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>>93321477
I would have sex with all eight of those characters.

>>93321477
can we please not use art like that

What's the best way to go about doing a generic race of bad guys that the players feel no qualms about slaughtering in the hundreds?
Should I build up lots of lore to hammer home the fact that these guys are bad or should I just keep it simple?

>>93321526
You can have nuanced backstories just fine. Like most Nazi's are evil pieces of shit obviously, but they still thought that they were doing good things by being evil racist pieces of shit.

The important thing is that the nuance in their portrayal doesn't excuse or justify why they're evil, just explains it.

The Metro series handles this well since they have both Nazis and Soviets and while you see that not everyone in those factions is a subhuman piece of garbage, you get a good look as to why they're super evil. Like in Last Light you see a Nazi gulag, and how they will arbitrarily change definitions of who is 'human' and execute whoever they don't like, and then later start flooding other stations with refugees so they have a harder time dealing with opposing their upcoming military campaign. While the soviets you see enacting a police-state, using human-wave tactics, they torture you early in the game, and at one point they test weaponized smallpox on an independent station and come in to 'help' with the quarantine as a prelude for annexing them.

I think the important thing is to show why them being evil makes sense from their point of view- even it it's self-serving or warped by ideology. They're not evil for no reason, rather they're evil for bad reasons (as opposed to say how a faction might be evil for good reasons- like say refusing to hand out supplies because they are scarce and certain people need prioritization to keep government organized as an example).

The PC races are called the Kins, or the Bloodlines.

Each Kin is an offshoot of the original human race simply called the Ancestors.
Instead of going for the elf, dwarf and orc approach, each kin are just humans with different features.

Despite the "physical" looks being different (certain kins having greenish skin tones while other tend to be more blue) I really want to nail the different ways each kin organizes their cultures and values.

OP's pic is the gayest most special snowflake freakshit possible.

Evil orcs would be refreshing since every franchise tries to redeem them now.
Demons being enemies instead of a fashion choice (Tieflings) would also be an improvement.

I'm looking to flesh out some creatures that live in my setting in various biomes. The problem is I'm not sure how to go about making more unique biomes (I have just forest, swamp, hilly grasslands, plains, taiga so far), as well as the creatures themselves. I was looking up speculative evolution stuff for the creature front but does anyone have any good ideas for how to get things rolling? Do I just take an existing biome, look up a defining feature and tweak that to get something unique?

>>93321477
>What fictional races exist in your setting, and why did you choose those in particular?
The standard fantasy ones. Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, etc. I wanted to make a story where humanity no longer exists on an alien planet, echoing the medieval era inheriting the ruins of Rome.
>If any original races exist in your setting, how did you make them, and what was your process?
Heavily inspired by Trigun, I created a race of "Plants" leveraging the double entendre of organism plants and power plants (also called Angels in Trigun, which is referenced in it's own way). I needed them to play the role of Archons in my world, and they create the fae by giving magic humanoid form.
>How about putting new spins on existing racial archetypes, like Elves, Orcs, etc., how do you make them more unique?
It's not the craziest twist, but I have Humans as the ancient and decayed progenitor species to the fantasy races, who are created after an attempt to meld human and fae bodies together. I chose this after learning about the Roman god Orcus.
>Finally, what do you need to remember when creating races for a fantasy setting versus creating science-fiction setting races, especially sapient aliens, and do you have any alien races in your fantasy worlds?
I guess it's fantasy with a sci-fi origin story, so all my races are both. I just try to make sure that each of my races has a good enough reason to be in the world.

>>93321526
Making them bioweapons like the sranc in Second Apocalypse does away with lots of issues. Why are they always evil? They were inteligently designed to be terrorists. Aren't they counscious? Insofar as they may be aware of morality or something like a soul, they revile it - they just love being evil so much - and would rather die than be subjected to it, but the ones that weren't designed to lead are just crude beasts, their torture-murder parties are genetically-encoded, not learned.

>>93321477
>Men - Arrived via sleeper ship centuries ago, but due to a malfunction in the reanimation process, were afflicted with amnesia and basically regressed to the Stone Age. Have since advanced culturally to the 1920s.
>Sparti - Created by sowing an alchemically-treated dragon's tooth in fertile soil, emerge fully-grown, armed and armored, and ready for battle. Tend to be pale, hulking, and have gruesome-looking faces. Lack ego upon creation, making them suggestible and easy to command, but will slowly develop a sense of self through interaction with others.
>Cynocephali - Self-aware robots, originally intended as caretakers and reference guides for the settlers, given a canine design because test groups complained how unsettling human robots looked. Mostly try to study and share knowledge, since the database they were supposed to draw all information from was corrupted.
>Calaveras - Native intelligent lifeforms of the planet, resembling human skeletons, though they look more exaggerated and less human at very old age. Often targeted by predators because their bodies taste sweet. Invented magic by singing lullabies to an eldritch star entity, until it began dreaming up symbiotes that confer magical powers when implanted.
Everything else is a monster to be slain.

>>93322374
>Evil orcs would be refreshing since every franchise tries to redeem them now.
Name 5

>>93323196
Convergent evolution means that ecological niches tend to be filled by similar traits. As an example- compare the biology of a shark with a dolphin, one is a fish the other is a mammal but they have similar body shapes. So maybe think about how other animal types might look in other environmental habitats. What might a crab look like if it has to graze like a horse on the steppes of Kazakhstan?

>>93321477
Why does everyone (except animal heads) get elf ears? Makes elves even more boring than they already are.

>>93324079
>one is a fish the other is a mammal
mammals are fish bro

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>What fictional races exist in your setting, and why did you choose those in particular?
My setting is humans only so instead of races I have civilizations that represent a package of socio-political behaviors. Although each civilization is represented by a single hegemonic state, there are plenty of other cultures that are influenced by them. They are meant to represent overlapping spheres of influence, such as a Greco-Roman, Chinese, Indian, or Iranian sphere. I designed it this way so that people can not only make up individual characters but also cultures for them to come from, with a set of guidelines to help players fit their character's culture in the wider setting.

>If any original races exist in your setting, how did you make them, and what was your process?
Each civilization occupies a setting on their own, so I designed their behavior around what sort of stories can be written within them. For example, the Rain Makers are led by a centralized state that perceivers themselves as the center of civilization, so a lot of urban cosmopolitan racial gang wars can be expected in the capital, or political families conducting fishy operations within the bureaucracy. The Free Settlers are a collection of many city-states with varying degrees of courtesy, their decentralization means there's plenty of banditry in between but also inter-city rivalries that require operations of finesse.

Also this setting was made with the help of /tg/, thank you to whomever participated in my threads.

President Aisha Bin Nguyen
It is said that once upon a time, Tripuran citizens grew sick of their government. They considered the career politicians to be incompetent, cowardly, greedy, corrupt liars who were ruining the country. They started voting for populists, but those populists were even worse than the old ones!

And then a 9 year old girl became a social media sensation by airing a comically amateurish campaign on Umetai (Tripuran YouTube) where she declared that she was only running to get out of school, promised that she would do no work and veto all laws, and spend her entire time making video streams about the running of government.

She won with 67% of the vote, becoming the youngest President in their history. On coming to power, she fulfilled all her promises. Inflation went down, unemployment plummeted, the military budget got slashed because she refused to enter new wars, and the entire bureaucracy got stalled because she refused to work past bedtime.

When she willingly retired at the end of her 10 year term despite being offered an extension, she became the second most popular President in Tripuran history, before and after Independence.

>>93324876
She would be the first, but hardly the last, of the "Anklet Presidents". Named for the anklets young girls traditionally wear on their feet so that their parents know where they are. They take them off at age 20 to show that they are now adults and don't need to be watched over.
In other words, she is the first of a series of increasingly powerful and despotic Presidents who are literally teenage and prepubescent girls that nevertheless got the job to be the most powerful man on the planet.

>>93324876
>>93324883
TL;DR: a literal toddler becomes the leader of the free world by making funny youtube videos. And somehow, it works out fine.

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You are at least journaling and publishing adventures and experiences of characters living in your world in accessible and easy-to-read format, correct? If not you better have a good explanation.

>>93324946
>you better have a good explanation.
Personal entertainment.

Your setting does have a race of horned, blue-skinned people, right, anon?

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>>93325026
Fug, I forgot a pic.

My setting has some 'elder races': elves, dwarves, various reptilian lizardmen (saurians, DnD yuan-ti and warhammer slann). Because of historical orcish invasions, wood elves sought refuge in the deep woods where satyr-like beastmen and ents/huorns already lived. Many compacts were agreed on between the elves and original inhabitants, differing by region. Not all forests were inhabited before they fled there. This resulted in intermingling between elves and beastmen at solstice festivals, but given the strength of elven heritage this barely had an impact on the resulting children. However, after many centuries of this you are starting to get some 'lower-class' wood elves with horns that are quicker to anger and stronger than their peers. This sets them apart from other elven factions, and even other wood elves (the wood elves are not one polity, rather many tribes and kingdoms with differing views on this).

Som human factions have subraces of stronger and smarter men, think Numenoreans/Dunedain mixed with Conan the barbarian. This is especially prominent among the Norse and tribal African hunters, but also among some Japanese samurai and Arthurian knights. This is considered a blessing of their gods in the former cases, and possible distant elven heritage in the latter two cultures.

I don't really have unique races - I wonder if straying beyond the basic species would worsen the setting in an attempt to be cool and unique (tm), but I am considering something like Dragon Age's Qunari - tall grey-skinned ox-men with a strict militaristic and fundamentalist religious society.

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>>93325152
Don't introduce new quirky races. Instead do interesting but modest twists on existing ones - for example gnomes which aren't pranksters but minority elite due to their hold on knowledge (for example gnome-only religious order with a secret gnome language being the kingmakers in human lands). From what you described so far there's already good amount of texture among denizens of your world and anyways races don't really matter that much. Anon can have interesting world even if it's humans only.
>pic unrelated

What’s the go-to specialised notebooks everyone’s using for their stuff? Text files and folders are starting to get unwieldy. Looking around I see Kanka’s pretty popular and I can export my stuff if it shittifies.

Just wanted to know what you all are using before I start migrating.

>>93326603
Docusaurus lets you host everything locally, greatly minimizing third-party risk.

>>93325026
>>93325033
Well of course, they're the genetically engineered royal guards of the dark elf sorcerer lords

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Despite its extremely patriarchal culture, where women are generally having children as soon as they can safely do so and continue having them till they're too old, the Wulfenreich are very big on teaching women to fight.

The traditional ideal for women is that they should be loyal slaves for their husbands, which includes caring for their Dominus's household while he's away for work or war. And because the natives tend to be workaholics that literally get depressed when they can't find something to do, that's often.

But somehow, this doesn't actually raise their social prestige. Women are considered nothing more than property of their patriarchs, to be bought and sold like chattel. There are no defenses for women facing abuse except the local pastors - who only intervene if their lives or childbearing capacity are in danger.

Cases of women wounding or killing abusive husbands are therefore high, which only tends to make the rest more repressive.

Is your social worldbuilding more Rousseauian or Hobbesian?

Are humans born as moral blank slates with a tendency towards being good to their fellows, and all human evils are due to societal factors? Or is man naturally a brutish, selfish creature and a strong government is needed to keep humanity from descending into anarchy?

