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>>25031063
Thread Questions:
>In your setting, what is the major religion(s) present? What advice do you have for creating religions, including books and other resources on the topic or existing fictional religions done well?
>Where did you look for ideas on the religion's name, religious garb, ceremonies/rituals, tenants, etc.? Are there any religions outside of the Judeo-Christianity umbrella that have good aspects for fictional religions, especially if they aren’t used as often as they should be?
>How accurate is the religion to the actual reality of the setting? And if the god(s) of the setting actually exist in the world, how does this affect their faiths, and what needs to be remembered when making said gods and pantheons?
>Where do you look for ideas/resources on creating the divinities of your settings? Are there any settings in particular that you feel do gods right?
>Do your religions have Saints, Angels, Demons, and/or other important figures besides the actual gods? If so, what are they like, and how do they impact the religion?
>Lastly, how much power does your religion have over the setting? And how do the people of your setting view the gods and religions?

Let’s try this again.

I'm having a bit of a problem here...

You see, the original idea was a respectful fanfic (with little to no romance).

Then the idea upon further development turned into a very ambitious fanfic project (still with little to no romance) that involves a lot of actual serious worldbuilding in unexpected directions. The purist fans (of which there are many) would probably loathe the very idea of it because I went for some very non-consensus directions in developing the story.

Then I started thinking that maybe I should just file off the serial numbers an make the idea into an original story (again with little to no romance) and develop fill the hole left by the original work with new worldbuilding and plot, but it turns out that a) I had been relying heavily on pre-established familiarity for many things and starting fresh unfamiliar character arcs in the middle is bad plotting, and b) the replacement worldbuilding and backstory almost has to be dangerous levels of obvious ripoff to keep the premise from falling apart.

To illustrate the issue, one of the plot threads involves a popular hero falling deep into evil and even being revealed as having been pretty much evil all along, even in the original story. This particular hero has many fans that would be quick to cry character assassination and a recognizable backstory. Successfully removing the associations would result in a much less interesting story about a new character revealing himself to be evil over many chapters, and starting the plot from an earlier place would be hard to do without falling into the obvious ripoff trap or at the very least writing the equivalent of a short prequel novel so that I can get to my main story.

Maybe I should just keep the story as fanfic...

>>25031346
Now that I think of it, the previous stuff probably doesn't sound like it has a lot to do with worldbuilding, but when the original work has some very recognizable worldbuilding ideas that affect the plot, doing a retreat along the same lines without getting too close and without drifting so far that everything turns dumb or nonfunctional or excessively bland and generic from removing all the most characteristic of quirks is very hard indeed.

Part of making a respectful fanfic that expands on the original is relying very heavily on the clues and the plot hooks in the original work, and that is what makes detaching the idea from the source material so hard.

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Made the hard choice to scrap the story/project I was working on and rebuilding from the ground up.
I ain't throwing everything away, but I am reconfiguring all the parts and pieces into something that is hopefully easier to post more places or evolve into other projects/mediums without the baggage of the thing I was working on before.

I am also vastly simplifying and toning down the multiverse portal fantasy aspect and instead focusing on only one world (that happens to have stuff from other realms and alternative realities plopped in due to convoluted lore reasons that the reader won't have to worry about unless I complete and publish my current project and people express interest in expanding the scale beyond the one world. )
However since I can never make things easy for myself, I am adding on several additional magic systems and adding a lot of depth to the social hierarchy and power hierarchy of the setting.

I am also want to make monster slaying and dungeon crawling more important to the economy and various hierarchies within the setting, which means a restructuring of almost everything.

Lots of work cut out for me but I think its a better direction for this project.
Also trying out using a slightly more detailed outline this time around for the story. I will still pants most of it, but I think it will help keep things in perspective and the narrative tighter so I am less likely to have several chapters of dense exposition where the plot doesn't move, then get butthurt that I have to cut so much.

>>25031068
>In your setting, what is the major religion(s) present?
Two major Deities, one for the sun the other for the earth. And the more disorganized and loose veneration of lesser spirits and some pockets of ancestor worship.
I am dramatically lowering the focus of the spirits on my current version of the world though.
Instead putting a lot more focus on social hierarchies, monsters, and the magic/power system.
>How accurate is the religion to the actual reality of the setting?
Lay practitioners are pretty hit or miss. Lower ranking members officially of the organized religious order generally have a rose tinted overly generalized overly positive view of their religion and quick to form negative views and hastily generalize everything else as wrong.
Those higher up in the hierarchy tend to be significantly more realistic, practical, and correct in regards to their religion that not while also having more well reasoned and evidenced backed views of others outside of their religion.
Though only very old very powerful very experienced beings know the 100% correct information for sure, because they probably seen it with their own eyes or are supernaturally informed on the subject from primary sources like ultra powerful celestial spirits, contact with a ascended immortal, or literally told by the god/goddess themselves.
>And if the god(s) of the setting actually exist in the world, how does this affect their faiths
True faith has real effects, divine revelation is straight forward and easily verifiable when it happens, and things that would normally be seen as miracles in other settings are well understood and even reliably replicatable by competent members of the orders.
>>Do your religions have Saints, Angels, Demons, and/or other important figures besides the actual gods?
That's a bit in flux right now during my current re-write. I will likely keep celestial and infernal spirits but make it more background.
The temple has Hero's and people of note that can be compared a bit to saints but not quite the same thing. They are more similar to great historical figures to be looked up to and learned from with especially interesting stories that are often reframed as showcases for a particular virtue. Though I might cut this aspect as it doesn't really come up in any of my plot points.
>Lastly, how much power does your religion have over the setting?
Depends on the area and context, and it's always in flux with other competing interest and power players. Earth temple is far more about soft power though, while solar temple is a bit more likely to throw their magically enhanced martial might around if evil is afoot, though defers to regional powers on matters not related to fighting literal embodiment of evil and destruction. With maybe the only exception being their hate of the "totally not vampire" nation that they don't accept as legitimate rulers and instead beings of diluted evil. They REALLY want to crusade against them but can't...yet

>>25032377
>And how do the people of your setting view the gods and religions?
Humans in cities and larger towns tend to have pretty orthodox views in line with the temple's teaching for the most part.
Those in small towns and the country side tend to have more folk religion stuff and spirit worship creep in to add a bit of texture and local flavor to their interpretation of things.
Non-humans ether are fully on the spirit worship side of things and view the two deities as just the two most powerful spirits, or they just have different stories and beliefs related to the Deities that put their species values and virtues front and center instead of the more human centered view.
The main exception that doesn't fit into any of that is the "not vampires" who kinda sort of do ancestor worship and generally sneer at spirit worship as something for the weak and stupid and are actively antagonistic towards worshipers of the solar god. For "reasons" they find those who worship the earth goddess tolerable/useful so are less derogatory when it comes to them. But they don't worship the earth goddess themselves.
There are some tribes and kin groups of humans that are totally focused on particular totemic or local spirits as their primary religious focus.
There are also some bloodlines of mage families that practice ancestor worship along with the more conventional local faith.

>>25031068
There are a lot of polytheistic cults going back to ancient times. The cults consider themselves broadly the same religion with different local practices. The exception is the reform movement that took over the North. The reform movement started out to remove all traces of barbarism and corruption from the religion and progressed to remove most religious practices in favor of "just be a good person, man". The South retained all the old rituals, including the blood sacrifices, and developed the rituals into more complex forms with ceremonies going on for hours on festival days. The North and the South see each other as total heretics doing the work of the evil one and are on hostile terms.

There is also a henotheistic newer religion that has a lot of influence in the South and is considered the top enemy in the North who find the entire concept as blasphemous and wholly evil.

The Elves have their own version of the polytheism and are the ones who initially taught it to humans.

I think the big issue with fictional religion is that they are often obvious copies of existing religions or just feel fake because the author doesn't understand religion. I think feeling fake is the biggest threat to avoid, and that's why excessively weird concepts have to be taken with caution.

Where did you look for ideas on the religion's name, religious garb, ceremonies/rituals, tenants, etc.? Are there any religions outside of the Judeo-Christianity umbrella that have good aspects for fictional religions, especially if they aren’t used as often as they should be?

I used a wide net drawing from various types of ancient paganism and added also more recent things from the church history.

>How accurate is the religion to the actual reality of the setting? And if the god(s) of the setting actually exist in the world, how does this affect their faiths, and what needs to be remembered when making said gods and pantheons?

The human version of the polytheism is badly off. In reality these entities really exist but are not nearly as powerful or benevolent as the religion says they are. The part about benevolence is particularly inaccurate, as these entities are all pretty much varying degrees of evil. The mistaken perception has been able to develop because of a long period with no interaction to speak of.

The newer religion is based around an immortal self-declared god king who, unlike the gods of the polytheism, is actually concerned with humans and how moral they act.

what a slop, 2/10 wouldn't read

When it comes to gods, I slot them into two basic categories:
1. Arrogant, overpowered villains crushing mortals out of petty sadism- that need a mortal hero backed by The One True God to kick their ass.
2. Proud and beautiful goddesses that can't admit they're in love with some mortal.

There's a lot of overlap.

Btw, does anyone here know about the Titanomachy's far less popular sequel, the Gigantomachy? Gaia created Giants to overthrow the gods. The giants were stronger, but the gods collaborated with demigods to defeat their invasion.

I didn't like that ending, so my own version is more Ragnarok-y. The Giants and Gods wiped each other out, with humans inheriting the world they left behind.

>>25032692
so fucken orginal man, how do you even come up with such genius ideas of reproducing thousand year old myths and masturbating how cool you are. you must be getting laid so much

>>25032655
The problem with putting out bits of worldbuilding is that the ideas that really are bad aren't necessarily easy to distinguish from ideas that aren't, but are simply minor parts of the world presented in a way that omits mentioning the plot hook.

Not every detail in a world can be super cool and unique unless you throw internal plausibility to the winds and go for something like Perdido Street Station that feels like it's made to promote a new RPG campaign setting.

>>25032732
Originality is overrated. The only benefit of reinventing the wheel is getting to brag to other idiotic nerds.

>>25032832
>Originality is overrated
this is why nobody will remember you

>>25032858
Just like nobody remembers Rowling?

>>25032832
I agree with this sentiment but I also agree that the Gigantomachy remix is super fucking "whatever" as you have currently left it. What am I supposed to imagine is the conclusion of this? Our modern world? Ancient Greek Cultivators? Hyperborea? Disney's Atlantis?

>last thread died at only 5 (five) replies
Dead general

My setting has an annual Carnival that lasts about a fortnight and what initiates it is an event where a night procession marches with torches along the city and burns effigies of defeated tyrants and rulers. It's based on the Genovese Escalade, but as there's no "Escalade" (of city walls, in that case) it would make no sense to call it that.

What would be another cool/appropriate name? I thought about the "Vigil" or the "Kindling" but I'm not too sure.

>>25033957
Understandable. All worldbuilders are busy over there in tabletop games.

