Invisible Cities editionFAQ:>What is worldbuilding?Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch, all while considering the logistics of these worlds to make them as believable as possible. Worldbuilding asks questions about the setting of a world, and then answers them, often in great detail. Most people use it as a means of creating a setting or the scenery for a story.>"Isn't there a Worldbuilding general in >>>/tg/ already?"Yes, there is. However, that general is focused on the creation of fictional worlds for the intended purpose of playing TTRPG campaigns. Here you can discuss worldbuilding projects that are not meant to be used for a roleplaying setting, but for novels, videogames, or any other kind of creative project.>"Can I discuss the setting of my campaign here, though?"If you want to, but it would probably be better to discuss it on >>>/tg/ . We don't allow the discussion of TTRPG mechanics, however. If you want to discuss stats or which D&D edition is best, this is not the place.>"Can I talk about an existing fictional setting that is not mine?"Yes, of course you can!>"Does worldbuilding need to be about fantasy and elves?"Worldbuilding, as already stated above, and contrary to what many believe, does not inherently imply blatantly copying Tolkien. In fact, there are many science-fiction setting out there, and even entire alternative history settings which do not possess supernatural elements at all. Any kind of science fiction book has an implied setting at least, which involves a certain degree of worldbuilding put into it.Old thread: >>25339384
>>25383610These are comfy threads.
How mundane can you make a setting without losing the interest of the reader? I've been writing western and adventure stories set in a secondary world, but I've been having trouble justifying it given how plain the world is.
I have been thinking way states come into existence.I think all fall under one of the following>A) tribal confederationA country starts as a confederation of tribes to guard their interest>B) succession partitionA kingdom is split upon the death of the king between his sons>C) rebel secessionA group of rebels occupied part of the country are able to fend off an attempt to reconquer.>D) fragmentationA state becomes so fragmented that its provinces begin operating independently, until the central government just fades out of existence>E) unificationTwo equal states form a new country>>25384053I'd assume you can go out all.
>>25384053I feel like you should be able to make the most drab plain world interesting because of the characters inhabiting it, take something like Sartre's "No Exit" where it's just 3 people in a drawing room (if I remember the location correctly).
Is there any “realistic” way to get the world stuck at a WWII level of technology for decades?
>>25384736Well, let's think about it. What were the drivers behind the technological progress in the decades after the war? The immediate one that comes to mind is nuclear power (and nuclear weapons). But something even more important is the type of polity you are writing about and its demographics. You can make the case that the technological development in the Soviet Union looked different than that of the USA or Western Europe because the problems they had to solve were different and the ideological driver of that progress was also different. I think it is entirely plausible to write about a sovereign state which has a huge population and the efforts to lift them out of the mud (a la Stalin) would take many decades even without the pressures of war and living conditions and technology would probably look roughly the same across the decades as resources and energy would be devoted to building and expanding infrastructure, housing, industry, and so on. The real trouble is if you want your entire world to be like that, because then you're going to have to deal with a set of factors we have no historical analog for. Russia was an absolutely massive country in terms of territory and population which was severely lagging behind the industrialization of the rest of the world and it led to the need for radical action in order to prevent them from being picked apart/colonized by the others. If they had been on roughly the same level of economic and industrial development as everyone else the first half of the 20th century would've looked markedly different for everyone involved.You also have to account for the national consciousness of the state/states you're writing about, because this has a huge influence on the direction of technological development. Again, if you are looking to make your entire world culturally homogenous, that would be incredibly hard to justify. We can continue thinking about it but I wanna hear what your idea is more in depth, what are you after?
>>25384736The don't have the rare minerals/metals needed to advance or haven't dug far down enough to find them.
>>25384760NTA but that's retarded and not realistic in any way
>>25384765How so?All the Taiwan stuff going on at the moment is because they have rare minerals needed for advance technology. It's a finite resource.I'm not sure what metals the 1950s computer tech used but just pretend the people in that world has yet to find any of them.
>>25374654Felt inspired again to draw a scene from one of my "stories" and it turned out a lot worse than the previous attempt. They're supposed to be taking shelter from the rain, but it's hard and annoying to draw and I gave up on trying to make it look good. Originally they were also supposed to be laying down and holding each other, but that was even harder to draw. Maybe I should buy a tablet and learn proper anatomy and techniques instead of using a fucking mouse.>>25375258Sorry for the late reply, and at the tail end of the thread.No, I haven't made them public. Don't know if I will, cause I'm self-conscious about it. But I can give a brief synopsis.The first one is about the protagonist being saved by a witch, and their travels together through the beastman-infested forest to reach safety.The second one is in the somewhat distant future, with the older protagonist becoming king a-la Conan by overthrowing a sorcerous magistrate.The third one is in the middle chronologically, with the protagonist going on a quest to slay a lindworm and meeting various talking animals and helping people on the way.
>>25384770Taiwan is importing the rare minerals it needs for electronics production and is important because the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company became the producer of almost all the microelectronics in the world for decades. The computers in the 50s didn't use special materials that were not available or known before that, what changed were two things - advancement in the manufacturing processes and, more importantly, the discovery of the transistor effect. So they went from glass and tungsten vacuum tubes to semiconductors.The reasonable attempt to stall technology is to delay the discovery of the transistor effect, which in the case of our history was not intentional, but it would be very difficult to justify, because the nature of the experiments being done by physicists and the problems they were tasked with solving would've stumbled upon it sooner rather than later (relative to our timeline, which was in 1947). Even if you did say they did it in 1957, it wouldn't have bought you much time. Advancements in other fields would've gone on at the same pace, like the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA which was not contingent on transistor rechnology, and the later discovery of the transistor effect would've been caught up with by having more advanced industry and manufacturing, so in some years they would've "equalized" with where we were in our history. The only meaningful way to stall technological progress is either cultural-political in nature, or advancements do not reach mass adoption for many years because either resources are funneled elsewhere or there are factors such as manufacturers which don't want mass adoption (yet) like Kodak and the digital camera. Proper worldbuilding is difficult and involves understanding processes which can't be handwaved away if you want to go for "realistic". Alternatively, just go with the rule of cool, just don't pretend it's "realistic".
