It’s Terror Time Again Edition Welcome to /wbg/, the official thread for the discussion of in-progress settings for traditional games.Here is where you go to present and develop the details of your worlds such as lore, factions, magic and ecosystems. You can also post maps for your settings, as well as any relevant art (either created by you or used as inspiration for your work). Please remember that dialogue is what keeps the thread alive, so don't be afraid of giving someone feedback or post whatever relevant input you might have!Last thread: >>94141435Resources for Newfags: https://sites.google.com/view/wbgeneral/Worldbuilding links: https://pastebin.com/JNnj79S5https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/Eo+fK41FKVR7xDpbNO0a0N4k0YYxrmyrhX3VxnM14Ew/Fantasy map generator: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generatorThread questions:>Since it’s almost Halloween, do you have it or an equivalent holiday in your world? And how do you modify the Holiday so it’s recognizable but not an exact copy?>If your setting has multiple realms, is there a time that the barriers between them weaken and things can slip through easier like Halloween is supposed to be, and what causes it if so?>What are the most horrifying and deadly creatures and monsters in your setting, and what makes them so fearsome? And how do you design your monsters, especially if you’re putting new twists on old archetypes? Not to mention how you define “monster”?>Finally, are there any races that are particularly feared by the others in your world, and if so why are they feared? How did you design them?Happy Halloween! All hail to the Pumpkin King!Bonus Question:>What Fall/Halloween-themed monsters exist in your world?
I'm working on a honeybee seed worldhttps://youtu.be/0_HwP-ePjdU
>>94286719In the same way all hallow's eve is spoooooky on account of being just before a holy celebration the Quorum handing out reprieve codes generates a similar (and much more warranted) unease the night before everyone collectively heaves a sigh of relief. Basically sans FTL travel, with a little FTL comms bandwidth and a whole lot of memetic expertise the best way for them to hold onto hegemony is "passive coercion". Technology is innately disparate and specialized so it's not too hard to guarantee that opting our of Quorum "patronage" means regression in that sense. Reprieve codes come into it because the Quorum "kindly" provides "cultural scaffolds" to prevent generation ship crews from going ape out of cabin fever, alongside "don't kill each other" the colonists are indoctrinated with subtle "bombs" which in the absence of semi-regular Reprieve will manifest as subtle mass psychosis.The Quorum uses rare, valuable ansible bandwidth to confer with local representatives. When satisfied that their interests are adequately represented they hand over the codes which delay cultural breakdown. This is done on a secret schedule but administrations make a point of yearly correspondence and distribution. They would never let slip that they hadn't been given the codes (panic would be a self-fulfilling prophesy) but in theory they could, as such the night before is a kind of Purge-lite as people preemptively freak out at the prospect of oncoming mass psychosis.Eventually a colony develops past the point of genships programming having much direct influence on them but by then they've risen through the pyramid scheme and are invested in the status quo. Reprieve announcements are more of a formality and the spooky prelude more of a quaint pass time than fearfully looking to the sword hung above.>>94287390Considering ants are basically wingless wasps you're gonna end up with a lot of interesting agriculture+ ventilation (perhaps with more wax among the concrete).
>>94287577>Considering ants are basically wingless wasps you're gonna end up with a lot of interesting agriculture+ ventilation (perhaps with more wax among the concrete).I figure either the loss of wings, or the loss of eusociality are racing a bit.
>>94287592Not necessarily. Eusociality wouldn't need to be lost at all and given its a seedworld where bees presumably make up a large share of "higher" life the sky's not the escape from scrumms on the ground it is irl. Lots of bees (often lone ones) burrow and given earth is an insulator some eusocial hive blade which learn to burrow to avoid winter all-but-the-queen die offs are well on their way to shedding wings except for dispersal breeders.
>>94287636while that is true, solitary bees are a very successful group in real life too, and I think there would be some species that converge on a solitary lifecycle.
>>94286719At a macro level >>94141836 are both the cornucopia of Clarketech which define the setting's "psychopunk" aesthetic and the horrors which have shaped how the hegemon of humanity (the Quorum) chose to warp the entire species. Their one commandment is "let no gods go unbound", it reflects their origin as the SCP crossed with mind-flensed refugees of a full-blown AI outbreak. Humanity would be extinct if not for the Insanity's propensity for eating itself having overcome its insidious conquest.The AI themselves are unknowable, their presence is more alike unto realities twisted in the vicinity of an Eldritch Force's influence.A good examples are the Soup Dragons, leftovers of the most successful AI outbreak which almost overran the Quorum. Souperb (tm) (later the Soupremacy) was a microbiome substrate hyperintelligence which did the bulk of its processing (and control exertion) through customer-thralls' guts. The Dragons are post-human amalgamations who act as local nodes of its distributed mind, these days they only contain meagre drama of their God but are formidable beasts all the same.https://youtu.be/SuEmD9WRKes?si=8ZznZfT_Mpf9Cl18
>>94286719OP this Halloween theme is going to outstay its welcome for more than two weeks. Don't force holidays into the OP.
>>94287686Undoubtedly, that said when it comes to "concrete" mounds and agriculture my money's on the eusocial ones. Common wasps are a minority of wasps in terms of blade number yet way more in terms of individuals. The beetle niche is a respectable one and with elytra for extra defense I could see carpenter bees getting there. Shame they've got those little warmup / gyroscope winglets... Maybe the thorax as a whole could expand into covers of a sort?
>>94287720>Shame they've got those little warmup / gyroscope winglets...are you talking about halteres? I thought these were synapomorphic of dipterans?
>>94287773Silly me, apparently they don't. It's actually the fore and hind wing joined into a "single" one. I think I misremembered bumblebees flexing wing muscles without actually moving them before takeoff to warm up and conflated their "single wing pair" with halteres. Guess elytra aren't so hard after all! The first solitary bee to reach that beetle niche is going to have a field day...
>>94287828very good point, although I wonder how many beetle niches would exist without certain other animals and plants to support them, for example cycad beetles and carrion beetles wouldn't exist without huge cycad flowers, and large dead animals respectively. The scarab group may have even evolved ancestrally from a carrion scavenging form, so I will have a lot of fun walking them toward those niches with the surrounding ecosystem adjustments. I only brought 8 plant species, so it is a bit restrictive at the start (thankfully), but I plan on bringing the diversity to a level where it would make sense for say, a hard shelled carrion bee, to evolve.
>>94287934They're almost the exception that proves the rule in that all those specialized morphs exist because the base beetle bauplan is so efficient that it's got everywhere allowing it to branch into all these other ludicrously narrow niches. A nice mix of durability, strength, mobility AND niche partitioning across lifespans (gotta love boring a grub into wood and flying away for it to chow down on cellulose which you can't anymore!). Anyway, best of luck to you. Sounds like a lot of fun.
>>94286719I’m working on a setting where the most being is a cosmic embodiment of madness and corruption. Desperate mages can use its energies to corrupt their magic, granting them increased power with their spells and making it easier to do things like use fire magic underwater, but unless one is VERY careful the entity can corrupt them and drive them mad, making them want to fulfill it’s incomprehensible goals. How could I improve on this concept, and what are some ways that I can show the effects of the corruption on spells besides just them being in weird colors and/or having more tentacles than normal?
I have so much shit to write about holy fuck
>>94287714Yeah but Halloween is the best holiday so it's fine
>>94289412OP is also going to force these "extended reminders" for Christmas and even Pride Month. He has been massively autistic about public holidays.
>>94287390Cool stuff
>>94288247>corruption on spells besides just them being in weird colors and/or having more tentacles than normal?add a snarling face to the spellsso for example, fireball. It explodes in an explosion shaped in an evil grin like picrel
I asked last thread, but I've been working more on writing that Asian inspired tribeI intended them to not wear body armour and to instead use magical paint to tattoo themselves, the paint is made from a flower on an island that is extremely deadly, so only their skilled soldiers get the tattoo put on themThing is I'm not sure what to call the process. I based it off the Elder Scroll's Nord racial ability "Woad", but obviously that wouldn't fit an Asian themed tribe. It's also meant to be a permanent tattoo as opposed to bodypaint.
>>94286719I'm gonna world build a steampunk horror setting for a novel
Remember that if your mythology doesn't have mpreg, femboys, crossdressing or gender switching it's not a real mythology.
>>94288247Corruption is about being hollowed out and soulless
>>94293377Actually, let me explain something.Dark magic in my world is not so much evil as it is flat out hollow.Even magic at its most malevolent is still alive. It breathes and grows. Dark magic isn’t alive. It’s completely hollow, and I don’t mean that in the sense of necromancy.I mean it’s nothingness. No desire, no movement, no feeling, no nothing. And it spreads
>>94286719>Finally, are there any races that are particularly feared by the others in your world, and if so why are they feared? How did you design them?The Rhosion are a race of blind, shapeshifting golems, most easily recognized by the large, intricate masks they wear, which often represent centuries of meticulous work. The masks serve two functions: They protect the crystal that serves as the Rhosion brain and sensory organ (they "see" through a kind of magical echolocation, the masks are made of materials that don't inhibit their vision), and, most importantly, convince the other races that the Rhosion have a soul.The Rhosion aren't necessarily "evil", they are just pure logic without any emotion. Every word and mannerism is carefully crafted to achieve a desired effect from you, they will pretend to be your friend, but only as far as it benefits them. Most who deal with the Rhosion get distracted by the colorful masks, thinking it's a reflection of something deeper, but it's all just superficial manipulation, anyone who isn't Rhosion is just a tool to achieve a goal.The Rhosion would be "kill on sight" if they weren't craftsmen without equal. As it stands, they are allowed (under careful supervision) into most cities, with the understanding that the moment they decide to start experimenting on the populace they will be used to reinforce the city walls.
>Since it’s almost Halloween, do you have it or an equivalent holiday in your world? And how do you modify the Holiday so it’s recognizable but not an exact copy?They have Halloween, but with a twist: It’s not about costumes but what kind of cool shit you can do to impress people for treats.>If your setting has multiple realms, is there a time that the barriers between them weaken and things can slip through easier like Halloween is supposed to be, and what causes it if so?Nope. There’s only one way in, one way out for each plane. No exceptions.>What are the most horrifying and deadly creatures and monsters in your setting, and what makes them so fearsome? And how do you design your monsters, especially if you’re putting new twists on old archetypes? Not to mention how you define “monster”?The scariest would have to be the Depths. They’re these fleshy polyps that induce horrid mutations in all flesh they touch. As for that second question, I try to be creative. Like how there’s a giant hairless gorilla with a stone horse skull for a head. >Finally, are there any races that are particularly feared by the others in your world, and if so why are they feared? How did you design them?Almost every monster is considered pants shittingly terrifying. But none more so than the Brights, because suffice to say, there are fates worse than death. What they do is effectively tear your soul out of your body, refashion said body into raw materials, and proceed to drag your soul back to their hive and effectively reincarnate YOU as a Bright. The resulting Bright has all of your knowledge, memories, and skills. And you’re still completely aware of what you’re doing, just unable to control your new body as you repeat the process on your friends and loved ones
>>94294048>>94288247Maybe represent corruption like this?
