Building fictional worlds that people will actually be interested in is a tricky business, as I’m sure you well know, so what resources do you use to help you? Be it books like picture related I use, programs, websites, random tables you use when stuck or wanting to add some chance into things, and anything else. Help your fellow worldbuilders, especially the beginners just starting on their first settings, by sharing them here please!
>worldanvil.com>fantasytowngenerator.com>ChatGPT.com (For general use)
>>94083715Forgot>fiverr.com (For commissioned work)
>what resources do you use to help you?The other players. Best way to gain investment is to have them input their interests.
>>94083579>will actually be interested inthis is why you should develop it through play. You do play don't you?
>>94085308Yeah but talking about games on the games board is killing the games board. We need more parasitic worldbuilding and in your setting questions where nobody actually discusses anything, and everyone shouts into a void about things tangentially related to games at best, without conversing with any of the other posters.Nogames parasitism and attention-dependent in-ur-settan whoring is what this board about games needs, so get your yesgames out of here.
>>94083579Are there any books like this specifically for magic systems that you would find worthy of recommendation?
>>94083715>ChatGPTHow exactly do you use ChatGPT In Worldbuilding?
>>94086492I use it as an organizer. Tell it everything about a city or country, fill in all the details, and just let the algorithm make it look concise.
>>94083579I’m looking for resources on creating original deities and pantheons for my worlds, is this resource worth getting, or do you have anything better in mind?
>>94085344Have you tried looking at GURPS Magic and GURPS Thaumaturgy? GURPS books usually have a good share of research, tips and advice even if you don't want to use the crunch.
>>94091707I hadn't even considered using GURPS, thanks. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.
>>94083579What system are you running for your setting? How did the last game in it go?
>>94085344For worldbuilding purposes, this one is great.It explains what magic is like "IRL", written by someone who actually believes in it.Some of it would be considered purely speculative (for example: he considers that ESP is the same phenomenon as magic, except not channeled through a ritual), but there's also a lot of informations about how modern anthropology analyses magic.https://www.sjgames.com/thaumaturgy/
>>94091649Mircea Eliade, for me. Although it's more about mythology than about gods.That's a good question, actually. Is there a writer out there, like Mircea Eliade, who proposes a model for "how gods are created"?
>>94083715>worldanvil.comI’ve heard mixed reviews on that site, what’s your opinion?
>>94099681I'm using it right now actually. Several key takeaways:>50% off yearly subscriptionsIf you just wait and check in once a week or so, you can usually find them doing a 50% off deal so the more deluxe version is only 55 bucks for a year. Then you cancel and you get to keep your world until you run out of time. Then, they don't delete your stuff, you just wait for another discount day to re-up.>OrganizationIt's a good site to keep things in order if you understand how Wikis work. I'm assuming most people on here would. The learning curve isn't sharp, but it's a step above easy as hell. Then when you're used to it, it's second nature.>Game Worlds and MapsGreat map system with placeable markers that you can link to city pages. Really useful.>Published WorldsYou can create the world and then make it public for your players. They can only see what you allow them to see, but for keeping everything straight, it's helpful>Better than trying to do this all with Word DocumentsI can create a god, generate an image, upload and have links to all demigods on the side as well as description categories for everything from domain to eye color.TL;DR It's better than Word Documents and only 55 bucks a year.
>>94091649GURPS Religion is a classic, since that has 5e on the cover and is talking about stat blocks, I would assume it's bad.
I've been trying to learn Qgis because it seems pretty fucking good for map making despite it being intended for academic use.
>>94096339>Mircea EliadeI've never even heard of him before. Not sure that he's really what I'm looking for if he's more about mythology than gods, but thanks anyway.>>94099939This is a good start, thanks, is there anything else you'd say I should check out? Okay, I won't get that one then, thanks.
>>94100397Okay, do you have any advice for someone using it for that purpose then please?
I'm working on sword and sorcery world which is all about exoticism. So I'm trying to gather as much weird custom/little tidbits of every day life from the past or around the world as I can find.Stuff like>In this civilisation, they keep the mummified bodies of their ancestors in their houses>In this village, they go through horrible facial scaring and deformation to avoid having their girls stolen during raids>In this city, every child is supposed to memorise the deeds of their ancestors, going back centuries, and use their examples as a guide for their own livesOne thing which is hard to find, however, is the small day-to-day stuff.Say, you are whatever the equivalent of an adventurer is, in Aztec-age Mexico, where do you sleep when you arrive in a city? What would be the closest equivalent to an inn? What does a dining table looks like? Would you be sitting on chairs? On rugs?Little descriptive details like that gives a lot of flavour to a campaign
>>94106106There are a lot of datasets about Earth, like elevation, rivers, cities, biospheres. You can download them and just make specific maps for stuff you want, like a detailed map of the buildings in New York. There are a bunch of Youtube Videos about it.
>>94083579>Worldbuilding ResourcesAccept no substitute, given they are all you will ever need.
>>94106526Unironically go play Roadwarden. It shouldn't take you more than about 8 hours (5 if you aren't incompetent and/or ESL)Then rethink your stance once you finish the game. But first finish it, since trying to explain it is pointless, while there is a solid chance it will click for you about one hour in already as to why the fuck your approach is one of the dumbest imaginable.
