to have the real world version of the Bronze Age Collapse later on and forget about the age of magic? Or is the world a completely unrelated fantasy world that doesn't become the our world?

>>24885851
A perfectly valid fantasy story can be done with just humans. Many have no need for more.

The key aspect of including a race is that its presence contributes something to the story. For example, in my story the High Elves are supposed to live in idle luxury. However this raises the issue of who sweeps the streets and does the laundry. The Elves are capable of doing all that by themselves, but that would undermine the theme of the false utopia. So a slave race was required, but it would need to be non-humanoid in shape and not normally capable of talking so that the Elves wouldn't have moral problems...

>>24886261
No, it's the same as ours. Except for literal demons being involved.

>>24886623
>Except for literal demons being involved.
NTA, but involved how exactly?

>>24886921
The Sea Peoples worship them, and they think their gods are commanding them to lay siege to civilization.

And other demons are weakening civilization from the inside. Many concubines, eunuchs, important nobles, and priests are disguised demons.

>>24886623
Okay. I was confused by that deluge because it's much too late in the timeline for Noah's Flood. Moses should be alive and leaving Egypt instead around that time. Even if he isn't really a character in the story, the timeline should avoid disasters that would have killed him and everyone around him or at the very least merited a mention in the surviving historical records.

>>24887204
God only said He wouldn't use a Deluge to exterminate humans...emphasis on exterminate and humans. He never said anything about drowning demons in a way that doesn't harm the normal humans.

And trust me, history gets weirder as I move closer to the plot. By the 19th century, there will be space colonies and Dyson Swarms dotting space even as human knights engage demons on Earth itself.

I love my black and white conflicts set in gray worlds.

>>24868365
My worldbuilding is about a special girl fighting the evil empire

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>>24868365
I was thinking that in my world the lord of the Abyss is a being of madness and corruption that cannot truly create, only twist and break. As a result, all demons were ultimately once elementals that came too close to a place where the barrier between the Abyss and the mortal world is thin, and got dragged through and twisted into a demonic form, but with some of their original elemental nature still shining through. I was thinking that there would be some kinds of demons, like imps, who can be of any element (flame, ice, lightning, shadow, etc.) while there are some kinds of demons that are only made of one kind of corrupted elemental, like gargoyle-looking demons for stone elementals. Besides ideas for which kinds of demons can be made of only one element, since I want there to be more than just one breed designated for each element, so succubi work better as demons created solely from flame elementals like picture related, or demons that can be any element? And have you done anything like this yourself?

>>24868573
People dont want to admit that every thing in this post is 100% true

How the hell can audiences even see the players in a coliseum built to accommodate faster humans?

And by faster I mean fast enough that you need multiple kilometers to give them space to move.

>>24889035
How the heck are they so fast?

>>24890566
Superpowers.

>>24891176
Okay, how do the powers work?

>>24887232
So it sounds like the Sea Peoples are meant to be Atlantis and possibly equated with the Minoan civilization in line with that one theory about Atlantis. I still don't understand though the thing about not drowning humans when apparently these kingdoms are not 100% demons but only infiltrated by demons, and natural disasters drowning entire countries shouldn't possibly be selective enough to only target the demons.

>>24889035
Massive video screens like in big concerts, zooming in on the action. Slow motion replays might be necessary.

>>24892986
The difference was purely academic by that time. Even the common people had become as evil as the demons.

What would an idealised Middle Class even look like?

>>24893821
You need to be consistent about these things. Evil humans should still count as human. If God has promised not to send another flood to destroy humans he should keep to that word and use other means. There are many possibilities, such as meteor strikes. (See Sodom and Gomorrah.)

Though I have no idea if you're going for Christian fiction or not.

>>24894045
Tbf I just thought it would be ironic if God turns the wordplay back on them. The barbarians thought they'd be safe since God promised he wouldn't exterminate humanity with floods, so God points out that:

1. It wouldn't be exterminating humans since they're just a fraction of the human race, and actively engaging in hurting the whole.
2. He never said anything about not exterminating demons, and these folks are definitely the majority of the demon race.

>>24894057
It turns God into a liar for no good reason. Much better and more historically accurate would be to have Thera erupt cataclysmically, or everyone in the evil kingdoms get killed by invading Hebrews, or a combination of both options, depending on where your kingdoms are meant to be located.