>>93327132
>Wulfenreich
Cool name, tell us more. Is it a combination of Germanic and Roman influences? Since you refer to the head of the household as Dominus.
>Women are considered nothing more than property of their patriarchs, to be bought and sold like chattel.
All women, even those that give birth? Raising a child is a multi-decade time investment. I would think the official wife or wives would have a higher status than others. It sounds a bit like an orientalised view of the Arabian harem transplanted onto a European warrior culture on all levels of society, not just among the elite.
>Cases of women wounding or killing abusive husbands are therefore high, which only tends to make the rest more repressive
You would think this would make husbands more cautious and respectful.

To elaborate on stuff like this a bit in my own setting: Norse shieldmaidens (not all young women mind you) are encouraged to go out and plunder, adventure and do violent mercenary work up to their mid to late twenties. This raises the bar for Norse men, encouraging them in turn to go and do great deeds or bring home riches to suitably impress her. Valkyrie mercenary adventuring bands are a thing.

Some wood elf tribes have a twist on a matriarchy system: a she-elf's voice carries more weight in the council if she's had lots of children. This practice grew in response to a population crisis to rejuvenate their dying race. Their mother goddess is very important. Now you have some areas with deep woodlands where you can never be sure just how many elves there are. There could be only a handful, low population numbers. However, they could also have been breeding like rabbits for centuries and disturbing the trees could be like kicking a hornet's nest, resulting in a tide of angry tribal elves.

I was considering using something like the icons from 13th Age. Any ideas for designing world-level NPCs? The idea of having them built as highly advanced PCs and allowing them to be eventually supplanted (by PCs) occurred to me. If implicitly made transitory, they would function as titles/offices. What sort of functions are broadly useful in (you)r opinion?

>>93327443
>Cool name, tell us more. Is it a combination of Germanic and Roman influences? Since you refer to the head of the household as Dominus.
It's an original culture. Their aesthetics are mostly HRE. That it to say that German is the common tongue, French is the aristocratic tongue, and Latin is the religious tongue.

>All women, even those that give birth? Raising a child is a multi-decade time investment. I would think the official wife or wives would have a higher status than others. It sounds a bit like an orientalised view of the Arabian harem transplanted onto a European warrior culture on all levels of society, not just among the elite.

Yes, all women. It's a deliberate flaw from the writer (me) as a natural result of how inhuman a society dedicated to perpetual conflict will be.

They may be humans, but don't think of RL cultures when you think of them, think of Sauron's Mordor except cold rather than hot. They're explicitly considered dystopian by the cultures around them, much as most people see Russia.

>You would think this would make husbands more cautious and respectful.
You would, but all it does is make them more dedicated to breaking the spirit of the women and making sure they never get the chance to take revenge on their tormenters.

Which isn't as easy as it looks, because these are women that are reasonably healthy and strong and trained to fight. But they are healthier and stronger still due to biology, and better trained.

>>93327443
>To elaborate on stuff like this a bit in my own setting: Norse shieldmaidens (not all young women mind you) are encouraged to go out and plunder, adventure and do violent mercenary work up to their mid to late twenties. This raises the bar for Norse men, encouraging them in turn to go and do great deeds or bring home riches to suitably impress her. Valkyrie mercenary adventuring bands are a thing.
Aren't Valkyries kinda like angels in the myths? Or at least psychopomps.

>>93328187
Not so much angels. They bring the valorous dead to Valhalla, and serve them mead when they're done training for Ragnarok, but there's some stories about mortal heroes taking valkyries as lovers. I don't know if it's ever really described what relation the valkyries have with the aesir or any other supernatural people of Norse myth.

>>93328187
They're paychopomps and imbued with divine power. They also exist to be the lover of heroes and serve mead to the honored dead.
The valkyrie is not an empowered figure.
Mixing them with shueldmaidens is the default in pop culture because it makes a lot more sense to make the thing that's kind of like an angel into a powerful figure, and warrior chicks are cooler than divinely empowered barmaids who also ferry the dead.
>>93327132
>>93328147
I would only point out that societies that do have a dedicated policy of breaking the spirit of a population group dedicate considerable resources to this task.
Consider the omnipresence of slave catching militias in southern US history (And their role in the sharing of the US military elite), the morality police in certain Muslim countries, or the efforts of cossacks (And to a lesser extent Streltsi) in Russia.

>>93328400
Remember that half of the warriors go to Sessrumnir in folkvangr, not Valhalla.

>>93328187
>Aren't Valkyries kinda like angels in the myths?
Yes, sort of, the other anon elaborated on their role. However, in my setting bands of Norse warrior-women would adopt the name or be called that by their countrymen, and the name stuck.
>>93328147
Genuine question, why would you train someone to fight and be strong if you're looking to dominate and break them? Are there female warriors, regiments or military orders in the Wulfreich?

>>93328539
>Genuine question, why would you train someone to fight and be strong if you're looking to dominate and break them? Are there female warriors, regiments or military orders in the Wulfreich?
To protect the household while their husbands are away. From everything from wolves to the gangs of deserters and savages that stalk the forests.

No, proper war is a masculine privilege. Women are only allowed to fight in defense.

> would only point out that societies that do have a dedicated policy of breaking the spirit of a population group dedicate considerable resources to this task

To put it this way, the only reason they don't run the world already is because they're too busy oppressing their own people to direct their efforts on other nations. They are the poorest and most backwards of the Great Powers despite having the highest potential.

Ironically, their emigrants that live in nicer cultures tend to be disproportionately successful. Like, they are a byword for wealth in almost all countries they flee to, despite starting as merely refugees with nothing but the clothes on their back.

>>93328422
Uh, sorry I didn't quote you above.

>>93323319
>>Finally, what do you need to remember when creating races for a fantasy setting versus creating science-fiction setting races, especially sapient aliens, and do you have any alien races in your fantasy worlds?
What is even the point of this question?
Who have problem with such trivial shits?
Fantasy - magic is involved.
Scifi - magic is not involved.

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>>93328683
¿Por Qué No Los Dos?

Finally got a lot of my setting notes written down instead of living in my head. Less than I thought there was going to be, probably because a lot of what makes it is visual and I don't believe I have the artistic talent to depict it all.
Still working on names though, that part always gets me and I have a hundred different noun that need proper nouns.

>>93321477
>Drow Aasimar
Kill it with fire (PC and player).

>>93327325
Rousseau was a clown with no understanding of humanity.

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>>93328683
>Scifi - magic is not involved.
What is science fantasy?

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>>93301991
Thanks, sorry I didn't see this until now. But I was more asking in the context of ship scale guns.
Would the ammunition mass be similarly negligible if it were scaled up that much?

>>93327325
>Is your social worldbuilding more Rousseauian or Hobbesian?
No. If my worldbuilding is inspired by any model of human behaviour, it would be a mixture of Dostoevsky's Underground Man and Cervantes' Sancho and Quixote. Both models are irrational, with the Underground Man irrationally harming himself because of his emotions (spite, jealousy, misery) and Sancho + Quixote irrationally helping people because of their playful (but sincerely felt) delusions.

>>93329860
I don't see any reason it wouldn't be. An ordinary bullet has a weight in the grams, an artillery shell has a weight in the dozens of kilograms, which is a roughly 10,000x factor. Which would bring our mass up to ~10^-5 grams, or one gram per hundred thousand shots. Even if you add a few extra orders of magnitude to be certain, you're still talking <1g of "ammo" per shot.

>>93326742
Thanks! Was too focused on web based apps, didn’t consider looking at some offline software too.

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>>93321477
>What fictional races exist in your setting, and why did you choose those in particular?
pic
>If any original races exist in your setting, how did you make them, and what was your process?
saurians are lizardfolk-lite; I got inspiration for them from the duke nukem 3d lizardmen
>How about putting new spins on existing racial archetypes, like Elves, Orcs, etc., how do you make them more unique?
only slightly; I changed races to fit more with how people typically see them, to some extent
like elves are tall and blonde/blue-eyed
orcs are green and buff
my dwarves have a color change which I think is really neat
>and do you have any alien races in your fantasy worlds?
ive been toying with the idea of adding "star folk" to the setting
these mysterious beings that come from the night sky, might have corporeal bodies, might not
they mainly just trade with certain people at certain places at certain times (mountaintops on certain nights, for instance) for magic and gems and other rare and precious things
but its too cloudy of a concept for now

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>>93330566
giants play a bigger role (pun intended) in my setting compared to other D&D settings, and dragons a much smaller one (they're non-speaking non-spellcasting beasts)

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>>93330566
>>93330574
my setting is a 750 mile wide circle and I don't concern myself with what is outside of it or whats happening out there
things can come in from outside, but the players can't leave (if they try, there are special legendary monsters that show up, depending on where they go past the boundary)
planar travel is very limited; not sure how I want to handle that, though there may be a few portals that lead to distant lands or other planes or planets, but it would be like a small minimap kind of thing where the players do whatever is needed and come back
my world caps at 12th level, but not at CR 12, though I will hardly go past that; most of my favorite monsters are CR 13 or less
im avoiding "save the world!" shit so the players can mostly get up to what they want, but there will of course be threats

>>93321477
>What fictional races exist in your setting, and why did you choose those in particular?
Elves, dwarves, trow. Things like cambions have stats, but they're human mutations, not races, and they are very rare. One per party max.
>If any original races exist in your setting, how did you make them
Trow are a mixture of the various 'small race' types. I don't see much of a need for more than one, so I thought about what traits I like from halflings/goblins/gnomes, what traits I didn't like, and what I thought should be added. They ended up more about skittishness and speed, kinda like little cattish people that see good in the dark.
>How about putting new spins on existing racial archetypes
I tend to make sure my fantasy races are more physically distinct than just human but short or human but pointy ears. Other than that, it's just small things, like elves having short-range telepathy with one another, or dwarves having visible, hard forehead bones that make them difficult to stun. I don't see a point in having either if they don't 90% resemble their normal selves.
>Finally, what do you need to remember when creating races for a fantasy setting versus creating science-fiction setting races
Less is more. If there's no narrative reason for a race to exist and it doesn't provide a substantially different look and feel compared to playing a human, it shouldn't exist.
>and do you have any alien races in your fantasy worlds
In the sense of being from another world, elves. And, because they're related, dwarves and humans. Trow are the only playable natives.

>>93321477
Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Harpies, Trolls and maybe Goblins
Cholse them out of lazyness and personal taste, I prefer more humanlike races, no furryshit or otherwordly abomination.
For original races I have nothing yet, hard to even come up with something that cannot be compared to something.
As of giving a spin to original races that is something I care a lot about, I have something for Elves involving dreams and magical connection to other realms but for other races I sadly need to explore more.

>>93324521
>Although each civilization is represented by a single hegemonic state,
but why make it so samey?

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>>93321477
I saw a thread regarding an elemental races concept on here earlier today, and it inspired me, I'm going to have the races in my setting all represent an aspect of an element, like Dwarves being tied to buried veins of ore and gems in the Earth while Elves are representative of trees and other plants on the surface, or even two elements, like Giants being both Earth and Wind because they are large and tough as rock, but perfectly at home in the peaks of mountains where the air grows thin. What races would you associate with each element, and if you have any elemental races in your own worlds, please share them.