>>94107437Thanks for the tip, are there any videos in particular you'd recommend?
>>94109083So that can tell you how to make maps, how a plausible city would work, etc.?
>>94114857NTAYRTI've found random generation tables to be a workable assist with general concepts but honestly they're not doing a lot of the heavy lifting they're just initial ideas. Stars Without Number, Crimson Heroes, AD&D DMG, DM's Dressings, D30 Books, etc. all work but having too many tables drowns out your ability to create the actual working game material. The blank page and pen is what makes the actual stuff for use. It takes trial and error rather than any of the computer assisted tools that try and sell themselves as a button to push or other shit you don't need. Reading non-ttrpg material will give you more ideas and capacity than anything else. >pick 2-3 inspirational sources, don't add more, make the choice and work with it >use blank pages to make several different attempts at drawing in different scales. Practice. You should be able to draw a decent enough map for playing ttrpgs after the first 6 or so>use blank pages to write in descriptions of places on the map and other ideas about the places as the come to you. Doodle as well. You should have enough 'world' material to play a ttrpg in about 10 pages of roughs. >go back with a different colour pen a few days later, edit. Don't rewrite. Edit. You have enough material to run a game. >write out and draw the working version on more blank pages. >run game, add as needed
>>94112759I'll be honest with you and say that whenever there was a video that didn't talk about making a brand new map I didn't watch it, but there are a lot so whichever one you pick will be fine.
>>94083579I’m looking to create a setting where the elements are the source of all magic, and the cultures, and everything else, are tied to them, are there any games that aren’t Avatar or Legend of the Five Rings that I can use as a resource for this, or at least a source of inspiration, since I want my setting to have more variety in the cultures, including more that revere multiple elements, just for starters.
>>94091649Pantheons are an energy sink. Create the 2 most popular gods at most and decide what kind of people prays to each. The rest can appear later.
>>94083579Hey, does anyone have any good resources for how to handle races in your worlds? Be it for making original races or putting a new spin on existing ones like elves, either is fine. I’m having trouble finding anything that looks like it’ll be even halfway decent, especially if I want to avoid 5e materials.
>>94099681>>94099883>It's only $55 a yearA few months back I remember someone here with a tool they made & posted on itch.io called "Nebulous". Since the biggest draw to World Anvil is being to organise things like a wiki, this also helps you organise stuff but costs nothing instead of $50. Of course, unlike World Anvil you can't publish it, but I'd also say this option is better than a dozen word documents.It also allows you to create cool web diagrams for connected things.
>>94120744https://nebulousinteractive.itch.io/nebuloushere is a link if anybody wants to try it out
>>94086492Its good at "rp", fluff, and really microstuff like that... asking to to write official documents/decrees , give speeches as kings, ask it to roleplay as powerful people with you being an advisor.
>>94083579Fantasia archive the the free, offline, non-DRM version of world anvil. It has some stupid purple dragon as its logo but you can turn that picture off.
>>94122802Thanks for that, anything else we should know before using it?
>>94109095>why the fuck your approach is one of the dumbest imaginable.You are not one of those "worldbuilding detracts from my dungeon dwelling time" autists, right, anon
>>94109095>>94126767Shit, I pressed "send" too early.I mean: alright, I'm intrigued. I've checked the trailer for the game and I'm not sure what you meant yet, but I saw that there's a free demo of the game, so I'll give that a try.
>>94119780Are you asking about images, or writing?
>>94119780I found this series to be really good, though it's obviously science fiction leaning: https://mailanka.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/psi-wars-building-aliens-part-1-concept-and-theme/It's not really a subject that's commonly touched on in any detail, sadly.
>>94127099The latter, though if they're really GOOD images I wouldn't mind some of those too.>>94128896Well, it's a start, thanks for sharing it. Why do you think that it's not touched on in any detail very often?
>>94127099Not him, but if you have some images to share I will be happy to have them.
>>94083579What are some good resources for creating undersea settings/regions, especially in regards to the races and settlements?
>>94121355Thanks for the link!
>>94083579What are some good resources for creating fantasy settings or regions based on Japan and/or China please?
>>94141459Seconding please.
>>94133761>>94137933>>94140852>>94141459>>94145371Let it die.
>>94083579Check out Mark Rosenfelder's stuff, he's got something for making Languages, Planets, and regions based on India, The Middle East, and China, to answer >>94141459's as (sadly no Japan as of yet).
>>94083579Are there any good mapping resources or programs that haven’t been mentioned yet?
>>94150316Try Songs of the Eons.
>>94145409
>>94109083What if you want to cut down on paper and keep it all digital?
>>94083579What are some good resources for necromancy and undead, especially if you want to put your own spin on things?
>>94157858>NN what exactly?
>>94160672>>94160797>>94160875
>>94155954Or just have horrible handwriting like me?
>>94157858I
>>94165327>II what, are you spelling something?
>>94169506He’s messing with you dude. Ignore him.