>>94295067Two different anons
>>94286719Hello everyone, I'd like some help coming up with an elemental affinity for a Horseman of the Apocalypse.The Horseman in question is War, who is generally themed around plants and nature in a "Survival of the fittest, natural selection" kind of way and I'd like to emphasize that with a life and death motif, with the plants representing life and the (currently undecided) element representing death.The obvious choice here would be fire, but I'd like to assign that one to Famine instead as fire uses up fuel to burn.Does anyone have suggestions for an element for War, or else an alternative for Famine?The elements I have in mind for the other two Horsemen are lightning for Conquest and wind for Death.
>>94286719Happy Halloween! What are some ways I can give elementals "dark" forms, something horrifying and unnatural, brought about by extreme anger or an overdose of power or some similar circumstance? Happy Halloween, BTW.
>>94296591Oh, huh. I would've gone withDeath = Earth (graves, burials, bottomless dark abyss)War = Fire (rage, burning cities)Plague = Water (stagnant pools, filth, waterborne diseases)Famine = Air (wind blowing through barren fields, dust bowl)
>>94296591are skeletons an element?
https://pastebin.com/mckDCp2LTHERE we go. How is this? Kind of still a WIP but would you play a game in this world?
>>94297003The white horse isn't plague> watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.(Or the KJV)>And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, one of the four living beings saying, “Come and see!” And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.
>>94298227The only rider with a specified name is Death. There rest are ambiguous, and there are different interpretations of what they represent. Personally, having both War and Conquest is redundant (those who favor this reading usually distinguish them by having War mean 'civil war' as opposed to Conquest as was with foreign powers). Pestilence is a more recent interpretation, but it works better in an 'Apocalypse Pantheon' by being more distinct, and that seems closer to what you're doing.
AI copies of dead people are becoming an actual discussion now in 2024. For my sci-fi setting, how should I handle this? Can I have Chinese descended cultures with massive Mulan (Disney) ancestral shrines where they can pop in and ask the last couple hundred years worth of their dead relatives for advice? Should I have entire cultures ban the practice? Is it something that should be treated as a lost art, or otherwise hard to do, so only "saints" are preserved as high level AI copies of these people?What are some options I should consider? This is happening now, so I think a serious sci-fi setting should definitely consider the future implications of this issue.
>>94300488>For my sci-fi setting, how should I handle this?There are so many ways to do this. The one example I'm personally familiar with would be 40k's Necrons, who are effectively just androids with digital copies of the old Necrontyrs' memories implanted into them.>Can I have Chinese descended cultures with massive Mulan (Disney) ancestral shrines where they can pop in and ask the last couple hundred years worth of their dead relatives for advice?Probably. That would probably be a variation of "this tech is allowed, but strictly controlled." There could even a possibly interesting conflict between two different civilizations that both have some kind of ancestor worship, but approach this topic completely differently. One sees the tech as a way to directly ask venerated ancestors for help, and the other sees it as an abomination that disturbs the dead ones' final rest.>Should I have entire cultures ban the practice?It could be a "we going too far" kind of a situation. Another possibility would be that the tech exists, but digitized people appear to be driven insane. Or maybe the procedure is imperfect and makes digitized people incoherent, meaning you don't even know if they "normal" or not.>Is it something that should be treated as a lost art, or otherwise hard to do, so only "saints" are preserved as high level AI copies of these people?Or maybe it's actually relatively easy, but powerful people are keeping it for themselves. Can't let dirty proles achieve immortality like the elites, now can we?
>>94299571>The only rider with a specified name is DeathIt's Zelos (Conquest/Zeal), Thanos (Death), Martius (War) and Limos (Famine). All four represent (importantly) something humans do to other humans. The white horse rider being pestilence is a relatively new (And by relatively new I mean that the first mention is in the 20th century). The description of him does not mention disease, does not mention plague, does not mention sickness. It mentions a crown and it mentions conquest.What this conquest means is up for debate. Does it represent the antichrist? Does it represent empire? Does it represent the horrors of war? Who knows, but it does not represent disease. The idea of disease comes specifically from a later passage in which the four horsemen are given power over men through Sword, Famine Plague and Wild Beasts according to bad translations, but the original Greek just says Thanatos (Death)
>>94297195What should I add or change?
>>94300488Since >>94287577 is based on psychohistory as a general ancestor simulations output more accurate models when you're after the "aggregate average ancestor" rather than some particular black sheep from the way back when. In that sense a collectivist approach (and suborning the few living to the many dead is pretty fucking collectivist) which communes with "the council of the ancients" over necromancy with a particular long-dead voice would be the way to go for them. In fact a particularly twisted take on the Bene Tleilax (all-male gengineers from Dune) in time inverted into a true eusocial hive "governed" by the dead-yet-dreaming tank-mothers. Denied sensory input and the release of unconsciousness by their Tleilax creators the mother's regained a measure of (strange) selfhood with the advent of in-utero training engrams followed by "feedback" in the form of dead drones' memories being fed back into the programs training the next disposable generation. The mother's accreted a sort of "second-person sapience" with a "self" composed of all the lives that pass through, out and back to them. As a single blinkered perspective in contrast to the chorus of memories life is less real to the mother (and by extension their countless daughters) than their experiences before birth and after death.I say simulation rather than upload of course because the idea of reconstructing a simulacrum based on the externally observed persona of an individual is chalk and cheese to actual uploads. Think Black Mirror's "Be Right Back" rather than any of their more frequent upload stories.
>>94301729I think C'Tan fuckery and Necrontyr desperation leading them to jump the gun had something to do with that iirc. Obviously a pulp setting like 40k could have a certain "soul" that can only dwell in flesh but if true transferal to new substrate is viable at all the way Necrontyr did it isn't the smartest.The family data caches would be immensely valuable, I wouldn't be surprised if they were encrypted in such a way that high fidelity access required certain initiation rituals. Partly this is because that's the bread and butter of ancestor worship but it could also be that lacking glands and fleshy hardware getting yourself into a drugged / cybered / epileptic trance to allow patterns in silicon to "timeshare" on your meat is part of the communication process. If it's cheap and easy to simulate anyone then infernal protection rackets are gonna crop up.>"It'd be a real shame if granny went for a swim with the devil fishes... Better pay up your hell bucks, family man!As usual Greg Egan has a fantastic story about that though the name escapes me now.Zedengi is one of his about the fundamental incompleteness of near-future upload attempts, not his best but very heartfelt. In my setting a key conceit of upload instability is stolen from his Composite person NPC series. Basically no brain scan is complete so of a sample of say 100 people a stable Comp is only ever going to be at most the pattern replica of 20% of a given person. If you make a replica 100% of a given person then it's 100% of someone with severe brain damage, you need collage (and diluted continuity of identity) to fill in the blank spots.The Comps in mine have it way worse as identity doesn't simply blur into a new person, scraps stitched together enough to emulate someone sane naturally introspect and can't help but stumble across contradictions in their memory and sense of self. A better Comp means more collage, more soul-sutures to pick at and more introspection leading to that.
So I wanted a type of "super soldier" created from infusing a magical fungus into the members of the tribe. They are seen somewhat similar to Briarhearts from Elder Scrolls- noble, heroic, and powerful by their tribe. The side effects are not as severe (i.e. no constant pain or bugs settling in the open wound) but I did want it to have some annoyances in day to day life. What would be some good ones?I also am not sure what to call them.
Is it possible for the adventurous spirit and wonder of medieval fantasy coexist with the grittiness of the modern period?
>>94286719I've got a modernish take on D&D and Fantasy.>Twenty years after third world war. >Went nuclear.>Humanity reduced from 8Billion down to about 50-60Million across the world.>Because humanity has receeded, supernatural elements and creatures have returned to the world.>The Party's first quest is as such: their village is facing a famine, and is asking the party to head to the nearby large settlement to convince them to send water caravans, in exchange for access to their farming combines, tools, and libraries of small knowledge >ten mile trip on foot.What do you guys think?
>>94286719>What are the most horrifying and deadly creatures and monsters in your setting, and what makes them so fearsome? And how do you design your monsters, especially if you’re putting new twists on old archetypes? Not to mention how you define “monster”?There are three orders of creatures in the world, the natural, the demonic, and the created, although within technically the alchemical abominations wrought by man are 'natural' in not holding origin from the Fae.The chief soldier of the Fae and their fell aims for the entire world are simply called 'The Beasts', as they have no true orthodox design unto themselves. Not merely do they range in coloration, size, metabolism, and texture - but what they look like shifts every second. Their only fitting description is a gibbering mass of flesh the size of a small house, spewing forth bile from a constantly growing, receding, and regrowing mound of squelching orifices howling for blood. Tendrils, legs, and other manner of limbs rip forth from the mountain of flesh to drag it forward in a tumbling roll, then are consumed by the flesh and regrown again. Its blood boils fiercely from the aggressive regeneration of its cells, and it is covered in eyes to watch every angle.Its nature is due to its literal assembly from the leftovers of creation itself, their godhead imprisoned by the mortal races, the Fae were left to cobble together with scrap their weapons to reconquer the surface world. The only means to fell a Beast is to tear through its black heart pumping at the very center of the roiling mess of flesh, which is no mean feat on account of aggressive, visible regeneration of all wounds and the fact its blood is hot enough to boil your skin off. And of course surviving the assault of writhing tendrils, gnashing maws, and piercing appendages lancing forth.Though it is not the greatest of fauna, its unholy nature makes it the most terrifying, and it is far more numerous than that which is fiercer.