>>25384782... I concede.But I'm not retarded... Just the idea I had was. Didn't have those facts on hand.
>>25384796It's alright, we all have retarded ideas. Sorry for calling you retarded instead of the idea, I overmeme when I post on here
>>25384801It's fine, overmemeing is part of being anonymous.>>25384736Eco-terrorist luddites killing researchers and blowing up facilities.
>>25384802Since we covered retardation, how autistic is it that I got annoyed while writing my sci-fi story that I didn't know when the next FTL capable ship (Weir ship) would arrive in system and I made a logistics app tracking the Weir movements around a cluster of 1555 systems?
>>25384846You've just reminded me of a poem I was supposed to write.Can't tell you about it since I may actually get published again.Be autistic. Put everything you can into the pot to cook up new stuffs.
>>25385004you got any connections in publishing? I've got some poetry (sci-fi aside) which could use feedback from a publisher who could at least tell me what the fuck I can begin to do with it in order to get it published at some point. The sci-fi is much easier to find people to talk about than "serious" poetry.
>>25385041Only to the theatre darling
Making a story about a rebellion on an orange planet (planet colour isn't important to the story, but it's their only real identity for now) and trying to make a name for themCan't call them the Orange Order, that makes them proddy Norn IronCan't call them the Orange Free State, that makes them Dutch AfrikaansJust changing the colour of the planet sound like defeatism
>>25384736Sure. Semiconductor chips' production gets delayed, which is very easy - the USSR completely failed because of bad air quality in their foundries due to uncaring workers, read the CIA report on it.
>>25384736fastest way how I can think of is probably if every general was planning for a WW1 part 2Yes, they would eventually get out of the rut but can depend how quicklyplus a lot of Britain and France was preparing for that exact thing, hence shit like the tog and Maginot line, the fall of France destroyed that mentality.
>>25385123Why is the planet orange?Maybe make their name after the thing that makes the planet it's color rather than the color it's self.
>>25384140There's also cases where states form out of a colony that is simply too distant to be effectively governed by the home country, and rather than rebellion they home country simply stops trying to collect taxes and it becomes independent. Thinking of Carthage, and many Greek colonies as well.
>>25384736The development of nuclear power came about due to the US and Germany both sponsoring research into it during WW2, and the US snatching up most of the brightest minds in Europe fleeing Germany's invasions creating a kind of super think tank for nuclear physics. It was the US that made the breakthroughs that were eventually stolen by other countries. So if you want to prevent nuclear power from developing, simply prevent that kind of concentration of researchers, and prevent their independent experiments from going anywhere. Keep the brightest minds split up. Make the countries sabotage one another constantly, make their experiments fail. Assassinate scientists who are too innovative and too brilliant so they can't contribute to the development of new technologies.Next, you have semiconductors and computing. This only really took off after the end of hostilities, when resources were freed up by no longer needing to devote a huge percentage of the industrial cap toward war material. So continuing the war (not continuously, since that wouldn't be feasible, but like maybe a few years of armistice here and there, but tensions flaring back up into periods of hot wars) means nobody can afford to shift away from a war economy, and expensive R&D projects have to be carefully rationed. So instead of abundant R&D into semiconductors and computing you have only a few experiments and low-budget forays into the field that due to their up front costs don't enthuse a lot of the people holding the purse strings for the national budget, the war is expensive and they can't afford to demobilize even if things are temporarily quiet.You can further put a damper on development with this the same way nuclear power gets hindered: assassination, defection, sabotage, and stuff just going wrong. Scientists are human, and if they don't have an entire national budget behind them they can run out of money or get discouraged by bad results of experiments and decide to go into something more lucrative, like designing cheaper bombs for the army.
>>25384796>anon actually concedes instead of doubling downI will screenshot this post and have it framed on my wall as the rarest /lit/ post I've ever come across in my way too many years here. Only the worldbuilding thread could produce a poster like this. Good job.
>>25385200Turns out venus has a surface structure very similar to what I'm looking forThis gives me a lot more ideas than just the colour of the planet would of given me
>>25385871Your naming conventions and the middle of the crest are weird, otherwise I appreciate the level of detail you've gone to, it's exactly what I like
>>25384736Definitely. Materials shortages. Semiconductors, transistors, these things relied on a plentitude of polysilicon, germanium, all the dopants necessary for processing the materials. Also in Europe everyone was absolutely fucked for a bunch of essential materials, the Germans were inventing a new (very impressive, groundbreaking, but desperate) alloy substitute for metals the Americans were throwing away after using once for the entire war. They figured out how to make a butter substitute out of fucking COAL.If you cut that off you'd see a lot of advances in synthesis and alloying early, but a major fall-off in the stuff that plentitude enabled, which could lead to WWII tech remaining stagnant just because it's more practical.
So, my current story (a sword and sorcery / western set in a land based on ancient lebanon and moorish spain) centers on a Cattle Dynasty which is rapidly devolving into a succession crisis over who takes over the estate and brand once the old man patriarch keels over.Does anyone have any neat facts about cattle, cowboy life, and cattle driving? I'd love to factor in anything you have.
>>25386555how are they weird?
>>25386883I can't tell what the main feature of the crest is supposed to be it at all.And the construction of the names feels random. If these are representatives of different cultures, each one would share a linguistic substrate which would make the names obviously "belong" together. The problem here is that, based on the scale of the map, either these should belong to the same linguistic family, or they should be similar, or, if by historic happenstance you have something like a contact region between greeks, latins, goths and other tribes, you have crammed too many different linguistic families close togther for it to read well. -ovo is Slavic, -eir is a common Nordic language suffix (Ofetho also sounds Nordic), fasmae sounds arabic/middle-eastern inspired, alsorbe is I don't even know, stenra is germanic, deslibean has a vague English demonym sound, which reads as too varied.