>>93330925
I dont fully like the idea of elemental races, tying a race to a specific element can imo be a trap to make races the biological version of planet of hats.
What element is a Mongol horse riding archer? Or a European heavy knight? Or a hoplite?
That said I'm brainstorming the idea of a elemental race, that is a race that is naturally prone to hyperfixate biologically and magically towards one element, but this attunement can drastically shit if ths background mana changes.
Basically my objective is to have elementally attuned people without this attunement being static and biological.
Does anyone know what happens in D&D if 2 genasi of different type exist?

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>>93331142
Well, that's part of why I was thinking that some races (and now I'm thinking most races, given what you've said) would be tied to two elements, to give them more of a spectrum to fall upon. Also, I was thinking that humans as a whole would be elementally neutral, does that affect what you'd assign to each race? As for your question, In 4th edition Genasi could use the Extra Manifestation racial feat to do something like you're talking about, and then there's Para-Genasi and the unique types of Genasi in Dark Sun, check them out.

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What are some interesting tabletop magic spells?

>>93327325
Heideggerian and Dostoevskian

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I am working on mini-setting for Savage Worlds.
It is set in fictional town in modern day Japan.
PC are students of local catholic high school.
I'm aiming in anime-style contemporary fantasy.

I have some problem with setting cosmology.
On the one hand I want to have Christian God, angels and daemons.
On the other hand I want to also have monsters from Japanese folklore (kitsune, oni, yokai, etc.)
I'm looking for some clever "in-universe" reason to combine it.

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Aside from the usual things, what unique weapons would you give a vampire hunter? What about a vampire?

Not so much of a worldbuilding thing, but looking for fun ideas to make two "elf" brothers to never had had any children despite them both being grandchildren if a hero with blessed blood.
One of the brothers is a king, the other is an ascetic cult leader.
Infertility feels like it'd be weird considering they're the third generation with the same weird blood.
The king became king through marrying a ruling queen and then becoming popular enough to rule.
The cult leader is morally good but a bit too pragmatic.
They're both immortals (but killable).
Feels like it's almost necessary for then to not have children for their positions to make most sense.
> A "true" prince/successor is impossible.
> Cultists are the other guy's "children".

I have a few magical races, each corresponds at least one of the six or five realms of magic. How many realms there are I have yet to decide.

Empyrea has the Elohim, which are the angel race who use light based powers and all live in an ecclesiarchy. They have a monotheistic religion, a hegemonic culture, and live above everyone else in flying cities. They maintain control over the mortals using their religion and the mobility of their cities. The Elohim give them food, medicine, construction, and protection through their technology. In exchange, the mortals are fanatical devotees to the religion and will do anything that the Elohim demand of them. Fanatical, but not corrupt. They are not grimdark, nobledark. Genuinely well-meaning, just flawed. Whether or not their detractors accept this is another matter.

Naraka has the Akumatin, horned humanoids that channel the power of the elements. No, they do not chant scary words and perform human sacrifices in some contrived orgy under the blood moon for power. They just do kung-fu. They are divided not by nations but by schools of elemental styles. Mortals offer their services in exchange for the services of the akumatin, and the akumatin constantly fight over who gets to be the provider.

Gaia has feralkin and dryads, which are animal and plant people respectively. I don't think anything else needs to be said other than that they don't follow conventional notions of morality and I have yet to come up with better names for them.

The dreamlands is the home of the Fey, they are weird to say the least. Like, mage and fairy from World of Darkness crossed with ENA, Amazing Digital Circus, and

Tehom has the Stigandi and the ectomorphs, these are essentially vampires and ghosts except the vampires are not undead and the ghosts are merely amalgamations of psychic residue given ectoplasmic form. Strigandi are essentially a species of predator mafia that require the 'prey' in order to sustain themselves and reproduce.

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How would the Ability to shape Stone and Earth via Elemental Magic shape Stone Age Development and its Weapons and Tools? My players will be investigating a murder in a archeological site and I just realised that I never thought about the fact how in my setting Earth Magic might have shaped the Stone Age. Any fun ideas?

>>93321504
Probably the only decent Yuan-ti illustration I've seen in fifteen years.

>>93329668
Science-fantasy is what children discover when they grow too old for saturday morning cartoons and then are introduced to these magical things called "books", some of which are even older than their moms and dads. It's kind of a sad story, though, because books are usually longer than a tweet, so no one can read them.

>>93333008
Well one of the things about "vampire hunter" as a trope or character archetype is specifically that they use unusual / unique weapons.
I think the concept of giant chakram isn't explored nearly enough in non-fighting-game contexts. Hand fans, too, for that matter. Throwing daggers / darts just please not kunai. Sickles, like the small crescent kind used for harvesting herbs - especially with strong lunar motifs (why should the sun get all the fun? No doubt the moon wants a say over creatures of the night?) I would say whips, because it's a great combination of sensual, reach and complexity, but y'know...

How much info/backstory do you guys put in for towns and cities in your world?

>>93334609
eh

>>93333321
>king
I think he would understand because of his agelessness bloodline might grow restless and attempt to assassinate him to gain the crown at best and at worst starting a civil war.
>cult leader
he's a cult leader. Make him celibate due to ascetic reasons.

>>93331899
2 elements work, but I think in general what could also work is just have a way for the elemental power to not be fully figured out and have different societies of a given race have a different take on it.
For example in Avatar the last airbender you have waterbenders from jungle societies have a different type of bending compared to water bender from the ice caps, as they don't know how to freeze water but know how to manipulate water in plants.
This is a relatively straightforward and intuitive way of making your elemental-attuned races feel not samey, but maybe if you want to go beyond you might want to look into weird behaviors of your elements and have them play a salient factor, maybe water dudes in your world can somehow make cements faster than it would happen in our world, or maybe can maintain some unlikely chemical reactions by being able to infuse thermal energy into it in a way where no pre-modern person could

About the Genasi, what I mean to ask is what happens if 2 genasi of different elements mixed.
>Also, I was thinking that humans as a whole would be elementally neutral, does that affect what you'd assign to each race?
I don't think so, but what would it mean to be neutral for an average mage? Can they learn magic faster(or at all) than any other race's not attuned element? Can they learn different, possibly incompatible, types of magic at once?

>>93333008
I watched Nosferatu (1922) recently, one of the main things that it did differently was that the maiden had to sacrifice herself to the vampire to make him forgot about the impending dawn. It reminded me of the series Angel (spinoff of Buffy) where a character drugs herself right before fighting a vampire to ensure that even if she lost and got bitten, she'd drug her opponent as well. In both cases, the victim was a weapon against the vampire - winning by losing. That could be something an order of vampire hunters takes into account, sacrificing someone to play on the vampire's dark thirst.

>>93334609
Towns get one "weird" factor, if the party investigates ot becomes a bygger deal, if they don't it's just a quirk. I always jave a back up town story if they're quick about it, otherwise we pick up the investigation next week after ive had time to write something badef on whatever i had to inrpov for the last 15 minutes of the session where they did the initial investigation or whatever.
People really underestomate the value of just letting the players decide what's fun.

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>>93333008
>vampire hunter
Seems to me like a billhook would be very usuable against a vampire. It has spikes/hooks for grappling at a distance which is likely to come in handy in the hands of multiple assailants gainst a vampire (not to mention can be used to hammer the foe with), a substantial edge for slicing and a long spike on top for stabbing. I reckon it would also be good at carving in coffins and useful to let in some sunshine from boarded up windows.

>>93334054
Improved Roman roads with a stone railway built in.

>>93335685
Oh and given that the billhook originated as a peasant weapon (against knights no less!) it already got a nice theme of going after your betters/the village coming together to rid themselves of a monster living off them.

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>>93321477
>Mortal turned living god unites three tribes together
>Married a woman from each tribe
>Disappears along with his wives and says his sons will come in time
I wanted his sons to be born from the ordinary women of the tribe, but I also kind of feel there's a bit of cucking by having another woman birth the child (even if she isn't really the mother either).

I also wonder what's some good ways they'd identify the sons of the god. I was thinking the Avatar way with the toys of the living god when he was a kid but I didn't want to reuse that for all three.

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>>93335752
I have few ideas.
1. Eyes of unnatural color (gold or purple)
2. Mark on a forehead.
3. Slight glowing aureola.

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>>93321477
There are two factions of races in my world, the first were made by the Sun god, with the help of his fellow gods, to carry his Light into the world. The others were spawned by the Void when it invaded, with that first exposure the Light tempering their essence, turning what was meant to be monsters into functional races, though it eventually figured out what it was doing wrong after a few waves. Some of these new Void races interbred with the Light races, and others were made in mimicry of them (not sure if Drow are the latter or the result of a Void race interbreeding with Elves, just to throw an example out there). Is this based or cringe, and what races would you associate with each force, like Elves and Humans for Light and Orcs, Goblins, and Drow for Void?

>>93336370
The thing is I wanted the children to be indistinguishable from ordinary children at first before their divinity is discovered

>>93329860
>>93329998
NTA but branching off the question because I had a read of that atomic rockets article and I've got a few questions.
Mainly, as I understand if an electron beam were to hit something like the side of a spaceship, it would release a ton of radiation. What would the effects of said radiation be? Would the hull around the area of impact be irradiated? Or would it just fry the electronics and any unfortunate crew?
And what would an impact actually look like? Would it punch a hole through a ship? Bypass any material because subatomic particles? What if you used beaver material like protons or heavy atoms like lead?

>>93335088
Thanks.

I've got about 7 towns in my map, and I'm writing a short 2-3 sentence overview for each.

On another note, how deep should I go into the politics, for now? My players stated they want to overthrow the government, and I want to drip-feed them some stuff (military coup underway behind the scenes), but how much detail should I give them from the get-go?

>>93335088
>Towns get one "weird" factor,
What are some examples of weird factors you have used?

>>93330778
Cohesiveness. I designed my setting for players to be able to also make up their own faction their people come from, but I understood how important it was to give guidelines to make it easier. The setting was initially started for a campaign where players were all hostages, heirs of subjugated kingdoms of a hegemonic Super-Empire )of multiple civilizations. They were supposed to also invent the kingdom their character came from, and the civilizations were meant to be a way for characters to group up with each other via cultural similarities.

I just realized that in an urban fantasy setting, there would probably be a taxi/Uber-like service for transporting merfolk between bodies of water. But how would that work exactly? Last I checked, phone waterproofness still only goes so far, and can cell phone signal even travel underwater?

>>93324892
>9 years old
>toddler

>>93321477
Kys d*scord cancer.

>>93328950
Her father had a visitation from an angel of Eilistraee, that convincedhim to escapeMenzoberranzan. Nine months later he got a second visitation, from a stork

>>93324521
Really nice concept anon, while a lot of them are really intuitive in regards to purpose and functions, is there any pdf where I can read more into?

>>93339840
gaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy

>>93322374
>Evil orcs would be refreshing since every franchise tries to redeem them now.
You mean cosmic evil or like regular evil? Grunts of the resident evil overlord/demon king/whatever? Or a people which sees nothing wrong with raiding and pillaging their neighbors for gold and slaves and whatnot?
>Demons being enemies instead of a fashion choice (Tieflings) would also be an improvement.
What I take issue with is that few people seem to treat Tieflings/Aasimar/Planetouched in general with the gravity they deserve. I think they work best, thematically, when they’re rare, with the birth of a Tiefling/Aasimar being ominous/auspicious (respectively). Alternatively, if they’re common, make it mean something goddamnit, like the nobility of a given society being comprised of those who bear the favor of Heaven (or Hell, or whatever).