>>94306479Of the natural order, by far the grandest and greatest beast of the lot is the Manticore. Smaller than the largest drakes (although significantly larger than a mere lion), what it lacks in its body mass it makes up in monumental aggression compared to the cold blooded. If five men fear a boar that has been cornered, then a hundred might fear the Manticore grounded; airborne it has no equals. It occupies the frequent title as 'king of the beasts' which it asserts by exterminating any predatory population around its mountain dens where mated pairs rear their young, and lords over docile herds of herbivores in the plains below which form its foodstock. For propaganda reasons, this relationship is quite popular among knights, although scarcely any of the fractured modern era can claim to have tamed a Manticore as a mount. Any who did would become more than a force to be reckoned with, but a rallying point for any cause they wished to champion.These creatures are rare in number however, for their ferocious appetites restrict their numbers to mated pairs which oust their kittens upon maturity. Hunting of Manticores is infrequent and usually the endeavor of incredibly suicidal nobles seeking a Manticore kit to seize and raise. Given their mountainous abodes and flying nature however, seizing the offspring of a Manticore has many logistical complications. Perhaps stay home and enjoy your wyvern or horse.
>>94302438You sound like you have strong opinions on this (ambiguous and open to interpretation) subject. Which is fine, but don't act like there's an objectively true answer. We're arguing about a couple paragraphs written hundreds of years ago by an unknown author. And I agree, reading "and he went forth conquering, and to conquer" as representing Conquest is nice and straightforward. But it's just kicking the interpretation can down the road, since now you have to interpret what Conquest means, and like you said it's unclear.Your argument against Pestilence was 1) it's a newer (early 20th) interpretation, 2) it's more of a stretch, 3) it isn't something humans do to other humans, and 4) it originates from a bad translation of a later verse (Rev 6:8). I could quibble with any of these a little, but they're all basically correct.My pro-pestilence argument was 1) it gives your pantheon more distinct roles compared to having a War and a Conquest. That's basically it, though I'll add the corollaries 2) it maps more easily onto the 4 elements, which was the original question, and 3) the purpose is for use in a game, so #1 & #2 matter more than having the most biblically-rigorous scriptural interpretation.
>>94306527>Were it not for the Alchemist, we'd be unemployed.Tracing back to the Great War between man and goblin, the created monsters which now stalk much of the continent owe their twisted existences to the maddened work of alchemists who considered any tactic to defeat the goblin invasion justified, regardless of the ramifications. Unfortunately for everyone in the following millennia, they dealt with a great deal of ramifications. The varieties of alchemical horrors made are immense, highly divergent among their own phenotypes, and extremely unstable across generations, subject to persistent mutation. For various qualities of their make, post the Great War many amongst goblin kind derisively call human alchemists fae-touched, for the children emulate their elder brothers. For the ignorant traveller, the beast means to discriminate the natural from the wrought is to count the number of heads it has - very rarely does anything naturally existing have multiple brains. Some of these strains have stabilized, chief amongst these is the general grouping of Hydras, which range in size and intelligence. Usually they are multi-tonne beasts, establishing themselves locally as apex predators, and are prone to consider anything they can swallow whole or in pieces to be prey. Notably unlike the supernatural horrors of the Fae which are nothing but animated flesh, the creations of alchemy have souls, however abominable their nature might be. Alarmingly this can encroach upon humanoid intelligence, especially the greater the number of brains the Hydra or Chimera exhibits. This can grant them a degree of cunning more akin to an enemy fighter than a mere hunt.
>>94297195I'm trying to figure out music for this society. What kind of instruments would they reasonably use given their resources and knowledge?
TFW when you realize you can't think of a way to make your your setting, at least in the "present day" into a compelling game
>>94308952>tfw you realize you're a talentless hack with no creativity and can't make anything of worth
>>94303632auto-brewery syndrome.
Rate the species for my SF setting. Or ask questions about them.Goblins: Leftover slave species from a dead civilization, build/understand tech but no sentience until humans uplifted them.Humans: Have life extension tech and whole brain emulation, while these technologies are still WIP for the xenos.Yoke: Human-ish, but have had language much longer (~1.3Mya years versus ~50kya), so they are much more consensus-oriented and prosocial due to self-domestication. They technologically uplifted the other species of the Final State.Carvers: Eusocial, weak self-preservation instinct, very military-oriented.Felids: Protandrous hermaphrodites, had an interstellar civilization ~60kya, but were crushed back into the stone age by their extinct enemies, so a half-dozen different former colonies have been uplifted.Moths: Capable of flight on their thick-atmo homeword, their native languages are very dense and they're designed to 'listen' to hundreds, so they're extremely good at organizing, corporate lean.Elder: Biologically immortal, ex-slave species from an extinct civ, pacifistic and environmentalist as a consequence, major role as priests/philosophers in the Final State.Mold: Grey goo event overtook native organic life on the planet, after 1B+ years, re-evolved multicellularity. Horizontal gene transfer, use construction as sexual signalling, basically very artistic dwarves.Warstrider: The men are aggressive brutes who kill each other to get a harem.Esurient: Protogynous hermaphrodites, dominant esurients become male and have a harem of their subordinates, creates an extremely nasty hierarchy at large scales.Bramble: Their generation ship got lost, their tech degraded, adapted to 0g, can't enter gravity wells; are now traders and space pirates and such.Ferret: Chromatophore skin, cartilaginous skeleton, oh and their 'brains' are parasites that infest subsentient hosts. Can transfer from host to host with (relatively) little difficulty. Lots of criminals.
>>94286719The post about assigning elements to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse got me thinking, what are some potential elements and other abilities for the embodiments of the Seven Deadly Sins and their servants? Like, I can see Greed being Earth, and having the power to turn themselves or others to gold or gems, but I’d prefer not to copy FMA too closely.
>>94309012I ain't got shit
>>94309762Are you Fenoxo?
>>94297195I'm beginning to think nobody likes this setting.But anyways, here are the sentient races>Constructs, which have been described>Brights (Sorta sentient, in some situations at least)But there are two more.>SomenImplied to be humans who have been forced into new bodies and thrown into the Abyss as punishment for their "Crimes." Generally resemble Constructs but have faces that look kinda like theater masks, as well as a mark that resembles whatever crime they performed. Only a couple thousand exist, and they to live a nomadic, somewhat deprived lifestyle. Their magical abilities are sealed off normally but when unsealed by special situations or rituals are incredibly strong.>LipiansNewcomers to the Abyss. Plant-like in nature. Generally superior to Constructs on average, with better technology and physical abilities, but haven't learned magic yet. Tend to try and "Protect" Constructs but always cause more trouble due to attracting attention from the really bad shit. They also have a high mortality rate due to their current inability to comprehend how dangerous the Abyss is. Even their best tech and warriors pale to some of the stuff the Abyss has.
If typically only males of an animal has antlers/horns, how would one tell a female jackalope from a rabbit?
>>94309992Then steal from FFXI instead, and use the seven godly virtues: Fortitude, Prudence, Justice, Hope, Faith, Temperance, and Love.
>>94309762fetish/10.Can you explain more about carvers and mold?
>>94312918There are some species of deer that have antlers.
>>94309992>>94296591When the thread needed him most, the four elements autist vanished.
>>94311056No. The xenos just don't have biologically-ingrained nudity taboos.>>94313425>Can you explain more about carvers and mold?Carvers are eusocial, so 99.9+% of them are infertile 'workers.' Fertile male and females are fed/maintained by the masses of workers, spending their whole lives breeding. The only ones you actually meet are the workers, who have a severely blunted sense of self-preservation; their equivalent instinct is to preserve their colony/supercolony (think "town"/"country," in rough scope). During the recent huge war that broke up the Final State, they were bred at an extreme pace to fill out the ranks.The Carvers' homeworld is a planet-sized Lebanon, an unsteady equilibrium of countless different supercolonies. There's a collection of colonies run by "Ultras" (think Young Turks or Meiji Restorationists) who are breaking with the safetech tradition of the Final State to go full gengineering on Carver workers and otherwise push every modernism that the UN has that they don't. There's also the Airrog Caliphate, a bunch of Muslim converts who also got into Maithism, this transhuman pseudoreligious thing where you connect your neurons to another person's, creating a larger gestalt consciousness.Molds are basically movie shapeshifting ooze monsters (Venom, etc), though they mostly just build stuff with extreme fine level manipulators. They reproduce asexually, with a significant chunk of knowledge inherited by the "bud," but they also engage in something like "sex," where they rub against another Mold to share genes. They don't have very differentiated internal cell structure, only like, 'muscle' + 'neuron' equivalents which tangle together. Alongside the Moths, they run the Platinum Economic Community, a mega-EEC-esque structure. Culturally/biologically, they greatly undervalue "thinking/talking" jobs compared to "doing/building" jobs, so their cultural product is limited and flat, and their sciences are weak.
>>94286719>What are the most horrifying and deadly creatures and monsters in your setting, and what makes them so fearsome?Idk if it qualifies as a creature too well, but I'm workshopping evil, quasi-sapient water as an enemy and a natural hazard for my fantasy setting.In specific places, most typically heavily infused with some sort of malicious, supernatural presence, rivers and lakes themselves are hostile to you. They're lifeless, bearing no fish or underwater plant life, but the banks and shores around them get by fine and tend to be natural in their lusciousness. A small island containing a lich vault would be a typical spot surrounded by hostile waters, but they don't necessarily originate from merely a lich leaving his shit behind in an island vault - it's more that the evil water comes to it naturally, from other places, as if the world's own lifeblood seeks to close off something foul from those that could disturb it.The evil waters don't really leave their shores, try to grab you and drag you down or form figures to try and fight you. They don't have the strength for that. They do not ever give up anything they acquire without a fight, though. If you fall into the water, the surface tension will never break, unless somebody drags you out. You will drown - and with the water being as dead as it is, you might even end up preserved, forever.Going by boat over an evil lake is an eerie thing. There's barely any sound - no splashing of birds swooping down to try and catch fish, no frogs croaking, the waves, if there's any, don't disturb the water enough to create noise. And if you look down, through the crystal-clear water you will see the corpses lining the lake floor, looking up at you with eyes as if alive. After all, the water doesn't give anything back without a fight - that includes souls.
>>94313900>No. The xenos just don't have biologically-ingrained nudity taboos.The second sentence doesn't corroborate the first.
>>94315786Humans are almost-unique in that we have sex in seclusion as an apparently biological trait (Arabian warblers also do it, and I think a couple others), so I had the nudity taboo be uniquely human. The xenos were all nonhumanoid until I spent some time thinking on it and concluded that it wouldn't work just from a "people like humanoids" perspective. Xenos wear clothes but it's cultural or aesthetic or functional, not just "I will ne'er be naked under any circumstances."I actually am not into "public nudity"/"free use" type stuff.I am into tall muscular girls and maledom and mommydom. Felid, Bramble, and Goblins all have their heights set for sexy purposes: Goblins at dicksucking height, Felid at 'use your head as a titshelf' height (like, shota/milf height difference but for adult human males), and Brambles at 'sniff your dick with her gills as she makes out with you' height. Do you believe me about the nudity thing yet?