>>25386905>I can't tell what the main feature of the crest is supposed to be it at all.Not him, but how is that a problem? As long as the device makes sense within the setting it doesn't matter if it's unfamiliar to you. One could even assume, logically, that if it's being used as the main device of the coat of arms, it's probably very well known within the setting and makes sense to the people there.
>>25386940>Not him, but how is that a problem? As long as the device makes sense within the setting it doesn't matter if it's unfamiliar to you.You're right, I said it under the assumption that it should be meaningful/recognizable without exposure to the setting.I (wrongfully) default to "worldbuilder error" when things don't immediately cohere or make sense. The naming issue (I have) also tipped me in favor of interpreting it as the author's error (wrong about one thing means it's more likely he's wrong about something else as well). I guess I've been exposed to to much garbage over time, I will try to probe more and gather information before jumping to conclusions. Thanks.
>>25386854Cowboys had their own lingo, slang for everything from ropes, to hats, to guns, and types of weather encountered on trail, and unique little idioms. Something to keep in mind when writing their dialogue. You can invent your own slang for them or do some research into cowboy vernacular. Related to this is the fact that American cowboys were surprisingly multi-lingual, at least functionally, if not fluently. They traveled frontier regions where they frequently encountered people who spoke Spanish or various Native tongues so they usually had a smattering of words in these languages, though unless they were brought up speaking them they weren't really fluent. They could barter, ask for directions, that sort of thing. Also, in general, it's the type of job with good pay, but really hard hours, and lots of travel over long distances. So cowboys often don't really have a typical family. A cowboy might have a "girl" in a particular town. Or several in different towns, but rarely a home to call his own.
super comfy thread
Is there an archive to read other peoples world building?
>>25385871cont>>25386905>I can't tell what the main feature of the crest is supposed to be it at all.You can think of it like a religious symbol equivalent to a crescent or cross. I like to include abstract symbols instead of generic heraldic animals that are common to factions.>And the construction of the names feels random.That argument is a stretch. You make that an assessment based on 5 names.You can easily pick a dozen random words from any language that don't feel like they should be part of the same language, because no language is that uniform.Even then, I would argue these names could be part of the same language. Though in this case they aren't meant to.Now, I realize the need to feel like things belong to the same group. Which I do by patterns, like the island of Frudeir and Lenbeir both end with -eir, precisely to form a pattern.>>25386961> the author's errorI think the only mistakes in worldbuilding are in internal consistency.
>>25386995This is good stuff! I definitely need to come up with some lingo. I already have them using loanwords from the local nomads' dialect the way american cowboys used Spanish. This should further help the atmospherics.The latter point is actually extremely relevant to the plot. One of my three POV characters is a cowboy and the metaphorical "devil on his shoulder" is his old instincts as a cowboy telling him to cut his losses and bail as things go down hill. But he's fallen in real love this time and he can't manage to leave her to hang.
I need a snappy name for apartments and houses that have been built top-down. IOW they designed the structure before they decided what sort of surface it'll be based on.It's futuristic stuff, modular structures to quickly establish cities on asteroids, moons, or whatever. Places where you never know what sort of terrain you might need to colonize, or if it's even going to be solid terrain at all.
>>25383610What actually makes an entity a "god" in your world?
>>25387431Probably not, just go read actual spec fic fiction.
>>25384736Technology is influenced by economics, and economics is influenced by politics. If technology is at WW2 levels, maybe so is politics.Which is to say that FDR's New Deal is stifling scientific growth with subsidies, regulations, and destructive taxation.
>>25388429"Habs" or "Plant-Habs" / "Plants"
>>25388429TransHab.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransHab
I'm starting to really like my map.
>>25388899Looks like an ancient impact crater, nice. The island belt in the middle doesn't make a lot of sence tho and fucks with the rhythm.
>>25388979No no, it's supposed to be unrealistic and shitty, it's like, fantastical and stuff.
>>25388979Volcanoes made em?
>>25388899I animated your map for fun of it.Think anyone would pay for such things?
Anons, I made a 3d star map for ~1500 star systems because I got annoyed that I didn't know when the next FTL capable ship would arrive in system.>https://available-duplicate-debate.ngrok-free.dev/Can anyone tell me if it comes out okay on your screen? This is an early version, the next one is more finely tuned but if you find any bugs I can patch them out in time.I forgot the reference image, it should look like picrel.
>>25389243Is this for you the writer or for us the readers?
>>25388899>>25389024Make it look like a dinosaur skull eating a capybara.
>>25389451Both. It gets "populated" with more data beyond what is present here as I write stories, mention systems, institutions, events, and so on. Also people can out when travel/movements happen in real time - if you change the date in the upper left corner it shows you how the FTL ships move along their routes according to an itinerary (which includes service days as well), how long they stay in a system and so on. The FTL in my universe is based in actual physics that is being researched right now and the size of the drive is so large that they assemble fleets around them and jump from system to system like trains, so I could have stable routes and itineraries.
>>25389136>livin the dark green zone
>>25389499I'll be completely honest with you anon this feels like you're putting the cart before the horse. I don't know your stories so it's not that interesting for me to use as a random person. I mean it's cool in theory because you can plot a course and stuff so it's a great tool for you but I don't think people are interested in this right now. Get some stories out that are good enough to make people want to develop head cannons and use it. To counter my own argument maybe if you can make it so cool and fun that that makes people want to read your stories but that might get into a lot of stuff that isn't writing As far as what it looks like right now it could use some visual interest. Like a background nebula would be cool. Maybe a planetary system map when you click something would be fun.
How do I make the world seem interesting in a story?I've thought that maybe peppering the story with standout worldbuilding details could do it. Eg demonic contracts being a relatively normal thing.But what other kinds of things should I do? Are there any specific worldbuilding ideas I should use to build the world to make it interesting? I've just been thinking that I could make the world contain original fantasy races that are different from the traditional ones. But it doesn't feel like this makes the world more interesting. If anything, the lack of elves and dwarves and goblins makes it less enticing.Should wedding details be "cool"? Like a floating city or a race of nymphs that wants to fuck anyone. Basically things that would get someone's mind going "hell yeah"? I ask this because a lot of the worldbuilding information I find is stuff like >your villages should be 15-20 miles apart because that's how far you can walk in a day>your medieval city's food supply determines how big the city isWhile these can be interesting points to think about, it doesn't feel like they make the story's world more interesting.
