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>what should I name this god?
>he's the sun god of agriculture, health, and good weather
>...
>ah yes, "Sol"
>I really outdid myself this time, even if I say so myself

For the questions?
>Not really
>None
>Sort of but it’s not really a directed conspiracy

Common folk don't conspire, but there's several cults dedicated to things that are "true" but not good.

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>>94482475
I just watched a longform essay about DX and it had this image/scene in it prominently several times. Weird coincidence, I'm sure it's nothing.

What non-monarchic governments do you have in your setting? I'm a huge fan of pirate republics

https://pastebin.com/khnH5JAG
Need more help with this

>>94482475
Does anyone have any forms/sheets/etc., for organizing information? Right now I use a word document but it's filling up and getting hard to work with.

Where would be a good place to have a Mars sized artificial planet placed in the solar system that suddenly became observable to Humans?

>>94484565
Probably beyond Pluto's orbit

>>94482475
>Thread question
There's a race of "intelligent" spiders (about as intelligent as a small child) that have gone full Waco by the start of my story, believing they're in the midst of the apocalypse and that the other races are literal demons sent to take them to Hell. Which would be silly, except these spiders are fond of webbing bones together into fucked up bone mechas, which turns "silly" to "problematic" for kingdoms who find one of their fortresses inside their borders.

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What are some tools you use for world building?

Also any suggestions on how I could do metal/resource placements if I have a full world map?

If sex ratio at birth was biased towards more females than males (say perhaps 67-75%), how might that impact a preindustrial agrarian civilization?
I assume there would be more women in roles where there might not otherwise be, and perhaps polygamy would be at least tolerated as the norm due to not enough men to go around, but what else could it affect?

>>94484565
Put it in the exact same orbit as Earth, but 180 degrees father around, so that the sun is always between it and the Earth. That's a very obviously artificial location, and it would be extremely difficult to detect, even in the satellite era. Plus it's not difficult to get to, in terms of orbital mechanics.

>>94488579
Let's talk war. This kind of lopsided gender ratio would historically be the result of losing a war, and would further cripple a people's ability to make war--but if it's the default state, everyone else is already also operating under those conditions. It might mean that armies are not stocked with numerous expendable troops in formation but instead resort to elite teams of hyper-specialized warriors who use guerilla tactics, or perhaps highly armored shock troops, or something else of the sort. Men would still be somewhat more disposable than women since you could, hypothetically, still have a society with like a dozen men for a couple hundred women and still maintain a population for a while, but their ability to make sustained warfare while taking losses would be questionable. Another route, though one that might be niche, would be to simply value women's lives less, and have far more female soldiers than any real-life culture. How exactly that would work, I'm not really sure--it could be organized in all sorts of ways. A lot of this could depend on climate--in warmer climes, high-population-density civs are more viable and things tend to naturally end up with a few strong men in control of most of the resources and way more polygamy. This might be even more pronounced with a female-skewed gender ratio, or, since a lot of this depends on the ability of warlords to use excess men to make war with each other, it might actually flip around and go the opposite way it does in real life.

Posting again since it was at the end of last thread
Any has recommendations of media about the thirst years war. I have the urge of making something akin to that in space as the basis of a setting.

>>94482475
TQ:
In universe, there are lots of "stupid" conspiracy theories (equivalent of antivaxx), like "encephalic regenerative micromachines are actually rewriting your brain" and "the government takes your brainscan and tortures it to find out if you cheated on your taxes".

There are also politically-active NRMs that people complain about, like the Maithists (transhumanist Sufist sect that are all about hacking to mush brains together), the Solar Galaxy Movement (American fetishist Japanese Abrahamics who want to colonize the galaxy with humanity), the Annunists (simulation cult, like a UFO cult but with the simulation hypothesis), and Laomudao (proselytizing xiantiandao sect that's done fairly well in both China and Africa). Think Scientology or the Moonies nowadays.

The real conspiracy theory that's Just True is that the Final State - a democratic integrationist interstellar empire that tried to conquer Earth in 2200-2215, failed, and then tried to blow it up in 2235 before getting slowly beaten down to its home system over a 20 year war - has a biodegradable form of nanotechnology, called Scour. By breathing it in, they can get the nanites to your brain super fast, and then a skilled technician in combination with a machine can rewrite your brain any which way they feel like. Memories, loyalty, personality traits, etc. It was expensive and highly restricted, so it wasn't recovered by UN forces, but the Final State itself still has it, and it's pretty clear it's been used to create various cells in UN territory. Their entire goal is to basically fast-track the predicted end of human civilization by pushing people in key positions to hit the button, so the Final State can come back, conquer the ruins, and get back to its mission of colonizing and civilizing the galaxy. So there is in fact a bunch of intelligence officers and Manchurian candidates running around trying to kill basically everyone.