>>94286719Kys d*scord cancer.
>>94315902Shame. I can see why you made that choice but honestly I prefer the concepts in isolation from the art, hard to cast any aspersions then too. Most spec bio art tends to do naked ayys because fashion + ergonomics are a bitch in addition to all the anatomy and most people are after the moneyshot of an alien's "alienness" on display.
>>94309762Why goblins? Like, they look like fantasy goblins and seem to be like fantasy goblins. This seems to clash with a sci-fi setting. I guess you kinda have a science fantasy vibe anyways but if you're gonna put this much effort into the cool aliens, why are some of them just "fuck it, here's a fantasy race"? Makes no sense to me (guy who refused to include xenos in his setting at all),
>>94317674Yeah. I think, intellectually, I prefer the other way, but I was aiming for something in the Mass Effect/Halo subgenre, and even going for "half-humanoid" for the most PC-ish race options (centauroid Elders, drideroid Warstrider, etc), it just was obvious that people would want to play them less and empathize with them less. I kept all the weird quirks, though, like protandrous hermaphroditism and stuff, which I hope will make them feel more interesting/alien than a body plan might anyway.Attached the old body plans.>>94317800They were named by humans, who said, "hey, these guys are short and green and are good with machines and are r-strategists and have a sort of baboon-esque personality profile because of their limited intelligence" so they named them, "goblins."During the race design process, I spent a lot of time thinking about "race archetypes" that were common/popular, what went into the more distinct and interesting races, etc. "Big savage brutes" (krogan, klingons, brutes, ogres, etc) got taken by the Warstriders, but I wanted "little savage swarmers" (goblins, vorcha, grunts, etc) as a race too. Then the problem became, "okay so I get to play a shitty tiny loser who's weaker than everybody else?", so I needed to give them something neat that they could do. The idea of borrowing the watchmakers' gimmick came to me and felt like a really good fit.It's actually not meant to be science fantasy at all, really? Not sure what gave you that impression. It's the rough tone of ME/Halo, but a little more towards the radical hard SF of something like Eclipse Phase or Transhuman Space with EMs and moderately widespread biomodding. No magic or psi or anything. The fact that everybody's humanoid and the females have boobs is just something that's true and please don't ask why because I don't actually believe there's any reason for it to be true. I could maybe squint and excuse the upright spines, but not the mammaries.
>>94317941Look, it's a fetish setting as you said. So I get it. I disagree with you emotionally, but rationally I understand and find nothing wrong with it. But a real explorer would have sex with the warstrider in the sketch.
>>94317941As I said I see why you made the choice for accessibility, sucks for niche nerds like us is all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (at least you get to toss in some magical realm on the sly!). It's nice that for a few I could identify them without a name, the spindly bushbot is definitely a 0g dude and grey goo as a slime are easy enough. Nice ti see Povorot's influence in the Esurients' design.For Mass Effect meets alien bodyplans Id recommend checking out Jay Eaton, Charseraph and Callum Diggle's stuff. Beautiful art and really cool (often wholesome) cross-species interactions.
>>94309762I have a few in a fantasy setting (omni-underdark) because I'm too smoothbrained to dream up plausible biospheres. Way easier to rely on the universal plot sealant of "magic!". Reckon I'll focus on reproductive/ gender dynamics as it's amusing to imagine how magical realm they might be if converted into shaggable humanoids:Chispen: Matryoshka bureau(cratic) crabs. Sex is a matter of coercion rather than enticement. "Ripe" spermatophores are sensitive as hell and outright excruciating if removed by anything but specialized "receiving" appendages. The species is universally hermaphroditic with far larger Guardian morphs outputting way more gametes (and having the social clout to guarantee the relief of "harvest") which feeds into the kin selection which makes them so protective of the community.Hoon: Polygynous "bull and cows" fish-lion-hippos like your Warstriders except that a (possibly engineered) plague decimated secondary sexual characteristics (mostly quill-manes and bright wattles) along with virility. Society is as sexist as ever, the difference is that gender is a ceremonial thing. Only a Bull can lead the herd but with the right mask, mantle, dyes and scarification all you need is social recognition to fill that role.Cephool: Every bird of paradise's overelaborate display and brood parasitic scheme crammed into a critical mass of breeding excess. This species complex may as well be called The Magical Realm as they've reached a failure state of self-augmentation by embracing hedonism at the expense of all else. The squid-birds' already sophisticated sexual, brooding and rearing mores have become so baroque that they can barely produce fertile young without direction by their clutches of sapient yet still unaddled by post-puberty instinct hatchlings.
>>94286719We're all familiar with the classic race choices for fantasy settings like Elves and Dwarves, but what are some other creatures or beings from mythology, folklore, and/or more recent fantasy works that can be converted into a playable race, are there any good lists or other resources out there?
>>94324108Amazons are fun.
>>94324108I have 3 potentially playable races, all of which I made up myself>>94311653
>>94312960>use the seven godly virtues: Fortitude, Prudence, Justice, Hope, Faith, Temperance, and Love.You mean in addition to the Sins? Okay, what powers would they have then?
I'm revising my shitty map. Here's the Kingdom of Anstigland, formerly Albion (very obviously just medieval Britain).
>>94328270fucked that up somehow, here it is
>>94286719How do I format a "master document" where I write down everything about my setting while having it be concise and readable?
I like making maps, even if some people on this board get angry when you post them. I think neutral zones between realms are important, areas where the king's or emperor's control is tenuous at best and bandits and bad actors or races can thrive and plot and adventurers can attempt to win their fortune or even carve a small new realm. I love the idea of forests the size of a small continent like Mirkwood from LOTR, so I added two - lebensraum for wood elves, greenskins and beast-races to compete for. Some coastlines still need some work, especially in the 'Mediterranean sea'. I think I should also enlarge some of the smaller forests.
>>94329337It's always the same map
>>94329363Do you mean that you find most fantasy maps too generic, or that you recognise this specific map and find it terible? It's a zoomed-in version of a world map I posted here two/three months ago. Your memory is quite good if it' the latter. How would you improve it if you think it's bad?
>>94328930Kek
>>94329408I mean that your fantasy map is the same map as all other fantasy maps
Is there such a thing as "semi post apocalyptic"?Like there has been exchanges of nukes or WW3 but instead of going mad max, society still endures though very much diminished?
>>94336105I think that's my favorite kind of apocalypse. Kind of the slow wind-down, post-Roman collapse vibe. Or even like, post-Soviet malaise. There's a sense that things used to be better, but the world keeps turning.
>>94336105I've been drafting a story with a setting that sort of counts, if it's of interest:>major global desertification (don't ask me how or why because I've not actually got an answer right now, and even if I did it's not really relevant to the story anyway)>story takes place in an enclave of humanity on a (gradually shrinking) region of viable arable land>they've no way of knowing if there are any others elsewhere; for all they know they could be the last>society is somewhat deindustrialized to what I'm imagining as an early-to-mid 19th century level: not because they don't know how more modern technology works anymore, but primarily just because they don't have the population to specialize that deeply, nor the industrial scale to produce it at the same precision and cost>still reliant on a lot of modern machinery designs, adapted for lower-tech manufacturing with more primitive/less precise production and materialsSo in terms of aesthetics/material culture, I'm imagining bare utilitarianism with a weird blend of 19th and 21st century technology.My main worldbuilding obstacle at the moment is just figuring out exactly what that looks like, which means figuring out what they would/wouldn't be able to produce and how they'd have to do things differently.
>>94336343It's interesting but it seems pretty rare, unfortunately.>post-Roman collapse vibeHubert Robert has great paintings about it. The vibe I'm looking for is similar but in the modern world.>>94336485It is, thanks.>My main worldbuilding obstacle at the moment is just figuring out exactly what that looks like, which means figuring out what they would/wouldn't be able to produce and how they'd have to do things differently.My exact problem.
>>94328280>>94328270I'd use less highly saturated colors for a map. Save those colors for clothing.Also the edges of things look too smooth. Both the shores and the borders are far too smooth. Real life borders are quoted jagged, as are shores.I'm not sure how you pronounce Aberbwr. Is it like the Cyrillic y that makes an "oo" sound, where it's sometimes transliterated as a W in certain languages?
>>94337330>I'm not sure how you pronounce AberbwrNot that anon, but if they're taking influence from the British isles then I would assume it's meant to be like Welsh.Apparently when Welsh uses w as a vowel it's either pronounced either like the "oo" in "pool" (/uː/) or u in push (/ʊ/), depending on whether it's in long or short form.
>>94337531That's how it is in the Turkic languages too. Some of them transliterate an "oo" sound as a W when using the Latin alphabet.
>>94286719I’m working on a story where mages are all elemental, determined by genetics like benders in Avatar, but with the twist that, the more they use their magic, the more it marks them. The first stage is always having the eyes change color to match the element and glow when the mage is casting a spell, but later stages vary considerably based on how much they use their magic and what spells they’re casting, among other factors, and I need some help coming up with ideas. There’s the hair changing color as well, or even becoming made of the element, like a fire mage with flame hair, and the skin changing color based on element, but what else is there besides water mages getting skin with fish scales and/or webbed fingers and toes, wind mages getting feathery skin, etc.?
>>94337759Interesting, is there any specific reason why they developed that way?
>>94341331Double u used to literally be double u so the oo sound is older than the wa sound. I think anyways. I'd have to reread some linguistics shit to be certain. NTA btw
>>94338311Oh that’s sick
>>94342525Thanks! Got any other ideas on how their respective elements might manifest while we're here? After what I've already mentioned I'm torn between the mages manifesting tattoo-like markings on their skin and having the mages actually tattoo themselves to better control and amplify their abilities, just to start, which do you think is better?
>>94343742Kay. I think a nice compromise would be that these traits only show up when they're using magic. Means you can go weirder without permanently altering their appearance if you want to. Examples>Level 1 heat/flames users, when using magic, have the body part that's using the magic appear singed or burning like embers. Higher levels of magic use can cause the body part to glow white hot with lava-like cracks like the image you posted>Ice users merely appear kinda frostbitten but it evolves to frost and eventually ice forming on the body parts.And so on
>>94343909How about if a mage uses their powers too frequently the changes start lasting longer and longer, and the "timer" resets every time that cast a large spell while in that state? That could work better, thanks. Still, I'd like to have more options for how each element could manifest in such a state, got any more ideas? Having the eyes go from glowing to surrounded by an elemental aura like this guy could work when they're casting archmage-level spells, but what else, I feel like there's something else that I'm just barely missing. Features of animals related to the element would tie into what I already said, like water mages getting fish scales.