>>25388429>I need a snappy name for apartments and houses that have been built top-down.Top-downs. You're really overthinking this shit.
>>25389721>If anything, the lack of elves and dwarves and goblins makes it less enticing.not for me. Do people really want generic tolkien rip-off #8326487y534?
>>25389721Each to their own, but for me it's about making the world feel lived in and interconnected.Like in LOTR, the entire trip of Frodo and Sam is full of historic sites that remain from the war of the last alliances, like Weathertop, swamp of bodies.
>>25389721>If anything, the lack of elves and dwarves and goblins makes it less enticing.Fuck the elves, dwarfs, and orcs.People use archetypes of them because they are lazy and can't come up with distinct human cultures.
Does anyone have any good resources for making maps, specifically of our Earth?I want to make changes to the coastlines, mountain ranges, rivers, etc, but it would still be our Earth.
>>25389749I don't care about distinct human cultures. I want immortal waifus.>>25389745That's a good point. I do find that a lot of stories lack this element of the past, but LOTR went a bit too far on some of it because some elements didn't really work together with the rest. >>25389742Yes.
What do you call a system where the military is technically in control and the civilian elected authorities are barely more than puppets, but the military doesn't really have a single unifying authority and still pretends to be "just executing orders from the legal government"?The backstory is that a massive federation that more or less did away with their standing army is facing state collapse. The government is bankrupt, leaders are unpopular and corrupt, and pretty much every popular government are either fascists or banned for being fascists. Law and order is accordingly gone altogether, and police has become a militarized entity that's basically the only thing keeping the cities from collapsing into Haiti level apocalypse. The government doesn't dare reign them in because major police commanders openly threaten to overthrow them if they do. But while the police/military is de facto running the country, they don't really have any national level leaders. Each city's police chief is a law unto himself. Nor do they have any legal basis for taking over either, they're still legally just controlling crime and collecting taxes.
>>25389669Oh I didn't explain myself properly. I have a bunch of stories which I will upload on the site when it's done as an archive and this is just going to be an additional "visual aid" page with some world building info which I don't need to shoehorn into the story. It's an alternative version of exposition about the world.
>>25390205Military warlordism. You can also call it feudal anarchy if the military ruling are part of a feudal system with a collapsed central government.
>>25390274Military anarchy might be closer to the mark. If there's no central leadership, it's an anarchy.
>>25390205>Each city's police chief is a law unto himself.Textbook warlordism. Imagine feudalism but tyrannical in the Greek sense: IE no one has any real legitimacy to running the whole show, but just take that power upon themselves because no one else can / will.
>>25390274>>25390330>>25390393Is there really any practical difference between warlordism and anarchy?
So what factors do determine whether a country can have a centralized government? The main setting is currently really fragmented due to humanity being distributed among thousands of fortified arcologies. It's not like it's a bad deal or anything, the economy is booming and people are at peace, but their military power is negatively affected by being funded by no more than three arcologies at any given time.Better one big army than thousands of uncoordinated militias. They may be able to slow an opportunistic raider down, but a coordinated conquerer could easily take them apart one by one.And unfortunately, the big empire that covers most of the continent is this close to invading under the pretext of defending the rights of smaller arcologies. It's not a good prospect for them.Naturally, I want the protagonists to unify these morons before they become just another subjugated province, but I'd like to know the prerequisites to a unified nation first.
>>25390587>The main setting is currently really fragmented due to humanity being distributed among thousands of fortified arcologies. It's not like it's a bad deal or anything, the economy is booming and people are at peace, but their military power is negatively affected by being funded by no more than three arcologies at any given time.Better one big army than thousands of uncoordinated militias. They may be able to slow an opportunistic raider down, but a coordinated conquerer could easily take them apart one by one.You're literally describing the Greek city-states and their fall to Philip II and Alexander.
>>25390593And a lot of other places. Ancient Gaul during Caesar's campaigns, for example.
>>25385871>>25387584Animated it for some reason
>>25383610What are some of the biggest mistakes you can make when creating a setting, especially for beginners at world-building?
>>25391182I get where the waviness of the borders comes from, looks like territory gained and lost, but would be neat if there was a slight pattern respecting the territory surrounding, such as lowlands/flat lands will gain and loose territory fast, more mountainous regions move slower, but albeit almost 'lumpy' on a map as an army marches peak to peak
>>25390205Military junta? Read about South America if you want to know more.
Reposting because last thread died shortly after I posted it initiallyI am nearing the end of my first draft and one of the things I have neglected is world building. One of the biggest things I'm delaying til the second draft is figuring out the power tiers and the numbers concerning the protags and the antags.To put it short: >The antagonists are the Azarians, who conquered the protags' city some 15 years ago. >The city is now part of the Empire, and ruled by the "Conclave", which is based on the Venetian Council of Ten (though it is a council of 20). It is also called the shadow council, because it is said the Azarians control it behind the shadows.>The main forces of the city are around 3k soldiers strong. 2k belonging to the city watch (controlled by the conclave, including some Azarians) and 1k directly by the Azarian garrison. >One of the important side plots is that the villain, faced with inevitable rebellion and half his force sent to war, has to enlist the locals against their will, enraging them further>I initially planned for him to replenish his forces by just calling for reinforcements meant to be sent to the war and keeping them for his garrison, to now pulling the Azarian forces of the city watch for the same purpose. >This eventually leads to many locals in the city watch just joining the rebellion by the end
>>25391410Does it make sense?
>>25391232Good point, it's because I didn't bother to map out the elevation until now.