>>25033574
It's just background info for why people in "modern" times are getting possess by shapeshifting monsters- it's the time travelling spirits of dead giants.

>>25034309
I think as long as it follows similar naming conventions you already established for the setting and it doesn't sound too goofy or is too hard to remember/read/pronounce then you are probably fine.

My setting has almost rediscovered traditional gender roles despite being set about a thousand years or so from today.

>Everyone always stays home because remote work is the norm now. Only people going out are men, who are conscripted by the Public Service Corps.
>Women are generally peer pressured into getting married and having children because society needs constant manpower to keep running, and they're the ones responsible for the production of new workers.
>Wealthy and/or intelligent young men can still avoid service by getting into a good college and women by buying birthing vats and android nannies, but they're the exception rather than the norm.

It's like an eternal advertisement version of the 50s.

>>25034664
The more things change the more things stay the same in other regards. I could buy social and gender roles falling back into similar patterns of the past that tend to be pretty stable.
What kind of speculative tech you cooking up for your setting?
You already mentioned birthing vats and androids.

>>25034668
It's mostly just an idealized dystopia where the 50s never ended. You know, the usual. Fusion power, robots, space colonization, terraforming Earth to make it richer, capitalism wins everywhere, World State etc etc.

It's not a utopia, of course. Poor people still exist, racism is just scientific now, the government is corrupt and oligarchic, wars are common whenever some nation decides it doesn't want to be part of the World State anymore, criminals still have power through unions and trafficking of illegal substances. Et cetera.

But it's still a world that resembles the 50s, or rather the future they saw for themselves. One where their own society is scaled up to the entire solar system.

>Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch
Show me one (1) single original element in your worldbuilding.

Pro-tip: you can't.

>>25034690
Originality is overrated. Steal what you need to make something you like.

>>25034690
There is the Guyin.
Batterak
Rah-Helos
Thrymmageo
Geoshi
Sol and Sor

>>25034703
I guarantee these are all stolen hiding behind dumb names.

>>25034716
Prove it.

>>25034719
I'm not the one making extraordinary claims.

>>25034739
You are actually.

If you two are quite done and wish to act your age....

I'm having some trouble finding a Lust Demon that isn't just a conservative mother's worst nightmare. I want something that can make men commit sin, but not so if they're properly faithful to Christ. No mind control allowed, because it's cheap.

Any ideas would be welcome.

>>25034822
I would help but you sound like a cunt so no.
Ideas are easy.
Stop being lazy and brainstorm until you get something that fits your story.

>>25034826
Yeah they're really easy when you just recycle everyone else's.

>>25034840
Says the person begging for other people to do their world building for them.

>>25034843
No I would never write fantasyslop it's beneath me.

>>25034847
So why are you even here?
To make a ass of yourself.

>>25034843
That's me, actually.

Anyways, here are my first ideas.

#1 would be a hippy sex cult. Some demons take the form of extremely persuasive artists and writers that spread a theology of hedonism. They trick bored and immoral young men and women into a life of empty pleasure and addiction.

Most of these cultists end up broken and mentally damaged by this immoral social environment. They become either predators or prey. Many die of drug overdose, many have to settle down raising unplanned children without fathers while said fathers become glorified animals, and poverty destroys them because they no longer have the discipline to get good jobs.

>>25034856
#2 is that instead of demand, they're creating supply. They run both the porn industry and the narcos, and advertise a life of hedonism and degeneracy to drive up their own profits.

....which they then reinvest into the business. Money isn't really their goal. They're lush demons, not greed demons.

>>25034895
#3 is....both. The entire movement that made porn mainstream, from boardroom to the lowest long haired freak, is a unified conspiracy to shift sex from a mere reproductive process to a society destroying obsession.

>>25034664
...why wouldn't birthing vats be used by everyone? Just take out the foetus and put it in the tank.

Why is it restricted to rich people?

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>>25031063
I’m looking to create a fantasy setting where the four classical elements of fire, earth, air, and water are the dominant mystical force, a bit like in Avatar. As a result, instead of one pantheon of gods, I’m planning on having four separate pantheons for each element, each god having at least one divine domain outside of their element, like the fire pantheon having the forge/blacksmith god, etc. I’m just looking for ideas on which domains to associate with which elemental pantheon. Some are easy to assign like the fire pantheon getting the aforementioned forge god, same for the sun god, and the water pantheon getting the moon god makes sense both to counter that and because of the moon and the tides, but what other ideas can you suggest please, especially the more subtle/thematic associations (like how in Greek mythology Poseidon was the god of horses due to having created them out of the crest of a wave in a contest with Athena to become the patron of Athens)? My traitorous brain is refusing to cooperate with me on this and I need as many ideas as you can suggest to me please so I can get past this, thanks in advance for the help!

>>25034954
It's expensive to hire one and most women have a sentimental wish to "feel" the baby inside them.

>>25035149
water healing
fire is smithery
wind is movement
earth is fortification and defense

>>25034849
To raise you subhumans into self-awareness. You have created nothing, that's why you write fantasyslop.

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>>25035259
Thanks for replying! If you have any other ideas, please let me know, I need to fill out the pantheons more!

>>25034822
Use your mother for inspiration.

The idea that muh overpopulation will lead to space colonization is genuinely retarded. Any civilization that has the tech to colonize space could colonize the Sahara or even the oceans at a fraction of both the cost and the risks.

We could store over a hundred billion on Earth alone before space colonies are remotely practical. That's how wide the habitability gap is between the worst places on Earth and the best places in space.

>>25036891
This is to say that in MY setting, the reason humans colonized space was to escape the grip of a single empire that had monopolized over two thirds of all land on Earth.

If that empire hadn't existed, or it hadn't conquered most of the planet, or if it were just smart and pragmatic enough to create a free trade system to allow other nations to share their resources, space colonies would have remained economically impractical.

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How many moons does your setting have? In mine, there's 3 moons with the third smallest being an ancient magic space temple

>>25036969
Earth has only the one moon....but it has a lot of sibling planets in around the same orbit.

Are there any megastructures we could build on the Poles? It's useless for space elevators but I can't just let it remain unravaged.

>>25036969
I try to avoid world building that causes me to endlessly procrastinate due to getting distracted by astrophysics questions that have nothing to do with the plot.

I am guessing in your case it is plot relevant so maybe ask /sci/ about speculation on the effects of several moons on a earth sized planet, or maybe you are better at resisting physics autism.

I don't really have anything to ask, I just want to let everyone know I've got every single type of beastgirl there is, and it's actually an important part of the setting.

Thing is, the Black Goat of A Thousand Young has been seeding the solar system with her spawn for millions of years, leading to nonhumans on many worlds. Many more moved in through interdimensional sorcery.

They're kinda sorta standins for the Native Americans and other primitive indigenous people that got wiped out by modern colonization, except without any romanticization whatsoever. They were warlike slavers who were no better, or maybe even worse, than the people who destroyed them.

But since they did get destroyed, any survivors just exist in zoos and slave markets as either slaves or curiosities for their conquerors. Which is definitely pitiable even if they weren't angels.

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Worldbuilding for sci-fi and spec-evo fiction? Easy peezy.

Worldbuilding for high fantasy? Impossible.

>>25036969
It's similar to the real world, but Earth's Moon has life and an atmosphere, among other things. The ancient terraforming is deteriorating in the present of the story, but luckily Moon never had much of a population.

>>25031346
Fanfic is easier to writer for cause you cna just go "here's character X" and won't have to do 5 chapters worth of backstory and character establishing for them. Make that choice with this knowledge

>>25037651
I think writing hard sci-fi that isn't boring is the hardest.

High fantasy isn't too bad if you don't go crazy building literally everything from scratch until it's incomprehensible to someone not already in the deep end and invested in understanding the world. Then again most writers have the opposite problem of letting overly well worn tropes do all the heavy lifting and not making much if anything new themselves.

>>25036998
The ignorance of you fantasyfags is beyond the pale.

>>25039005
Will you get a life and fuck off already.

>>25039011
My life doesn't get in the way of the occasional driveby humbling.

>>25039005
Hard scifi, bruv. Sister planets are physically possible.

how do you avoid race wars that escalate into genocide, thus resulting in a monoracial planet?

>>25039068
Strong central governments that denounce nationalism.

I genuinely don't see the point of magic systems. Sounds too RPG for me.

I'd rather just have magic do whatever thr plot demands. Why shouldn't I? Magic doesn't make sense anyway.

>>25039068
Free trade and a mono language so that communication is relatively easy between people groups.
Obviously there is still conflict, but interdependence means genocide never is the sensible option.

>>25039068
Good fences make good neighbors.

>>25039005
Larry Niven put five Earth-like planets on the same orbit in his Known Space series.

Discussing fantasy is a lot harder than discussing scifi. Scifi writers are mostly cribbing from the same "manual", but every fantasy series is either different or a copyright violation.

>>25039261
Then Larry Niven is a what you would call a fucking retard.

>>25032329
And I have the general overview of the magic system, how monsters work, and the sorta why for dungeons.

Monsters are entities that are when arcane energies become concentrated and fuse with matter to become relentless beings of malevolent hunger and sadistic rage.
Places where this energy consistently coalesces in such a way regularly spawns these monsters. To contain these monsters civilizations from long ago constructed dungeons. However not all dungeons were constructed only for this reason.
While normal weapons can damage and slow monsters they can't kill them. No mundane means can actually kill them.
Instead to put them down permanently the killing blow must be struck with arcane energy controlled by a sapeint being.

>>25039347
Your trolling is just annoying.

>>25039360
A statement of fact isn't trolling.

>>25039360
Just ignore him. Don't feed trolls.

***

As for me, I'm making a vast subterranean empire that's capable of controlling tectonic and weather activity on a planetary scale.

>>25039347
The five-planet system didn't happen by random chance but was engineered that way by an advanced alien race that wanted to sustain a large population inside one solar system.

Peter F. Hamilton, another well-known science fiction author, also once did a similar thing with multiple planets sharing the same orbit at the distance of Earth from the Sun because reasons. I forget how many planets it was exactly, but it was many more than five. That situation was entirely artificial too.

If you think the concept of multiple planets sharing an orbit is against the inherent laws of physics, you need to update your knowledge to at least something as recent as Newton.

>>25034664
>Only people going out are men, who are conscripted by the Public Service Corps.
So your society where traditional gender roles are enforced by the government has rediscovered traditional gender roles by accident?

>>25039359
This is where the 3 blessings (aka magic systems) come into play.

There are the armed, the armored, and the artful.
The armed can summon a particular to them magic weapon at will. These weapons can slay monsters as well as pretty much anything else with very few exceptions. The armed can also temporarily dramatically boost their cognitive abilities at the cost of mental exhaustion. Lastly they are able to self power magical weapons (and other magical devices) without the need of external arcane energy sources like a power stone.