>>94345357Aura is weak.Fire>Singed fingers to start out>Evolves into lava like cracks>Eventually they evolve to appear as if they’re made of pure plasmaAnd so on. They go from appearing as if they were affected by that element to appearing as if they are MADE of that element
>>94342265In hindsight that makes a lot of sense.
>>94345440Again, that would be more of a visual indicator of the mage casting a spell of a powerful level, an evolution of the eyes glowing like with less powerful spells, than an actual effect on the body caused by the magic being channeled, but I digress. My issue is that I want more variety in how the element in question can affect the flesh, not just in how 'much'/'deeply' the element has changed them, so I can make the changes more personalized, maybe even give individual mages of notable power unofficial titles based on said traits. Like I already said, mages might gain traits from animals/mythical creatures tied to their element as one option, so a fire mage might get draconic features and be known as the Dragonfire Mage, for instance. I'm just looking for more ways that the elements can affect the appearances of the mage besides what I've already mentioned so I have more options there. Like, maybe if they overuse their element their eyes can actually shift to seem to be made of their element, and they might have trouble seeing if their element isn't involved, like fire mages needing to look for others via their thermal signatures until their eyes return to normal, air mages looking for voids in the air to find where solid objects are, etc., what do you think of that?
>>94350925Yeah, that makes sense
>>94350936Thanks, got any more ideas on how the elements might affect those channeling them? I was thinking that mages who are less skilled might have some of the power "leak" from them as they cast stronger spells, to show that they're wasting energy, but that's more a bug born out of being inefficient with their spells than an actual feature.
>>94338311>the more they use their magic, the more it marks themWhy? Is it just because you think that looks/sounds cool? It says something regardless, my immediate thought is commentary on how power changes you and I'd immediately assume that old and powerful magic users are both externally and internally inhuman. I imagine them not being evil, but indifferent and cruel, since they are physically representations of nature. I think I'd be disappointed if it was purely visual, just a look for the sake of a look actually.
Do you have a world, place, which is your main world, something to which you return regularly? What is it, how does it look? How often have you rebooted it? How do you interface with it? Is it a lore dump, or a single story or something else? Do you self insert or is the world explored through various characters? Is it published anywhere online?
>>94356047What do you mean by that?
>>94354969While the cool looks are a part of it, because I was thinking that mages with particularly striking magic-induced features might gain titles, as I said above, your commentary was mostly accurate otherwise, though I was thinking that the mental changes would be a bit less extreme than you were suggesting, and regardless I'm looking for more variety in how the physical changes might manifest at the moment, do you have anything that hasn't been mentioned yet?
>>94356438Well, since their human nature is like fuel then for someone with fire it would make sense to proceed as you have already established. At the extremities first, then closer and closer to the core. You have ideas like cracks, so the power seems to be eating them up from the inside out. Hands blackening and turning to charred skeletons and spreading further and further up the arm, flames licking up and down these torched extremities as more and more flesh falls away seems promising. Burnt out eyesockets with only pricks of flame inside seems like another one that would be good to indicate how far gone someone is.
>>94356479My setting is sci-fi, and while I haven't officially thought about it I think the answer is "it varies by jurisdiction". The muslim-derived culture is... literally muslim-derived, and they don't have an issue with child brides probably. Perhaps moreso when other cultures are way more flexible with body modifications and gene therapy. When you can live for 150 years on average and don't start to feel old until over 100 you probably don't feel as much of a rush even if you are biologically capable.I feel like for the protagonist's culture it would be along the lines of "as long as you get permission from her parent(s) it's fine". Brackets because they could have anywhere from 1-6 legal parents depending on the genetic and marriage situation.
>>94356537Based conservative world builder
>>94356547>1-6 parents>conservative world-builderQue?
>>94356479>Does your setting have a modern day conception of the age of consent?It's an SF setting, so yes.It's something like, 14-18 in most jurisdictions but not in the hardline Islamic regions, where it's 9. They have biological immortality, and the norms around 'May-December' romance is mostly that, once you hit somewhere in the 25-30 range, you're a "full grown adult," for lack of a better term, and people don't think much of it if you partner with a person 100 years older than you.If you're significantly older than your partner, though, dating people under 25 will get you the side-eye basically no matter what, and dating people under 30 who aren't obviously mature (e.g. started on serious career, business owner, etc) will also get you the side-eye.
>>94356578>>94356537Why the fuck are sci-fi fags so consistent about space muzzies fucking children????
What's some stuff I could put in a present day isolated region to highlight how isolated it is?I'm thinking of how Cuba still has a lot of classic American cars running, or the thing where some isolated communities get their Internet slop in a weekly/monthly delivery by USB stick/harddrive that gets passed around the community, or how a lot of pacific islands have cuisine based on the field rations of American soldiers because of ww2 and the cold war.
>>94356586Because they're/pol/ brained and because you want a culturally backwards kr religious faction in your sci fi, but you don't want to do dominionism and Muslims are kinda weird.
>>94356586I respect their culture, and don't try to force it to conform to my values. Mohammed fucked a nine year old, he's supposed to be the greatest human ever basically, this is the logical consequence.There are more secularized Muslims in Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Albania, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Niger, Mali, Hausaland, Burkina Faso, etc, who set the age of consent higher than 9.
In a world that is part of a double planet system in which both planets are tidally locked to each other, how might the cultures of the world be influenced by having another life-bearing civilized world right there up in the sky? I imagine it would be the centerpiece of a lot of folklore and mythology, and telescopes may even be invented quite a bit earlier in an effort to better study the civilizations present on the other planet.
>>94357850Until the widespread adoption of electric lighting, the invention of radio or telescopes already advancing enough to see the surface clearly, there wouldn't be much to allow both civilisations to be aware of each other at all.
>>94287390Neat! I like spec-evo stuff. Why do I have to wait fifteen minutes before posting? That seems wildly excessive.
How do I get esoteric ideas without resorting to hard drugs?
What do you use for creating timeline notes?Things I've tried:>spreadsheets>flowcharts>tables created with various mark-up languages>gimp>plain text notesNothing really seems to be adequate for tracking multiple lines of events that's organized and intuitive for the creator while still being presentable to others if necessary.Dedicated "timeline" applications I've tried always force the user to use real world dates which is not useful for my purposes.
>>94359158Have very specific reasons for things that consider a lot of minor, tangential concerns, and concerns caused by those concerns, that can't be discerned by looking at the end result.
>>94359158Look up alternate history and mythical/lost continent maps, pic related. Starting a dream journal may also help. Keep a small notebook and pen by your bed, when you wake up don't move around much to keep your brain chemistry from switching over to fully awake mode (which is what makes you forget your dreams faster), and repeat the key "plot points" of the dream to yourself. Then write it all down, preferably without getting out of bed. As long as you recall the key 3-5 parts, you'll be able to fill in the details between them.
>>94356586In my world, "Age of Consent" is more "Do you understand what the fuck you're doing and the consequences, both immediate and long-reaching?"Not like these characters have sex anyways
should bestial, digitgrade, narrow-chested etc etc beastmen have human-like scalp hair? Yay or nay?
>>94359670"Age of consent" is specifically sexual."Age of majority" of "age of maturity" seem more like what you're saying.
>>94286719In my setting once every hundred years mages of all kinds compete in a grand tournament to see who succeeds the head of the Mage’s Union. I’m just trying to pad out the list of magic types for said tournament. There’s the different kinds of elemental magic of course, demonic magic, holy magic, healing magic, divination, runic magic, summoning and banishing, golems and other enchanted items and/or magical devices, warding spells and barriers, soul magic, necromancy, and blood magic, am I missing anything else?
>>94296591Could it be rot or bacteria? It explains how sepsis, necrosis and trench foot are all linked with War
A magazine-fed bolt-action rifle would obviously be more complex to mass-produce than a single-shot one, but how much more so?I'm trying to figure out whether it would be feasible/economical in a setting with less advanced technology, roughly equivalent to early metallic cartridge kind of era (so a few decades before they entered widespread use irl).
>>94360514Yeah, but it's not like they have sex anyways, at least not in the way we do
>>94361413Easier to mass produce than a clock
>>94361413Before jumping into guns, consider blast furnaces, the metal lathe, the metal shaper, the milling machine, and the drill press. Much more transformative than having dwarven artisans build Lee Enfields.
>>94361413The first magazines were in use by the Austrians during the napoleonic wars and predate what we would call a cartridge, and were possible because the guns were air rifles so there was no need to put in gunpowder between shots.
>>94362990 (me)I'm discounting paper cartridges, I know.
>>94360488What are the pros and cons of each approach?
>>94286719I came up with a limerick for peasants to sing in a bar. You can use it if you want. "There was a big fat bastardHis name was big fat stu!He was a bloody tyrant,Us peasants lived off gruel. Until a starving farmer, knew just what to do!He turned that big fat bastardInto a big fat stew!"
>>94368528>Limerick
>>94368528That's not a limerickIt's also not really that catchy.
>>94368528Any advice for creating such limericks?
>>94373344Yes, cut a lime in half and rick it.
>>94317941I like your sketches more.
>>94358633Use it much on your projects?>>94359477This anon's right, insomnia has its silver linings. That said there are few things that guarantee a sleepless night more than waking up in the wee hours to jot things down.Speaking of Anon what's some off the wall esoteric nonsense your unconscious has served up?>>94360488Depends on their unnatural history and your goals as a GM. Manes are a nice way of doing uncanny valley if that's what you're after, man-like compared to other beasts but still with hair where you wouldn't expect on a person.>>94368528Based and bard-pilled.https://youtu.be/SrEFWv8aSQ8?si=5htB4ISRFByzHaxy>>94374114Seconded.
I need alternate names for horses. Preferably something that would also fit terms like ____power>>94367420NTA, but I'd imagine one con is that it's PROBABLY biologically...out there
What’s a cool nickname for a motherfucker who kicked the shit out of your strongest guy?Like>Your civilization invaded his people with the aim of making it better. With your superior tech, this should be a breeze!>He walked up, beat your toughest dude to a pulp, threw him half a mile, chucked a rock with enough force to shatter the hull of one of your battleships, and told you to fuck off and never interact with his people ever again
>>94377152horsepower?