I like cyberpunk but I'm not too big on 2077 and the rtal setting in general, so I've been working on my own. One thing I wanted to do was set it in the past since a lot of sci-fi futures like 2001's 2001 or Blade Runner's 2019 have come and gone. In my head I've been bouncing around somewhere between 1984 and 1995, but I can never seem to find a date I'm happy with. With some of the tech ideas I had it seems a little too high tech for the 80s but into the 90s and some of the characters I have written as vietnam vets start pushing 50. Any thoughts?
>>25391182>>25391449Bump map isn't nearly as cool as I thought; I guess to make full use of it, you'd have extremely detailed bump maps.
>>25391269I wouldn't call it a Junta - Junta implies they're unified.
>>25390426>Is there really any practical difference between warlordism and anarchy?Yes, you can have warlordism with a functional central government. In fact, that's generally what monarchic feudalism is. Likewise an anarchic government does not automatically result in or imply warlordism. Confederations can be anarchic in nature and do not have to be made of just warlords.
>>25384140There is also when one much less powerful state's monarch inherits the throne of a much larger more powerful state and this personal union gradually becomes political union. Like Scotland and England+Wales forming the United Kingdom
>>25392108Then it sounds more like anarchy.
>>25392352The terms aren't mutually exclusive. If you wanted to be hyper specific you could call it anarchic military warlordism.
>5 chapters left to finish first draft >my first task will be filling out the worldbuild I so much neglectedfeels good man
>>25393058>he wrote before building the world
>>25393085There's nothing wrong doing it that way. In fact, I'd argue that's a more sensible approach if you're trying to complete your story in a reasonable time frame and have serious aspirations to publish.
>>25393085That's much more efficient
>>25393085I tried to write before making the characters. Wrote 5 sentences before I realised it was completely incoherent.
>>25393085It's pretty common for writers to only really flesh out details of worldbuilding while actually writing their draft.
Increasing technological sophistication has my beloved office comedyvtropes increasingly anachronistic. There's very little scope for comedic shenanigans when AI is making everything and everyone more efficient. And cameras plus good business practices make typical Dilbert style comedy impossible.
>>25393719how are the two related?
>>25394752What two?
>>25389751Get fucked
>>25388979The Hawaiian archipelago is your model here, but scaled up and with several linked hotspots throwing up islands as the crust moves.
Began animating battle maps, for fun of it.Figuring out the river was the most time-consuming, and I'm still not happy with the blood; I should have probably made it with dynamic paint.
>>25383610What are some key resources for designing a city, be it modern, fantasy, or science fiction? What cities have you made?
>>25391778you need a height map to really make it pop>t. /3/ chad
>>25398490it is a displacement map, I misspokethis is also in Blender >>25398182 it doens't have dipslament map, only overlayed bump map
>>25398494Displacement is something that needs to be turned up or down. The actual texture is just a set of definitions that tells the computer how much to move each pixel in relation to the others. Think of it as raising the volume. If you're not happy with the effect you have to pump it up
>>25384736Sure, emulate the Hindred Years War.Start with everyone poorer. Have them field much larger armies, reducing the number of engineers and scientists available to do R&D. Think it won't work? Look at Japan. They fought from 1937 to 1945 with such limited resources that they never adopted a widespread submachine gun, unlike every other Allied army, let alone an infantry antitank weapon like the PIAT or M2 bazooka or Panzerschreck.
>>25390587>what factors do determine whether a country can have a centralized government?IRL, communication, transport, food preservation techniques, and trust.If you cannot communicate fast enough that your capital city can issue orders to manage day-to-day operations at the edge of your empire, you have to rely on regional warlords, and sooner or later that warlord will break off that region into another country. Ditto transport and food preservation, because even if you can communicate, if you cannot mobilise, transport and supply loyal soldiers from other regions in time to suppress rebellions, they can entrench before you get there. Lastly, trust: your empire can overcome all these if you have regional warlords you can trust. Corollary, the less trust you can evoke, the smaller your empire.
>>25384736Depending on what you consider realism, you could have aliens invade overtly or covertly and decree that further technological development is not allowed "for the good of humanity" but really to prevent humans from becoming a threat to the aliens.Stopping the technological clock at World War II with purely internal factors is difficult because if the war keeps going on past its historical end date, military technology is strongly pushed to advance, and if the war stops, the state of peace allows for civilian applications to flourish. I suppose you could have a lot of prominent scientists just die for some reason and chance discoveries like the one that led to the microwave oven never happen, but that could easily end up less realistic than the aliens.
>>25398528Not so simple, higher displacement strength will mean a spiky mountain, but that might be just the case of image texture not being high resolution enough, it certainly wasn't the vertex count, remain the same even when I tripled it.
>>25398733Well at that point it's a matter of artistry. I highly recommend learning substance designer. I've started making my own planets in it
How would you worldbuild a xianxia land?
>>25398955>How would you worldbuild a xianxia land?Step 1: Disregard physics.Like feel free to have that shit be on the side of an infinite wall with living balls of light floating around in place of celestial bodies. Get wacky with it.
>>25399132>with living balls of light floating around in place of celestial bodiesAre you saying the sun is a cultivator?
>>25399179>the sun is a cultivatorMy Golden Core is a Star, do you call this cultivating?
>>25388486Something is magic if mere mortals consider it so, and someone is divine on similar grounds. But basically gods don't die, men do. This is the default definition I use because I find that sticking closer to the real world makes it easier to take your worldbuilding seriously, but I like the idea of gods that are "artificial" and more clearly-defined by either belonging to a specific race or drawing their power by drinking from a specific source. This can help your world feel more unique, but I like the generic approach.
>>25398955You wouldn't because xianxia is inherently retarded. Such settings do not exist to make sense. They're parodies of real life in order to preach morality tales.
>>25400196>ridiculous preadolescent power fantasy>morality tale
Why would you even post your shit on 4chan. All it takes is one Reddit screencap and your idea is stolen and turned into a billion dollar movie without your consent or input.
>>25400216I guess for the Gamer Generation™, even that little is indeed too much to ask.
>>25383610Hey, is making an empire cliche at this point? What’s the best way to design one?
>>25400585what is empire cliche? Do you know what empire even is?