Have there ever been scifi stories of low-tech alien encounters? I've been spitballing for a while an idea for a story in a world where Mars is habitable and has a civilization develop at almost the same time as earth. The idea would be to make 1920 the divergence point where Earth and Mars (more likely Juno because it would be more blue than red, resulting in different name) manage to both confirm for definate that the other has an advanced civilization, as both detect radio waves. More than anything, I'd think of it less as scifi and more as althistory, primarily exploring sociological themes when aliens end up being another Earth with its own easily recognizable array of 20th century woes as well as highs. For all intents and purposes, Martians would just be humans with a different set of cultures. Thus questions like Cold War, ideologies, cultural exchanges, religious adaptation, solar diplomacy, (dis)interest in the now mundane aliens, space race implications would be central. Problem is - inventing an entirely new Earth with its own 20th century geopol is pretty fucking hard.

>>94482475
>TQ
>conspiracy
Setting is reneisance-tier for the most part, so its less a conspiracy and more superstitious belief. People say that sometimes people are born who vividly remember events they've never experianced, people they never saw, places never seen. This is believed to be a person remembering their past lives and proof of reincarnation among those who subscribe to this belief, but some regions have different folk interpretations. Certain religions persecute this idea as heresy, not because they think its true, but because it contradicts their views of life after death. Most think its a superstitious fairy tale, as almost no one met someone who had such memories. There are orders of mentalists who use psionic powers and who study the phenomena, thinking its related to their powers, but to them its like studying Ball Lightning - they seem to be mostly sure its real, but can't pinpoint it, have basically zero evidence or tests done and no clue of what these memories could be or how they work.
>is it true
Yes, such memories do indeed occur and they in fact show events experianced by someone in the past.
>unknown conspiracies
The first emperor of the largest empire in the setting was a conqueror of a people fleeing cataclysm on another continent. He claimed to receive direction from his peoples god, but in fact he was one of the few with memories of past events and was analytical enough to realize they showed him a different continent to which he could deduce a way. No one knows this secret.

>>94489429
this sounds like the john carter of mars series, although that starts in the 1860s rather than more modern

Still trying to work with my magic system so that the players can actually feel like they're learning

>>94489429
>For all intents and purposes, Martians would just be humans with a different set of cultures. Thus questions like Cold War, ideologies, cultural exchanges, religious adaptation, solar diplomacy, (dis)interest in the now mundane aliens, space race implications would be central. Problem is - inventing an entirely new Earth with its own 20th century geopol is pretty fucking hard.
I don't think it would have that much effect until they can actually visit one another, which would take until ~now. You might have some experimentation with some ideologies/technology from the other side, but unless it's way better I wouldn't expect too much. If you really want an alternate Earth geopol, just go grab some alternatehistory.com map where Hitler dies, since that's around the necessary POD and would totally rewrite the world map.

Eldritch Skies is basically an alternate history where the events of Lovecraft's stories were true. (And the events of his stories, not the fanon stuff, so the aliens aren't all malevolent psychos, etc.)

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>>94482475

In my world, most goods are produced by individuals.
Nobody just goes out and buys a sword, they make it themselves.

>>94482475
Kys d*scord cancer.

>>94491611
how does that work? like some kind of prison shiv tier weapons or dopes everyone have a forge they can use?

>>94491109
I can't help but imagine that anyone who has such a picture, or worse, made one, must be incredibly angry.
I don't think I've seen a wojack that doesn't make the person posting it look much worse, and the same goes for chads. Other than, you know, original version chad.

>>94491826
Depends

>>94491109
What is "political powerfantasy" even referring to here?

>>94492194
Making your preferred form of government clearly superior to others.

Weapons in my world are unique because their strength, like most things, is linked to knowledge in a strange way. Example
>A single blade, roughly half a meter in length and made of a crude metal.
>However, it was forged in a way that was thorough and refined, with the person making it having poured their all into it.
>Further still, they slowly added runes that allow magic to flow through it
It's hard to explain but every weapon is something that becomes personalized over time. As if it ages with the user in a strange sense.

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>>94491839
Is this better?

>>94491109
>>94496517
how do I worldbuild if all my fetishes are very vanilla?