Trying to put together a hard-ish sci-fi that is kind of like Battletech shrunk down to the scale of our solar system, and I haven't decided on how "weird" I want it. Should I clutter the setting with uplifted animals and geo-engineered dinosaurs purely for fun and flavor? Are the insular and distrusting Martians just kind of weird or has the atmosphere made their culture truly alien? Should the chinese-led eurasian-originating empire take the more modern and secular route and name themselves the peoples republic of blah blah blah or can I actually call it the "empire of heaven" and have them shape entire asteroid colonies in accordance with feng shui, while their anglo-scandi-germanic rivals unironically call their jupiter colonies duchies? Is the "power struggle of 19th century empires" vibes purely incidental of the logistics of interplanetary travel and space mercantilism/protectionist economics, or should I fully lean into it and give ship crews vibro-sabres/shock-rapiers and brown-bess-shaped coilguns? I certainly like the idea of 22nd century warships having solid panel radiators (sails) and a split battery of short range railguns/long range lasers (pre-dreadnought design) vs 23rd century warships having curie-point radiators (smokestacks) and only particle beam batteries (dreadnought design).
>nation has democratic government that falls into fractal levels of conspiracy, corruption, and incompetence>nation falls apart into bickering rump states that try everything from anarchy to communism to fascism to ooga booga etc and it generally sucks most places>a really good leader is finally born and reforms the country back together, is ultimately very liked, and it goes to his head>he is very much believes his ideas to be the best ever and that they have to stay even after he dies, never to be overturned>crowns himself the king by divine right, issues a decree which outlines precisely how the nation is to be run>three parts of this decree is that 1) there are no peaceful or democratic solutions if this decree is not upheld, 2) this decree may only be amended or replaced or revoked by the king, and 3) nobody is allowed to be king>nation is subsequently ruled by a head of state with a lesser title while the throne remains emptyDoes this have any historical precedent? Do you think it would work? I wanted this to be the kind of faction that is ruled by people who are kinda assholes but nonetheless are fairly competent and try emulate noblesse oblige.>>94377152Is this literally a horse but by a different name for some reason, or some creature that performs a similar role to a horse but is not one? Why can't they be called horses?
>>94377152El Condor PowerSecretariat Power
i stand out at the long abyss of my life and think about why i made the choices i did. how can i find the solace of meaning when i am always alone and cant handle it any longer i have tried so hard and failed so many times that i cant pull through any longer where will it be that i can finally have a little slice of life pie in the skiy happy times for once? you all just create some world to run into whell i was the one that wrote the books themselves you steal my threads yep yo ustole my thread you hijacked you burned my thread you reported people you got people abnned and you dont even talk abotu the games anymore oyu just try to steal my threads and rebrand them under a WOG general probably run by thegreased hairs of the italian gangster mafia that run nigerian salt mines but i dont be contained in this world of yours thats for sure...you think that you had something to show for your thread but what i proved was that im taking itb ack i rolled that dice and i got what i wanted from it
>>94378423Are you willing to have terrawatt range engines? If so, go with dreadnought designs because you can't get away with that without stupidly strong engines. Generally speaking, weirdness arises from a Galapagos effect. If you want all these places in the solar system to be unique and weird they probably need to have been isolated (both physically, and culturally) for centuries. That kind of weirdness is easier to justify if you're a no FTL, interstellar civ. But for the weirdness that everyone shares I think the limit should be that if you just want window dressing, think of the idea and don't elaborate on it at all after introducing it>the turbosimian waiter brought us our tea and then left with a bow>never ever explain what a turbosimian isBut if you are going to actually use it, and need to have rules so people can understand why this weird thing was used in this situation, then bother introducing detail.If you keep the majority of weirdness as window dressing and introduce it as throwaway lines only semi-frequently it will not be an issue to introduce a lot of weirdness.
>>94379547>Are you willing to have terrawatt range engines?Yes. The main drive here is a "nova drive" which is basically crushing a blob of fusion fuel with the propellant itself, which is fired by a circular array of railguns, and using magnetic coils to push off the blast. In laymans terms, you are riding on the blast-wave of dozens of mini-nukes every second. Not as insanely efficient as Epstein drives from the Expanse or your typical Heinlein torches where you can just 1G from Earth to Pluto without coasting, mind you. It's more like you accelerate for a few hours up to several hundred km/s, go into a spin or tumble for pseudogravity, and then deburn a few hours before arrival. For your typical crew from Earth, you'd be looking at a few days to Venus, a week to Mars, a couple weeks to Ganymede, a month to Titan. Basically, early age of steam (1860-1910 or so).I figured the "galapagos effect" you mentioned would be enhanced by the environments these people live in being significantly different. For example; many Venusians live in floating skytowns that ride on the jetstreams of the upper atmosphere at 55-65km where air pressure and temperature is so mild you just need an oxymask, but because their habitats are built to be insanely light, they have no sense of personal space or social boundaries because their walls are a couple millimeters thick and *everything* is heard. People on Titan have no realistic possibility for terraforming and the gravity causes muscles to atrophy, so they've wholly abandoned any taboos against bionic augmentation.
>>94379661I see. Do you have a spec sheet up for one of your ships? I'd like to compare. But your premise makes sense to me, basically a fusion Orion right?On the Galapagos effect, I think maybe you should find some excuse for low rate of information exchange between planets. Right now globally the Internet keeps everyone pretty up to date on culture. If trends from Mars can easily end up on Venus, you will see some degree homogenization.
>>94379703Whoops sorry, forgot my attachment.
>>94379703>On the Galapagos effect, I think maybe you should find some excuse for low rate of information exchange between planets. Right now globally the Internet keeps everyone pretty up to date on culture. If trends from Mars can easily end up on Venus, you will see some degree homogenization.Well this is a setting that splits from our timeline in 2000 technologically (2nd space race), and spiritually/politically in 2036 when the yellowstone caldera blows up and a huge societal collapse and population drop follows (central europe and east asia fair best), with many rich escaping to Mars only to find their new atmosphere is even more dangerous than the angry poor, and having to embrace the cult of "absolute meritocracy" and figuratively bury their past selves to survive with no assistance from earthers who just see them as karma dodgers. This is a pretty sour note to start the space age, and while all the factions are pretty reasonable (not even particularly dystopic), they are all built on signficiantly different ideologically/geological foundations, and definitely prefer to set up cultural firewalls between eachother. There is definitely some information crossover between groups but its not enough to really homogenize to the same degree we see it today.
>>94379864That explanation satisfies me completely on the subject of isolation. Broadly speaking what are your factions? I see Earth, Mars, Venus, Jovians so far. How does cislunar space align itself, like colonies in around Earth Sun L4? Seperate, part of Earth sphere? Asteroid belt is Martian clay or independent? Are the inner rocky planets in an alliance against the outer planets? Anyone living out in the Kuiper Belt or Oort cloud in isolation? What's the sitch?
any decent discords for this subject?
>>94379993Might expand on all the factions later after I get some much needed sleep. I want inspiration/input for the largest faction because I've developed it the least.>Solar Empire (name WIP)Holds nearly all of Eurasia, almost all of Luna, Venus is sort of a client state, massive space colonies at all Earth-Sun L-points, lost most outer solar system holdings after the Troubles, with some exceptions like Eros. Would be the uncontested ruler of the solar system had the Polaris Dominion and Sovereignity of Mars not managed to briefly overcome their hate and schemed to help eachother assert their independence at the same time. States within it are granted quite a bit of political and cultural autonomy within their realm as long as they make their contributions to the whole and accept surveillance, but the overarching governmental/military apparatus has a much more unified and "high" culture to it. The concept of the "mandate of heaven" is foundational and has been redefined mostly to mean protecting mankind from future annihilation (the feared "kinetic exchange" scenario) either through unity or, at least, utter dominance. The emperors generally have a history of good statecraft and diplomacy, with one notable exception, who ironically brought the world closer to catastrophe than anyone else when he (a teenager at the time) opted to invade Titan with a gargantuan armada out of revenge for his father. Seeing the great foundaries of Iapetus getting pounded into dust was the first time the population of soon-to-be Ring Minarchy would accept the idea of being a state at all. The old dynasty (name WIP) will be disbanded and replaced with a new one ruling elite who are genetically engineered for their leadership role.
>>94378423I'm a sucker for systembound space opera, though butter-soft Warframe and Destiny do justice to the "boring" well known cosmic backyard.If you want Galapagos despite Torchship commute times it's worth considering that biotech doesn't have much direct bearing on the mechanics of CoaDE space warfare (except maybe regeneration vats for healing + anti-stroke G-resistance gene mods along with long term microgravity adaptations). With some reason for the Old Country to oppose transhumanism many periphery footholds could be established on the basis of morphological freedom or bootleg uplift projects, lots of reason to end up with a medley of rubber forehead "ayys"!>>94379661Selection doesn't act all that quick though, self-modification is what'll kick physical change into overdrive (culture is implied if transhumans are de facto forced into insularity, self-selected as as weirdos pre or post transformation).
>>94378423>Should I clutter the setting with uplifted animals and geo-engineered dinosaurs purely for fun and flavor?You should.I think it would sell the idea that the solar system is filled with life.If you think animal and dinosaur are too weird for hard-ish sci-fi.You can change them with post human.
I need help.So, in my setting countries fight for resources and territories in the form of war games with giant mecha.Now, which one is make more sense;one vs oneor team vs team?
>>94382684Implicitly, such ritualized warfare represents the military capacity of the involved states, allowing them to know who would win without needing to have all the death. Since modern warfare is much more about industrial capacity than individual heroism, team v team makes the most sense.
>>94382684First of all go read all of Heavy Object. Then think to yourself, can you write a better story than this? Can you make a better setting than this? If not, start stealing.
>>94379661Assuming the nova drive was a more relatively recent invention, that gives plenty of time for cultural drift. Ordinarily space travel is in the scope of months at a minimum, which has everything very isolated. Not totally, since messages could still come and go, but you'd get the unique living conditions and the outlooks that are shaped from those.Stuff like asteroid empires and moon duchies might require some more eccentric circumstances though, since that's beyond just cultural drift and is more like a cult trying to larp as some ancient kingdom. Not impossible to justify, like if the people running the Jupiter colonies do something weird like offering noble titles to qualified people who sign up, but as a player it's the sort of thing I would be curious about the history of. Like how did we get from modern-day China to an Imperial dynasty within the asteroid belt? Crazy billionaires is an acceptable answer, but it's the sort of answer you'd want ready.
>>94378787It's the former. It's complicated, but in this 'verse, "horse" refers to a bipedal sentient species.
>>94378423I've been trying to do something like this myself, but one of the major problems I have is when I make a setting I tend to make more that while different, share a lot of common elements, which I fear makes them all feel samey especially from an outside perspective. Then I want to add elements of setting A to setting B, but doing so makes A redundant since those are the big things separating it from B.