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>>93325026
I mean, there’s elves and orcs. Elves have technicolor skin/hair/eyes, and some ethnicities have horns (but these tend to be rare, especially nowadays). Some orcish ethnic groups also have bluish grey or green skin, and it’s not uncommon for orc men to have horns (seen as a sign of virility).

>>93339778
I mean, a 9 year old girl is still really young.

Way to young to be President.

>>93340345
but not a toddler
also, this is a fantasy worldbuilding general, so a 9 yo girl could have had hundreds of years of knowledge and wisdom implanted in her brain anyway.

I don't know what races to pick. You could pick or make so many and they're all good for different things. How do you curtail your setting down to one good selection instead of endless bloat?

Please tell me one of you have gnome designs that

1. look cute
2. have hats
3. are distinguishable from halflings

>>93340353
But that would ruin the joke.

>>93340832
Didn't know there was a joke (still can't find it desu), sorry

>>93340482
Just pick one race per environment. Start with land and sea, and then specialize from there until you feel like you've got a good amount.

>>93339528
Option A: Magic cell phones
Option B: Merfolk live on the surface of water or can transform into fully humanoid forms for leading terrestrial lives
Option C: Portals make the need for transport services non-existent
Option D: Merfolk use wired connections when under water and more waterproof devices are specifically made for them. Lord knows there's plenty of underwater cables

>>93333008
>what unique weapons would you give a vampire hunter?
Throwing crosses, goedendag (aka a clubbing stake), maybe a loud ass metal shield that can be beat like a gong to confuse bats, lucerne hammer for prying coffins open, maybe something ranseur or sasumata-like for fending off wolves, an executioner's sword or a panabas or bardiche or something for beheading, flaming arrows, a holy water sprinkler that actually sprinkles holy water

>What about a vampire?
bolas, flechettes, lasso, nets, caltrops, poisoned darts, basically anything focused on disabling, an estoc or bec de corbin for can opening, traps, kusarigama and other trapping weapons, a pike, crossbow, javelins

Does anyone have names for a fantasy Arabia based on the early caliphates and the 1001 nights stories? I've named its satellite states but can't settle on a name for the central realm or faith just yet. I'll probably skim through the 1001 nights for inspiration later.

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>>93334665
Yeah, that's kind of what I was going at with the aspects thing, the elements have more than one singular thing they encompass, with the different races each embodying a different part of an element (or, from what you've been saying, I think I should go with multiple elements for each race instead, but same principle applies), what do you think, I'd love to hear your feedback on this.

That's a cool idea, thanks, what would you say that Fire, Earth, or Air elemental dudes might be able to do? Like, maybe Earth races might be able to, say, build walls that are far sturdier than they should reasonably be, just to throw a suggestion off the top of my head out there?

Oh, that would be the Para-Genasi I mentioned, who are connected to the paraelemental or quasielemental planes instead of the main four elemental planes, or at least that's one way to get them. They were a fan-creation that got canonized in 3e.

I was thinking in terms of magic that races aligned to an element can still learn magic from another element(s), they just find it a bit faster/easier to learn spells from the element(s) they're aligned with, and maybe slightly more slowly in regards to their opposed element(s), like a Water race mage having a bit more trouble learning Fire spells. So humans would have no advantages in that regard, but no 'dis'advantages either. Again, I'd love to hear what you think about all this please.

>>93340870
The joke is that a literal child can run the country better than the politicians just by doing nothing whatsoever.

Trying to justify drone fighters over just missiles in space navy. Torch ships are already in use, human-crewed fighters is a no go, and tactical (dumb) AI is okay. My first thought is that you generally want your weapon or weapons platform to be cheaper than the thing it is supposed to destroy. A missile with a torch drive and a drone with a torch drive both are basically the same weapon, even down to the computation requirements. Using them to screen and as a weapon's platform instead of a weapon might be a more cost efficient use. Since there is no human inside the thrust to weight ratio is still advantageous compared to a larger craft, and slinging smaller missiles or using EM guns to shoot clouds of ball bearings at both enemy drones and larger vessels seems effective for damaging guns, comms, and maneuvering. Plus drone swarms trying to screen their own ships while others make a dash for the enemy to cripple them is more dynamic and interesting than both sides slinging missiles at each other and then trying to destroy the enemy's missiles before they kill you.

Do I have any major holes in my logic?

>>93337828
Little besides the basic structure.
No good fantasy story actually starts with a lecture on politics.
>>93337886
Town is mostly underground, there are only children and old women present at the city, the gods are wrong, the entire town is one big longhouse.

>>93341614
>That's a cool idea, thanks, what would you say that Fire, Earth, or Air elemental dudes might be able to do? Like, maybe Earth races might be able to, say, build walls that are far sturdier than they should reasonably be, just to throw a suggestion off the top of my head out there?
Hard to say, I would suggest to just start looking into some engineering or nature stuff and ask yourself if modern stuff we do could be discovered by a magical race able to do things real humans could only do with tools in the last 500 years or so.
>I was thinking in terms of magic that races aligned to an element can still learn magic from another element(s), they just find it a bit faster/easier to learn spells from the element(s) they're aligned with, and maybe slightly more slowly in regards to their opposed element(s), like a Water race mage having a bit more trouble learning Fire spells. So humans would have no advantages in that regard, but no 'dis'advantages either. Again, I'd love to hear what you think about all this please.
That's fine, is alignment fully random, fully genetic or a mix of both? If it's genetic enough you can have families of people specialized in a type of magic and the randomness could lead to competition between children as house heads would choose the most fit child rather than the oldest to carry on the family tradition and marry children with people of the right alignment.
Fully random might have a weaker story hock, so I would make it decently genetic but maybe it could be a weird non linear mix of both where "inbred" families can keep alignment over the generations but the non "inbred" families are decently random unless they end up marrying people of the same alignment.
Maybe mixing 2 people with strong affinity to opposite element leads to weird rare magic affinities arising.

>>93341614
>Yeah, that's kind of what I was going at with the aspects thing, the elements have more than one singular thing they encompass, with the different races each embodying a different part of an element (or, from what you've been saying, I think I should go with multiple elements for each race instead, but same principle applies), what do you think, I'd love to hear your feedback on this.
If you go ham with the specificity and number elements then you can get away with 2 elements per race, the 2 elements being close, but if you have only 5 or so elements I don't think that works thematically and you would run out of elements if you have too many races and if 2 races share one of the 2 elements and use it the same it might also take away from the vibe you were going with if one races use lightning and magnetism the same as another race uses fire and lighting

I'd like to have some plot involving infiltrating a cult, but I'm having trouble having it make sense.
The gist is, the cult is doing dangerous shit, but they're actually good people. The leader is very powerful but does truly know what he's doing. The cult is very secretive due to how dangerous the magic that they handle is, but the stuff they do does help keeping the world safe.
The cult is fairly small.

Would it feel too cheap to have the powerful cult leader pretty much "let" the party infiltrate (ie pretend to be interested in joining for real) only because the cult leader wants to understand the party and how could the party could potentially help his goals in the future?

>>93340561
4. Are seven times stronger than you

>>93343727
>Would it feel too cheap to have the powerful cult leader pretty much "let" the party infiltrate (ie pretend to be interested in joining for real) only because the cult leader wants to understand the party and how could the party could potentially help his goals in the future?
Yes. It teaches your players bad lessons, too (like "even if it looks like we're succeeding, the whole thing could be a session/multi-session long prank"). The players can be tricked, of course, but you should be careful that they get tricked because, you know, they got tricked, and not because their enemy is so powerful and epic they just automatically knew what the players were doing and used acolytes who happened to be perfect actors in order to better study them.

I need advice. I'm doing an OSR hex crawl game of conquest and bloody gods set in the world of Aztlán from Aztec mythology.

How the fuck do I create a decent world map from pic related, or should I just go fuck it and hack it whole cloth/create my own setting and call it Aztlán.

World fluff wise I've decided Aztlán is an alternate reality that's connected to our world and where the Aztecs originally came from, it's also got plenty of prehistoric beasts that wandered through in aeons past and the like.

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>>93346042
Fuck, forgot to attach the map.

>>93335752
What if the Living god came from those abandoned to the wolves by other tribes? Now the tribes take in those left by others and their gods sons are always found amongst these 'Sons of the tribe'?
It'd fit nicely with the 'rewarded for following gods tenants' and 'never cast pearls before swine' undertones. Plus its not cucking to have good strong social structures around orphans.

>>93341430
There were the Abassids in the beginning, then the berbers split off to form their own caliphate with black jack and hookers called the Umayyad caliphate. You also had the mongols coming in forming the Timurids (the heirs of Timur) in Iran, and then the Mughals (Mongols). A lot of powers in the middle east also made use of Turkoman slave-soldiers called Mamluks that took over Egypt.

Similar to the arabic thing, but not really. I have a not-morrowind place I am working on culturally inspired by assyria, sumeria, those civilizations but I am having difficulty coming up with a decent name for it. Any advice?

>>93347978
Uruk is one of the oldest civilizations in that region- notably the setting of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Akkadia was also a notable state that a lot of people haven't heard of.

>>93347978
Go find a list of ancient cities in that region, pick one with a nice sounding name that isn't too famous. Alternately, go google a dictionary for one of the relevant languages, and feed it through a half-dozen words until you find a nice sounding name.

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>>93343455
So, say, an Air race might be able to do shit like separate out different gases from common atmosphere, like pure oxygen, hydrogen, etc.?

I'm a little confused, I was talking about affinities towards elemental magics being racial, though I suppose for races with an alignment with two elements which element they favor more could be determined by a mix of genetics, personality, and maybe a bit of random chance, though maybe strong exposure to an element pre-natally can occasionally result in say a member of a race with, say, an Earth element alignment having an Air magic affinity, but that would be like lottery odds at best. Does that clarify things?

>>93343468
So you're saying that the concept would work better if I added a couple more elements to the equation. I guess I can see that. Now I just have to come up with more aspects for each element and what race(s) would work best tied to them besides the aforementioned dwarves and elves.

>>93346116
Eh, I'd say the living god is not an orphan himself but I think he would have a soft spot for them as his own tribe was mostly orphaned

I think the orphans is a good idea. What do you think of these divination methods?

>First method
Tie a hair of the god to a needle, poke it through a cork, float it in water. Creates a makeshift compass that points to the very first son.
>Second method
Because now there are 2 sons of the god around, the compass method doesn't work as it just spins around.

So after some trial and error a method like this is used (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching_divination#Three-coin_method) where one coin has a hair of the first son and the other two just have the hair of the deity. The first coin merely points to the first son's location, the other two will be used to find the other sons. The three coins are thrown onto an octagon and the corresponding portion the coin lands in is the direction the son is in.

However I intended this second method to fail on the third child because the child is adopted by merchants and is constantly travelling around. I based this off the Kyoshi novels from Avatar.

>>93346042
Cool project anon. I would just overlay a hex grid on top of the image and put all major locations in a hex and fill in the rest myself accordingly.
It doesn't have to look realistic imo.
It would probably be a campaign map hex like those huge ass hexes gygax used for the world of greyhawk and you would have to then get to work on a playable hexcrawl, unless you are ok with using small hexes and having a more diminished map, but it doesnt feel right for an entire plane that spawned different people, species and even gods

>>93347978
Amazuur

Building lore about morality is really hard. I'm trying to make a race of imprisoned demigods that were thrown into Not-Hell because they lost a civil war, and I want the heroes to know they're a bunch of bastards.....but they don't deserve this fate, and letting them out is the morally correct option.