>>25400585Yes, having "the empire" is very cliche, but why should that matter at all?
what do you think on using words (verbs, adjectives) stemming from real life cultures/persons to describe something in a fictional world? Like, Titan, daedalian, mesmerizing etcdoes it take you out of the setting?
>>25400794I don't get autustic about it, but I don't refer to stuff like "dijon mustard" for example that is literally the name of a French city.
>>25400222That's the idea. A lot of people don't even want the credit, they just want to see the setting depicted on screen.Including me.
>>25400794I think as long as the real life thing isn't the first thing anyone would think of if they heard a word, that word is fair game.I'm not gonna cry about someone calling something "borked" in a fictional setting, but calling someone an "Einstein" instead of a genius would be a bridge too far.I also won't cry if there is literally not an alternative word for something, e.g. "cesarean", unless the word or phrase in question is capitalized in reference to its namesake, e.g. "Kafkaesque", in which case you should really just make something up for what it's called in your setting, use something close enough, or remove the reference. Like maybe go with Element-104 instead of Rutherfordium.And lastly, I'm not gonna cry about genericized trademarks unless it's common knowledge that it's a trademark. So no "kleenex" or "band-aid". That said, I'd avoid using any generic trademarks you're aware of if there's a recognizable alternative.
>>25400222checked and yeah, that's before even considering the scrappers running through every thread 24/7.
>>25400640I guess I just talk to myself because nobody else wants to talk about empires.So, most people can't tactually say how empire is different from a kingdom beyond, "emperor outranks a king".Main difference is that emperor relates universal monarchy
>>25401374we could have had a discussion, if you could write in intelligible English
>>25401374A kingdom that annexes other kingdoms belonging to different cultures becomes an empire. The title of the ruler might be the high king, the emperor, etc.
>>25401374An empire is something that has conquered or otherwise subjugated many kingdoms. An emperor can do things like rule over kingdoms without personally holding said kingdom titles. You could have an empire-sized kingdom, with the king himself holding all the titles, but it gets really messy when he dies. It's all wrapped up into legitimacy of rule. Although, all of what I just wrote doesn't have to be true, since your setting's empires/kingdoms can work by different rules than ours did IRL. But then you'd have to explain why they don't work that way, since basic father-son heredity emerges very naturally out of human family structures. So you don't need to explain why heredity works that way, but you do need to explain situations where it doesn't.
>>25398955I'm doing a setting in which the magic system is deep down based on xianxia (very slow but theoretically unlimited growth based on innate psychic powers, with many different applications to set the casters apart) but I'm not going for Daoism or Chinese webnovel clichés. There are no sects for cultivation, for example. The immortality of the Elves is not dependent on the cultivation treadmill either. The term "cultivation" is not even used, and so on.There's no need to copy all that Chinese stuff that feels arbitrary and alien to a Westerner when trying to craft a world. Instead try to draw ideas from multiple sources.
>>25401493And how does this affect the food supply in your system?First thing that should always occur to you in any of these xianxia settings is, why do peasants still exist? In fact, why do any non-cultivators exist? When a single cultivator can do the work of millions of people on his own, and just as easily kill all of them so that he doesn't have to care about them anymore and can clear our all their farms and replace them with cultivation-enabling wild herbs or magical animals to eat or whatever. So it'll be in the cultivators interest to kill them all and he has no reason not to. And of course, most the people in these settings are these insanely ruthless psychopaths who wouldn't scoff at murdering millions of people over the most trivial reasons, so why haven't they done this? Is it just because they are sadists, and enjoy making humans suffer? Is that the foundation of this entire society; sadism?Xianxia is just retarded.
>>25401513>When a single cultivator can do the work of millions of people on his ownWhy should a single cultivator have to? That's time that could be spent cultivating.
>>25401513Setting aside the passive resource gains mortals provide, occasionally mortals advance in cultivation on their own, which is why sects will sometimes recruit from among them. And setting aside the value of lower tier cultivators for their passive resource gains, prestige, and meat in conflicts, there is always a nonzero chance that someone that begins cultivation will progress into a cultivator's school of cultivation no matter how profound it is, which means they could potentially unlock a branch of an immortal's cultivation they have not yet explored which if shared with a cultivator would more rapidly deepen their own cultivation. It's a low chance, but there is always a chance.With how desperate high tier cultivators always act for even a shred of a chance at hastening their cultivation by a second, if anything there's way too much murder in xianxia settings. This is ignoring exceptions like bloodline cultivation or sex limited cultivation or people having inherently hostile qi types or cripples. Those would open up more people to murder.
>>25401533Because it helps his cultivation.>>25401542What resource gains? What can mortals do for a cultivator? They can't even fucking grow rice without it being too low quality to eat. A cultivator can fart on the ground and produce a single seed from a plant that'll be worth more than a million mortals could labour to produce in a year combined since everything that they produce is completely worthless. All they're doing is taking up space that would be better spent even just letting the wilds take over, since even wild plants and animals are more useful than mortals growing their worthless rice so that they can feed only themselves.I fucking hate xianxia-defenders, you obviously haven't spent even five seconds thinking about your own setting or any of the consequences of any of these concepts within it, and you're pretending to be "worldbuilding". The only thing you retards know how to do is cope about how your total lack of any worldbuilding isn't a problem because, and then you provide something totally retarded to defend it, like "morals providing passive resource gains", which you KNOW is total bullshit.
>making a codex in obsidian>cant decide on how to structure entriesaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
>>25384053Tolkein did it pretty well designing the Shire. Bunch of normies doing absolutely nothing with their lives. The simplicity of life has character to extract, though.
>>25401563>Because it helps his cultivation.But not as much as meditating or refining. Opportunity cost is a thing.>I fucking hate xianxia-defendersI'm not a xianxia-defender. Most xianxia has godawful worldbuilding. I'm just pointing out food webs exist. In xianxia settings higher power sects have lower power sects do grunt work for them and lowest power sects have mortals do grunt work for them. It doesn't matter if mortals can't produce food pure enough for high level cultivators to consume without harming their cultivation. What matters is they make it so the people above them will have more time to work for the people above them so the people above them will have more time to work for the people above them so the...