The armored can create a protective aura around themselves at will that is powered by their body's natural biological energies. They can also temporary greatly boost their physical abilities to super human levels at the cost of physical exhaustion once the boost wears off. They also have all kinds of passive resistances especially to environmental effects, depending on the strength and training of the person.

Lastly there is the one I have probably had the most trouble with and still working on. If I count previous projects then I have technically been working on it for months more or less.
The Artful are the category that more classical magic users would fall into. Regardless of the particulars the commonality of all of the artful is that they can use their will to manipulate external arcane energy in some way shape or form. They can all theoretically learn magical crafting related skills. And they all potentiality can (again in theory) learn to comprehend Arcaneum and the formal arcane arts to become a "proper" mage.
Though the vast majority of human Artful are spellborn. Basically think of it as they have one innate spell that they just instinctual know and hyper specialize in. For example a guy might know firebolt, and over the course of their life learn to up or down cast it in every way they can possibly imagine to fit any sort of situation they find themselves in. But that same guy since they are one of the artful, could also learn to engrave enchantments using knowledge in the arcane arts learned in a formal setting, then through that charged and enchanted item expand their abilities such as using that magic item to cast a different spell from the one they innately have.
As you can probably guess, the main downsides are that the Artful require lots of knowledge, material, and time to go beyond their initially limited innate abilities. However a Artful who is well prepared is a force to be reckoned with.

Some species consistently and predictably have one or two of the blessings, or none at all.
Humans potentially could have a individual with all three blessings but this is extremely rare naturally, and generally only happens artificially. With humans the blessings are sometimes related to bloodline, sometimes random, sometimes environmental, and sometimes due to pacts with other beings, but most humans do not having any of the 3 blessings at all.

>>25039752
They re-evolved those roles through natural means, yes.

Setting I am working on doesn't have horses.

I have borocks, which are relatively slow heavily naturally armored beast of burden that are often used to move heavy cargo through dangerous areas. Also used for more typical beast of burden stuff like pulling plows and the like. Their natural musk scares off normal predators and there temperament means they don't freak out or run off spooked when something like monsters or bandits attack. Instead their instinct is to hunker down or circle up to maximize their natural defensive nature.

Then I have daggadashes, which are a cross between a very large raptor (the dinosaur kind) and a ostrich. They are used as very fast battle mounts especially by ranged carvery. Strong enough to support the weight of a fully armored grown man, and when trained are vicious in battle in their own right. Even when fully loaded down they can still sprint short distances up to 50 miles per a hour. Meanwhile they can keep a marching pace all day as long as they are properly fed and well watered. The main logistical difficulty with daggadashes are that their preferred/optimal diet is primarily carnivorous. Things like "kibble" exist, but if supply chains are broken then they can't just graze on grass or whatever like a horse can.

Names are a work in progress.
Want to add more animals too and have some ideas, but will probably just come up with them as they come up in the story.
Like a rodent with wide set front legs and over developed rear legs with a smooth hard belly that slides along the ground when ground conditions are right for sliding.
Or a variation of a flying squirrel with extra long whiskers that can sense thermals and use them as well as the wind to catch a breeze that is just right to spiral super high into the air then glide very long distances.

I just want the place to feel less like a alt earth and more like a strange place of it's own, while still giving fantasy vibes rather than sci-fi. Like different and there is a certain logic to it, but at least a bit of a whimsical feeling too.

>>25039229
>>25039073
>>25039249
as the chinese say, "those not of my race must have hearts different to mine", how do you overcome that most ancient instinct of tribalism that generally causes genocide spirals, especially if humans co-exist with other actually different races?

>>25040845
Through the power of wishful thinking.

>>25040845
Again, economic interdependence and trade has a long track record of creating peace between people groups who hated each other for centuries.
Based on historical prescient it's the way to go.
Proper communication makes free trade smooth, hens the mono-language thing.

>>25040855
economic interdependence and trade didn’t stop homo sapiens from great replacing/killing neanderthals out of existence and they were both of homo genus

what stops humans from obliterating elves and dwarves and lizardfolk and insect people during the stone age and prematurely starting the age of man?

>>25040994
There isn't conclusive evidence for humans genociding Neanderthals.
In fact there is plenty of evidence of both trade and mating between the two. The leading theory is that climate change made the style of hunting Neanderthals relied on not viable and that is the main thing that killed them off. Not war or hate.
They sort of live on in human bloodlines of Europeans because of "getting along" with us.

Why do you assume genocide is the only possible outcome of different peoples interacting?

>>25041083
There is no evidence that humans were "getting along" with neanderthals.

>>25041166
It's literally in the DNA ancestry of a good chunk of northern Europeans. What the fuck do you mean there is no evidence?
There is both dna and archeological evidence of breeding, trading, and using the same camp sites.
You didn't even try to look this shit up. You are just saying shit to argue.

>>25041220
>It's literally in the DNA ancestry of a good chunk of northern Europeans
That's not evidence of "getting along". Do you think kidnapping and rape is "getting along"?
>There is both dna and archeological evidence of breeding, trading, and using the same camp sites.
No, there's not. There's DNA evidence of genetic exchange, which does not require "getting along". There is no conclusive evidence of trade, that's an unsupported interpretation of the latter point, that there was overlap in their use of sites.
You're a pseud.

>>25041232
You are just arguing to arguing and don't have a point.
You are a donkey's butt.

I like soft magic and when its mysterious and stuff but I really prefer when worlds have hard magic with rules and laws, ideally a fantasy world should have both with the hard magic being more common

>>25041347
Simple.
Protagonist has hard magic.
Antagonist and mysterious helpers of the protag who aren't around most of the time have soft magic.

Far as I'm concerned, the fantasy version of Hard Sci-Fi would be... Magical Realism.

Think about it—both genres are effectively about grounding a "fake" world into our real one by using the genre's conceits to anchor it to the "real world".

In Hard Sci-Fi, the anchor is the Law of Physics. The writer creates a "closed system" where every miracle must be paid for in joules and decimals. In Magical Realism, the anchor is societal changes. The extraordinary—a man with wings, a trail of blood that seeks out a mother, or a girl who floats—is treated with the same weary, matter-of-fact observation as a rainstorm or a broken fence.

Both genres reject the "secondary world" trope of high fantasy and space opera. They refuse to take you to Middle-earth or a galaxy far, far away; they insist on staying right here. By embedding the impossible into a world of laundry, politics, and physical grit, they strip away the "wonder" of the spectacle and replace it with the weight of consequence.

In "soft" genres, the magic or tech is often the solution to the plot. But in Hard Sci-Fi and Magical Realism, the miracle is usually the complication. If a Hard Sci-Fi protagonist deals with the grueling, technical reality of lunar gravity, the Magical Realist protagonist deals with the grueling, social reality of a ghost who won’t stop sitting at the dinner table.

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>>25041366
Completely wrong. For example, Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward is considered hard science fiction and most of the story takes place on the surface of an imaginary neutron star, telling the stories of the non-human aliens that live in the strange environment. For another example, Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement is set completely on an alien planet that has very high gravity and speed of rotation and the primary main character of the story is an alien native to that planet. Larry Niven's Known Space series (you know, the one that probably-you denigrated for daring to have five Earth-like planets orbiting an equal distance from a star) is considered hard science fiction too. And so on.

Hard science fiction's focus on (the illusion of) scientific plausibility does not necessarily imply any connection to Earth or humans though humans are still popular as main characters for reasons of convenience. The primary difference between hard science fiction and hard magic fantasy is the amount of authorial invention required for developing the hard rules on which the plot operates.

>>25041440
Actually, I'm the one who said he did have a multi-planetary orbit.

>Hard science fiction's focus on (the illusion of) scientific plausibility does not necessarily imply any connection to Earth or humans though humans are still popular as main characters for reasons of convenience. The primary difference between hard science fiction and hard magic fantasy is the amount of authorial invention required for developing the hard rules on which the plot operates.

You don't know what Magical Realism is, do you?

>>25041448
>Actually, I'm the one who said he did have a multi-planetary orbit.
Are you pretending to be me? How dishonest.

>You don't know what Magical Realism is, do you?
Magical realism is not concerned with explaining or providing hard rules for anything. It's low-stakes realism in which some unexplained magical stuff is an accepted part of the world but the focus is on the characters and their lives. This is the opposite of hard science fiction in which the focus is on some problem involving science and technology and may involve imaginary new breakthroughs that are completely speculative in the real world.

>>25041489
No, I'm pretending to be ME.

>Magical realism is not concerned with explaining or providing hard rules for anything. It's low-stakes realism in which some unexplained magical stuff is an accepted part of the world but the focus is on the characters and their lives. This is the opposite of hard science fiction in which the focus is on some problem involving science and technology and may involve imaginary new breakthroughs that are completely speculative in the real world.

Calling magical realism "low-stakes" ignores its roots. In post-colonial literature, magic is often a tool to process systemic violence and historical trauma. The stakes are the survival of a culture’s soul.

As for "rules", magic is fixed and consistent in these stories. If a character is followed by yellow butterflies, that’s a local law of physics for them. It's not like it's some surreal story.

>>25041694
>Calling magical realism "low-stakes" ignores its roots. In post-colonial literature, magic is often a tool to process systemic violence and historical trauma. The stakes are the survival of a culture’s soul.
You can't be serious.

>>25041694
>magic is often a tool to process systemic violence and historical trauma
God you're such a fucking faggot

>>25042797
>>25042805
Looks like someone needs to read up on the themes of post-colonial literature.

>>25043158
Why do you troll this thread so much?

>>25043412
I'm just trying to talk about the parallels between magic realism and hard scifi, at least in terms of how they are both drawn on the same canvas- Earth.

What are the different kinds of smart, scheming characters in fiction?

>The man who can predict what his enemies will do.
>The man who is an expert at improvising and remaining unpredictable.
>The man who always has a backup plan.
>The man who can manipulate his enemies into doing what he wants.

Any more ideas like this? I guess they're archtypes.

>>25043544
No you aren't.

>>25043549
Unironically look it up on TVTropes.

How could the United States legally deal with the fact that they need to depend on underage "soldiers"?

>>25038859
I'm doing this as a personal hobby, so I don't need to go the easy route or care about things like deadlines. I find plotting out and hopefully writing a complex story a fun and interesting mental exercise. My current ideas are revolving around going to an original direction to avoid certain difficult plot hurdles with the fanfic route, but I could easily change my mind in the future.

I'm currently thinking that I could open with a long prologue about Plot A, using that to lay groundwork for Plot A.1 and Plot A.2 as well as Plot A.3. Getting in the foundation for Plot B is harder, but I think I could maybe achieve that with some small mentions in the prologue and then having characters talk about Plot B during the downtime parts in the early Plot A.1, though I'm worried that won't be enough exposition. Maybe the prologue needs another section added to it or something, but I'm worried about the readability of the prologue with all that infodump.

>>25043942
What?
What the fuck are you talking about?
Are you lost?

>>25034309
Call it Burning Fags.