How do I adjust the lore around that divine civil war such that the heroes could organically come to the same conclusion? Or should I just promise them rewards for doing so?

>>93323196
Biomes are mostly the climate (so temperature and evapotranspiration patterns) paired with the biological history of the place - the more separated or remote from similar or same climate areas, both temporally and spatially, the more unique a biome's flora and fauna will be.

Climate is the harder one to make unique, something like the Koeppen classification really covers everything a life similar to Earth's could inhabit. But that only until you add a significant other factor (radiation? magic level?) to create new climates, or life which can exist outside of the Earth's climates. For example, a high-magic steppe (normally BSh or BSk) might be a climate of their own, significantly different from the normal ones, with different adaptation needed for life.

For the history and remoteness, this is where all those remote islands and hidden valleys come in. Think about when they got cut off from the "main" biomes, how whatever was there evolved and changed over time while missing some "normal" life forms, or having an abudance of otherwise rare ones.

>>93326603
I use ObsidianMD for the electronic stuff. The good part of it is that it uses Markdown files and folders for its data structure (hence the "MD" in the name) and it has a thriving plug-in creator community, and it's free too. The bad part is that it needs those third-party plug-ins for some of the more useful things, like metadata-wrangling your notes.

>>93347493
>There were the Abassids in the beginning, then the berbers split off to form their own caliphate with black jack and hookers called the Umayyad caliphate.
You got it backward. The Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad caliphate with the latter only clinging on to power in al-Andalus.

>>93346032
Fair.
Maybe I'll go with something like: weird shit has happened recently, some politically powerful individual blames the cult, hires the PCs to investigate.
Cultists aren't powerful, except the leader but the leader might either be away or temporarily drained from a ritual.
So, PCs can force their way in, or explain the situation to the cultists until the cultists begrudgingly agree to let them investigate them, but not being all that open right away because the cultists don't want the PCs to be able to access their secret knowledge.

>>93349649
>Or should I just promise them rewards for doing so?
Easiest way to make a party do anything.

>>93346042
>How the fuck do I create a decent world map from pic related
Are you looking for a tool?
https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/
It's a little rough around the edges but once you get the hang of it it's great and free.

Sounds like a cool setting. Be mindful when you are researching that basically all of our records of the aztecs come from accounts written by Spanish conquistadors.

Are you going to have a stand in for Spain in your world, or is it only going to be aztecs?

>>93350600
I think you're approaching this from the wrong way. It seems like you want the players to reach a certain scenario (the cult leader gets the players to join him, or something along those lines?) and you're trying to figure out the nicest or fairest way to get the players there. That won't work.

Tabletop RPGs are not like any other form of storytelling. They're player driven, not GM driven. The GM is not there to provide any story whatsoever, but rather to help support the players as they drive their own story. Part of that support is creating the world and characters which the players can warp and mould as they make the story, and that can sometimes seem like you're making the story for the players, but you're not. I strongly advise you do away with any scenarios you have in your head and which you want to guide the players into "reaching".

Trust your players. Give them this cool cultist dude and his actually-good cult and watch what they do with it. If they decide on their own terms to ally with him then it'll be much more fun than if you tried to shuffle them that way. And if they decide to fight or become rivals despite their goodness then they've either made a cool and nuanced decision that they don't care how good the cult's aims are, they're still doing bad things; or they've fucked up and made the wrong assumptions out of ignorance and hastiness, and that too will make a great story.

>>93350955
>It seems like you want the players to reach a certain scenario
It's more like that I want it to lead to something memorable. Ie if they decide to embrace violence and kill everyone in the cult over a bunch of misunderstandings it would still be more memorable than "everyone here is obviously good, let's go back". So I guess I want a balance between challenges, things making sense, and things being actually interesting.

>>93348689
>So, say, an Air race might be able to do shit like separate out different gases from common atmosphere, like pure oxygen, hydrogen, etc.?
sure, though for that specific example nothing comes to mind that is interesting.
Another thing to remember is that while your race might have affinity to a specific element they can still use tool to add to their magic, for example a wind mage that can separate oxygen and bring it along can still use fire to do create some sorts of fireballs.
A fire mage on the other hand might have an easier time using fire more spontaneously but might not be able to procure the fuel as well as a wind mage can.
>So you're saying that the concept would work better if I added a couple more elements to the equation. I guess I can see that. Now I just have to come up with more aspects for each element and what race(s) would work best tied to them besides the aforementioned dwarves and elves.
Yep, I'm not sure if abstract stuff like light, dark, chaos etc. work as well with more concrete magic but you can try anyway.
If you have issues finding new elements maybe you can just have different races have a different kind of aptitude, some people might be able to control elements only directly around their body but with precision and strength while others might be able to control it at a distance but less precisely/strongly
I already had the example of ice not existing in the tropics in Last Airbender might also be used(but I think tropical people having access to ice is actually more interesting)
Also it'S magic so you can come up with whatever weird system you want, overland earth-attuned people might be able to control fine grained materials like dirt and sand while underground dwarves might be able to look in the dark by sensing the movement of sound through the ground and walls or be able to make an internal map of their surroundings by being able to detect the presence of certain minerals and rocks but be blind to living being.

What are your favorite mini-bosses and evil underlings for your dark lords and liches and such?

>>93323196
Are your pursuing uniqueness for its sake? I'm not sure if you can really invent a new biome without bringing up completely new system like magic that might create new resource cycles or climatic pattern that don't exist anywhere in our world.
Anyway you might want to look into micro-climates where you might find some of the more exotic stuff.

>>93324946
>If you're not making money on or publishing art, what are you even doing!?!
I don't need to explain shit. Not a fucking thing. Who the fuck are you? Post your novel ass wipe. Post your published game. Otherwise fuck off.

tell me about swimwear in your setting

>>93324946
This is /tg/ not /lit/
Begone ye faggotron

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Trying to come up with a satisfying taxonomy of elemental magic
>fire and lightning are active
>air water and earth are passive
>fire is 'active' air - makes sense I think
>electicity is 'active' water, we borrow some terminology for electricity from water, such as current and flowing
>active elements can be augmented or impeded by passive ones
>air can make a fire burn hotter but insulates against lightning
>water conducts electricity but snuffs out fire
>earth grounds electricity
>all fits into the paradigm of order and chaos
>just missing one thing in that gap

What do I put in the gap? It would need to be orderly but active.
>life/nature
no because there's lots of life in water and water needs to impede whatever is in this gap
>metal
water could corrode it, not sure how earth would augment it other than providing raw materials, and metal doesn't seem very 'active' on its own in the same way that the other two do
>words/lore/information
maybe? you can chisel words into a stone tablet for longevity, water erodes carvings. But words don't seem like an 'element'. Best candidate I've thought up so far but it feels awkward

>>93354492
according to the ancient greeks, the four elements are categorized by being wet/dry, or hot/cold.

Fire is hot and dry. Air is hot but wet. Water is cold and wet, while earth is cold and dry.

For light and dark, could be useful to remember white is the presence of all colors, and black is the absence of all colors. By proxy, black absorbs heat (light) and white repels it.

>>93354492
>What do I put in the gap? It would need to be orderly but active.
Decay. Destruction. Change. Death. Time. It goes by many names, and the scary thing is not just that the order it imposes is the order of nothingness, but also that it's inevitable and unstoppable.

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>>93321477
My world has the main cosmic conflict be between the forces of Law and Chaos more than Good vs Evil, with each race being primarily under the banner of one of the other, their actual moralities evenly split across both sides. There’s a bunch of good ideas that I can use for Lawful races, like Elves and Dwarves, but assuming that one doesn’t want to copy 5e too closely, what might you use in such a scenario, especially if you want to avoid just having mutated Lawful races or blobs of random body parts like Chaos Spawn in 40k?

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>>93354492
Matter / Compounds / Composites / Pattern /Structure

Basically any processed elements. So metals, ceramics, chemicals etc. It represents "ordered" molecular structure of processed earth elements, that water corrodes and dilutes.

>>93355019
For as messy as it seems to us, life’s ultimate result is the creation of order. A species’ reproduction takes randomly distributed molecules and uses them to replicate itself. In a cosmic sense, life is an excellent expression of order and an active force against entropy. The same goes for the works of a species, be it art or technology.

I would personally represent chaos as the fundamental forces and elements of the world, the unthinking and unceasing things that destroy over the course of millions of years. Erosion through wind, rain, fire, tectonic shifting, that kind of thing. The gradual cooling of the universe. The embodiment of entropy itself. I would not personally make these entities sapient, maybe they would function like an anthill or beehive.

This conflict may not even be martial in nature. Rather, it would be the fundamental opposition of their effects on the world and how destructive one is to the other through their mere existence. But one left unchecked would result in the other being ground out themselves, resulting in an ever-churning “battle” that must necessarily occur to sustain existence itself.

To life, the entropic entities would be unthinking barbarians that threaten everything they have built. To entropy, life forms are terrifying gluttons that absorb their very bodies in a mad desire for control. Yet without continual destruction and renewal, life would not be able to sustain itself. If not for order, the entropic entities would simply follow their instincts until they too disperse into a uniform sludge. The yin and the yang, the dark and the light, ever spinning around each other in the great dance known as Creation.

TL;DR I got bored on the toilet at work and started to wax poetic. I hope you can use at least some of this to help with your world building.

>>93355268
>In a cosmic sense, life is an excellent expression of order and an active force against entropy.
Isn't life just a way that entrophy leads things to organize themselves in order to maximise the use of draining energy?

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>>93353608
It's made of wool.

>>93324946
No. In fact, I am journaling it in the format of old CRPG manuals which include in-game discussions posted in random order in addition to red herrings with no bearing on the game's actual plot purely to throw off would-be spoilers.

>>93354492
Neat. Can each element do stuff beyond just shooting elemental blasts and shit?

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>>93356055
Technology is the final element and it's elemental blast is just a Javelin AT
missile

I'm having trouble brainstorming up a religion, that has a pantheon of human-like deities but also has a branch that practices shamanism. A belief system that would allow for the consumption of animals to gain their strength

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>>93339844
I'm in the middle of building a website to display my autism.

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>>93352452
Well, again, it was just off the top of my head, I'm sure that if there's something that would work better for Air races, to say nothing of Fire and Earth races, we can find it. Like, maybe Fire races can make fires that don't let off any real amounts of smoke, like they're fueled by gas instead of wood?

So an elemental synergy type of thing? That might work. Got any more ideas for that kind of thing? Because my best idea at the moment is water mages using an Air magic tool to speed-freeze someone after spraying them.

Well, maybe if I make them responsible for more abstract/metaphysical aspects of the universe, while the other four are responsible for the physical stuff it could work. What do you think?

Not really what I was going for, but I might explore different races specializing in different ways of using the element culturally, yeah. And I agree with you about the ice thing. Oh, and those are all cool ideas, I might tweak those a bit, thanks.

>>93354492
You're thinking too hard.
I just made mine the seasons then you throw random elements in each season based on vibes.
Anything that doesn't seen to fit I placed in the solstice pool or the lunar pool.

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>>93321477
>TQs
>inb4 complaining about AI slop

Pic related are the races of my sci-fi setting. I've been coming up with alien races ever since I started playing with LEGO blocks and used them to build my own spaceships in the '90s, and a fair number of the pictured races here date back to then in one form or another.