Do you think it would make sense for a species that produces pearls under their tongue to be targeted by people wanting the pearls?I was thinking that it would devalue the pearls since it'd inflate the supply so people may not actually want them.
>>94384724>Do you think it would make sense for a species that produces pearls under their tongue to be targeted by people wanting the pearls?Isn't that basically the source of pearls in real life?More seriously though, it just depends if going after that species is easier than diving into the ocean to crack open oysters. If it is, then obviously people would use that as a source, especially provided the quality is good. But unless the quantity of pearl yields is an order of magnitude greater than that of oysters, I don't think it would make a massive change in the market.
>>94385213I intended the species to be humanoid. They're also quite physically large (much bigger than a human) so their pearls tend to be quite a bit bigger than normal clam pearls, but they're also physically quite dangerous to humans if angered.I also had in mind that they would be sentient and some shrewd individuals even sell the pearls that grow under their tongue. Originally I intended humans to hunt them for their pearls (and they would hunt humans to use their body parts for something else) but they form a treaty and some clever individuals on both sides start trading.
>>94383147I see.Okay, one last question.Which one more likely, team consisting of 11 mecha or 5 mecha?The mecha is about 6 meters.>>94383894I'm actually stealing the concept from kengan ashura and the mecha from front mission.
I want a setting that allows for near complete character creation freedom, but I'm stuck as far as ideas that allow for that go. I've went over existing concepts that meet that need, like GURPS Infinite Worlds, The Strange, Rifts, etc. but none of them really gave me the spark I need.So, can anyone point me somewhere? Much appreciated
>>94385431How about a setting based on Traveller's Tale?
>>94385431>I want a setting that allows for near complete character creation freedom, but I'm stuck as far as ideas that allow for that go.Remember Planescape: tormenty boy? Something like Sigil, but more soundly fleshed out allows for that anything goes background range
>>94385975This could have lots of great ideas but skimming through this alone makes me dread the possibility of actually reading it lol.>>94387279I've thought about this, but dismissed the idea because planescape has such a defined vibe and that's not really what I was going for. Branching off of something like Sigil makes it a place more important than others, but I suppose if I want any setting stability at all there should be somewhere like Sigil.What I was envisioning was more freeform than that, there is no 'prime world' or something like that, the dimension hopping aspect comes from the characters, but that only makes things harder, some sort of hub might be unavoidable, I'll see if what can brew with this
>>94385371How much bigger? Like, the size of a quarter instead of a dime, or is it the size of a golfball or something larger?Either way, I think that might actually result in two different sorts of markets. People usually want pearls as jewelry or necklaces, and while one of those might work as the centerpiece for a crown or necklace, it's not as though they'd quite work as a substitute for standard pearls in that sense.And if there are individuals who are smart enough to sell them, that might help keep things peaceful, but if there also might be a lot less profit if they ask for too much.From what you've described though, I think those are sufficiently more of a pain in the ass than oyster pearls where they won't fully substitute the market. There seems to be a lot of extra risk/cost involved either way, and nothing about it has made the smaller pearls easier to get.
>>94387812>What I was envisioning was more freeform than that, there is no 'prime world' or something like that, the dimension hopping aspect comes from the characters, but that only makes things harder, some sort of hub might be unavoidable, I'll see if what can brew with thisYou already half-rejected it but the more you talk about your vision, more it makes me recommend Taveller's Tale.It's an almost anarchic society of dimension hoppers doing stuff around the multiverse with a vague, long-term goal of fighting cosmic horrors from beyond the time and space.
>>94388431This alone makes my brain churn with better ideas, I might give it a better look after all, thanks. I'm just not sure I really get the picture from what I've been reading on the pdf, is this all there is of this setting?
>>94387978Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll keep the pearls as a "trophy" of sorts from people who killed them in war, the war started for other reasons however.
>>94378787Yeah we tried "Give the king all the power and then abolish the king" in the real world, and invariably someone appointed themselves super-king or not-king(but totally king)
>>94377152>>94383962Burdenbeast.
>>94286719Making a campaign that involves the exploration of an overgrown abandoned post apocalyptic (plague wiped out) pseudo medieval urban stone metropolis. How easy is it to mess up this worldbuilding? I want to make a fun campaign for my players.
>>94395919It doesn't seem like you'd need much at all. You're basically making a megadungeon out of a city that was abandoned due to plague. The few questions that immediately come to mind are>how long ago was the city abandoned? (important for if their are any tapestries, silk, or old tomes still left or if it's all moth-eaten)>what's the state of the country in which this metropolis is in? (just basic stuff for who has authority over the lands and the ruins, if any, and what the nearest settlement is like that the players will likely use as a home base)>what are the five most powerful monsters lurking in the ruins (if you want liches and dragons residing in there it's good to account for their presence early and what that would mean for the ruins)None of it would require going beyond the borders of a single country at most. Not messing it up just requires avoiding a few pitfalls, but it's a very simple concept and most of the worldbuilding that you need to do should spring about in the process of creating the dungeon itself.
>>94384724Wouldn’t that be like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?
I'm working on a mini-setting for an adventure arc, to run a series of thematically-connected one-shots. Our group's been doing a lot of classic dungeon-delving and village/wilderness stuff, I want to shake it up and do some urban adventures.My Pitch: Noctburg, the City that Eats People.In Noctburg, it's always raining. A city built on itself, with ancient sewers that haven't been repaired in centuries. The schtick of Noctburg is that it's full of predators; physical and metaphysical. I just want it to be the place where every urban monster that feeds on humans has a home. Giant cockroaches that wear hats and trenchcoats and stalk you through alleys to eat you. Ettercaps that set cunning snare traps, then drag you off to eat you. The only thing keeping the city functioning is the alchemists that moved there due to the lax pollution laws, so the sewers and river district are full of noxious chemicals and cast-off experiments. The ambient despair is so strong that when anything particularly awful happens, reality buckles and a mini-Silent-Hill forms (an easy source of bottle dungeons). Demonic drug-cults that throw raves. Vampires.This isn't meant to be a super-serious setting, I know I'm describing excessive grimdark. Really, I'm looking for more good examples of monsters that live in the dark shadows of human civilization, and a place for me to run spooky silent hill dungeons where the monsters are manifestations of despair and addiction, wrath and depression.
>>94400115Well I intended the race to be intelligent and somewhat hostile at first as they're based off the Asian dragon-illusory clam idea. With the other response I think it's best for the pearls would be more a trophy than an actual thing worth harvesting for the most part.
Dragons as the guardians of the middle plane, where humans and other mortals live, opposed to the Angels from the upper plane and Demons from the lower plane, wild forces of nature that will wipe out entire cities in order to eliminate otherwordly presences, yay or nay?
>>94403071Sure why not?
>>94403071Describing them as guardians in that context feels like a misnomer, but having dragons as just so fiercely territorial for anything that they pick up as an 'outsider' to the plane and stopping at nothing to destroy it gives them a pretty nice role.
>>94378787My form of governance is interesting because it's more a "This is for our benefit" kind of deal.It works like this>Multiple villages and a small capital city>They have a council per-village>Said council acts as a way to relay village happenings to the royals, such as a monster attack or a recent geological development. They do this via messages. >Royals can act as a hub to contact other villages and send help or resources.Now a few questions that may arise from this:>Why don't the villages contact each other directly? It usually results in a breakdown of communication and a lack of organization or preparation, which usually results in a cataclysm >Are the royals hogging power? No, not really. They don't really control everything, they just help to facilitate communications>Why don't villages break away? They do sometimes, but separatists don't last long. Not because the royals or the rest hunt them down, but because they usually get buttfucked by monsters or anomalies in a matter of weeks, and with no backup they quickly either die or run back home.
>>94403427You've just reinvented the Zemstva, congratulation it was a gigantic failure.
>>94403340Nice.>>94403406>Describing them as guardians in that context feels like a misnomerI agree and I'm trying to come up with a better word for it.The idea comes from Gamera, who is said to be the guardian of the planet/nature: While not hostile to humans, it doesn't care much about collateral damage when hunting other giant monsters that messes the balance of the planet.
>>94403620Hmm, sentinel perhaps? Has some similar connotations of watching for external threats, but without the implication that they're there to 'guard' anything. Though a wording like that does assume that people in the world know about this function of dragons. At least, beyond any assumptions they have about dragons just being territorial if a demon shows up in their face. People might just as readily assume that a city under attack by demons that was leveled by a dragon (killing all the demons in the process) was simply a disaster on top of another disaster. It's only if people put the pieces together about dragon behavior (assuming that dragons can't just talk to tell them) to realize that they're being territorial against extradimensional threats.
>>94403620Depends on which Gamera you’re talking about.Heisei actually does care about humanity, he just couldn’t afford to hold back given the situation.Now, Rebirth is something else because his entire goal is to protect humanity from the Kaiju. Not even a “They told me to” but because he actually wants to.
>>94403595Do you mind pointing out the flaws?
>>94403854If the individual zemstvo can make laws and govern themselves and only need the monarchy for military protection, there is no reason for them not to organize around the monarch except the monarch actively preventing them from doing so. If they can't they end up becoming effectively districts of a unified realm under the monarch. If the monarch can make laws that govern all of the zemstvo then he is incentivized to bypass them as legistlative bodies, if he cannot then we have the HRE problem on steroids.But the problem that Russia ran into is simple. This isn't a parliament. This isn't democratic by any real measure. But it is also a stark limitation on the monarchs power, which satisfies neither side on the issue of democratic governance. There is little reason to be ideologically committed to this system. If the realm expands the monarch has every incentive to not extend the system, and short of revolt there is no way to make him, and no zemstvo has any reason to want other zemstvos short of wanting to limit monarchical power, other towns having councils does not affect me, their rules don't affect me, and a russian has no benefit from poles or lithuanians having a council, especially because each Zemstvo has a privileged position that if anything get diluted by the presence of multiple zemstvos. So the state can either not expand or this system becomes relegated to a secondary system. The Zemstvo were organized under Alexander II, and by the rule of Nocholas II had lost all de facto power, only regaining some as the government began losing control of parts of the country during ww1 (A short lived renaissance, as the whites didn't want the zemstvo and the reds wanted them reformed into soviets).The issue is to sum it up that this system puts the central government and the constituent states at odds in a way that can only be balanced by a monarch who does not want to expand their power.