My magic system is related to sex. The higher a mage's body count is the more powerful they become. The most powerful mage has a harem of girls that he fucks one at a time as he casts spells. It's like a perpetual mana machine, but with orgasms and magic missiles.

But it's not porn. It's very tasteful.

>>25045277
With a premise like that you really shouldn't pussy out, you should embrace the eroticism and just write it as porn. Porn can be a valid vehicle for story telling, art, and in this case world building.

Do it.

>>25043942
They wouldn't. They would deny it's happening and keep it off mainstream media. The same way the US and Israel justify genocide.

>>25035149
You have been asking about this for over a year now. If not two.

How is it that you have made no progress in all this time and still keep asking people to do the bulk of the world building for you?

>>25043942
If such a shift were to happen, the U.S. would face immense legal hurdles. Here is a breakdown of how the U.S. would have to "deal" with this from a legal standpoint, based on existing statutes and treaties.

1. Domestic Legal Framework
Currently, federal law (10 U.S.C. § 505) sets the minimum age for enlistment at 17 (with parental consent) or 18 (without). To legally utilize 12–15-year-olds, the government would need to:

Amend Federal Statutes: Congress would have to pass new legislation drastically lowering the minimum age for service.

Constitutional Challenges: Such a law would likely be challenged under the 5th and 14th Amendments (Due Process) and potentially the 8th Amendment (Cruel and Unusual Punishment), as the Supreme Court has increasingly recognized that children lack the cognitive and emotional maturity of adults (e.g., Roper v. Simmons).

2. International Law & War Crimes
The U.S. is a party to the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC). Using children under 15 in hostilities is a violation of international humanitarian law.

War Crimes: Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), "conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into national armed forces... or using them to participate actively in hostilities" is classified as a war crime.

Treaty Violations: Even though the U.S. is not a full member of the ICC, it has ratified the OPAC, which commits the U.S. to ensuring members of its armed forces under 18 do not take a "direct part in hostilities."

3. The "Non-Combat" Loophole?
In some historical and global contexts, "child soldiers" are used in roles that are legally distinct from "combatants." If the U.S. were to attempt to bypass the law, they might try to classify these minors as:

Support Personnel: Messengers, cooks, or scouts. However, international law (the "Paris Principles") defines a child soldier as any person under 18 used in any capacity by an armed force, including support roles.

Militia Designations: Under 10 U.S. Code § 246, the "unorganized militia" consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age. Expanding this to 12-year-olds would require a total rewrite of the U.S. Code.

After writing a scene where a mage explains the magic I have come to realize that after 50 or so times grow tired of typing "arcane energy" over and over and over again.

Thinking of shorting nearly all references to the magical energy "arc" instead, but not sure if it would sound right to someone who isn't already in deep.
I don't want to just default to mana, even if functionally speaking it servers the same role in the story/world.

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>"Can I talk about an existing fictional setting that is not mine?"
Can I talk about the greatest DnD setting of all time?

>>25047663
Depends on what you want to talk about regarding it, and if it's relevant to the thread topic.
But if it's on topic then go for it.

What would you like to discuss?

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Trying to come up with an elemental system like the classical Greek elements but more on a cosmic scale, so stuff that applies outside in space too.
So far I came up with:
>fusion: star fire and forge of elements
>gravity: neutronium, black holes and endless collapse
>nebula: whispy barely-existence and rebirth
Now those are three and I find these already well correspond to fire, earth and air. But what would be water. I was thinking about that imagery of violent storms on gas giants, constant wind, electrical discharges etc, but that just is normal air in a more extreme.
What would be a good analog to water in space? Or is there even another element that fits the bill?

The top ranked university in my setting used to be a temple once. Then after the twilight of the gods, Bright Eyed Athena was sealed in a chamber in its dungeons.

Her blessing allowed the university to become a Mecca for scientific research and philosophy. It brought in endless amounts of wealth from donations and patents. It also created a powerful social network that controls the country.

But it also has a minor flaw, one based off her nature as a goddess of war, civilization, and generally the status quo. The flaw is that the university is a repressive, hierarchical sub-society where the strong (rich or smart students) can casually get away with all sorts of misdeeds, from rape to murder, in the knowledge that the university will protect them.

>>25048454
>Trying to come up with an elemental system like the classical Greek elements but more on a cosmic scale
I would suggest maybe actually reading up on the classical Greek system of elements and how it was used by them. It would likely give you better ideas on where to go for your system then any suggestion I might give.

>>25048539
You mean the timaios? Yeah that's what I already read it. it's why I got this idea because in it, the world's creation is explained through the interaction of elements. In what I want to do, those elements would only come about through the interaction of the extra-planetary elements.

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I have a setting dominated by very large magipunk cities but all the technology is powered by crystals and only work within a perimeter of a mother crystal (yeah i stole this from final fantasy). Outside these giant cities, the world is just a typical fantasy medieval place, with some places being dark shitholes while other place being extremely comfy shitholes. But these places are far from the cities so they're basically centuries behind the major crystal cities.

A lot of people immigrate to these cities so a lot of parts of them become overpopulated cyberpunkesque Kowloons.

There's a lot of racial differences too. But I'm torn between using typical fantasy races or just having humans with different skin colors like in real life.

>>25050282
>humans with different skin colors
Disgusting

>>25050298
You don't just make all your humans brown?
I like to just have elves be white/pale skinned while humans are either brown or asian phenotypically.

>>25050303
No brown "people" don't have any place in fantasy based on Western mythology.

>>25050357
>Western mythology
But there's no Thor or Wodin, or Cu Cullain or Lugh or anything like that. There's no mythology here other than some terms derived from old english.

>>25050399
>Fantasy medieval
You mean European.
>elves
European.

>>25050409
>You mean European.
No, I mean fantasy medieval. Not European
>>25050409
elves. Not european. They are not europeans.

Actually it's a fantasy world and is totally original. It doesn't have anything in common with real history, other than all the things that are like that. But the history isn't the same and the culture isn't the same. It's called fantasy, you can do whatever you want.

Or so the usual spiel goes, right?

>>25050433
Yeah I mean, if that guy wants to keep being some weird identitarian, I'd love for him to tell me which European country elves come from and have citizenship in.

>>25050357
Not even brown skinned elf girls?

>>25050445
Medieval is a term to describe Europe and Elves come from Germanic mythology you gay retard.

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>>25050457
>Medieval is a term to describe Europe

>>25050459
Uh yeah it is. It's a period of like 1000 years specifically concerned with western european history, coined in that period and region. He is actually right about that. If you meant Japan you'd say "Muromachi period" and not "Late Middle Ages", if you meant China it would be "Ming dynasty", and so on.

Whether he actually knew this is debatable, but it is correct that "the Middle Ages" is only concerned with Western Europe when speaking.

>>25050477
You gave two exceptions that prove the rule. Everywhere outside of East Asia and the Americas that time period is referred to as the Middle Ages, not just Europe.

>>25050480
You're so retarded you don't even know when you're wrong.

>>25050511
Please, go read a fucking book we're on the literature board. You don't have to argue a blatantly incorrect point.

>>25050480
India, the Mughal era
Russia, the Rurik dynasty
Thai history refers to that period as the feudal period at least in some English sources
Malaysia, the Srivijaya

On the other hand, you typically don't say things like "the Carolingian period" though you might say "the Carolingian dynasty" if you wanted to be geographically and temporally accurate. Most scholars don't like saying "the Medieval period" and especially not "the feudal period" anyways, you're going to get a lot more specific usually like "the High middle ages" or "the xyz dynasty".

In local-language historiography, scholars use their own internal periodizations that don’t center on the European medieval/modern break. The Islamic world, for example, often uses dynastic or caliphal frameworks (Umayyad, Abbasid, etc.). In broad Anglophone discourse, the European periodization model often gets exported outward as a kind of default template. In that sense, Europe is treated as the reference frame and other regions are mapped onto it.

Your claim mistakes the dominance of European historiographical language in general parlance for a natural or universal periodization of world history that really doesn't exist.

>>25050517
Ok, cool. Not gonna argue, anonGPT.

>>25050518
I accept your concession lol. Contrary to popular belief, you actually look dumber by doubling down instead of admitting fault.

>>25050514
>You don't have to argue a blatantly incorrect point.
>Said the retard arguing a blatantly incorrect point

>>25050525
Whatever man.

>>25050282
I am a fan of atypical fantasy races.
Gives you a chance to get creative and/or tailor something particular to the kind of story/project you are working on.

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Main reason I need them to is so that Magical adventures are more important. HP had the problem where Hogwarts was only relevant on the world stage because that's where Dumbledore (and Harry) was, and because Voldemort had some affection for it. Mostly the former.

I'm considering making something of a national ideology for Mages, something that makes them consider all Mages to be part of a single unified "Nation" that SHOULD dictate politics for the benefit of Magic on the whole and Magic Users in particular.

>>25050809
What are some atypical fantasy races that you’re particularly fond of, and/or advice you would give or resources that you would recommend for someone who wants to use some in their own settings? What about existing settings that depict such races in a well-done manner?

do you boys post your stuff to substack at all?

why the hell would anyone ever want to do that?

How do I get the reader to buy into a secondary world set in the 19th century? Do I just write it and hope for the best? Do I compromise and set it in a made up country in the real world?

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>>25031063
I want my deities to reside either in a plane of chaos and a plane of order/law, with the mortal world sandwiched between them, and thus having different sphere of influence as a result of which plane they're tied to. I don't want to take too much from Warhammer though (even if I used the image I did just because of how recognizable it is), especially the idea of one side being inherently good or evil (I know in Warhammer the Chaos gods are supposed to represent both positive 'and' negative traits, but they're typically pretty evil, so I want to actually show the good and and bad in both sides in what domains each group gets, does that make sense?), and I need some help coming up with spheres for each side. I could do Magic for Chaos and Technology for Law for instance, though I was considering that each force would have their own kind of magic, and obviously Chaos would have a Trickster archetype and Law a Justice god, what else works?

>>25051566
>What are some atypical fantasy races that you’re particularly fond of
The ones I made myself are the ones I am particularly fond of. Would be weird if it was any other way.
>and/or advice you would give or resources that you would recommend for someone who wants to use some in their own settings?
I think soft sci-fi and the pulp adventure age of sci-fi and fantasy are better at this than contemporary fantasy. While I deeply enjoy contemporary fantasy they are usually deeply influenced by D&D and Tolken, and thus handle fantasy races in well worn ways.

>What about existing settings that depict such races in a well-done manner?
Star Wars, especially the sublimental stuff and lore books.
Every plant, every animal, every person group besides humans are original to the setting, yet it's still easily comprehensible to even a child. It truly is a totally different world from both our own and every other setting. While I have always had a special place in my heart for star wars when I started world building myself came to appreciate how impressive they seemed to pull off easily what for most writers would find nearly impossible.
Seriously, if you haven't I would recommend picking up some of the books written like encyclopedias and those beautiful ones that show the tech schematics and material culture of the peoples of star wars.
While I am not saying their world building is perfect, its sure to contain tons of inspiration for any worldbuilder.