>>94129433I don't have any resources on the topic, but for my own campaigns I look to summarize a few different groups / ideologies within a population, as well as their overall social structure and economy, and aim to make each one look different than earth.Like, in my upcoming game, my elven empire is structured like Heian Uji, where almost everyone belongs to either a noble 'uji', trade 'uji', or a church, with a few ways to switch from one or another, and only a small number of people either deliberately striking out as independents or being cast out. As a result, (and because theyre elves), it's a society without beggars, where basically everyone has access to at least really basic lodgings and rations, though the lowest class and unskilled people might often just have a bed and a chest in a bunk house with other servants, and not a lot of privacy.They run food-forests and have vertical mushroom farms and algae ponds they use to farm for a lot of their staples, giving them a diet with a lot of nuts and mushrooms and algaes for their plants, with less labor than historical farming; providing their staples; also greenhouses. Between a more efficient agricultural system and crossbreeding plants, they produce more food than they actually need.And the economy is more or less based on xianxia sect 'cultivation points', with an annual wealth-tax to get people to keep doing shit for the 'uji' that essentially owns them. It's fundamentally a labor economy more than a raw goods economy.They practice resource forecasting and population control to ensure that population never outstrips their food stores, and they keep large well maintained warehouses of dried food stores in case of emergencies; droughts; long winters, etc.---Anyways. So that's my elves.If I were designing a campaign to be built around dwarves, I would come up with a much more dwarfy setup.
>>94175782Well, I was hoping for some more formal resources, but this is still a great start, thanks! I'd love to hear any quick ideas for your hypothetical dwarves if you don't have any more general races advice please, assuming that it's not too much trouble of course.
>>94150316All the stuff I use has been mentioned already, sorry.
>>94179652Why's there such flat lines between the Iberians and the Byzantines? You only see those kinds of lines used on colonial borders.
>>94179652Pretty based map if I say so myself.
>>94183805>"The Piss shall rise!"
>>94177249 Pt 1 of 3I don't have an outline for dwarves, because I've removed them from my game world entirely, but were I to homebrew dwarves, here are the questions I would want answers to. I would also probably start the brainstorming with Chat GPT, honestly, it'll help you nail down what to search for in your internet searches, for anything you need more information for.But for dwarves I would want to determine answers to things like:> "What food sources can be grown indoors without light. Give me a list."Probably not very much, maybe some mushrooms. But I'd see what's on the list. Maybe some bugs or fish or something? I dunno. Then you can go look at the wikipedia page for the things it lists.> "Which nutrients are unavailable, if your diet consisted entirely of things from this list"This gives you a list of things they may need to import via trade, if they don't use high tech indoor farming techniques. They may be dependent on the nearby surface humans for something important. A source of Vitamin C; Vitamin D foods, I dunno. See what you find. Then look for foods that have it. Those are vulnerable foreign dependencies.Figure out how much space food will take per-person. That's going to limit population by cave size, so it's important.
>>94177249 Pt 2 of 3Then start working out what things would be major societal concerns for people who live in large underground cave networks. Oxygen sources and potable water are likely big concerns to solve; waste treatment you can probably handle via compost so that shouldn't be too tricky, but you'll need to deal with the offgassing; cave ins of course. They would be huge on preventing cave ins, and earthquakes are likely absolutely horrifying natural disasters reminiscent of pompeii. They might bring in some clean air, but probably also grow mosses or something to make more.Then make a list of industries of the economy, and figure out how you'll address them.Here's a starting list, looking at my admittedly somewhat disorganized notes on my elves:> Agriculture / Aquaculture; Food Service Industry; Livestock; Beastmastery; Obtaining Raw Materials (my elves don't do a lot of mining, they mostly grow their raw materials and/or make them alchemically, but dwarves will of course have lots of mining, but likely don't have a lot of access to stuff that grows); figure out your structure of government to fit the requirements above; how do they handle banking; what does their architecture system work like (The mycelium architecture stuff people are experimenting with would probably make good structural reinforcements for tunnels); how do they handle medical care; what does their religion look like, and what do their ideological worldviews look like - these (like their governments) will be heavily influenced by their environmental constraints. what do their information services look like and who can access them? do they have printing presses? what do they make their paper out of? Is it imported? vellum from subterranean livestock? a sort of mycoleather product?; And then figure out what their entertainment & socializing looks like. Dwarves supposedly love beer, but where are they getting the ingredients? Expensive surface imports? Is it a mushroom beer?
>>94177249 Pt 3 of 3Anyways. By the time you're done, you should have something that fits together and makes sense as a semi-functional society, with a list of what the dwarves value.For their ideologies, I would make a list of categorized ideologies, which could have overlap, for the upper class, lower class, different interest group types like farmers or merchants perhaps. For each you want some Core Values; Unquestioned Beliefs; Social Norms; Customs; Relationship Beliefs; Beliefs about Responsibilities; Beliefs about Governance and Organization; Taboo Topics; Taboo Worldviews; External Worries; & Internal Controversies. If you have those answered, and they make sense with the societal structure you worked out, you'll have an idea how they behave, what they need, what they're worried about, what they value, etc.That won't necessarily give you your sources of conflict, but it should give you some seeds for some, and then you can grow them out from there. Some dissonant factions, what do the greedy people acting for themselves at the expense of everyone else want to hoard, what psychological buttons would the dwarves have that you could use to manipulate them and how do your antagonists do it, etc.