>>25401563>retard discovers capitalism, starts seethingit's one of those days, eh?
>>25401513Most humans in the setting have no idea how magic works. Many fear it as a thing of evil because of too many historical bad experiences with evil casters. Any human would develop magic eventually just through living normally, but a human life is too short for noticeably magical powers to appear. Special circumstances such as becoming an apprentice to a wizard or finding information in forbidden manuscripts are required to be able to train magic purposefully. Elves also have provided instruction to some human cultures but didn't give any background knowledge to turn this harmless minor magic into a science that could be researched independently. Some of the things taught by the Elves help extend life, but the humans have no idea of this and simply think their lineage blessed, though the blessing is gradually fading away, as can be seen by researching family trees.The Elves themselves know entirely well how magic works from their childhood education, but being immortal even without cultivation, there isn't that much pressure to master magic beyond the basics. Instead of no-lifing it for the sake of staying alive like a Chinese cultivator, the Elves prefer to enjoy life and pursue their interests, in which they are able to learn supernatural skill. Even if that interest isn't originally related to magic, the interest ends up becoming a form of magic. Some Elves do pursue direct magical power though and can end up becoming extremely powerful.Dwarves do body cultivation and keep the techniques and even there being any techniques strictly secret from any non-Dwarf.
>>25401382I made a few typos, you don't have to be a dick, anon.>>25401429>>25401489Wrong. Ruling over other cultures doesn't have anything to do with it.Pre-Napoleonic emperorship tied to celestiality and universal monarchy.In the emperor titles of China, Tibet, and Japan, all meant something like "son of heaven", indicating they larped as demigods. The indirect approach in the West was having the religious head crown the HRE and ERA as ultimate protectors of the faith.
>>25401820>all meant something like "son of heaven", indicating they larped as demigodsidiotthe titles implicitly or explicitly meant "ruler of all under the heavens", signifying their dominion but stopping short of declaring even demigodhoodin chinese, the actual words that mean the "Mandate of Heaven" indicate that the Emperor's source of authority is heaven, upon which he is DEPENDENTin chinese eyes it carries an admission that this authority is NOT inherent within the emperorhood - and therefore is not assured in its legitimacy, because what the gods give they can also take awayhence the many times in history when the emperors of both China and Japan were reduced to begging for support, even as their figurehead-legitimacies were being fought over by the warlords who held the real powert. actually speaks the fucking language
>>25401820>Wrong. Ruling over other cultures doesn't have anything to do with it.That is the actual academic definition of what an empire is. I have no idea where you got your definition, but I doubt you could produce any credible sources for it. In the first place, the Roman Empire had nothing at all to do with that "universal monarchy" crap, and the Roman Empire is the very basis of the idea of "Empire" in the western tradition, upon which all other imperial titles are based. And the idea that Rome was some kind of "divine supreme monarchy" is just false. The early Roman Empire did not even have an actual imperial title or office, the emperor was just an autocrat who justified his imperium over the entire Roman state by having the Senate give him whatever Republican titles he needed to justify his actions. And later on, the emperors just started naming themself after Caesar or Augustus, and that name became the de facto imperial title, implying imperium over the state in itself. But even if being Caesar or Augustus was effectively the same thing as having an official imperial title, it wasn't, actually, because it was based on tradition, rather than law. This meant the "imperial title" of the Roman Empire was fluid. This is why they found it so easy to split the empire in two, or four, and have multiple Caesars and multiple Augusti, because there was nothing about those titles which explicitly said they had to be the only one.
>>25402038https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Heaven
I will have to make a language now to make names. So far, I just take names from my own language and Greek-Roman names and twist them a bit.
>>25402327Conlangs can be fun, but don't go too crazy with it if you only need a facsimile for names.
>>25402055yeah and the interpretations of virtually all of that is wrong
>>25402052Glad you wrote this we can have a conversation going here.So, I would divide the definitions of empire into formal and informal definitions.Formally, an empire is a state ruled by an emperor.Any other use of empire is merely an informal description of any large state or dominion (e.g. soft drink empire).>The early Roman Empire did not even have an actual imperial title or officeDuring the Principate, the rulers of Rome had four titles those were:>princeps (first citizen)>imperator ("commander")>augustus ("venerable")>pontifex maximus (supreme pontif)Octavian's entire ploy was to avoid monarchical connection, which is why he rejected rex and "romulus", and took the ambiguous title of Augustus.Princeps was very republican, and imperator is just a military title.Augustus was a semi-monarchical title, and probably most importantly, because it was the main title.But the fact that they also carried the title of pontifex maximus, which was the highest religious title, already makes them divine.>And the idea that Rome was some kind of "divine supreme monarchy" is just false.Case for the Dominate is even clearer, because emperors after Diocletian added dominus et deus ("lord and god") into their titles.>And later on, the emperors just started naming themself after Caesar or AugustusIt wasn't later; literally every ruler after Octavian took the title augustus, it was the main title.
>>25402055>The title, "Son of Heaven", was interpreted literally only in China and Japan, whose monarchs were referred to as demigods, deities, or "living gods", chosen by the gods and goddesses of heaven.[3]>Source is page 59 of Dull, Jack (1990). "The Evolution of Government in China". Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06441-6.>Check source cause I know enough to know this claim is complete and utter bullshit for China (Japanese emperors are considered divine descendants of Amaterasu)>The ruler soon bore a new title that was based on the legitimating concept of the Mandate of Heaven: the Son of Heaven. The term was not taken in the literal sense to mean that the Chou king was descended from Heaven and therefore divine, but it did convey the idea that the king had been chosen by Heaven.The person on wikipedia just made up shit whole cloth. Although they conveniently cited the exact fucking page of their source that contradicts them, so it's not like I had to hunt for this.A reminder that wikipedia should not be treated as a primary source.