>>25052090
Have you read any of the Elric saga?
I think Moorcock's approach to Chaos and Order could help inspire you in different directions. I mean it partially also inspired 40K too.

>>25051731
When you say this secondary world is set in the 19th century, what do you mean by that?

>>25035149
earth: harvest, love, healing, nature, constitution, resilience, god for salt of the earth types

>>25037651
I'm currently trying to write what is fantasy, but not the stereotypical medieval evles and Tolkien stuff. I'm not really trying to bother with worldbuilding with gods, pantheons, planets, or any of that stuff. My idea is places that exist in a dream setting or some sort of dimension. I also don't like getting bogged down in the traditional fantasy worldbuilding details. I started with trying to create somethig that is neither sci fi nor fantasy, but it seems everything that isn't sci fi is fantasy. I'm no where near skilled enough to write something truly out there.

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>>25052374
Haven't really read those books yet. I looked up the wiki though and they don't really ascribe any actual spheres of influence to many of the Lords of Chaos from what I see, so while Checkalakh makes the argument that Flame could belong to Chaos, and I could extrapolate the other three main element from there, just skimming the wiki doesn't help me much, and it might be a while until I can read it. Thanks for the suggestion though, if you have any others please let me know.

>>25052379
A fictional setting with technology and culture inspired by the 1800's.

>>25051566
The Thomas Covenant books by Stephen Donaldson make a good use of non-standard races in addition to humans and have a particularly unique kind of low tech, high magic worldbuilding, though you can still see the debt to Tolkien. (Only the first six Thomas Covenant books are worth reading though.)

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>>25052453
Thanks! I would have attributed healing to Water, to be honest, but giving it to Earth is an interesting idea. If you have any ideas for the other three elements, please let me know!

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>>25052367
>The ones I made myself are the ones I am particularly fond of. Would be weird if it was any other way.
What races have you created then?

>>25053058
>(Only the first six Thomas Covenant books are worth reading though.)
Why is that? I’d love to hear more about the races and everything still, please.

>>25031068
I haven't published anything, but I have this big project I've always wanted to make.
>>In your setting, what is the major religion(s) present?
In this setting, the planet is tidily locked to its sun.
Near the northern twilight zone, there is a purple and black rain forest and an archipelago near a mountain range connected to the great ice sheet.
The predominate native tradition is a belief in the shadow God. The sun is a war God who burnt the land and flesh into being. This pushed back the forces of the underworld, but nothing in this land could think like the spirits of the underworld. The shadow God stole the souls of the darkness and brought it to the new land of flesh. Now the navies live under the rule of the sun before being taken by the underworld. When aliens arrived, they were seen as undead creatures here to reclaim the world.
Many city states of the archipelago have incorporated this with their local Gods that are more conventional.
>>25031063
I do have a question for the thread. Does anyone have an alternative form of currency?
I've created a problem for myself with trying to create an alien world where human society wouldn't make sense. However, they still share the society part.
The intelligent creatures communicate through color changing skin and wings that exist more for stable running and hiding. They have four legs and a prehensile tail instead of hands. One larger species runs on two legs like a dinosaur.
they have no jaw, instead they have a tongue that punctures flesh and stuck in food.
They're in a Bronze Age and have a high sense of honor.
I'm not decided on the mating structure yet, but I don't want the same royal hierarchies to exist or a pass down of wealth.
So for money, I've been trying to think of an alternative that still resolves the specialization of roles in society. I'm at a loss for this one.

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>>25031063
My setting’s pantheon is headed by a couple, a goddess of Light and a god of Darkness. Each of them has several other aspects of reality in their divine portfolios as well, like Sun/Day and Fire and Moon/Night and Water respectively, as well as several children who all take after one parent or the other, save for a god of Twilight, their first child. What other aspects go best with each side?

>>25054346
Your pantheon will always feel fake and gay because you fundamentally misunderstand how polytheism comes about in practice.

>>25052515
I think as long as you maintain verisimilitude and give the readers a reason to care (aka decent characters and plot) then it should be fine.
There is a decent amount of "gas light fantasy" with tech and cultures inspired by that era.

>>25053552
>I do have a question for the thread. Does anyone have an alternative form of currency?
Personally I don't (most currency in my setting is silver coins with a smattering of some nations using bank notes) but I have suggestions based on history since you are looking for alternatives.
In our own history some bronze age societies used their primary and most important stable food crop as their primary currency. For example Egypt and Messopotamia used grain.

Here is a few links on the subject of the use of important foods used as currency in history, as well as the evolution of trade mediums for some inspiration.

https://ancientegyptianhistory.wordpress.com/2023/02/27/grain-as-currency-the-open-market-economic-system-of-ancient-egypt/
https://go2tutors.com/foods-that-were-used-as-currency-throughout-history/
https://www.rewbix.com/insights/the-birth-of-money-how-ancient-civilizations-pioneered-currency-systems/

>>25054407
You going to elaborate or at least try to be constructive?

>>25054407
99.999% of readers aren't polytheist themselves so won't care or notice.

>>25054812
Polytheism typically arises from the blending of different cultures' beliefs. Culture 1 has a sun god. They conquer or merge or are subsumed by culture 2 with a moon goddess, and so on and so forth until you have a pantheon. Often the nature of their relationship will reflect that. You don't end up with a sun god that is also the god of fire, the day, and whatever else you can conceptually pack in and a moon goddess directly opposed in every capacity. They take on added traits through syncretism with still other cultures and it's not a clean process. Sometimes your god of the sea is closer to their god of medicine even though that's an aspect of your sun god, so you incorporate the former. If you've conquered them and are trying to fold them into your empire, you don't syncretize your chief gods with theirs, you subjugate them. The result is a top tier of your pantheon that's often more conceptually pure. Further, sun and moon gods often hold prominent positions in primitive cultures and then are later relegated to lesser roles by more developed civilizations because the sun and moon are predictable and decreasingly relevant to survival as your civilization grows and advances. Gods of storms and floods and the sea often become very important because they're more disruptive and unpredictable, and so you create rituals and cults to appease them. Gods of war and craftsmanship become important, gods of agriculture and trade. Your perfectly ratioed, all-encompassing sun and moon goddess sitting atop the pantheon forever will feel fake and gay for those reasons.

>>25054939
They won't be able to articulate what it is they're noticing but they will notice.

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>>25054974
Thanks for the explanation here. But assuming that you're also >>25054407, doesn't this change when the gods are actually beings that are confirmed to exist and have an active impact on the setting? Especially if they existed before the religions instead of being created by the worship of mortals. Because that's what I was going for.

>>25055061
Does writing about them like they're real change the audience's reference material?

>>25055086
It changes the context and points of reference, meaning it matters.

>>25055201
Why don't you just type all of this into ChatGPT instead since you're just looking for validation?

>>25055221
Why don't you stop getting emotional every time you get push back on your ignorant nonsense.

>>25053496
>Why is that?
The Last Chronicles were written decades after the earlier books, and the quality drop is... drastic.

To elaborate on that, the earlier Thomas Covenant books had their unlikable main characters balanced by a likable and heroic side cast and a vivid and interesting world, but in the Last Chronicles the supporting characters range from bland to incredibly annoying and the world comes across as strangely lifeless and mostly a rehash, in which many of the old locations are revisited while the old charm is missing. The pacing gets out of whack too, and there are pages upon pages of slow setup for a payoff that isn't epic enough to justify all that and in some notable cases is a total aggravating anticlimax. There are some massive missed chances in these books. The final ending is bad too.

In particular, the addition of time travel and widely-available teleportation to a story that used to be really good at developing tension and a sense of dread means that the characters j go straight from a static and tedious chat scene to a fight scene with no rising tension beforehand, and I think that works out really badly. Also, the addition of time travel to a story that didn't originally have it is said to be a sure indication of the plot being about to become ruined, and the Last Chronicles would certainly support that view, even managing to make the earlier books retroactively worse.

>>25053496
>I’d love to hear more about the races and everything still, please.
As of the First Chronicles, the humans of the Land live in a pacifistic neolithic utopia with high magic that allows nice things such as effective healing of ailments and convenient indoor lighting. Instead of elves and dwarves, the common humans are divided into villages that make use of either wood or stone elemental magic and live in harmony with nature. Magic can be freely learned by anyone who wants to put in the effort and get the equivalent of higher education, but many people are content doing simple jobs that are necessary to the society too. The people who do put in the effort and get the equivalent of a double doctorate in combat and utility magic get to be part of the ruling council and oversee the defense against outside threats, supported by non-pacifist humans from the Western mountains who are a lot like shaolin monks and are skilled at unarmed combat.

As for other races, there are the ur-viles, a mysterious non-human artificial race generally aligned with evil. The ur-viles are black in color, perceive their surroundings somehow despite being eyeless, and can run just as well on two or four limbs. The ur-viles are talented in magic, frequently make use of the acid element, and fight in wedge formations in which the magic-wielding loremaster at the head of the wedge can draw power from the entire group, becoming a very formidable entity for as long as the formation can hold together

The reclusive Waynhim are a gray variant of ur-viles that decided to protect nature despite being inherently opposed to natural law and hurt by normal healing spells.

The Giants are many people's favorites. They are big, strong, friendly, like telling stories, and are completely immune to fire. They are talented with making things with stone and even use their stone-shaping magic to make functional ships from stone.

The Ravers are immortal evil spirits with possession powers who are a serious recurring threat despite only three Ravers total existing in the world.

The jheherrin are a small and weak non-human race that probably inspired the slimes in Japanese media.

The immortal, shapeshifting Elohim in the second trilogy have vast magical powers and an even vaster unwillingness to do anything useful despite theoretically being on the side of good. The Elohim can be compared to fairies or fallen angels trapped in the world.

An interesting part about the metaphysics of the setting is that when a natural law is broken through special effort, the law stays broken and can, with sufficient magic, be exploited by anyone, including the villains.

>>25055261
How ironic.

Impressions of this magic system?

There is an eternal war between the upper and lower realms, between the demons and angels.

Magic is done by drawing an entity from one realm to the other because, in doing so, it passes through our realm, the middle realm. There are several "path-shapes" an entity can follow from one realm to the other, and depending on the shape, it will have different effects on the middle realm.

Every location within the middle realm has a "magical potential energy", depending on the balance of power at that location between the upper and lower realm. At the sight of recent a battle or massacre, for example, the forces of the lower realm are drawn nearer and spontaneous disasters or small misfortunes are apt to occur (as greater or lesser demons pass through unguided) for some time after, until equilibrium is once again reached. At places of worship, miracles are similarly apt to occur.

The path-shapes that the entities take can be influenced by carved/drawn runes.

The human mind can also be used as a conduit for entities by picturing path-shapes. The human mind can force a path in either direction, though there is more "recoil" if it draws an angel down in cursed land or vice versa.