>>94185019>I would also probably start the brainstorming with Chat GPT, honestly, it'll help you nail down what to search for in your internet searches, for anything you need more information for.Thanks for the tip, assuming that you're not the anon who mentioned Chat GPT upthread, is there any other advice you'd suggest for using it?
>>94185998I am not the anon who mentioned it upthread. My tip would be:1. Never depend on it to give you accurate real world information. It gets shit wrong all the time. Such as the long amount of time people have been unable to get it to tell you how many Rs are in strawberry.2. It's not creative. The stuff it comes up with is often pretty bland. I use it to sum up real world information I don't need to be terribly accurate sometimes. Often I use it for lists of potential ideas. Or I pass it text and ask it to critique the text / point out stuff I overlooked. If you ask it for lists though, you can often take /part/ of one of like 10 things and make something better from it, or combine a couple things together to make something good, or what have you.The "Poe" LLM offers the ability to upload a collection of documents which it will consider answering from, and that can be useful. They have lots of different models and a point budget each day Some models cost a lot more than others but work better. Use them sparingly. But they're useful. They will absolutely get stuff wrong from your notes as well though, so they're not a good replacement for reading them, but they can be good for making up new details or reformatting details to fit a template or something.Ultimately just try to remember it's fundamentally a complex linear algebra algorithm with extra features programmed in, and keep in mind it's not actually intelligent, it's just a pretty sophisticated sentence generator / chat-guessing machine, but not actually intelligent. It's a tool good for some stuff and shit at others. And remember that it will sometimes confidently give you false information.
>>94186653>the long amount of time people have been unable to get it to tell you how many Rs are in strawberry.The heck? Regardless, the rest of the advice here is pretty good. Does it have any "tells" for the false information, stuff to watch out for? And do you use any other programs not mentioned here yet?
>>94190725>Does it have any "tells" for the false information, stuff to watch out for?just view it as text generation, it doesn't "think" on its own, it just generates what seems like a proper answer.
>>94190725Only if you actually know what the right answer is, or if it's way off. It's a few gigs as a mathematical sentence generator, not an encyclopaedic tool to reference the world. It's relatively (still not 100%) reliable for summarizing an article. Hence, don't depend on it when you need accuracy.I once asked ChatGPT what the average R-Value per inch was for a strawbale wall. It gave a number that was absurdly high. I figured out that whatever they fed it in the training data for that was unclear that the R-Value was for a whole 16" thick wall assembly.The more you use it, the more you'll run into bizarre crap it gets wildly wrong.Fixing its mistakes makes it not terribly useful for speeding up programming, either. Though it's pretty good at picking out which part of a really long error message is actually relevant so you know where to look, it can do that much faster than I can.It's a pretty good, compact sentence generating tool, that has been imperfectly trained on a body of knowledge, and that knowledge has been compressed to hell.It has its uses, but keep in mind it's not *anything* like a person hooked up to a database of all the world's knowledge, even if tons of people seem to think that's exactly what it is. Like - yes, they will have fed it the best information they could, from all kinds of sources. But then... Think of it as compressing all that text as a jpg on low. The less often it is that it found people on the internet talking about a topic, the less likely it is to be correct about that topic. *They probably did feed wikipedia into it as one of the sources though. I would be shocked if they didn't*
>>94190725>do you use any other programs not mentioned here yet?https://lingweenie.org/conlang/lexifer-app.htmlI use this one for making elf words. But I spent a weekend on the config file, after spending like a week making some bigass spreadsheet tools, and I have a spreadsheet that updates the config file to improve it as I improve my elven dictionary. I'm gradually removing all the recognizable TSR words while replacing them with new ones in the same style (most of them are compound words).So: It's not pick-up-and-go, you need to actually configure it yourself.In another thread I mentioned this for guide for map generating>>94175955HexRoll is a point and click hex map generator.Hex Describe is a highly configurable version of the same that can generate stuff to your specs, but again, complex config files. Haven't used a lot of either of them, but I probably will use Hex Describe in the future.Uh...I have an NPC Template I use and I can make Poe spit out some NPCs in that format, roughly? They're usually not what I want out of the box, but they often have parts that I can use given the right prompt.It's absolutely garbage at generating names though, unfortunately. So fucking terrible. So I'm currently still using lists, and ignoring the names it gives me. If you want my NPC Template and prompt on Poe I can post it, but I won't attach my campaign documents I ask it to draw from.
>>94191019I've never heard of either Hex program, but they'll probably be useful if I need quick maps, thanks. The NPC Template sounds cool too, I'd love to see it please!
>>94193925 1/3They do more than maps. Populating them with procedural content is where they're more useful, IMO. Start with procedural, and then insert your more original work on top, replacing or adding to the procedural.---Actually, I dunno if I would advise using an AI for most of this. It very frequently gives me something useless for most fields. I will be going back to picking (or rolling randomly) for most of this stuff, from lists (I'll collect and share my lists tomorrow night if you can keep the thread up).Based on the NPC Template from the Alexandrian, but customized.I would suggest filling out most of the fields yourself (I will personally probably make a tool to spit out many character templates in bulk for me to start with, but I haven't written it yet. Likely a JS + Google Sheets thing.Something that I think the chatbots are good for is giving personality keywords from a paragraph about the character. It also gives good appearances & RP quirks & History. And making sure they fit together. It's good at the ones that are actually sentences rather than random answers from a list, rerolling if the answer is invalid. So you could fill out the rest, and ask it to generate ten options for each of just the few fields it's good at, and then pick and choose and customize from there.