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city population and area in square km
what is a good resource for knowing if i'm describing my city as overpopulated or not. like a chart or something

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>>94482475
>>Are there any conspiracy theories in your world and what do they say?
>>How true are they?
The war against the Cybog Collective (CYCOL) was won with teamwork between the independent colonies, the Universal Corporate Council (UCC), and Shared Prosperity Sphere (SPS). This is held up as a moment of human unity.
The colonial forces on the surface of a disputed planet, the Hightower Colony, fought against a full scale attack by a CYCOL fleet lead by a rare and powerful node ship in orbit. The colonial forces were deceptively left open so that CYCOL threw all of it's forces at them, leaving none in reserve. That allowed the waiting UCC fleet in hiding to launch a small ship crewed by SPS personnel who infiltrated the CYCOL node ship and uploaded a package that caused the node ship to go haywire which also incapacitated all of the CYCOL which were connected to it. This upload spread to all node ships and from those node ships to all CYCOL units under each of their influence.
A perfected executed plan. Or so the marketing goes.
The reality, which is treated as a conspiracy theory in-universe, is that the corporate fleet was supposed to back up the colonial forces trapped on the planet and they simply did not. The UCC wasn't willing to put resources in harm's way. The SPS members who ended up uploaded the package into the node ship were working against SPS orders, and they were not lended a UCC ship but stole it. UCC had no idea what was about to happen. Reality is it was a few rogue SPS responsible for uploading the package, and the colonial troops on the planet for holding out all on their own for as long as they did. Everybody else is assholes, but propaganda in universe (largely published by the UCC) treats the event like a success of leadership.
>Is there a conspiracy no one actually knows about?
Always.

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>>94498211
>Is there a conspiracy no one actually knows about?
A UCC middle manager was doing experiments on human test subjects, subjecting them to the unusual energies of the leistung cystals. The goal was to tap into a theorized energy grid that exists in humans and empower and expand. It was an insane study, based on fringe puesdo-science and carried out with heartless disregard for the subjects. Eventually, the main research center was totally destroyed. One subject reacted with an unanticipated amount of both power and consciousness.

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>>94498271

I'm trying to think of a good shape for my forgotten runic language.
Something that feels old

>>94482475
>Are there any conspiracy theories in your world and what do they say?
missionaries from the elven priesthood of the mercantile god are a subversive cult trying to destabilize the region
>How true are they?
they are actually a pyramid scheme funneling donations and acting as a front for a cartel of smugglers
>Is there a conspiracy no one actually knows about?
nobles are always plotting against each other to some degree

>>94496715
double down on the political power fantasy

>>94491109
A facesitting kingdom of ethnonationalist fascists kept in power by their control of moon magic? I guess that's a setting.

>>94498731
>moon magic
Not esoteric enough

>>94491611
I have the same idea for my "elves" race.
Since they're so attuned with nature.
They can just make a sword out of tree's bark, which is a bit better than normal sword.
This is why blacksmiths and merchants guilds hate them.

>>94498838
Not that kind of moon

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So, I ought to ask, what do you guys think of this map i made?

The colors are randomized from the program i used to make it, i do intend to change them once i'm sure there's no more changes necessary.

>>94500447
It looks like a mirrored version of Europe.

You better have the Balkans equivalent be an extremely unstable region

>>94501724
>It looks like a mirrored version of Europe.
Well, the way i made it, was that i took a map of europe and started drawing over the borders while spinning it around and moving to different parts.
>You better have the Balkans equivalent be an extremely unstable region
A bit too early for that, it's supposed to be at the 17th century.

Anyway, I suppose i just wanted to know if there was anything wrong with the map. In all honesty, i wish it had more enclaves, since those were all the rage in this time period, but that felt like way too much work.

>>94491109
>>94496517
What do I do if my political power fantasy is like, sovereign wealth funds + worker coops?

My magic system is something I'm still working on. It's one of those "Easy to learn, hard to master" kinds of magic, where anyone can do it if they have the basic know-how, but it takes a long time to REALLY do good with it because it's exceedingly complicated to operate.
Example of simpler spells
>Making a glow
>Drawing shapes in the air with your fingers
It's similar to figuring out a language when you really want something useful. For example, let's say you wanted to do something like, an enhanced punch.
>Focus energy into your hand is the first thing you need to learn to do this.
>What is your hand? Your palm, wrist, and fingers, correct?
>You also need to make sure it moves with your hand and sticks to it rather than just flying off it like when you draw shapes.
>It's even more complicated than that, however. How can you enhance it? How does one create force?
>Well, it's hard to do. You'd need to find a way to manipulate objects first. The best way to practice this is to focus on something outside your body, like a small pebble or twig. Try and focus your magic into latching onto the rock. But you also need to make your magic more solid to successfully manipulate the object, even a little bit.
>With this basic knowledge, you MAY be able to try and make your arm, legs, and hips move faster to create more force.
You basically have to figure out and fine-tune each aspect of the spell

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>>94482475
I’m looking to create a world in which there are two factions of mages, one that derive their power from light and one that derives power from darkness, each having magical specialties that they can do that the other cannot besides manipulation of the force itself, along with a few neutral specialties like healing magic or magically enhanced movement. For instance, light is especially suited for illusion spells, and darkness is especially suited for self-invisibility spells. Anyone have any other ideas for specialties for each force?

>>94500447
I am very fussy about maps, this one is very nice.

the tricky step is to make the height map.