Conceiving of most useful path-shapes is very complex and requires large amounts of study. Most are only capable of conceiving of a handful of simple shapes, and they must be read each time to picture them fully.

Purposeful magic can be done in a few ways:
1. Blood magic: shaping a path, typically a simple rune, then drawing demons near with foul deeds.
2. Holy magic: the mirror of blood magic, but for angels and holy deeds/worship.
3. Sorcery: Studying a path until you can conceive of it, then reading it each time you wish to cast it
4. Wizardry: Grafting runes orbs directly to the brain until the subconscious mind shapes itself to the complex paths. Thus allowing complex spells to be cast without reading each time. Most can only handle one or two spells grafted in this way.
5. Demonurgy: The practice of trapping a demon or angel within the middle realm, usually resulting in chaos.

>>25056789
Has potential but I would have to see it used in a story to fully get it.

>>25054974
That isn't even true. Not a scrap of it.
Where did you get such incorrect information from. Like really, what is your source?

>>25056789
The logic holds up well, though the naming conventions for the different types of magic feel a bit standard for such a unique mechanical hook. Calling them sorcery and wizardry might lead readers to expect traditional tropes rather than the visceral mental grafting you described. The idea of "path-shapes" is the strongest part of the pitch, but it raises questions about how a mage handles moving targets or dynamic combat if they have to stay focused on complex geometry or read from a page. If the recoil is too punishing, your protagonists might end up feeling passive, unable to act in the very places where the story is most exciting. There is also a risk that the "eternal war" between angels and demons feels a bit binary or familiar unless the entities themselves have personalities beyond just being fuel for a spell. It might be worth figuring out if these beings have any say in the matter or if they are just mindless forces being pulled through a straw. Maybe brainstorm some more distinct names for these casting methods if you want to lean into the anatomical or geometric themes.

>>25056934
>Reeee that's not true reeee
>Can't refute any of it
Midwit general on a midwit board.

>>25057176
>my source is that I made it the fuck up

>>25057348
>EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE SOURCED FROM SOMEONE ELSE NO ONE CAN HAVE ORIGINAL THOUGHTS OR NOVEL OBSERVATIONS I DEMAND IT BECAUSE I'M A BIG GIANT BABY THAT CAN'T THINK FOR MYSELF OR FATHOM ANYONE ELSE DOING THE SAME AND I CERTAINLY CAN'T REFUTE SOMEONE ELSE'S THOUGHTS BECAUSE THAT WOULD REQUIRE ACTUAL THOUGHT BABABLOOEY WAHWAHWAH

>>25057387
So in other words you basically admit you are full of shit.
Glad that is yet again cleared up.
Now if your failed attempts at trolling are done you are politely invited to fuck off.

>>25057554
I admit that I don't need sources to provide spoon-feed me my thoughts and ovservations and I admit that you're a dumbfuck that's never suffered a creative thought and that desperately needs to haul his ass back to plebbit where you'll feel much more at home among the unthinking, well-sourced, "trust the lying experts" midwit masses.

>>25057636
Cry more.

>>25057703
Be more retarded.

I want to make a turtle world

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>>25059197
Then make it.

>>25059197
Like Discworld?

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>>25031063
What settings do you look at for ideas on gods? What about other pantheon creation resources?

>>25061238
No gods no kings.

>>25061238
In all seriousness, such things really should relate to the themes of the story you are trying to tell. What deeper meaning is being expressed.
In isolation I think such speculation just hangs there without depth or anything to grab on to.

Which is why I have been saying for over a year in this thread that you need a project of some sort to put world building into context.
Be it writing stores, making art, or using it in games.
Characters to explore the world, to live there, to experience things in the context of a person within the world.
What kind of god would your charcter turn to in their time of need? What kind of god would your primary antagonist worship? How could they worship the same god(s) yet be so opposed in ideals?
Ask questions like that will lead to more interesting results that have greater impact on your world than just plopping someone else's stuff into your world but recolored with the names filed off.

Try this. Imagen yourself reborn as a baby in your world. Now over some time, maybe a week or a month, imagine their life as they grow and interact with the world.
This will flesh out your world's little details far better than such blanket questions.

>>25061238
Pantheons are overrated. But you may want to research Greek mythology as well as other real-world mythologies, as well as how the religions belonging to those mythologies functioned in practice, to avoid having of your understanding on pagan religion filtered through Dungeons & Dragons and imitators or David Eddings and imitators.

There is no reason a fantasy world need be polytheistic by default. For example, I think the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant does very well with a more Manichean approach:

>The god of the setting created the world and it was beautiful and good
>The main villain interfered in the creation process and introduced evil
>Open conflict
>The main villain ended up locked inside the world, weakened by this state and unable to leave
>All the innocent inhabitants of the world are trapped with him
>The main villain is OP with special powers that include true immortality as well as dangerously cunning (for the first six books at least)
>The god of the setting is outside the world, unable to interfere directly except by destroying the world and freeing the main villain
>The main villain's plan A is to find a way to destroy the world from the inside and free himself
>The plan B is to cause so much destruction and misery that the god of the setting voluntarily destroys the world to end its suffering
>Only an isekai'd hero from the outside can possibly help the poor inhabitants of the world
>But their designated hero is Thomas Covenant...

Here the mythic stuff that in most cases would be irrelevant background legend ties directly to the main plot and gives it particularly high stakes.

>>25061238
Literally just make a regional cult, anything else is far too sophisticated for even the above average worldbuilder and definitely a waste of time even if done well.
>have a temple
>have a god that probably resides physically in that place through some totem
>it has some aspects and ceremonies and holy days
>it might be a major thing that even the political elite support, or a minor thing that is in the area and most people ignore it

If you have an interest in it, I hope you enjoy reading because it's an extremely expansive subject and you're not gonna make anything good or interesting without becoming something of an expert.

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>>25031063
What do you have to consider if faith/servitude in the church of a god gives benefits like classic cleric abilities? Especially in terms of how closely the gods police their followers and what they do with said magic, etc.

>>>/tg/
Unironically, more in their wheelhouse. Did you get lost or something?

>>25064512
You have to consider if you really want to base your work on Dungeons & Dragons, because the D&D cleric is a very special invention that is metaphysically more in line with a traditional witch than a traditional priest.

I was thinking about the difference between hard and soft fantasy and what would be the equivalent of hard science fiction for fantasy. My conclusion was that the sort of fantasy that adheres closely to traditional ideas in religion and folklore without going for the "all myths are true" type nonsense would qualify as hard fantasy. So, evil witches, vampires afraid of the cross, etc. and no silliness like "Odin, the Coyote, and Ereshkigal walk into a bar..."

>>25031063
Where do I start with a sci fi setting? Planets? Environments? Biospeheres?

>>25066328
Start with the type of story you want to tell. Will there be characters traveling between multiple planets? Space battles? And so on. Answering those types of questions can help you set down the big lines for your setting, and then you can just elaborate on that as necessary.

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I'm writing a sci-fi story about a detective investigating murders on a mining colony on another planet. I want some sort of monster, but I'm struggling to think of an interesting gimmick for it so it doesn't just come off as a Xenomorph ripoff.

>>25067446
Maybe them mix of tribbles and locusts? They start out as cute cuddly pets until the population reaches a certain mass and they start killing people.

>>25067446
Maybe rip off prey and make it a mimic type creature that can shape shift to look like ordinary objects.
Can make the literature version of spot the difference in several scenes as a clue.

>>25061438
>No gods no kings.
What?

>>25069737
Very old anarchist slogan.

>>25065981
Tg world building is for table top games.
This one is mainly for people writing fantasy and science fiction. Books, web novels, stuff like that.

>>25065981
Why does worldbuilding cause so much seethe? Creativity is a muscle, you can build it up yourself instead of being envious of people who have it.

>>25070665
I am pretty sure it's just one or two fags from the writing thread who have a consistent hate boner for "genera fiction" because no one wants to read their boring depressing pseudo-audiobiographical plotless stories about depressed neet losers internally complaining about the world.

>>25070126

Also a great way to know that anyone who would say it sincerely can be dismissed out of hand and ought to be actively prevented from accessing any meaningful power. A sentiment which, whether taken as a statement of fact or as an aspirational statement of the way that things ought to be, is in every case false. In logic, the opposite of a tautology is a contradiction, an utterance, which, due to its form, is always false regardless of the incidental details. That's very nearly what we have here.

>>25071550
Illogical circular reasoning.

>>25067446
Mind control or memory manipulation but only within a certain area of effect or with some sort of restrictions that create patterns and particular clues that the detective (and reader) can pick up on and slowly put the crime together.

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Anyone else having to constantly look up clothing terms?

I have made each area have a relatively distinctive common style of dress, but in trying to describe it I find myself lacking the vocabulary so having to actually learn whole categories of fashion and clothing terminology.

>it's another dark age of the setting series where the gods no longer directly appear/have fallen/have been killed and the setting is in deep a state of decline from its heyday
Muh old ruins of more advanced civilization

>>25073504
If it fits the kind of story you want to tell then go for it.
There is plenty of demand for it and clearly people aren't tired of it yet. So you would likely get readers.

>>25073512
It was a critique that fucking almost all fantasy series are like that

>>25073516
But they aren't. Not even remotely.
Clearly you don't read a lot of fantasy at all.

>>25073516
Lotr
Malazan
Witcher
ASOIF
Every Grim dark series
>dark souls
Bakker
Wheel of Time
Broken Empire
Only when its YA (everything Sanderson) does this not apply

>>25073516
>>25073585
The inaccurate reduction to the point of absurdity aside
This is a thread about creating your own stuff.

If you don't like what you described then don't make your world that way. Make the kind of world you find most interesting.
Be the creative change you want to see.


But let me guess. You don't write or world build at all and just here to off topic shitpost and overall be a crab.

>>25073639
>This is a thread about creating your own stuff.
I mean, not really.

>>25073645
Don't project your on inability on anyone else.

I have come to the realization that the world building and magic system of my setting is far too complex and the framing device of the story I was writing leads inevitably to chapter after chapter of exposition.

I basically have to scrap the whole project again and start from scratch.
This is basically the third time this has happened, but at least I realized it only a couple months in rather than the first time where I only realized the boring exposition and pacing problems after being a year into the manuscript.

At this rate I likely will never finish a decent book.

>>25074498
I decided to avoid just that sort of problems by doing a very detailed outline first so that I can get my plot in order before I start writing the first draft. I still haven't reached the proper writing part, but my outline has been through massive revisions and still isn't close to being done. Some parts have been radically changed from their original conception, multiple times even, but there are still significant plot problems and spots of vagueness that need to be resolved somehow.

For example, similarly to your case, I was just recently thinking about how long it is taking for the story to progress beyond
>vague intimations of approaching eventual doom, maybe
and for the main plot to appear. It's much too long. I added a new plot device in the outline to make things a bit more urgent, but it feels like the plot device is still too much of a nebulous threat to do much more than add a bit of atmosphere. Something more needs to be done to fix the early parts that had been mostly unchanged from the beginning.