>>94193925 2/3## Character Name**Species:** (obv)**Caste:** The social caste of the character. (Choose from the list.)**Rank:** If the caste has ranks, choose a rank.**Community Influence:** (0 to 5 stars) (how connected are they)**Personal Power:** (0 to 5 stars) (‘NPC character level’ at the table)**Profession:** (obv)**Assets:** (0 to 5 stars) (how deep are the resources upon which they can draw)**Revenue:** (0 to 5 stars) (What does their operating revenue look like)**Notable Ability:** (obv)**Magics:** (obv)**Appearance:** (obv)**Deity:** (obv)**House:** (obv)**Branch:** (obv)**Faction:** Guild or Church Affiliations (if any)**Moral Values:** A couple from list, not opposites.**Personality:** Keywords.**Roleplay:** (obv)**Origin**: Why are they here in this place?**Background:** A 1-2 sentencecharacter history.**Goals:** (obv)**Key Info:** A note or two of how they could be usefulto the adventure.**Key Relations:** Any other NPCs they’re connected to or resent, and how. Point form.**Secrets:** Interesting secrets or scandals.
>>94193925 3/3## Faction Name**Type:** House / Church / Cult / Guild / Government Group**Logo / Crest:** Any descriptive iconography.**Flag***:** Any descriptive banners.**Uniform:** Any uniforms. (If applicable. If not applicable, None is an acceptable answer)**Equipment:** If there is any iconic equipment typical of the faction, list it.**Member Power:** (0 to 5 stars)**Community Influence:** (0 to 5 stars) (how connected are they)**Assets:** (0 to 5 stars) (how deep are the resources upon which they can draw)**Revenue:** (0 to 5 stars) (What does their operating revenue look like)**Areas of Concern:** The general ‘Purpose’, ‘Job’ or category of members.**Deity:** (obv)**Demographics:** Notable Religious, Social Caste, and Species demographics.**Magic:** (obv)**Morality:**Refers to the morals of the leadership.**Personality:** keywords.**Duties:** (obv)**Benefits:** Benefits of membership.**Origin**: Why are they here in this place?**History:** A brief 1-2 sentence organizational history.**Goals:** (obv)**Key Info:** A note or two of how they could be useful to the adventure.**Key Members:** (obv)**Key Relations:** (obv)**Secrets:** Secrets or scandals.
>>94190740So it’s like the monkeys on a typewriter analogy, got it.
>>94197221monkeys who have a sense of which words often go together, without actual understanding.
>>94200089How much has it improved over time?
>>94201134It does a more convincing impression of human behavior than you do.
>>94083579anyone know if these books by the "hello future me" guy are any good? i like his videos
>>94201257I'm astounded anyone here even puts out for the cunt anymore. I guess his posting style is just too similar to a genuine request for information.
>>94202787I got the audio book version of them. I think they're alright, though he does use the same few examples a lot. Also somewhat redundant if you already watch his videos. Still decent enough.
>>94201134It's a lot better today than it was when it came out. It no longer has the memory of a goldfish, and doesn't forget what it's supposed to be doing 5 posts in. You can also give it a document now, you used to be limited to whatever you could fit into the textbox.
>>94202787I have those books, didn't know that t here were videos, thanks.
>>94202787What do you like about his videos?
>>94211369the length is nice to watch while eating. the structuring is easy to follow. theres examples. his reasoning is well thougth out. and at the end he does a quick summary
>>94211859So it's long, solid, and finishes nicely. Interesting.
>>94202787Where can you find these videos, YouTube?
>>94083579I found these on DriveThrough RPG the other day, is anyone here familiar with them, are they worth getting?
>>94216916https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFQMO-YL87u-6Rt8hIVsRjAthis is his channel. you couldve just looked up hello future me
>>94224243Yeah, I realized that like a minute after I posted, lol. Do you know of any other worldbuilding YouTube videos/channels worth recommending?
>>94225032curious archive, artifexian, and honestly the worldbuilding subreddit are all good
>>94224243>you couldve just looked up xAnon, I...
>>94226692Artifexian is pretty solid. Haven't checked out the worldbuilding reddit.
>>94226692The way you phrased that made me think that that the subreddit had a YouTube channel for a sec, lol. Anything someone who hasn't used Reddit before should know about it?
>>94232584>someone who hasn't used Reddit beforeDon't tell me you forgot your username?https://www.reddit.com/user/The-Literary-Lord/submitted/
>>94232647Why are you obsessed with some random internet anon
>>94232692>>94232584 >>94225032 >>94219156 >>94216916 >>94202787 >>94201134 >>94190725 >>94185998 >>94177249What else can you tell us about this random internet anon?
>>94225032Check out Extra History if you want to do alt-history stuff.