It is possible to import a map into aazgar's

(Aazgars keeps getting more awesome.)

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>>94503803
Funny thing you say that. The way i made this map was that i drew the continent borders, painted some mountains on top to make it be able to autoassign, and then used Azgaar to create a whole map.

What i did after that was transforming it into a 100k cell map and exporting it as a GeoJSON, which allowed me to use it in QGIS (GIS tool) to make a map.

>>94498709
Disco Elysium: the strongest political faction is boring European-style centrist bureaucracy.

>>94496715
A vanilla fetish is still a fetish, so pack 'em in anyway if that's what you'd want to see.

What is forbidden in your world?

>>94482475
Assuming a flat earth how far would an object have to be for the atmosphere to obscure it?

>>94505308
furries

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Trying to make a alt history world where the 6th seal of the book of revelations is currently in effect with the divergence point during WWII, where the nazis (black sun) does a ritual and makes a deal with satan to turn the untermensch into “beasts”, but ends up turning Russians into gnolls instead.

Except i cant come up with a plausible deal for the nazis to make with satan. I was thinking the holocaust could be ritualistic, but that got heavy pushback on the subreddit discord, so i dont want to go down that route.

You guys got any suggestions?

>>94507168
>Le nazis...but occult!
Snoooooooooore

I don't know, have it be some sort of crazy desperate project by a cell in the later stages of the war? Or if you want it earlier, an ancient molochic ritual found by the nazis in the middle east or Egypt? I dunno.

>>94507629
Im not trying to be original. But thanks for the suggestion.

>>94502078 #
I think it's a little fucked up to keep your workers in coops, but you do you

>>94507629
>>94507168
Make it something the Poles did

>>94507168
You should fuck off back to your cancer site.

anyone want to help me think up names for vaguely spanish, desert dwelling elves?

>>94511000
Solaria
Aurelin
Valenara

>>94511045
I meant more for them as a people/culture, two of those names are already quite similar to their countries, their region is called Arridia but I don't want to name them after that

>>94511000
Here's what I do for this stuff: go to Google Translate, and put in a dozen related words in on separate lines, then translate them into the desired language. Look through them and notice any that look good, tweak to taste.

dancers - bailarines
runners - corredores
hunters - cazadores
chasers - perseguidores
corsairs - corsarios
cowboys - vaqueros
cowgirls - vaqueras
singers - cantantes

In this case: cazadi, maybe. Could toy with it more but I have no idea what you really want.

>>94512151
that would be hunters? I don't think that really fits them as the more religious of the elven sub types, they're more closer to the spanish inquisition and various andalusian caliphates in terms of culture

>>94512593
Like I said, I don't know enough about them to actually pick appropriate words. The main point is just to sound good, though, and it isn't like you don't have weird etymologies in real life. Des Moines is from what the Peoria tribe called their western neighbors, mooyiinkweena, which literally means "shitface."

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>>94482475
>Are there any conspiracy theories in your world and what do they say?
The Soviet Union advertises RedNet via bots, the wirelayer union is militarized, and most governments have de facto fallen to their local oligarchies (even the communist ones).
>How true are they?
These are all true.
>Is there a conspiracy no one actually knows about?
The scale of violence in their shadow wars, roughly 200k people die a year fighting in contested markets and unless you literally live in those markets there's no way for you to know.

What kind of government would work in a civilization where they're not in any position to explore or expand due to being hopelessly outmatched by monsters?

>>94513224
bureaucracy

Looking for a quick poll of something. Mass Power Rangers setting, ie anyone can diy a rough morpher system. How do you handle megazords?
>Ranger bullshit powers can make one
>You need a proper large scale factory and bay for one
>Mixed
>Something else

>>94515229
Power of friendship

>>94515526
>Megazords can be summoned went a group of rangers vibe hard enough
I can dig it

>>94515229
an extra item is needed like a flute or something

I'm thinking of trying to add some influences from Dune to modify the character classes for Stars Without Number. What aspect of Mentat's or bene geserit would be good to translate as a class ability or a Foci?

What kind of music would a society produce when their key value is about not losing hope?

>>94482475
I made a few conspiracies for settings which aren't around anymore. There was
>Aliens are colonizing known space to replace humans (schizo conspiracy)
>Aliens encountered during the Minotaur Incident were running from something (true)
>That something was humans from earth who have achieved the singularity and become god-like beings while the humans the setting follows are descendants from a colony banished from earth millennia ago (true but nobody knows)
>Not all ancient technology was actually made by humans, some of it was aliens (unknown)
>There exists a wormhole somewhere out there in the void that leads you to a time when the emperor of space was still alive (unknown)
>FTL travel actually send you through some kind of alternate dimension, and if you open your eyes in-transit demons will kill you (unknown)
>The deep state is building a generation ship at the edge of the solar system (true)

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>>94482475
What do you need to remember when creating beast-folk races for your setting, especially if you want there to be more to them than a generic "evil" race, and what are some underutilized animals for such races?