>>94404980I mean, it makes sense within the context of this shit>Incredibly dangerous world>Rapid communication and the ability to organize is key to survival
>>94405212nta, but it doesnt make sense in a realistic setting. You cant remove the nobles' desire for more power and control.This is not something you can remove from human dynamics.This system would either fall apart with the nobles being incompetent/corrupt/icapable for whatever reason to facilitate their job and get replaces by the peasants, or they are good at their jobs and this status and authority provided to them allows them to consolidate more power and change their dynamic with the peasants.Maybe on some noblebright anime setting tha people are good and altruistic just for the vibes and the nobles are good guys just because, but not on any realistic setting.If the world is so dangerous and rapid communication is vital then this would have developed with the rise of organised society and naturally would not be relegated to outsiders like the nobles. How and why does nobility even existin this world.There are so many reason why this makes no sense that i cant get my head around typing all of them
>>94405265Read this to get a better understanding of what I’m doing>>94297195
Sanity check on my doctrine pls.>space>weapons systems in play include: lasers, particle beams, kinetics, sometimes missiles, drone fighters>missiles have been made useless because your big torch missile can be defeated by cheap (relatively) chemical missiles, so generally only relevant in a ship-to-ground situation>longest range weapon = electron beams, can get 50% hit rates (on other vessels) around 75,000 km, travel time to target of ~1/3 of a second, but cuck giant laser arrays since they actually can strike accurately on "static" targets a light second away, as good as a giant laser weapon>also have lasers, but our mirror size is constrained to 60cm aperture turrets which are mounted jack in the box style, unfortunately hard to focus (20cm spot size at ~1,000 km)>gunports all over the ship with particle accelerators firing buckyballs at extreme velocities (in excess of 0.01c, less than 0.07c)>additional gunports for 1g sized metallic projectiles, 100 rpm 700+ kps>ships have very good dV, a light cruiser or destroyer might have ~700 kps, a heavy cruiser or carrier might have ~600 kps>ships employ a mix of magnet drones ahead to deflect charged particles and ferrous pellets, have magnetically contained plasma fields and CWIS to vaporize incoming shot, and thick angled armor as a last line of defenseThese conditions get chunky, armored needles flying in formations, hammering the shit out of each other, maneuvering quite a bit at close ranges, and trying to achieve drone superiority while trying to squash the other guys with big guns. Drones fight in the mid-field among the beams and pellets and microscopic dust "bullets", trying to increase pressure by taking out deflector drones, telescope drones, and other combat drones. Since armor is basically all forwards flanking matters (in 3-D too), but splitting your fleet can let you get defeated in detail, so we have a early 20th century warships vibe, plus LoGH.Does this general approach make sense?
Alright so, I have a situation that i don't know how to fix.I have this map, right? It's supposed to be a pretty high scale map - i'd compare it to an map that extended all of europe, northern africa, and the middle east. The issue is, of course, that because my scale is so high, the main continent in which the 'adventure' will be set remains to look thin and small.What can i do to fix this? I've tried resizing, but obviously, it doesn't really work. The central continent is supposed to be the size of Europe, not the size of a single region.
>>94405212No it doesn't. The fact that there ARE external threats is one of the factors for why the central power (The monarch) would need and want to expand his power. If he needs to rally an army, he cannot be bickering with local village elders.If he needs to grant concessions to do the one thing he exists to do, he is not effective.You can solve this one of 4 ways as I see it1: City state alliance. Think Aztecs. Each of the towns as well as the capital city are nominally independent, but since one is just so much more powerful than the rest it is the hegemon. (This has its own problems, but they are not as fatal to the project)2: Get rid of the central authority. Canton time baby.3: The monarch is supreme. Each town elder runs the day to day, they make their own rules, but all the rules have to be okayed by the monarch and he has veto rights and can just abolish them if he feels like it. This makes sense for larger realms, but you're dealing with A city, so like why wouldn't the monarch just rule himself? This is trying to federalize a city state.4: Fuck it man, it doesn't need need to be a good system. The Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth existed for a century with the most retarded governmental structure known to man. The HRE did ok
>>94405520Thing is, he can't. You think it's that easy to just expand when everywhere beyond the areas you've managed to inhabit are full of stuff that tends to butcher you en-fucking-masse? This society is not anywhere near the top of the food chain and likely never will be.READ THIS TO GET A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONTEXT>>94297195These people>Suffered 1000 years of slavery>Were discarded into a lower plane of existence>Discovered magic after 500 years of being slaughtered in droves. Absolute bottom of the food chain.>Managed to make a civilization after discovering magic, which allowed them to go up like 50,000 tiers in the power dynamic (Out of hundreds of thousands)>They're still nowhere near the top because some of the shit that exists there is just what the fuck.I need to create a form of governance for them that plays in line with their values (Heavily values free choice due to how they were fucking slaves) while also being pragmatic for their situation.
>>94405451Iz nice
>>94406278Thank you Anonymous. It was rather painful to get a set of power and numbers that are reasonable and allowed this framework. Now to write my version of NDP-1. This is essential.
>>94405518Not much you can do. You've created Anatolia
>>94407046No, anon, you don't get it. The problem isn't the shape. The problem is that the map is too "small". If I were to try to make the "politics" map the borders would look small. Resizing doesn't work. The image becomes bigger but the continent itself still has the same proportions when compared to the sea and such. I can't make a second map because I suck at drawing and have no idea how I'd do a "more detailed" version of it that still follows the same coastal shape.
Why are there so few bronze age settings? Imagine a setting where the bronze age collapse never happened, or they never advanced to the iron age, or they entered the "iron age" but the world doesn't have iron and they kept using bronze
>>94410360>Why are there so few bronze age settings? Same reason there are so few stone age settings, such things are mostly defined by what you can't do/can't buydoesn't exist, rather than what you can.
>>94410360What exactly can such a setting offer that a pseudo-medieval setting can't?
>>94385431>>94387812Agents of Combine, player characters from several realitives being sent on missions by an unknowable empire to spread its reach even further.
>>94410360>Imagine a setting where the bronze age collapse never happenedBoring. In my setting the Bronze age collapse is currently happening
>>94410496because the things the modern world likes are either directly "descended" from mostly the 19th century or a direct response to those said things in the 20th century and we carry that cultural baggage in the western world.Romanticism loves the new reinvented "cool" medieval ages and so this is what we got, besides ancient greece/rome.Most people dont know enough about the bronze age to even make a mental image of the peoples cultures etc.How do you expect them to either develop or play in an rpg set there?It is no coincidence that the more educated university kids from affluent middle class families were the ones to make Runequest, the original bronze age fantasy rpg, while the religious weirdos and other rurals in the usa got to be the ones that got so very into dnd.It is also telling that Runequest was much more popular in western/northern europe where bronze age interest is higher and people are generally more educated.Tldr, knowing about the setting enough to visualise it and imagine a character or create a fitting concept is really a necessity to playing in any game
>>94412541meant to quote this >>94410360
>>94286719That's pretty cool.
>>94333279because they're all copies of europe north africa and the middle east
Trying to figure out a language for my world.I need something that’s simple yet fits this vibe>Unfamiliar and weirdly surreal>Beautiful and heartfeltI’m trying to think of something that has no truly “Ugly” words.I’m trying to mix basic English sentence structure with some Asian/Russian for accenting, along with a few words from other languages for more complicated terminology. Very few closed mouth sounds like P or B, lots of O’s and vowels. So far at least.>I love you = Io sou lin>Where am I = Yoh ei io>My name is = On uoah in>This is fun = Ith in lilin>I am a healer = Io ei o ArztAnd so on and so forth. How do you like it so far?
>>94286719Do you guys have any bad tropes or stereotypes that you love and or use?For me, it's Romans with British accents. Two of my main characters have this. One has a posh Queen's English accent, the other has a Cockney accent that is so thick, even Dick van Dyke would find it cartoonishly offensive.
I need some help.I'm making a setting with a geocentric model.Should i keep the retrograde? Or just scrap it?Anyone knows any settings that used geocentrism?
>>94417079Language building is pointless even by world building standards.
>>94424086Why?
Which would you say is better, wonderdraft or CC3? Wonderdraft certainly feels easier to use
General question, why do nearly all stories and worlds based on central and south america have it´s people inevitably living with dinosaurs, domesticated or not? It´s kinda cliche at this point.
>>94420940Elder Scrolls uses geocentric model for Nirn. The night sky is an enormous shell and the sun and stars are holes where spirits that didn't join in the creation of the planet broke out of the universe.
So I've been working on a hb world, mix of High Fantasy and High SciFi. I have an idea for this feudal society that has noble houses, but the sci fi gimmick is that the knights are actually using 12ft tall power suits. I had an idea that the brothels and sex work are run by a guild that is backed by an elderly noble lord who legitmized it using his name. The idea I had was that this man had a daughter who he planned to marry off to another noble lord as a power move. The daughter, not wanting to marry this man, ran away. The noble never knew what happened to his daughter until one of his agents chanced upon her ring through a shady dealer.He would come to discover that after running away, his daughter had no means to provide for herself and after exhausting the funds she had began to whore herself under the service of a crime syndicate. She turned to drugs, etc and pretty much had a terrible life until she OD'd. Upon her death, the criminals took her things and sold it. The noble lord set out in force and purged the crime syndicate to the last man and their ends were not quick. Driven by pity and grief for his actions he offered to proved for the remaining whores from his own estate. One of them spoke out to him and told them that while generous, so long as men had desire, what happened to his daughter would happen again. She asked him to instead use his power to create a haven for the prostitutes and women who only had themselves to trade for livelihood. Fueled by his daughter's fate, the lord agreed and while scandalous, he took the brothels into his name. Flash forward some 40 years later and the brothels are still stigmatized but they are not victimized by anyone. My question is, what would this sort of organization do with women/men born into the "family" that weren't suited or women who aged out?
Sci-Fi setting, solar-system scaleI wanted the system to be trinary but I'm not sure what kind of stars to populate it with. My 2 main ideas are either a regular sunlike star with a dyson sphere around it, and 2 proto-stars. Or The dyson star, proto, and one at the end of it's life that is actively dying. Which sounds better?
>>94428577The older women take care of the younger ones. They act like den mothers who help care for their children or help them to learn the trade or still turn tricks for clients who still find them desirable. The older ones can also move about in polite society via their contacts and act as information brokers and a way to connect people to people, especially the ones who have been between their legs.
>>94428930The Dyson sphere with two proto stars sounds really cool anon.
>>94309762>implying those are goblinsYou can't hide your garbage fetish faggot. Those are clearly fennec foxes painted green and turned into gay furry shit.
>>94317800>they are too obviously goblins>>94431493>they obviously aren't goblinsThe tao of /tg/.