They're just each meant to fit broad sci-fi stereotypes (the proud warrior race [chalak], the asshole space elves [tor'qua], the intrepid explorers [kyn], the jack-of-all-trades [elai], the scientists [edovan], etc.), coupled with also fitting into the 1920s IN SPACE that my setting is supposed to feel like. In the early 2000s I mapped them out to the core d20 stats (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) for a heavily modified Star Wars d20 game I ran in the setting, though right now I'm working on my own custom, non-d20 system for if I ever run a game in-setting again.

Give me the time and I could rant about any of them for pages and pages, but I'm sure you'd rather I didn't.

Oh, there's supposed to be another race, the pah. Tall thin avians, kind of look like anthro secretarybirds, the males are super colorful like parrots. They're utter hedonists; think what the Skeksis must have been like when they were young. However Bing AI isn't great at doing wing-arms, as opposed to wings and arms.

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>>93359041
Different guy, but please go on about this seasonal magic system

>>93354492
Not as interesting as you think it is

>>93358516
Really cool

>>93360631
It's a rough construction I made while coming up with a world where all magic is fae. Seemed appropriate to split it into seasons. This solved two issues.
1 - the autism trap of trying to boil things down into perfect elements
2 - allows simple polar categories

Here is the draft
>Spring:
Earth, Power, Growth, Touch, Lead
Trolls, Dryad, gnome, nisse, spriggan
>Winter:
Water, Cold, Darkness, Sound, Iron
Banshee, old man mountain, siren, vodnik, rusalka,
>Fall:
Air, Weakness, Decay, Smell, Copper
Pixie, redcap, djinn
>Summer:
Fire, Heat, Light, Sight, Gold
Leprachaun, Huldra, satyr, succubus,
>Solstice/Equinox:
Spirit, Time, Transmutation, Taste, Mercury
Shapeshifters, sithe, barghest
>Lunar:
Truth, Fate, Undeath, Agnosia, Silver
Lycanthropes, zombies, hags

I haven't worked on it in a while. Could use some extra powers and the solstice and lunar fields need some tweaking.
As for general worldbuilding it's designed to be human only (well plus dwarves being a separate humam evolution and potentially goblins being cursed dwarves). Elves are akin to elementals, they were servants to the fractured aspects of god as they created the world. All fae were creations of these aspects before God got tired of their haphazard tinkering and garhered his aspects back together and created humanity with less inherent magic, but a spark of free will.

My world is literally just a bunch of video game RPGs smashed together by declaring all the main characters are actually members of the same family. Then I simply come up with random bullshit to justify why one world faces literal end-of-the-world scenarios every 20 to 50 years.

>>93321477
I hate that half orcs are just twinks now

>>93321477
I love that half orcs are just twinks now

>>93361872
I hate that half-orcs even exist. Dumbest shit in fantasy

>>93362287
elaborate

>>93362329
How would a nonhuman interbreed with a human? Doesn't make sense. Might as well breed a dog with a cat.

>>93362329
This anon gave sufficient answer
>>93362441

But also Orcs are shit in the first place. They're just le ebil humans with green skin. They're like a goblin with all the flavor removed. No fantasy setting should ever have orcs, let alone some half-orc abomination

>>93362441
Wrong comparison

Both are humanoids. It'd be more like a tiger breeding with a lion.

>>93363002
I agree on that front, I'd rather have my barbarians be humans
>>93362441
But here I disagree, I like races being able to mix, but I think their mixing needs to operate on different rules that allow the races to survive long term and be a valid definition which isn't just a step from human races

>>93362441
Presumably Orcs, Elves, and so on are human-subspecies.

For the record, donkey's are the result of mixing horses and asses, and they have an odd-number of chromosomes and are thus entirely infertile.

>>93321477
>tell us how you reskinned Tolkien races so you feel original without any actual innovation

>>93363017
>>93363020
>>93363215
Humanoid just means resembling a human. It doesn't mean they have enough shared genetics to reproduce. A dog and cat is a fair comparison, though a dog and bobcat would be more analogous considering they are roughly the same size and shape within the differences between orcs and humans.
The lore seems to indicate these different humanoids were all created by different Gods. There is no feasible reason they would be able to mate with anything else created by Gods besides *magic*.
Any attempt to explain half-orcs scientifically breaks down when you know orcs can canonically reproduce with Ogres, who are explicitly giants and not humanoid.
Half breeds is ridiculous considering orcs have like half the lifespan of humans while elves have like 8x the lifespan. This implies an entirely different life cycle and reproductive cycle. How would an egg with DNA designed to gestate over 9 months even interface with sperm designed to gestate over 4? Or vice versa?
No, the only explanation is *magic* and the only reasoning is "more content" at best and a fetish at worst.

>>93363864
>There is no feasible reason they would be able to mate with anything else created by Gods besides *magic*
The idea that the gods are lazy isn't that hard for me to swallow. Plus- people in myths had NO idea how crossbreeding worked, not even on a genetics level. For instance the minotaur is the result of the Queen of Crete having sex with a bull. Like a big bull, but a regular one. And I know people tend not to brag about bestiality, but I figure that was still common enough back in the day that people could verify that that's not where minotaurs come from.

As for half-breeds, I think it's simplest to use elder-scrolls rules and say that you are whatever your mother is. Like imagine a halfing fucks a giant- if there's a giant baby gestating in a halfling womb that's probably going to create some issues.

>>93364263
You literally are just saying it's *magic*.
That's not really a cromulent explanation, but it is what it is. Aside from the lack of logic, it begs the question of why it is necessary to have it in the first place, especially when you are handwaving all reasoning for why it works? Halfbreeds do not add anything interesting to a setting besides the immersion breaking queerness of it

>>93364473
I was arguing against half-breed races.

>>93363263
Reskinning is still doing -something- when you compare it to:
> Humans but very short
> Humans but stout
> Humans with mildly pointy ears.
I like how Zelda OoT did those three races, with kokiri (and arguably, Dekus in MM) filling the hobbit niche, Gorons being the dwarves and zoras being the elves.

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>>93362441
It is indeed retarded, but these types of nonsense breeding pairs have been a thing since the beginning of time in mythology.
Also, Tolkien really liked the idea of hot and pure elf waifus getting fucked by human males. Human females getting fucked by orcs is essentially the same "blacked" type crap.

>>93364556
Fair enough. But they shouldn't be able to procreate at all. It does solve the half-breed issue

>>93365159
You could certainly write a setting where races are sexually incompatible. But you know, when people are making a fantasy setting, they aren't trying to write one based strictly on realistic scientific principles.
>>93364814
'Orced' stuff doesn't bother me cause I think it's just inherently silly. For me the appeal is elves getting cockdrunk. I think you could do the same thing but 'humaned' if you wanted.

What confuses me about 'blacked' porn is that it's not by and for black people. Most black people I've heard bring it up find it disturbing (being seen more as an object/fetish than a person). It's for people who are racist enough that a black man is having sex with a woman, but not so racist they won't still jack off to it which baffles me. I'd respect the fetish more if there were like black lesbians 'blacking' or whatever other women. That'd at least spice things up.

>>93365863
>write your own
lame reply

Also you can still write fantasy with believable elements

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im trying to make a cat person race and i am not sure if the ears should be on top of the head anime style. i saw this comment online that human ears are on the side of the head since we have veritical spines. its this bullshit?

>What’s important to realize is that primate brains in particular are held much differently than with most animals. Most animal brains are connected to a horizontal or largely horizontal spine, so the spine is connected behind the brain rather than under it. That mean the “top” of the brain stem is just in back of the brain, and it’s not far from the top of the head.

>For most animals, including most mammals and most reptiles, placement of the ears on the top of the skull, just aft of the brain, is ideal in both regards.

>Primates have vertical spines, so there is value in the ears being lower to be close to the top of the brain stem. Furthermore, the primate vertical posture means our ears are already quite high compared to most animals, and primate ancestors in trees had even higher ears already. The difference between where the ears are now and on the top of the head is relatively small.

I've been floating the idea of a species that is basically double-ended centaurs. And yes, I'm aware of the "pushme-pullyu" from this board circa a few years ago or so.

To get the obvious imminent question out of the way, they have a shared hole in the middle

They are able to seamlessly switch "roles" in regards to which one acts as the "front" at any given moment. They often "switch" in lieu of turning around.

Though I'm a bit stumped on anything regarding culture or even naming, other than that the "rear" twin will often talk without looking at who they're talking to, and somehow their culture does not consider this rude.

>>93366870
I don't know how I feel about this.

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>>93361257
So if all magic is tied to the fae, with humans being less magical, how do humans, and dwarves, use it?

As for powers, while I've never played it myself I hear that the Changeling game has Courts based on the seasons, maybe that is worth a look?

>>93363864
>No, the only explanation is *magic* and the only reasoning is "more content" at best and a fetish at worst.
Well, that or "science" (see: Star Trek). But as a general rule, for my own settings there are no canonical hybrids, though there's enough magical, divine or scientific weirdness to leave edge cases for unique individuals like that (say, player characters).

>>93366689
It doesn't sound like it matters a lot, and ears on top are cuter.

>>93366689
Yes. Only humans and penguins actually have vertical spines, so that bit is incorrect.

Tree shrews, elephants, deer, goats, cetaceans, birds, and giraffes also have side ears, among others. Kangaroos, who have similar posture to other great apes, have their ears on the top of their head.

In general, highly "deterministic" claims of evolution like this should be considered highly questionable. A lot of evolution is path dependence, like how human eyes have a blind spot, but similarly-structured cephalopod eyes don't.

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Aztlan guy here, I decided the best interpretation of the setting would be that the land/world is one similar in biome to South America/Mexico, thus why the Aztecs decided to settle where they did after migrating.

I can't help but feel I'm missing something from my broad strokes plan.
Can anyone figure out what it is?

>>93368617
The whole world is a mix of desert and jungle? Where did the Aztecs migrate from? Our world, via planar travel?

>>93368691
Using Aztec mythology, they originally came from this world to ours, I'm interpreting it as 'via planar travel'.

I could probably do with a bit more desert honestly, but I'm leaning towards the land being heavily jungle and swamp based with mountainous regions.

Naturally there are other lands in the setting (probably) with other biomes but those're beyond reach. This region sits equivalent to the northern end of south america/mexico in terms of where it is on the planet.

>>93368708
Cool concept. Some ideas:
>More lakes with islands in the middle, natural or man-made
>Aztec mythological monsters and gods
>Blood sacrifice religion, maybe vampires in or beneath the temples
>Fear of Spanish conquistadors following them there, or preparing for that day

Mexico is very diverse geographically, so you can have almost anything as long as it's hot.

>>93368726
>Already going for, just not included in the big scale
>Naturally
>100% a given, group has already ran into Temple Guards (aka: Sacred vampires)
>I'm including nothing relating to the Spanish, I want it to be a 100% Mesoamerican setting, otherwise that becomes the focal point inevitably and fuck that for a lark
I'm including dinosaurs though, because dinosaurs are cool and could've easily slipped through the portal.
Yeah I'm mainly worried about missing a trick when developing the map currently.