>>25401820>The indirect approach in the West was having the religious head crown the HRE and ERA as ultimate protectors of the faith.Setting aside the fact that the West eventually embraced the divine right of kings and the position that rulers come to power only through God's grace, therefore anyone in power is effectively chosen by God and must be executing God's will on Earth. This position has unfortunately metastasized to even spread to democracies and is still seen in the modern day as a worship of rigid hierarchy by some Christians and at its worst as prosperity theology and a general characterization of poverty and disempowerment as a punishment from God for personal moral failings whereas wealth and power are rewards from God for good character.It's all Mandate of Heaven bullshit all the way down.
>>25403312>divine right of kings>prosperity theologyyou don't know shit
One of the biggest problems with defeating demons, the designated villains of the setting, is that destroying their physical form won't really destroy them. Their true form is split among multiple points in spacetime. Even if you've killed one right now, he can just teleport his "mind" into a century in the future where you're long dead.The only way to decisively kill one is to destroy them before they can jump, and in such a way that the higher body didn't detect the kill. That ensures they'll never trouble people in YOUR worldline. Since that isn't always possible, the more practical option is to just record that specific demon and transmit the data to future generations so they are forewarned. I was wondering if an easier, more permanent option could be created. My solution was to throw them inside a black hole's event horizon so that they can't "throw" their consciousness out. Another was to add holy weapons that can kill demons for good. Or just reform them, for that matter.
>>25403391I accept your concession.
>>25403417I dislike anything that implies poorly thought out time travel, and this sounds horrendous.Can they move backward in time? Can they change the future? If they change the future from one where one of their spare bodies is, is that body destroyed along with that timeline? How would anyone ever figure that bullshit out? Can their bodies coexist? Can they control multiple bodies at once? Do their bodies have an origin or do they just manifest in spacetime? Could you destroy one of their bodies while it isn't occupied or do they live out their lives in their various bodies in a linear order from their perspective? If you destroy one of their bodies while it's unoccupied and they attempt to jump into it, do they die?This sounds needlessly fucking convoluted. You could accomplish almost exactly the same threat profile without time fuckery by just having them have multiple bodies across different universes, some of which appear as if they are futures of other universes, while giving the demons the ability to move their minds between bodies and bodies between universes. Like Rick in Rick and Morty.
>>25403417This sounds like you're taking pointers from Dungeons & Dragons but have some sort of philosophical opposition to the existence of a hell dimension that would serve as a home base for the demons where they can be killed off normally. Unless your story is about dimension-shifting shenanigans for the main characters as they chase the demons or if the origin of the demons has something to do with the plot, I think it would be simpler and more functional to just have a hell dimension. You can have one even for a science fiction setting.
Anyone making a world with a significant ocean or other body of water? Just finished reading 20 000 leagues under the seas and I'm curious for more water worlds.One thing I notice from Verne's work and my own understanding of the ocean, is that in regards to life it's a world of contrasts. You have corals and river deltas teeming with life, lampreys, bonitos, sharks, all kinds of crustaceans etc etc. Then you have the open ocean, a water desert, all salt and no water any man could easily drink. The book has very few scenes set on open ocean, no interesting life-forms or natural activity take place here. Even Antarctica has both more life and more "energy" to it
>>25403573I had an idea for a barely flooded continent/ocean that would run the gamut from a frozen forest full of giant evergreens erupting from the ice with the ground level full of luminous fungi to a tropical forest mainly populated with fruiting banyan style trees to a kelp forest full of fresh water springs and artificial sand bars. Kind of my take on an oasis, a rainforest, and a redwood taiga in the middle of an ocean.
>>25403463>Can they move backward in time? Can they change the future?No. They can only move "forwards" from our perspective.>How would anyone ever figure that bullshit out? I mean, it's not like they hide their identity. They'll just straight up TELL people that they're the same demon that fought that famous warrior centuries ago.They like cultivating reputations. >Can their bodies coexist? Can they control multiple bodies at once? No. They'd kill each other if they did.>Do their bodies have an origin or do they just manifest in spacetime? They were born in the first seconds of the Big Bang.>Could you destroy one of their bodies while it isn't occupied or do they live out their lives in their various bodies in a linear order from their perspective?Their PoV is linear, and it's obviously not their body if they're not possessing it. Their self is the spirit, not the body.>This sounds needlessly fucking convoluted. You could accomplish almost exactly the same threat profile without time fuckery by just having them have multiple bodies across different universes, some of which appear as if they are futures of other universes, while giving the demons the ability to move their minds between bodies and bodies between universesYeah, but that would make them almost invincible. Even more so, that is.
>>25403483I do have a demon dimension, it's called Pandemonium. Why? I don't see how that affects my problem.
what is your opinion on naming conventions regarding cities/towns/geographic locations etc? For a story written in English, do you prefer if they follow standard Anglo nomenclature (like, Green River, Stormbay, Hollow Cave etc) or that of the fictional language (even if it's inspired by a RL one)?For example, my setting is inspired by 16th century Italian city states with no Anglo-Saxon names whatsoever, but the city where the story takes place in has both Anglophone toponyms (Merchant District, Temple District) and non-Anglo ones (Porto Scarra, Cantiere etc)
>>25404153Hell yeah go for the native sounding names, makes them more distinctive and makes it all feel less 'its given the literal name for stupid people or the writer couldn't be bothered to name it'Personally have a setting where a territory was owned by ethnic Mediterraneans, but occupied by a generic/anglicised forces, so depending on allegiance/ethnicity the names will either be Latin or English.
>>25404153I prefer fictional names.I'm so sick of every fantasy setting having names like Riverrun and Honorguard.
>>25384053If you go too far you lose sight of how magical the "mundane" features of life are. Like 40k has crazy things like warp storms which make its setting feel strange, but is a regular storm really any different?
>>25404153>standard Anglo nomenclature>Montmountainmount MountainI'd say avoid GRRM clichés, use something real but recognisable, because place names often go by what rolls off the tongue well and is memorableone SF author I read used obscure archaic English words as proper nouns and it feels so natural