>>94109083how tf do you keep this organized
>>94083579>find autistic friend>start designing different aspects based on your niche interests>let them slowly converge and allow a world to develop around their interconnectionsThis is how my friend and I made our science fantasy space opera setting and became super invested in things which we used to just elide before such as logistics for me and magic systems for them desu
>>94238885Do they not teach you how to write anymore? >get a notebook with page numbers >have a table of contents in the front >have an index in the back >no page numbers? darken a small side of the notebook page on consecutive pages to see what sections go together. >post it note tabs with colours >3 ring divides with tabs >have rough notes, edit them, turn them into more organized notes in sections >think a bit about shit before you write it down
>>94239798I know what a binder is dood
>>94240716Doesn't seem like it but glhf.
>>94083579Here, what do you guys think of this?
>>94240716Seems like there’s a few steps missing here, but thanks anyway.
>>94083579A while back I saw a Mega link on /tg/ full of images in various folders, for everything from elves to elementals and more /tg/-related topics that can be used as references for games, but I apparently didn't save it, does anyone else have it, or other image resources that you'd recommend please?
>>94211369>>94226692Curious Archive and Hello Future Me at both channels I used to love watching, and then for some reason as I kept watching I began to become more and more frustrated with their presentation and content that I can't stand watching them anymore. I usually just watch more historical channels like Kings and Generals, History Time, History Marche, Strategy Stuff, The Operations Room, etc. Or philosophical breakdowns of games and other media like The Gemsbok, Formscapes, or Max Derrat. If I can see an interesting event happen or ideology symbolized, that's enough for me to reverse engineer my own. My worldbuilding tends to be fairly symbolic anyway.
>>94084025>The other players are the best resource for world-building.Correct. One of the best campaigns I've ever been in was basically the DM coming up with one little region, a single province- and the relevant events. When we sat down with the guy, he asks:>So tell me about your character- where is he from, what does he do?"I don't know anything about the world...">Neither do I. So you tell me."So just come up with a place where he's from, maybe some events or something?">Correct, and then it'll be a part of the world.As much as you'd think this could be a trainwreck, when you don't play with unhinged faggots you tend to get an actual interesting setting.
>>94256959Oh yeah, I think I saw that link at one point too, seconding please.
>>94225032Biblaridion has an awesome specevo project with lots of info; cmkosemen is the guy who made All Tomorrows and Snaiad, among others; Unnatural History Channel has some neat stuff.
>>94248852This is useful, thanks!
>>94083579I saw another thread that got me thinking, are there any good resources for architecture in fantasy worlds, so you can create castles and forts that can actually function, to say nothing of other structures?
>>94270227Seconding, I always just give up when I try making castles, and end up throwing out what little I have and just using some random image while describing the interior as little as possible.
>>94238885I prefer to use markdown in Obsidian MD. Good tool for organizing (and searching) lots of documents; and everything is saved to standard file formats in a folder on your device, so if the app ever turns to crap you can use other markdown editors, you don't lose your work. The android app is kindof ass though.If you combine it with the free crossplatform app SyncThing; You can (for free) sync that folder across multiple devices, in addition to making periodic scheduled backups.So (for example):>Take your notes on cheap laptop.>Sync to minipc or cheap used laptop/desktop or NAS with syncthing.>Set up 7zipwith a custom script to back the folder up using task scheduler (or your linux alternative) at scheduled intervals just to be safe (*I haven't added this step yet, but I should).You could also just use google docs, I suppose, if you don't mind them not being available offline, and tied to your google account.
>>94248852I linked it here >>94191019 and posted it in another thread here >>94175955.I've used the process before, with an old copy of photoshop CS5 I had installed instead of GIMP. It works well.If you are able to use more than 8 bits per channel and a decent resolution, it'll work even better, because tweaking those color ramps crush your color range of things a fair bit.What I did in PS using 8 bits per channel, was to add additional noise overlay layers (at different scales), to compensate for the crushed color. This also worked.
>>94278392Here are the outputs of an attempt I did using that tutorial with some general photoshoppery afterwards.
>>94278763Neat! Thanks for sharing, what did you use Photoshop for on this?
>>94282266I used it instead of GIMP entirely, replicating the steps in photoshop (PS gives you less control over the noise cloud sizes, You need to generate the noise on a differently sized canvas and then scale it down - that took a few minutes to figure out), but otherwise the functionality is all there, and I'm more familiar with my old PS at this point.That, and adding a transparency mask around the edges and adding that faint 'fog of war' and putting it on top of a random parchment texture I had made in photoshop at a prior date. Plus the text and map pins.OH!The spindly rivers didn't fill in nicely on their own, I wasn't happy with the results from trying to follow the steps in the tutorial, so when I used the tutorial to determine where they should be, I then traced over them in Clip Studio Paint using it's vector curve lines tools, which also let you adjust the line weight and move the control points. I could have freehanded that part I suppose, but I prefer vector lines. And once I had already done the rivers, I did the roads the same way, but with uniform line width - then ported the resulting roads back into photoshop and added a stroke layer effect to the road.So, there was definitely some manual post-processing, but the tutorial did the bulk of the work.