>>93339890
I like both of those and redemption. Basically they're sub-sapient individually but generate an egregore "dark lord" overseer when forced into close contact. When "born" feral these are self-hating, frustrated and solipsistic so to slaughter enough of the horde that the mind decoheres is a mercy to all parties. Should they persist long enough to learn that their component beasts can be kept in line with carrot as well as stick and that other sapients exist (and can be profitably interacted with beyond pillage) they mature into cheerfully murderous mercenaries. Not liable to hold a grudge and willing to negotiate when incentives align.

Very rarely they become downright civilised and emulate the social structures of dwarves and hobbits (as intoxication by symbiotic ergot is key to hallucinating sapience the beer + bread fermentation culture of both is a godsend). So mostly guilt-free fodder shading into rights deserving almost-individuals.
>>93321526
The ferals above are obviously a wretched lot in mind and spirit, to kill each beast is to cull a rabid dog. >>93323329 is slightly in effect albeit more out of inept design than malice. Turns out that the middlepoint between "resurrect ourselves as controller-tulpae" and "keep our tools dumber than us so they don't develop past our ability to control" is a mess which satisfies neither.

>>93341623
This is why Robert the Oak is one of my favourite things to have come out of /tg/ in recent memory. I stuff Crowned Tree symbolism wherever I can in republican/constitutional symbolism as a result.

>>93325018
Ditto, running the stuff on occasion is icing on top!

>>93332968

Just do it.
The Japanese mix them together irl

There is a anime about a school exactly surrounded by a Catholic church a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist Monastary

Haunted Junction Very funny

>>93368857
>Robert the Oak
Pls elaborate.

Help figuring out a good term for a type of NPC?
They're a lot like liches: humans (always humans) that delve deep into dark magic, to eventually figure out some rituals to reshape souls with the ultimate ritual being about reshaping their own souls. Rituals are not all that difficult to achieve (I'm thinking in PC terms they could be like level 5), but after the ritual it's pretty much random chance how powerful they can get. Consuming souls does make them more powerful, but only souls of humans or souls of other of these people who had undergone the rituals.
Lich is the closest being, but I don't the "close but not quite" to make it confusing.
This setting doesn't have actual gods, and the most powerful of these guys can do stuff such as putting and maintaining barriers over entire countries, or control an entire's country climate, stop earthquakes and so on, so just "dark gods" or something similar might convey it, but I'm not sure.
The transformation cannot be reversed, and their minds and personality changes radically, pretty much making them always evil and sadistic, although just months later they get a bit more self control and are able to further reshape their souls, although they're pretty much incapable of being good unless it's for a self serving purpose.

>>93365863
>What confuses me about 'blacked' porn
I think it's mostly about "ruining" a woman, even vanilla porn can have hints of that by implying the woman's pussy or ruined or so on.
>Cockdrunk
First time I've ever seen this term and it seems way too silly, but whatever.

>>93369822
Harbingers. It fits with them being able to fuck around and do natural disasters.

>>93367050
Oh. Forgot to mention one other biological/social quirk is that they have shared sensations, so the two "halves" have a gesture of affection toward each other that involves...hugging themselves

>>93367050
>double-ended centaurs
What do you mean?
Like CatDog?

>>93369822
So, soul-eaters or some kind of psychic vampires? The whole thing reminds me of the cultivation genre, so jiangshi might also fit.

>>93369906
That does sound cool, thanks.

>>93370195
I didn't know about the cultivation genre, but yeah, it is very similar to the idea I wanted, so I'll look it up.
Soul-eaters seems like a fair fit, but vampire and jiangshi feel like they could be misleading. Plus these guys aren't really undead.

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>>93329668
Atleast to me, Science Fantasy doesnt have to have magic, so long as technology is both advanced enough and ambiguous enough in how it works to where what ever effects it can be produced can be handwaved to such an extent that it might aswell be magic.

>>93321509
This. I feel like this is what the majority of fantasy art is nowadays. What's the name of this style? Cause it isn't just one dude.

>>93321509
For some reason, all of them except the half elf look like they're taking a shit.

Magic in the setting is defined by two categories, Affinities and Schools.
Affinities are elemental characteristics of magic, there being 8 in total. Each Affinity has an Antithseis, meaning that two conflicting affinities cannot be present in the same item, magic, or creature.
The affinities are:
Fire - Water
Earth - Wind
Light - Shadow
Life - Death
Non conflicting Affinities can be manipulated at the same time without a problem. Affinities also embody more abstract aspects, such as earth being stability/apathy or water being flow and melancholy.
Schools are the ways that the caster of the setting understand magic and how it can be manipulated. The Schools are:
Evocation: Create a non lasting effect of the associated Affinity
Conjuration: Create a lasting effect/creature/item of the associated affinity
Abjuration:Create a protection based on the Affinity
Transmutation: Alter the characteristics of something based on the affinity
Encantation: Alter the perception or apparent characteristics of something based on the associated affinity
Divination: Consult/alter the threads of fate or causality based on the affinity
Mallediction: Curse something reating a lasting condition
Benediction: Bless something based on affinity

So in order to cast a spell like fire spark, the caster needs Affinity 1 in fire and affinity 1 in Evocation. More powerful and complex spells might require more than one affinity, let's say lava dart being Fire 1, Earth 1 and Evocation 1. Same thing with more complex spells that require more than one school, like summon cinder soldier, Fire 1, Evocation 1 and Conjuration 1.

>>93358610
>Well, maybe if I make them responsible for more abstract/metaphysical aspects of the universe, while the other four are responsible for the physical stuff it could work. What do you think?
No strong opinions, I think you can ideate more than 4 more concrete elements if you want but I don't know exactly what you are going for.
If you go with dual elements as well but allow one of these element to be abstract then that would alleviate the issue I presented before.
>Not really what I was going for, but I might explore different races specializing in different ways of using the element culturally, yeah.
What are you responding to?

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>>93368617
Ongoing work. I'd like more mountain ranges & maybe some actual great plains I think, but I'm not sure where to fit them.

>>93369407
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2020/75778206/
>>93371245
That's a whole lotta 'crawlin!

>>93327325
Hobbesian. Not because I believe this to be the case irl but because a core conceit is the necessity of "memetic scaffolds" to prevent cultures on the high frontier from violently exploding. Faced with the horrors of a lifetime in smelly tubes with nothing better to expect for one's descendants "pioneer derring-do" doesn't quite cut it unaided.

However mankind was already riddled with genetic tweaks and memetic malware by the time it reluctantly limped from the trash-heap they'd turned Earth into so it's anyone's guess whether the Hobbesian state is anything like the natural one. In fact as Rosseau idolised the state of nature many exalt "humanity unaltered" and would swear of memetech entirely if only that didn't leave them so vulnerable to manipulation by outsiders.
>>93329895
Seems true to life and sorta-optimistic in an absurdist sorta way. We may be trapped in rational appreciation/analysis of our irrational follies with little ability to alter them but at least you can have an authentic time "playing the game" of being your idiosyncratic self.

>>93371367
>That's a whole lotta 'crawlin!
Those're 24 mile hexes as well, I'm going to zoom down to 6 mile hexes once it's complete.
Mainly because I'm using ACKS so mass combat and kingdom building are a given. A fully levelled ACKS character has a kingdom of 286-2,350+ 24 mile hexes.

I need the room for if the party ever gets there.

Would cannibalistic underground mutant humans be a good replacement for "orcs" in a post post apocalyptic setting?

>>93370103
Something like that, yeah. A "front end" on both ends

>>93372980
What, like how H.G. Wells did it? Yeah, that's fine.

>>93321477
I have a question.
In your opinion, when making a western type setting, are the Mexicans adding or taking away from it? Like, would a faction standing in as the Mexicans add or substract the experience and quality of the setting?
I am debating on whether to introduce a Mexico stand-in or abstaining from it, and I want some outsider opinions.

can you D&D nerds get night elves already

>>93374474
Sadly, no.

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>>93370942
I'm a little confused with what you mean by "dual elements but with one abstract". I'll have to think on this a bit more in order to properly answer your other question, I'll check back later when either you reply or I manage to sort things out enough to expand on it.

That thing you were talking about, like Dwarves being able to use the minerals in their environment to sense their surroundings in the dark, or the dirt/sand thing.

>>93374485
NTA, but why not?

>>93374605
Night elves are basically wood elves (nature-loving) plus drow (matriarchal, weird skin tone). Too much overlap. Any new race has to try to carve out a new niche, distinct from the canon races.

>>93369874
No, see the appeal of 'ruining' a woman I understand. I think it's a bit misogynist, but hey I'm a guy with a sex drive, I get it. What I don't get is the race angle. Like I'm not a fan of ugly-bastard porn, but I understand what people who do like that are getting out of it.

Again, what I find nuts is that you have to simultaneously racist enough that a black man having sex with a woman bothers you, but not so racist you still won't jack off to it. If it were one or the other I'd get it. I honestly wonder if a part of it might be some repressed homosexuality/bisexuality that is working its way through or something- something has to be repressed in this equation any way you slice it.

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>>93374616
>basically wood elves (nature-loving)
>big distinctions between druids & priestesses, with males dominating the tree-hugging role and females dominating the military and judicial roles
>architecture shared between tree houses, Japanese-styled wooden constructs, and stone utilization
>violent and xenophobic when threatened
>distinct connection to the Light via Elune compared to Draenei & Naaru, Humans & nothingness
>vast range of ages from 1 to 10,000, wisdom beyond measure (blizzard has no idea how to write this)
>athletic giants
>total babes

>>93374254
Lots of Bandito's factor into a lot of westerns. Mexican history is in a word, complicated, and it was no less complicated during the wild-west era. Pancho Villa's raid across the border is seen by some as the final chapter of the wild-west saga.

Even besides that, naturally there were hispanics all across the wild west, half of the wild-west itself was former Mexican territory won during the Mexican-American war. The Alamo would have been in living memory for most of the people in the era. Also- the US legally classified hispanics as white (and have since we started keeping official records for government purposes on that stuff) so not to say that there was zero racism towards hispanics, there was plenty of that, but they didn't have to face the same hurdles as say Blacks or Asians did out west (on that note the western half of the Intercontinental Railroad was made by chinese workers, and the chinese and japanese made their fortunes in the gold rush acting as cooks or tailors to others looking to find gold out in the hills).

I'll even point out there was a saga out west during the Civil War where both sides tried recruiting 'mexicans' to their side (I use airquotes because since the land was recently seized there was a lot of blurring of lines on whether these people still identified with Mexico or the United States- both sides used the term when referring to hispanics in the era). The Union even tried recruiting them out of the US Embassy in Mexico during the war (which annoyed the Mexican government since this is technically illegal- not just Mexican-Mexicans mind you, but both Hispanic and White Americans who were in Mexico at the time). Both sides however saw them as politically unreliable and not for ill-reasons as a lot of them didn't see the civil-war as their conflict, and a lot took their horses and guns down to Mexico as it was in an ongoing revolution (many feeling that's where they were actually needed as soldiers).

>>93374709
Yes you can note a bunch of details that make them more interesting. You could do that for wood elves too, if anybody cared to.

All the actual races have like two things listed about them each. If you boil nelfs down to two things, it's nature loving and matriarchal. (You also can't do specific religion or architecture, because D&D is """"""""""generic"""""""""".)

>>93374736
>(You also can't do specific religion or architecture, because D&D is """"""""""generic"""""""""".)
is this like when only 12 gods exist and all species are aware of them so therefore no religions toward imagined gods can't happen?