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how do you guys feel about Goatmen?
I had an idea about them being a cult who transformed themselves to look more like their idol

>>25075390
Never heard of those. Are they some modern heavy metal meme versions of the traditional satyrs?

>>25075390
>how do you guys feel about Goatmen?
I don't feel much about them ether positive or negative. I just take them as they are in the context of the story or setting.

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>>25067464
>gremlins

What's a good time frame, do you think, for a previously advanced, secular society led by technocrats to degrade into a cargo cult? Basically, the experts who were charged with maintaining the life-sustaining terraforming equipment weren't very good at documentation or knowledge transfer, after they lost contact with the home world, so over time their role became a hereditary priestly caste that worshiped the old machines as unfathomable idols.

I have a time span of about 400 years for this. Reasonable?

>>25074785
Maybe in your case putting notes for how each scene progresses the plot, then cut the ones that don't. Though if things in your work are more character focused rather than plot focused this method isn't the right fit.


My main issue is that because I outline and plan stuff in my head it's very easy to keep adding layers and layers of complexily and complication because I understand my own systems and have a overview of how everything works in the back of my head the whole time.
Only for me to realize that it's impenetrable to someone who isn't me without walls of text early on explaining shit, which makes for a badly paced boring story.

I now understand why all my favorite pulp writers ether have totally non-magical main characters and never elaborate in detail about such things, or if they do they keep the magic super vague, all in order to keep the brisk pace and focus on actually telling a good story.
Hell, even the king of fantasy and detailed world building, Tolkien, doesn't detail magic systems.

Most stuff that does have detailed systems ether keeps things fundamentally simple or let tropes and prior knowledge do all of the heavy lifting (like basically making reflavored D&D or popular video games the bases of their systems).

>>25075767
Sounds like 40k tech priest.

Anyway, I guess whatever makes sense in the story. Degradation of knowledge can happen in as little as a single generation if the previous generation was bad at or didn't get the chance to fully transfer their knowledge to the next generation. Highly sophisticated systems of expertise are pretty fragile.

>>25075782
You could try just having the main character use the magic system while cutting out the lengthy explanations. Then as the story progresses the reader should be able to eventually figure out the system more or less, assuming the story goes on long enough. (Steven Erikson did it that way in the Malazan series.) You need to be careful though to avoid something coming off as a deus ex machina when dealing with resolving important plot issues. Be especially careful of introducing major things such as time travel or teleportation to solve things at critical plot moments without establishing first that such things are possible in your setting and known to your main character.

>Maybe in your case putting notes for how each scene progresses the plot, then cut the ones that don't.
My problem is what the plot is supposed to be doing in some parts to reach the planned ending, and some people's character arcs are unclear. I have to make decisions about important worldbuilding matters too. I've already had to do major plot changes because of how the worldbuilding has evolved, and this has caused gaps that need to be filled with something advancing the plot in the correct direction. This is my first attempt at doing a truly complex story, so doing the outline in my head isn't enough.

>>25075836
Detours, moments of quiet and inner life or character establishing events (like interfering or not interfering in X), is the difference between a screenplay and a novel and an epic.
Screenplays = plot and nothing but plot except opening scene where protagonist does 'the thing that defines him'

>>25075878
Compare it with an orchestra vs a modern neoclassical EP.
Or a stand alone song vs a concept album like Dark Side of the Moon.
Or how a 6 hour play has intermissions, an epic needs intermission-like chapters where plot isn't moving and all you do is 'character learns something that just writer sneaking in exposition'. This is why protagonist from bumfuck nowhere is so popular, he has to learn as he travels and so you reveal the world to him revealing the world to the reader
Etc

>>25075887
But you should still be wary about dumping pages of uninterrupted exposition on how the magic system works, exactly, or, say, the full list of the 32 historical rulers of an important kingdom. Even Tolkien put the latter sort of stuff in the appendices. Tolkien's magic system also turns out to be surprisingly well put together, even if it never gets anything approaching a proper explanation.

And as for my story, the problem I was having with it was that the early part was almost nothing but these intermissions and lore-relevant asides without even bothering to establish a proper threat or a plot direction first. In fact that is still entirely too much the case, even if I'm moving some villain introductions forward, causing further plot complications in how to handle that properly.

>>25075983
I think I'll add that my outline indeed includes things like characters' emotional reactions and important world information given to the reader. The idea is to sort out the plot and the exposition beforehand as well as possible. The success of this approach can be seen in how much the outline has changed during the drafting process and imagining how annoying it would be to make all those changes, some of which involve wholesale plot replacements, after already having written a first draft based on the original ideas.

>>25076004
>The success of this approach can be seen in how much the outline has changed during the drafting process and imagining how annoying it would be to make all those changes, some of which involve wholesale plot replacements, after already having written a first draft based on the original ideas.

As someone who is basically not properly outlining at all, and thus has had to abandoned several half finished drafts, I can tell you starting over is painfully, but once I get over the extreme butthurt and couple days of depression, it isn't too bad to start over again.

That said maybe I should try proper written down outlining or making a story bible before working on the draft.
Helps limit system/world building creep and compounding needless complexity.

>>25075742
What are some specific settings you have thoughts on in this context?

>>25077346
Well, a audiobook I recently listened to had one that was pretty unique. Was a litRPG where all nonhuman peoples were somewhat oppressed to different degrees, anyway the first town MC gets to has your pretty standard adventure guild and the head of it was a small goatman. He would talk funny and constantly play the fool to put the humans at ease. Literally dancing around and throwing confetti for children when going around town and such while most human adults ignored him unless they had business with the guild. But among his tomfoolery and sometimes outright trolling he would sneak in words of wisdom and major warnings, and was constantly in the background manipulating events and setting things up, especially for the MC who was basically on a mission from a trapped goddess.
With it turning out at the very end that the goat man was actually a avatar of a lesser trickster god (which explained his constant trolling and practical jokes) who was highly invested in seeing the trapped goddess free.

Meanwhile in a different LitRPG series there was a goatwoman who was also working at the adventures guild who instead was more of a straight-man character who was around the beginning of their interactions with the MC super concerned and protective of the MC's welfare, only to be constantly shocked, horrified, and eventually fed up with the MC's death defying (often literally) shenanigans and constantly ignoring her sensible advice.
Example of one of their interactions would be
>hey you are too low level for this quest
>It has giant killer hornets that explode
>here, do this simple quest more on your level like collecting herbs in this relatively safe area
<nah, it be fine
*few days later
<so...about those bees
>yeah?
<I kinda blew up the whole hive
>but that hive was literally a mountain
<not anymore
>what do you mean not anymore?
<It's a smoldering crater the size of a manor estate now
<so anyway about the payment for that quest
>*exasperated goat noises*

Of for a non-litRPG example
I remember reading a old gothic horror novella called The Great God Pan.
While the goatman isn't really a character it is a totally separate vibe of otherworldly horror and woe for any and all with the misfortune to make contact with the entity. A more abstract being beyond normal comprehension.

I like the goatmen in the Diablo games

>>25078025
What do you like about them?

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>>25031063
I was inspired by the Brothers from RWBY, and was thinking that the main deities of my setting would be a Lady of Creation and a Lord of Destruction, the former making things all the time and the latter destroying the things that would harm the world at large and refining what he doesn't destroy, like a writer and their editor. What other aspects make sense for them and/or their subordinate deities to have besides Art and Life for Creation and Death for Destruction (and maybe Disease, because things like diseases and monsters would be what occasionally slips by him)?

I'd like some inspirations for a setting where hunting supernatural beings is a well detailed cornerstone of the economy. Does anyone know such a story?

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Reposting this from the writing general thread

how do you guys even get started with map building? I just realised three paragraphs into writing in my fantasy fictional island colonial world about a man projecting power fantasies on a government position (which is just a trojan horse, its really a vehicle for exploring introspective self help and spiritual development) and then it hit me "wait where the fuck am I, where is anything".
I had a visual idea of the immediate street, basic logistics, buildings, gardens and aesthetic direction but then it hit me that i dont actually have a spatial awareness of anything. Would you guys literally draw it with some artwork as reference material or whats the deal there? Is it literally as detailed as an annotated street map or is it a broad piece of artwork because you wouldn't want to get too bogged down in the detail?

>>25079711
I mentally keep sort of a directional and relational loose sort idea where things will be or are and then if I write them down in story I will make a note of how far and what direction some point of interest is from near by points of interest.

So for example in the middle of the main continent is Centeralia which contains the magedoms. To the north there are the Apex mountain range which includes Black Fang mountain, power base of the Blooded. Very far north is the Dusk lands. A place of permanent dusk and or dawn that is mostly uninhabited except for exiles, hermits, and sages due to the difficulty of survival there.
To the south west relatively close to the equator is the massive city state of Sol. To the far south east are the Simian kingdoms.
To the extreme far south are the Fractured Lands, where most float stone comes from and where the most advanced shipyards for building float stone ships are located.

Through text alone I can vaguely keep track of where things are in relation to each other, and when hard details appear in the story, like travel times or estimated distances between locations I will note it down for quick reference.
Not once do I feel the necessity to draw out a map.

However if it helps you visualize things by using a map I would urge you to keep it extremely simple and easy to modify later. Like making it in a vector based program using simple symbols you can move around, or using pencil rather than ink if it's faster for you to physically draw it.
That way if you want/need to move something around while drafting or outlining it's a quick and painless process to update the map.
Treat nothing as fully fixed and set in stone until you are working on a final draft. Even then you can probably sneak in minor redcons later if necessary.

That said geography isn't my strong suit when it comes to world building, so my way almost certainly isn't the best and won't work for everyone.

>>25079959
so geographically you would say to keep it very broad, and for areas like towns you only need to talk about the relevant area and nothing more? I see where youre coming from to keep loose points since its not like you would need coordinates to keep track of every square inch of a township. I like that idea of travel times rather than distances to keep it open ended too and you would just add things later as they come up rather than knowing where they need to be

>>25079711
Are you talking more about city maps or larger region/continent/world-scale maps? I honestly haven't seen very many creators even attempt to create very detailed maps of the cities featured in their stories, just a vague sense of 'the noble district is here, the wharf and merchant district is over by the river, the temple is in the middle, the slums are crowded over here, and there are walls that surround everything.' The larger scale stuff is far more common but I find it to be overdone and unnecessary in a lot of cases.
Geographic map building (like a lot of worldbuilding) is a bottomless pit you'll keep falling down. There simply is too much that goes into it, assuming your world has similar physical principles to our own.
If you want to write a story then, if you must make a map, then keep it constrained to the breadth of the plot and not beyond. If, while writing, you create a character from far-off Orienta or Hitherland or Wherever it literally does not matter how many kilometers that place is from the plot.
The map exists to serve your story, not the other way around. Never forget that.
All that said it would not hurt to familiarize yourself with some very basic geologic/geographic principles, again only assuming your world operates under the same physical logic as ours does. Stuff like water always flowing downhill, rain shadows, how geography impacts climate which influences culture and so on.