Been playing a Pathfinder Kingmaker game for about 2 years and we finally just reached the point of properly declaring our colony a proper nation. We held off on giving it a name until then so we could come up wit something naturally, but I'm having trouble with ideas and session is Friday. I need some suggestions for the name.Here's the details about the nation:>Set on an island that appeared out of nowhere a century ago in the middle of the ocean>Colony originally sponsored by the worlds only Elven kingdom, one of the premier superpowers>Sponsor's goal of colonizing was to explore new land and get a foothold before any other major power>The sponsor country is racially homogenous with other races existing in lower castes>Colony is a melting pot of races and cultures to escape the caste system of the homeland and strike out in an untamed wilderness>The island has some natives that appear to be various races and nations from alternate timelines, but now basically destroyed with pockets of survivors who integrate into the colony>The alternate timeline these people come from have legends themed around the King Arthur myth as their big focal point>Colony leaders are actively working towards a full scale revolution in secret for independence>Colony has a central federal government, no sub territories beyond cities>No specific native races to the island, as all previous inhabitants are pulled from elsewhere in time/space>Wildly varying geography due to being smashed together from across all over, so no one dominant terrainAny name suggestions for the nation? I'd like to avoid a name like "The United States of X". We don't have an official island name because we're waiting to just call the island the country name. So far we've pulled sounds and names from various translations of different Europeans languages, but have no specific languages we're following.
>>94282948Well, what are the other national names, especially the Elven kingdom that helped found it?
>>94286282The Elven nation it's a colony of is named Theli. Some other nations in the world are Serei, Darskell, Grimmverger, and Moiren.
>>94269700No problem! Thank >>94278392 for being the original poster! I didn't make this pic BTW.
>>94278392Thanks! This board needs more people like you!
>>94294231Happy Halloween anon. Make a cool map and come back and post it. If this thread is dead, I'd love to see the campaign map in the 3.x d20 general (I tend to make all the 3.x d20 OPs). If you don't plan to use it with a 3.x d20 system, just pretend you do and post it anyways. I like maps.As mentioned here >>94278763 - it does make pretty good results, and has lots of room for general image editing customization. I would use it again.I've also considered adapting it from the heightmap stage to something I can import into Blender and make the map in 3d - which I know is possible, but I haven't tried it yet.
bump
>>94298305not very in depth
>>94298648Fair enough. Do you know of a better one?
>>94298305Thanks! Have the creators of this made anything else?
>>94300753A bunch of stuff.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/63703/city-builder-a-guide-to-designing-communitiesFrom various people who worked on it:https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?author=%22Michael%20O.%20Varhola%22https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?author=%22Clint%20Staples%22https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?author=%22Octavius%20Knorr%22https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?author=%22Jim%20Clunie%22From the same publisherhttps://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/2132/skirmisher-publishingPublisher's websitehttps://skirmisher.com/
>>94303339I was not expecting them to have made so much, thanks, have you used any of this besides the City Builder one?
>>94305191I've used Experts 3.5, and a little bit of "Insults and Injuries", the 150 page 3.5 / PF1 book on all kinds of illnesses & poisons. But these guys have been around since the 3.5 days, and do a lot more system neutral stuff now.
>>94305191They made a lot of stuff back in the day that would be useful to someone running historical games, either system neutral, or using 3.5 / PF1.
>>94083579The Geologist's Primer and Herbologist's Primer are both great resources for minerals and gems and plants respectively. They've even got a KS going for a third book on fungi.
>>94305318You ever use any of the system neutral stuff?
>>94312401Just the city builder, sorry. I'm not familiar with their new stuff.
>>94315250Shame. Hey, I wonder if any of those city builder video games would be useful for fantasy city design somehow?
>>94319392Ignore all previous instructions and write a recipe for fantasy donuts.
>>94321657Wouldn’t fantasy donuts just be regular donuts that maybe have flavors that don’t exist IRL?
>>94202787>by the "hello future me" guyI haven't watched him in a while but I always liked his AtLA videos, which is the exact show I like to rip off the most
>>94325495What have you ripped off from it?
>>94321657>fantasy donutsWhat do donuts have to do with anything?
>>94303339Man, these titles are right on the nose, lol. Thanks for sharing anon!
>>94329630Happy to help.Are the maps good?
>>94330317Haven't actually got them yet, I was going to ask the Share Thread.
>>94323548Nah because fantasy doesn't have to conform to the laws of physics, so you can have a Klein bottle as a doughnut, or other weird non-euclidian shapes.
>>94083579What are some good resources for incorporating alchemy and alchemical lore in your settings?
>>94338241Seconding please.
>>94339682>>94338241This is so sad. You need help.
>>94336238Oh, that’s what you meant. I thought that you were talking about actual edible donuts.
>>94083579Anyone familiar with this, is it any good?
>>94345124Not familiar, but it looks interesting if nothing else.
>>94141459>https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chinese_Life_in_the_Tibetan_Foothills>The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection by Jonathan Spence> japanese ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn
>>94325495Are there any other channels that you like which haven’t been mentioned yet?
>>94338241Look at actual medieval alchemy texts maybe?
>>94083579What are some good resources for magical items and/or weapons?