>>93367244
I may have spoke in a confusing way. Fae is just the lingering elements of the Aspects that were used to shape the world. God created the world then split himself, then the aspects created elves as servants, and went about moulding the world like a sandbox and filling it with creations. Since they didn't have all the powers of God, they each used a portion of their power to create a net around the world. This allowed each aspect amd their elf servants to access all the power they needed to shape things.
So magic is in a somewhat typical weave, but it's use is more specialized.
Wizards use wands as if they are knitting the weave. Their magic is percise and powerful.
Clerics use chants along with staves to bang the weave, creating magic that reaches a crescendo.
Bards play the weave like strings, creating a continuous magic that they may riff off for poignant effects.
Sorcerers weave with their hands, allowing more maleable magic, but less powerful.

>>93367244
Also what is the "changeling game"?

>>93374741
D&D 5e offers DMs almost nothing except long clunky boring trash combats and the chance to worldbuild, you can't force them to use your gods or history or architecture or anything else.

>>93374474
We did. White Wolf published Warcraft supplements under the OGL back in the days of 3rd Edition.

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>>93374742
Thanks for clearing that up. Speaking of wands and wizards, are wands specialized for each season?

>>93374749
Changeling the Lost.

>>93374921
Really? Neat! Why did they stop though?

>>93374925
No. Wizards specialize in a season, but can learn cross season spells.
The season design is intended to create rails for magic design and give some flavor to magic, not to specifically limit PC access to magic.

>>93374941
Presumably a company-wide shift away from the Sword and Sorcery subsidiary to focusing on their own system, mixed with an expiration of the license. 4e didn't enjoy quite the same degree of third-party support as 3rd/3.5, and with World of Darkness getting a big shift to NWoD prior, I imagine D&D ports of licensed works took a backseat to their own products.

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>>93370907
This sounds awesome! I would love to hear more about it! Like, what's the full list for the more abstract aspects of each Affinity? And when you say that two conflicting Affinities cannot be present in the same item, magic, or creature, does that mean that a mage can only use four Affinities max, or just that they cannot cast a spell that uses both, say, Fire and Water at the same, but 'can' use them separately?

>>93362441
Well, humans and Neanderthals interbred in the past, along with a few other hominids, so assuming that Orcs and humans are related species, it's actually not as implausible as you're implying.

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>>93374967
My question was more about the wands being specialized for the seasons, like a wizard switching from a Summer specialized wand that gives a boost to their Fire spells, even if they're already a Summer wizard, to a Winter wand to amplify their Water spells, since that's outside their area of expertise. Sorry for not being clearer. BTW, how are wands made, and do they require any specific materials?

>>93375093
Wands are not season specific, though they could be. I could come up with some ubiquitous material for them, but it is nicer to say it is in the knowledge of the spell and craftsmanship of the wand. Gives more room for development

>There are massive godlike monsters trapped beneath the world. King Solomon of Israel trapped them in subterranean prisons to save humanity from their frequent rampages.
>The spell that traps them also uses the energy they create in their writing and stamping (for they don't like being trapped beneath the earth) to counter earthquakes. Therefore, the entire planet has been rendered immune from tectonic changes like tsunamis and Earthquakes.
>Dragons are perpetual motion engines. They will NEVER get tired, either physically or mentally. And they are always trying to get out....and sometimes, they do.


This is why Dragons always emerge from caves and subterranean regions.

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Alright, I think I'm mostly done. I can't help but feel the map is missing something, maybe a little bare in the top area?

Can anyone pick up on any obvious tricks I'm missing?

>>93375062
I'm still figuring out the list, but the main idea is that each Affinity embodies its own "elemental" nature while also bringing subjetic meanings and aspects. Life magic is well, magic over the forces of life and the natural cycles. But it is also about mortality, hunger, violence, happiness, health, sickness (virus, fungi and bacteria are just another form of life).

On the affinities and their antithsesis yes. A mage can wield up to 4 affinities, since when you get an Affinity in Earth, you lose all possibility of understanding what ìs in the essence not-earth or inverse-earth, in this case Wind magic.
Items cannot have runes of opposing Affinties and beings cannot be affected by spells of the opposing Affinity.
A sword with a life rune cannot be infused with a death rune at the same time. The new rune will supplant the older one. A creature under the effect of a fire enchantment, if targeted by a water enchantment, the fire one will fickle out and only the water one will be active.

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>>93321477
challenge:
take this parody map and make it serious

Are there any intelligent monsters that are incapable of using tools?

>>93378121
>Republic of the dead
I am immediately intrigued

>>93364761
>humans but very tumblr

>>93323196
Evolutionary arms races between two competing species to throw up crazy hunting/ escaping traits

>>93379876
Who even uses Tumblr in current year?

>>93380998
You're right, the boil that was tumblr has been popped and the disease ridden puss is spreading all over the internet so there needs to be a better term for the SJW type cancer known for producing that sort of art style.

>>93378352
Same here, more details please.

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Anybody else hit a roadblock when it comes to populating their settings?

I'm working on pic rel, and trying to figure out what I could do with the eastern continent, the big one that's like 80% hot desert. There has to be something going on over there, but I'm not sure what to do with that beyond the classic arabian knights stuff.

Still, its been fun working on the western continents, those two have so much interesting little bits to them its kept me occupied

>>93381152
What exactly is the issue with the site?

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>>93377921
Okay, what do the other Affinities have so far, maybe we can help you flesh things out a bit more based on what you say, since you said that you're still figuring out the list?

In the context of the setting, how does a mage 'get' an affinity to begin with? In general, not just in terms of PCs? What about non-sapient creatures with Affinities, how does that work?

Also, that "beings cannot be affected by spells of the opposing Affinity" bit reminds me a bit of some Pokémon types. I presume that it has loopholes, like a Wind spell sucking the air away from an area where a being with an Earth Affinity just happens to be standing? Not to mention beneficial spells.

>>93380998
Today? Mostly inoffensive queers who just talk about their young adult novels. The acidic cunts who couldn't have fun if you threw them in a holodeck left long ago.
>>93381363
>but I'm not sure what to do with that beyond the classic arabian knights stuff.
A thing I like to do is brainstorm differing solutions to the same problem, and expanding around it through whatever implications it has until I have made an actual culture.
>problem: no fucking water
>solution 1: large plant that absorbs moisture in the air and can store it, becoming bigger and bigger with age
>this means they're non-migratory to stick around that plant, might eat its fruit and use its other parts for many purposes (maybe the bark is fibrous and useful for construction, making rope, clothing, and more)
>extremely militant and prohibit the use of fire in their settlements, all in order to protect the plant: it is not really usable for human purposes for the first ten years of its life and thus can't be readily replaced
>solution 2: dig until you find an aquifier
>digging makes them build large cities in the rock, and thanks to ready access to water, they build a masterful ventilation system that uses wind towers (badgir) to keep everything cool
>to reduce food imports and space dedicated to food growth, they rely on hydroponics to grow their crops underground, and trade minerals and readily-usable rock found through excavation
And this is what I came up very fast. Cultures are shaped by their environment as well as the cultures surrounding them, so take a good look at your world and the ideas might come from unexpected places.

>>93381363
I'm as well, I think the best advice I can give is to force yourself to not overthink, be overly derivative at the start, directly copying from settings you know and as you come up with specific events then be ready to massively change things to make specific narratives and events work

>>93381277
Just top of my head:
> A bunch of exiled necromancers from the Human Empire occupied a sparsely populated region of the Dwarfland
>However, in order to conquer it, they raised large number of dead soldiers
>Every resurrecting weakened the necromancers, and after doing it so many times, they lost any magical ability
>Meanwhile, with the decline of necromancer's magic, the undead stopped taking orders from them and developed basic intellect
>In order to control the dead, the necromancers founded the Republic of the Dead
>In the republic, the dead vote for the magicless necromancers to office, of course the elections are rigged, but the Undead don't know that

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>>93381363
Sometimes you just need big, empty spaces. However, you do have wetlands on the east, and cooler forests in the south. Lots of savannah and grasslands as well. Mongols, Scythians, Gökturks, Gobi, Sahara, Madagascar, Laos, India, even Australia can all be inspirations that are fittingly relatively east of your "American" continents.

My own setting is a massive Saharan continent with Greece, Carthage, Basque, and Louisiana expys for thematic reasons. But, knowing what regions each of my biomes are meant to represent is a huge help in populating them thematically. Then again, I had the themes first, and created the map after. Perhaps that's why it might have been easy for me.

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>>93321477
>What fictional races exist in your setting, and why did you choose those in particular?
Pic related

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>>93355268
Well, I was trying to make it so that Law could be evil or Chaos can be good, maybe I could have communicated that better, sorry, but still an interesting analysis, thanks, I'll consider it, maybe ask again next thread with my question developed a bit better.

>>93355472
Where are you getting that idea from?

>>93381363
>Anybody else hit a roadblock when it comes to populating their settings?
No, if anything I'm trying to control my urges give every river valley distinct culture (>>93382209)

>the big one that's like 80% hot desert
Watch Lawrence of Arabia for inspiration and add mountains and oases.
Basically don't think the desert just as desert, but a collection mountains and oases.
Saudia Arabia was full of small tribes based their village either around a mountain or oasis.
Some of the mountains created shadows allowing growing crops meant that caravans had to cross the desert to reach the fertile, so they had to buy the tribal territory and pay tolls to them.
You could have other tribes fighting over these trade routes.

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Map is almost done. I'm tempted to pop another island in that big bat in the north-west area. But honestly? It looks pretty good as is.

Now I just need to convert to Black & White, grey out the parts of the world that're currently unexplored, use the upscale to get it to 6-mile hexes and I'm laughing.

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>>93321477

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So I'm making my own fantasy race and after going through some concepts, I decided that each tribe of them would have a tail that ends in a different weapon. This becomes the defining feature of each tribe.

The thing is I'm not sure what to make their weapons to suit the theme of each tribe. So far I have:

>Generalist Tribe
>Hunting and Wilderness Tribe
>Industrious building tribe
>Warlike tribe

I was thinking that the hunter tribe would have tail weapons that end in spearlike ends, the building one would have clublike tails, not sure about what would fit the other two.

>>93384594
>Mapping
>Not literally building a world
You're overcome by the definition of things, get thee behind me.

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>>93384814
You can literally replace maps with anything as long you keep things relative.

>>93384908
Name an aspect of worldbuilding you couldn't make the exact same argument for.

Why the hell are you people so obsessed with maps?

>>93378121
>mermaidopolis is half desert
Namibia, here we go!

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>>93370942
Hope that we can talk more in the next thread!

As for what I'm going for, I think that I want the elements to be the driving principles/forces of the world, with the races naturally being tied to them as a result. Some races even believe that they were made by the elements directly, though I'm not sure if that is actually the case or not right now.

>>93387338
I look forward to see what you build, I want part of my world to be very elemental focused but not all of the world, I think I will make a subset of humans that evolved to attune themselves to the local magic type

>>93385584
What are you talking about?

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>>93387371
I do hope that we get to talk more on these humans of yours next thread, it sounds like a cool idea.

races?

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>>93387424
Namibia's got a bigass desert right on the coast. If a ship runs aground there, there's a good chance it'll be completely in the dunes in a few years as the coast gets modified by the waves. This is the Eduard Bohlen, which ran aground in 1909 and is now half a kilometre from the coast.