>>25080018
>so geographically you would say to keep it very broad, and for areas like towns you only need to talk about the relevant area and nothing more?
Pretty much yeah. At least that is my approach.
Not the only way obviously but it's what works for me.

>>25080036
the idea that i had was that its basically English colonialism that survived into the 1970s but with mechanical technology that didn't advance beyond what was possible in the Victorian era but electronic technology that is rooted in 1900s radio tech. So my idea was that this entrance into this island is blocked by the hostility of rapid plant growth that locks the settlement into a medium sized port town and a road that is maintained by the local government to feed into another port town on the Northern most point. To transport goods is to rely on a corridor only accessible by an overlanding tractor with numerous carriages of iron, coal, diamonds and passengers. Ala Solaris 1971, memories are seen within the infinitely transforming forest but spatially the MC would dwell more around the town aware of the dangers of trying to pass through. Knowledge and communication is maintained with the northern town but often fail as the telegraph lines are disrupted from the roots. Otherwise the island is a cold Atlantic one geographically.

So i guess what im trying to figure out is how detailed the routes around the island need to be for a population of about ~15,000 in a ~150 year old settlement that understands its limitations with generations growing up here. since its going to be a mid sized town that sprawls a few miles

>>25079711
Based and improovpilled.
Mapmaking is essential for any good world imo. The amount of ideas and plot points I've gained from filling out my own map was worth it alone.

If you're trying to start, get a notepad and just sketch random shapes until something tickles your fancy. Then comes factions/regions which leads into a gradual focus onto finer details. It's extremely painful at first so just trust the process.

It took me 2-3 weeks to get the essentials down and then nearly 3 months for all but one country. The tail end of the process has been immensely satisfying

>>25078449
Monster Hunter, Witcher, Dauntless, and similar games/stories explicitly about monster hunting including trade in monster materials.

>>25081928
NTA, but what are the best aspects of each setting?

>>25083558
The gameplay, lol.

Been working on my "not vampires" a bit and have made the choice to make most abilities related to them "soft" in the sense of keeping the mechanics and some of the details of how they work intentionally vague to the reader, even if I know exactly how everything works.

"Through the blood all things are possible."
(not really but it's a cool cult like phrase many of them repeat.)

I love how the Xeeleeverse proved that you don't need technobabble to make a strong setting. The verse may be as hard and realistic as modern understanding of physics allows, but it's so powerful that it can go toe to toe with the strongest soft scifi settings there are- including Doctor Who.

>>25084753
I am going to be real with you.
I haven't a clue what you are talking about.
The fuck is a Xeeleeverse?

I want a snappy name to describe the tone of my fantasy setting. Here's the major parts:

>Humans are really, really weak and insignificant compared to other sapient races.
>The oceans are filled with merpeople that could drown our entire species on a whim, the lands are filled with Kaiju sized sapient animals, dragons live in the mountains and the wind, and the underworld is stuffed with many races of superhumans that make even modern earth look primitive.
>Most civilizations are millions of years old while humans are just a few thousand years old.
>Nobody really hates us or wants us gone. We are seen as being about as significant as insects.
>Even human attempts to make war on other species are ignored.

The idea isn't that the world is a dark fantasy where everyone means us harm, it's that we are just so weak that nothing we do affects anyone but ourselves. We are like some third world uncontacted tribe.

>>25084974
Have you never heard of the Xeelee Sequence?

>>25084993
You are literally just describing Lovecraftian horror.

Is that the joke?
Did it go over my head?

>>25085043
Sounds like a Rick and Morty bit.
So for that reason alone I am not interested.

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How do I avoid predestination and the "chosen one" cliche for my heroes?

>>25085412
By just not doing chosen one, prophecy, or fate based storylines.
You control what you write.
If you don't want to write about predestination then don't write about predestination.
It's that simple.

>>25085428
What do I replace it with?

>>25085436
Literally anything else!

>>25085436
Cliches aren't a bad thing if you write it well. As for a replacement, refer to >>25085471 again

Had the idea of mixing and mashing racial features as a way of driving home that the setting I am working on is not like earth even if it has humans, and that their humans and human culture is in no way comparable to Earth's human culture.

For example someone with east asian facial features while also being 6 foot tall blond with a beard.
A dude with dark skin and striking ice blue eyes.
That kind of thing.

But I wonder if that would come off as racist, or if I should try to avoid any descriptors that could possibly reference racial characteristics all together just to be safe.

Also want to dramatically increase the proportion of humans with realistic proportional gigantism to 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 humans (depends on the city/settlement) with a equal spread of giants between men and women. This is just seen in the setting as normal.

However I wonder if such a detail would have any unintentional effects that I might be missing.

>>25086640
You could have unnatural traits in the mix, such as red and yellow eyes being considered ordinary human variation. That kind of thing would tie well to gigantism happening sometimes. You could then have your characters discuss families and heredity in a way that establishes the setting as openly fantastic. I don't recommend giving a detailed description of every character.

I can't say if you missed anything about the social impact of the giants as you didn't explain your plans in that respect. However, I might say that the physical abilities of the giants are more important and useful the more primitive the tech level of the setting is and the more everything relies on muscle power. In a world like ours, being a giant could even be effectively a handicap.

Should magic be affected by time? Like a spell or seal gets weaker over time?

>>25086747
You are the one who is making the magic system and writing the story.

If it makes sense in the context of your story or system then that is how it works. Just remember to be internationally consistent with it.

Lot of weird questions lately.

>>25087005
I thought it was clear the question is prompting for ideas/discussion, not appealing to the Holy Authority of /wbg/

>>25031063
Favorite origin of death story?

For me? Its Great Lady of the Night from Maori myth.
>her father created the first woman (her mother)
>Shes born as Maiden of the Dawn
>when she grows up she meets a male figure and together they birth humanity
>later she finds out that male figure was in fact her father! (gross!)
>so she flees to the Underworld and becomes Great Lady of the Night
>“You raise our children up here; I’ll care for them in the afterlife.”
>mortality enters the world! (that fucking SUCKS!)
>all of her descendants (humanity) return to her upon death
I like it because its one of the few examples of incest among the Gods portrayed in a negative light. (maybe this implies Maori needed this story to prevent family members fucking each other?)

>>25085374
Can't be, there's no real horror here. The other entities don't mean us any more harm than we mean to the average ant.

It's not meant to be horrifying, just humbling.

>>25085377
Go screw yourself. It's a hard scifi space opera written by an actual physics PhD. It's nothing like that American adult swim trash.

>>25087155
...also the transformation from Dawn > Night is a neat symbol for Life > Death

>>25087131
It was not clear.

>>25087191
At least you're honest about being retarded

>>25087131
>>25087155
>>25087160
>>25087164
>>25087166
Go write and stop procrastinating in this thread.

>>25087194
This - but also in every other /lit/ thread.

>>25087196
You specifically.
Fuck off until you have a chapter done at the very least.

>>25087197
You sound bitter. Writers block blues, anon?

>>25087205
You sound like you don't write and never intend to write.

This isn't the thread for you. You don't belong and never have belonged.

Prove me wrong if you can. Post what you have done.
But you can't because you have nothing.

>>25087218
I'm willing to share if you are, but you're obviously in a bad mood and no one wants to deal with your seething. Post something - it might make you feel better.

>>25087227
And that attempt to dodge providing proof is conformation.

You are a troll and shall not receive any more attention.
Enjoy the dead thread.

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>>25087230
stay mad, I guess?

So, I'm worldbuilding setting where everything is running on mana.

But I've run into an issue.
When sentients want to reproduce they create an egg. Then, the egg absorbs mana from it's environment. For most sentients, this means incubating the egg with their own mana. This can be done by individuals, or even groups. This means, that the concepts of sex or gender don't exist. Anyone can create an egg and incubation can be done by single or multiple people.

I'm sure this would have huge impact on society and culture.

But I'm having hardest time with language. I'm ESL, but even then, I feel it is extremely difficult to write setting where using she or he doesn't make sense. Don't know if using it or they would be a solution.

I'm thinking this is just too difficult for a novice writer like myself, and I should contrieve a reason why sexes and gender exists.

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>>25031063
Happy Valentine's Day! The occasion got me thinking, what other spheres of influence make sense for a goddess of Love besides the obvious choices of War and/or Fertility? Maybe the Spring, or Flame or the Seas due to the associations Aphrodite has due to her husband and reported origins? Someone else I asked suggested Home, Travel, or Secrets could work, what do you think of those, or the other possibilities?

>>25087964
You can use he or she for characters in your setting. Just use the same pronoun for everyone. "He" would probably be the best choice.

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In my world there are lovecraftian gods. I want the world to find out about these unimaginable horrors. What do you think the average persons reaction would be? What would people do with that knowledge?

Imagine finding out the sky is a cthulhu's eye or the mountain you live on is his pinky. Remember the great flood? Yeah, that was this godlike creature who doesn't communicate with us. It happened to fart and everyone died.

My specific world is "new age"-esque but the answers can be anything. It's more about the general concept.

>>25085428
NTA, but what's the best way to handle divination magic while avoiding predestination?

>>25088136
>find out about
>unimaginable
>knowledge
this is the main issue. it should never be understood or explainable, or knowable.
if they do find out about it they are deemed crazy by default in the eyes of those who dont yet know - no matter how much truth they are saying.
and if knowing these things means understanding them even superficially then they arent unimaginable they are just a new form of life discovered.

>>25088136
>>25089515
You'd have to write Lovecraftian gods as if you're an ant writing about humans. Not because of size but because our frame of reference to reality is incomprehensibly different. Or write from the POV of a 2D character writing about a 3D entity.
An impossible task obviously. (especially considering
So the best you can do is write it the humans discuss things they dont yet know but have an idea about. They are on the cusp of "understanding" something (scientifically or philosophically) but still way off - like our limited understanding on the human mind.
Lovecrafts best examples werent his monstrous or alien beings, it was his writing on dreams and madness.

>>25089501
Either read about cutouts, tunic divs, tarot, or some div school (/x/ has a gen) and do them IRL
Once you can say you are writing what you know, you can lead readers through symbols that give them aha moments and you can work whatever method in your like

>>25088136
>What do you think the average persons reaction would be?
What would be your reaction be to the sound the color green makes? Or the taste of the number 9? (I guess that's just synesthesia...)
Or what about solid fire? Or frozen light(ning)? Or a rock without mass? Or a silent scream?

What do we think about the "rather innocuous/kindly character introduced early is actually a powerful enemy/antagonist" trope?
Overdone, or potentially interesting/good? I was inclined to use it in my most recent story.

>>25089799
>most recent
>implying you write at all

>>25089799
It depends on whether you can have the character's characterization make sense in retrospect. Not like this random cat in a tiny village inn was actually the main villain who rather than ruling his country from his fortress was pretending to be a cat somewhere rural and eating mice because ???