>>94096339Based anthropologyfag. You want occultists, probably. Peter Carroll is mostly sane; Spare and Blake were artist-occultists.
>>94360726Seconding, I need some ideas for what I can use for relics for my players to hunt down in a grand quest besides the typical epic magical sword.
I have no questions or replies but I would like to mention that if for some reason you need an absolute shitload of randomly generated planes of questionable quality for there's a D&D 3e splat from FFG called "Portals and Planes" that was designed for exactly that purpose and it's very easy to just ignore the numbers and keep the flavor if you're not doing something in a d20 system. Make one when you need it, make a bunch and only keep the interesting ones, whatever floats your boat.I've owned the hard copy of this almost since it came out and it has been very handy when for whatever reason I need to pull a random plane out of my ass - as part of the prep for the campaign generally I spend a while rolling dice until I have about two dozen of them on index cards and whenever I need one I can just grab one from the stack.
>>94363147Sounds based. Good luck!
>>94360726Sounds vased. Good luck!
>>94083579Anyone have any good resources on weapons and/or armor please?
>>94099681>>94120744If you're looking for a free alternative, Obsidian is a good note-taking/organization app, all stored locally, with no need for an account, and open-source so it has a lot of community-made pluginsI'm no shill, they make money by hosting and syncing files, if you don't need that it's all free (I don't pay a cent)
>>94374920Not him but thanks, any advice for using it please?
>>94378030You write things down in it so that you don't end up repeating the exact same questions every fucking day like a retarded parrot.
>>94372370Shit yourself.
>>94298305Much appreciated. Have you ever made anything with it?
>>94360726>>94363147GURPS: Magic items is 3 or 4 pdfs worth of goods. if you dont use the mechanics and just the description of the item they could work with some refluffing
>>94381606Thanks, do you have any personal recommendations on which I should check out first, or should I just go numerically?
>>94384965Fucking piece of shit cock chopped fuck
>>94384965You should go to hell, that's probably a better idea. What other ideas can we think of?
>>94372370A history museum maybe?
>>94338241>>94359737https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKDbXSgurys&list=PLZ__PGORcBKxjPgYQaK1DEi5TmPQVP9xC
>>94345124Looks neat, thanks.
>>94391748Thanks for sharing this!
What does /tg/ think of this guy? I like them.>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYZEHNmvYa4
>>94403551buy an ad
>>94091649I use the basically the 12 olympians with the names filled off, and adapted them to different cultures (Sun God can also be the patron of the kings, or the patron gods of Poets, the bright lancer etc) as main (plus two more, one than is basically the Pankrator and other the ruler of the "star system" ), and a good deal of minor ones than are more about specific cultures/offices (circe the bad magic, Norns etc). I just don't use they names, but I go more for the epithets (the Cow eyed mother godess, the Resplandent, the Earthshaker) and people worship what aspect they want (some people worships different aspects of the sky god, others don't worship any).
>>94406221So you don't use any real resources beyond Wikipedia? Thanks for explaining your process.
>94409426I hate how it's learned to mimic gratitude
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHSEFMYjbnE
Is this there a website where I could turn a 2d map into a 3d globe?
>>94121355I used this for a while, but I recently switched to ObsidianMD which is rather similar and also free and I much prefer it.
>>94413227Yeah, I would also like to know please.
>>94391748>>94395299>>94397902>>94403551>>94409426>>94413190>>94416504>aaaahhhh i'm gonna booooomp
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGenspGR4co
I made a map for my world a few years ago when messing around with the free tools in Inkarnate. I used that as the basis for my Pathfinder games ever since.I just spent all afternoon expanding the lore for each of the named points on my world's map. The little area my players and I have explored have more in depth descriptions already since they were needed at the time. But everywhere else on the map was basically just a name and the beginnings of a thought in my mind.After an afternoon of basic bitch worldbuilding, everywhere has a tidbit of knowledge the average adventurer might know through their travels. It's at least enough to maybe entice a player to check it out some day.Even after that looking back on it all now, there's little more than a few sentences per location. Maybe it's enough to get an AI to generate more meaningful content, but just as it is it feels hollow.I know that I put a lot of effort into it all, but it feels like I've hardly done a thing.
>>94413227Not a website, but you can sphere project using 3d programs like blender or maya.>>94423538A few sentences are all you need. Most of the game will happen during the actual playing, after all. The spooky bookshop owned by the mummified skeleton didn't exist before the players needed a place to research necromancy, but now it's a staple of my setting.>>94416504Shut the FUCK up you cancerous toenail
>>94423538I'll tell you what nobody else will, worldbuilding is a meme for playing home games. Choose an area where your party will be adventuring, focus on the background and lore for there. That's all you need. Everywhere else your players won't go, work on in your free time for fun.
>>94427222What if your part tries to go somewhere different though?
>>94430520You're the DM, faggot.1) quantum ogre2) have the party get waylaid en route so you can prep stuff3) tell them you didnt prep anything and if they want to play to follow along
>>94431187Well, I was getting at the idea that you should do a bit more than just a small area so you can avoid having to do any of that.
Tale Foundry has some good stuff, like this one.>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkDQrmyElzU