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nnnnnnooooooooo is that a kingdom which has the same name and relative territory as it did 5000 years ago?!?!? stop stop stop stop stop stop! This is TERRIBLE worldbuilding!!!!

>>94512725
What was Y2K like in this? With such fragmented networks the whole "simultaneous collapse" thing could have been played up as "look at the foolish capitalist pig-dogs and their millenarian superstitions written right into base code!". Itd've been more propagandized and perhaps been the focus of sabotage making a self fulfilling prophesy of the scare for political ends.
>>94504188
Hyperliberals are doing pretty well within that system, as they do within any which doesn't outright kneecap enterprise. Problem is within DE that the amoral pursuit of capital doesn't really have the ideo-religious "heft" that could make it something an Innocence might champion.
>>94491109
Already did this once. Recursive mind controllers + controlled with syndicalism and memetics-enabled feats of mentat savantry = a "utopia" of harem-unions "led" by mind controller figureheads who are to some extent imprisoned / placated by the base desires they've warped their concubines around. The controller may have the singular Will but the harem collectively out-brainpowers them and enacts effective workplace democracy by default. The Controller is both "parasite" reaping rent from the coordinated work their control enables and functioning as a social "fulcrum" about which disputes are resolved with minimal ill feeling.
>>94502078
It's hard to square egalitarian tendencies with a hard on for mind control. Without the latter I don't think it ought to be too hard, give your version a go!

>>94482475
Conspiracy outweighs history by a wide margin, this is because memetics is the setting's signature tech (as cyber, bio and steam are to other "-punk"). Beyond the innate pollution you get as humanity finds a new landscape to exploit (good luck finding pure wild type genomes near a GMO field) the players are wandering the aftermath of the Semantaclysm, a war which as the name suggests murdered meaning.

Usually this refer to the fact that ideas about the conflict can contain "landmines" set to "detonate" within the mind of any wannabe historian, among the more popular conspiracies (and that which is alluded to in whispers is the only way the Semantaclysm can be somewhat safely approached) is the idea that Platonic Meaning itself was marred rather than the network of fuzzy concepts we mortals use to approximate it.

As to the deepest darkest secret whih we're blessedly none the wiser to it is this: to answer the Fermi paradox is to fall silent. The apparently empty stars are littered with the ruins of past civilisations veiled from us by Clarketech antimemetic screening. They were hidden like this not from us but from their builders, consciousness is inherently self-destructive and transhuman apotheosis entails such perfect self-knowledge that you cannot help but uplift all subconscious processes into the light of active control. Turns out that a lot of "junk" thought is about containing the seething insanity that is the Soul, by the time ayy demigods realise that their won introspection is a threat introspecting about introspection kicks the process into high gear.

Antimemetic shrouds are a desperate attempt to think without thought, they incidentally protect us from perceiving precursor ruins (thereby learning of their doom and succumbing to it) but mostly allowed the elder ayys to exist slightly longer than they otherwise might have. Long enough to choose between mass autolobotomy or trying to outrace extinction in a final blaze of glory.

>>94522441
>It's hard to square egalitarian tendencies with a hard on for mind control.
Sufficiently Advanced has the Cognitive Union which is quite similar to your idea (minus the harems).

>Without the latter I don't think it ought to be too hard, give your version a go!
I also am into mind control. Stepfordization, too, so I guess it'd just be the Cognitive Union with more markets and more housewives.

>>94520977
I have my own beast-folk written up, intended to be written as morally grey but on the "good guy" team. Do you want to hear more on it?

>>94520977
I don't have any beast-folk in my world now that I think about it.
Wonder if that's a mistake considering it's flat-out fantasy. Maybe I can fit something in there, but the question is what

>>94524459
Not him, but sure!

>>94523171
Hmm, haven't thought about that setting in a while... I'd argue mine has the saving grace of lacking a single centralised imposer of ideas: minarcho-mutualism over any command economy apparatchik clique cunts. That said I dig the whole "absurdly effective nerve-stapled communes who win converts through sheer competence". Reminds me a little of the Oubliette in Quantum Thief (in some ways the CU's outward antithesis) in fact having all their anonymising privacy tech be an outgrowth of the in-skull panopticon prison they merely forgot they were caged by. The wish fulfilment could have started that way with "harems" as minders of hypercharismatics. Since my I don't get off on abuse beyond usurped self-determination I can justify the absence of truly cruel masters by saying that as extensions of the id (who imprison and manipulate the master in turn) any innately self-destructive or vicious communes dissolve or end up nerve-stapling the evil bastard at their centre (pour hatred into those who cannot resist and reap the whirlwind). By a process of attrition only the bizarrely functional equilibrium groups remain and "proselytize".

Joining the "game" of ceding control is eased because nobody, not even the participants (*especially* the participants) know where it begins or ends. Nobody can point to when the new state of affairs took hold because there being no clear division is the whole point. Still, this shit is literally masturbatory and the whole point of the setting it'd fit into is of every culture unravelling into mass psychosis in the absence of outside aid. Finding out who's ultimately in control is an absurd pastime that's impossible by design, you don't question the rules while you're playing it. What if you did?

>>94525524

What if you found a black hole where ultimate volition / responsibility should be in your society and looked to other, less (or differently) distorted societies to see where it lies for them? What if it's missing for them too? What if your society spliners into sects who abandon the illusion of will, acting seemingly at random like Zeno Clash's Corwid of the Free or else entirely sublimating themself into obeying social mores for obedience's sake? desu it's harder not to go somewhere dark than somewhere ice where mind control's involved but those seem like plausible and compelling extensions of this fetishtopia to me at least.

I could easily have the union-harems be platonic to remove the whif of magical realm anyway. So long as everyone's characteristically cavalier about their will being stolen, replaced and / or forged in that strange society it should come across as well-intentioned, somewhat functional yet unsettling.

>>94523171
Oh btw you might enjoy Glasshouse by Charles Stross. Excellent sf and features an especially sinister take on Stepfordisation (not as fetish stuff but as a means of social control and collective lobotomy, not that you'd likely read it that way!).

>>94482573
I named my creator goddess Mother Sun. She's married to Father Stone. Got a problem with that?

>>94521919
I never said that

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>>94482475
What are some ways to make Angels or other celestial servants more distinct while not going too hard into the “Biblically accurate” aesthetic and keeping them as winged humanoids?

>>94525981
Figure out what you want them distinct from, and then add/remove features to make it so.

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I have an alchemist teacher who is concerned that for one of the first things he and a student discovered together, the student wanted to turn it into a weapon.

What is a way for the desire to use it as a weapon to be heroic or good?

>>94482573
>>94525901
I don't even have a name for my "God."
As with IRL gods, we're not even sure if they exist, only that we can't shake the feeling that they do.
In fact, the god has no name, only ever being referred to as "You."

There's a type of mount in my world
>Spiritual Deer
>Faster than any land animal, being able to reach mind-boggling speeds even compared to modern vehicles, especially when it really accelerates. Also can jump immense distances.
>Also able to phase through objects and extend this ability to others in contact with it.
Here's the thing. It's only able to be ridden by someone who it's actually okay with riding. If it doesn't want you on it's back, you're phasing through. It's not something that can be forcibly controlled or tamed, even by mages. It only follows orders if it actually wants to, and it can sense trickery.
Only two people have ever tamed one, and one of them is not only dead, killed by the other, but cheated by using magical spells to cause it immense pain, and even these barely worked.
How would the one person who is able to ride such a creature be treated? If it senses he's being exploited by others, it'll save him and take him away

>>94525901
rock daddy

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>>94526016
I meant to include "beautiful and radiant human", not sure how I missed that typo.

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do you think this would look better if I remade it in CC3 instead of wonderdraft? this is pretty much the main center of culture for humans on this continent, also it doesn't show on this map because it's quite old but just to the right of the map is where the lake elves(I don't have a better name for them) are and I wanted the southern coast of galeah to show some influence from them upon the humans there

>>94526646
>I don't even have a name for my "God."
We literally call our own god "God" 99% of the time. That's unironically probably not a problem at all.

>>94527811
God is still a name.
This is an nameless, silent, formless, yet obviously sentient force rather than an entity. The closest thing it has to a name is "You" or any variation thereof. Examples of what it does. According to the in-world religious document (May or may not have happened)
>There were gods. Many gods who lorded over the domains of the soil, skies, soul, stars, and seas, and so on.
>They had created all things and ruled over all things, creating beauty and life, death and birth, love and hatred. But they wanted more, so they traveled to another realm so they could rule over the things there as well. That realm is ours.
>And as they arrived, they felt uneasy. As if there was something beyond even them. That is you.
>And so they traveled, searching for the source of this feeling. But there was nothing. Not a shrine, not a monument, not a trace. You need none of those.
>But they refused to yield, firing the full force of their godly power into the ether, hoping to hit whatever the source of that feeling was. Yet, still, nothing.
>Desprate to provoke some kind of reaction, they set their disasters upon the people of that realm. Us.
>And despite the silence, they knew in that moment who you were.
>Their lightning missed anything living by a hairs breadth. Their earthquakes didn't shake just quite right, as if they were being pushed in the other direction. Their efforts to warp and twist us, to set us aflame, to erase us. None of them worked.
>You stopped them.
>You were there.

>>94525981
My version of "Angels" are actually more similar to fallen angels in a sense. In a good way.
>A realm that's far above ours
>They were forbidden from interacting with such a lowly plane
>But they left to help us.
>Even depleted, they shone brighter than ever.

Here I am, trying to figure out how to play what must be the third or fourth gambling game I've come up with that would be fun to try and fit into a fantasy setting, while having no in-depth development of the setting itself.
So anyways, it's a pseudo tarot-dice game I'm currently calling Chits which is a collective effort being played against the pot. It involves six 'dice' which denote one through six sides (marble, coin, d3, d4, d5, d6) and the game itself is an evolved (or degenerated depending on who you ask) form of old, haruspicy-esque fortune telling which was used to commune with the goddess of fate, luck, and change: Lady Qis. The player at cast pays their fee and throws their chits into an open box upon a table and waits for all to lie still, settling their fate. The other players, ideally six, each collectively throw a chit into a bowl to form the Lady's/pot's hand. One player throws the marble, one player throws the coin, one player throws the d3 etc etc. Your hand is then checked against the pot's hand, and depending on whether your hand has scored to buck the fate that Qis has set out for you, you either win or lose. Most hands lose, as those that try and fight their fate often do, and their bet is added to the pot. Some hands win, and you can collect either a large or small sum from the pot. Very, very rarely can one throw so well a hand against a poor enough hand held by the Lady that you can collect the entire pot at once.
Then the hand is finished, the chits are collected by their owners and the turn changes to the player to the left, paying in his fee before trying his luck against Lady Qis.
A pot can stand for an indefinite amount of time and all gambling houses where Chits is played are protected establishments under the watch of Qis' Temple. Hundred if not thousands in coin can pile up on a Chits table as the weeks and months go by, with the Temple collecting their tithe every seven months.

>>94522519
This reads like the groundwork for an excellent science fiction novel.

>>94484565
>that suddenly became observable to Humans?
By that you mean "it was there all along but only got visible now"? or "the planet just got visible, what's a good place to put it?"
For option A, both of the answers you received are great, but I can add another one:
It's on an extremely elliptical orbit, like a comet. So it may have been extremely far for most historical times, but can get as close as you want it to be.

>>94527936
Cheers, in theory it ought to be simply as a derivative blending of the series I like. Since I lack the chops for writing playing out at the table will have to do. So far I managed a fun ontological mystery / dungeon crawl within a derelict lighthugger but the real meat of gameplay which I don't think any setting offers is that the PCs are psychohistorian + missionaria protectiva STL traveller merchant-princes. In a sense the institutions of civilisations themselves are the NPCs they'll be dealing with as the individuals who happen to fill those roles die in the generations that travel takes.

The Fermi paradox solution above irks me desu because I honestly don't see much of a way it could be overcome. In terms of campaign structure there's meant to be an escalating series of capability increases matched by ever greater realisations of "we're fucked" with the idea that having found the tools to deal with whatever level of threat they were dealing with previously they'd do so again for the new challenge. Players aren't likely to reach the stage of play where they're grappling with the harder problem of consciousness (which is arguably the problem all patterns of life are an attempt to solve) but if they hypothetically did I have no ray of hope / further power increase to shine on that final "we're fucked".

In a cosmic horror "you can't beat Cthulhu but you can seal him" sense we're ahead of the game precisely because of the Semantaclysm. When "maturity" on a species scale is a death sentence ironically toddlers with nukes are the best champions you'll get, we've managed to produce fearsome intellects while having absolutely no idea what we're doing. That MIGHT save us in the long term if the ongoing apocalypse caused with / by them right now doesn't finish us off...

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>>94525481
I've posted about them before but I've been changing it as I make it.

Any feedback or suggestions appreciated, or if you want to know more and have questions I'll try to answer them. In fact asking questions is good because you'll probably think of some aspect I haven't thought of yet.

>>94489429
Venus would be much more appropriate than Mars, I think.
Much closer to the earth and within the Goldilock zone, much closer in size to Earth, too.
But, assuming you want to go for realistic, it's pretty unlikely that two different species would come up with radio communications within the same century, even assuming they developed sentience at the same time.
Both the neolithic and industrial revolution were the result of pretty specific sets of circumstances and could have happened much earlier or later.

>>94489429
>>94528661
That is, unless integrate concepts like morphic resonance, that says that ideas somehow gets transmitted after they are known by a large enough number of people.

So what systems do you actually use to bring these to life? >implying /tg/ plays games
I've got an idea for something that is basically just a schizophrenic amalgamation of the sci-fi settings I like. The player characters would functionally be cyborgs and I'm looking for non-specific rules system with am emphasis on limb focuses combat with amputation/mutilation.

>>94525981
>They are the spirit of the dead, who ascended
>Your guardian angel is often a prestigious ancestor
Could even be funnier than that:
Becoming an angel isn't automatic when you get to a given level of virtue, it takes a specific kind of life:
Say: you were righteous, but not virtuous (you were good, but didn't go out your way to help other people).
Or, after death if you are good, you get the choice between ascending or going back to earth as an angel

>>94528738
>I'm looking for non-specific rules system with am emphasis on limb focuses combat with amputation/mutilation.
Straight Cyberpunk 2020.
There is a generic version of the system called Interlock, I think, which is free. Solid system overall, easy to adapt to whatever you want and the damage system is localised.

>>94527157
Winged humans but not beautiful and not radiant

>>94528738
I mean >>94528377 is literally "a schizophrenic amalgamation of the sci-fi settings I like" which I managed to run a version of using Diaspora. It was the wrong choice as while that system drew me with its robust star cluster creation mechanics and society-level social combat it proved a poor fit for the megadungeon intro adventure I ended up running. With what I've learned I WILL try again, probably using Mothership. I still feel that Diaspora is best suited to the Protectiva + Foundation unique gameplay "hook" though (in spite of that being the game type that I'm least likely to run and even less so to run well...).

As to your thing unironically Nechronica. Something like the Monster creation rules in Monsters and other Childish Things might work too. Don't see why the concept >implying

Seems pretty doable to me.

>>94527883
In fact the best description of the Angels is
>Physically weak
>Tend to wander in small groups
>Body made of smooth, slender marble, segmented like a doll
>Have no face, instead possess opera masks that they wear
>Possess powerful magical abilities, but need to be in good condition to awaken them, as well as severe bodily or mental trauma as a jumpstart. Preferably the former. When they awaken their magical abilities, they gain wings

>>94529110
>Interlock
I thought it was Fuzion

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>>94528614
If you're torn between a spear and axe why not both? A halberd of some sort since they still have 2 hands to wield it. Or this was an idea I had, a polearm that can fold up to be just a regular axe

>>94532685
Thing is I wanted the halberd to be the primary weapon of professional soldiers.

However I think actually I'll have the professionals wielding great swords and the militias wielding halberds.

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>>94482475
A tale/narrative as old as time

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>>94534191
Ad now, being in heaven is apparently/potentially gay and lame because "muh hardships and struggle good."

Also, how you can tell someone is a pampered, sheltered or fortunate first Worlder living in such a safe peaceful developed country where people romanticize, and fetishize struggles, hardships, tragedies and turmoil. All because you live in such a safe peaceful environment, whereas a lot of people in not so developed places would WISH to live in a heavenly paradise with no struggles and hardships.

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>>94534199
Ah yes, the safe peaceful environment free from struggles and hardship of siberian forced labor camps under tsarist russia

>>94534199
Grass is always greener elsewhere

But it certainly isn't on twitter

>>94532623
>I thought it was Fuzion
Nope http://datafortress2020.com/InterlockUnlimited.html

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>>94525981
Well, since i used the angel as literally "messenger" in my setting.
I have like dozens different types of angels.
Here some examples:
Armor angel: angels with biomechanical body, think xenomorph but divine.
Statue angel: i used buddhist influence for this angels.
Elemental angel: angel made of pure energy, their materialized bodies are broken and reassemble constantly.
Idol angel: futuristic angels, to be honest i created this angels because i watch vtubers lately.
My point is, if you didn't want them to be biblically accurate, you can just add wings to any humanoid and call them angel.

Fantasy is totally creatively bankrupt, it's obscene how much complaining you see about "professional" fantasy projects and then go online to see the shit that gets posted in this thread, or on reddit, X, etc. by those same complainers.

>>94534199
>>94534191
It's accurate.
Having nothing more to strive for is an emotionally devastating experience

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>>94482475
For my world's pantheon I'm trying to come up with as many spheres of influence as possible. So far I have War, Love, Fertility, Life, the Earth, the Sky, the Ocean, Death, the Underworld, Medicine/Healing, the Sun, the Moon, Fire, the Forge, and Magic, what others can you think of, and what spheres of influence do your gods have?

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I came up with an enormous northern island country that vanished and was erased from history for one of my worlds. In the story lost records of it get rediscovered at some point. So then a few months later I saw Greenland on a map and I realized I forgot that Greenland existed and I was a little spooked when I started getting a mandella effect that it never existed and that it just appeared now for the first time.
What the fuck is happening

does anyone know of any good hex map generator?
I'd like it to not look too nonsensical, and only care about biomes, rivers and roads, not about big lists of encounters or points of interest.

>>94545257
You are literally retarded anon, toddlers learn object permanence yet this is somehow beyond you.

>>94545419
rude

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I love maps.

>>94545257
>What the fuck is happening
Alzheimer, sorry anon

>>94547346
Me too, and I love maps with a lot of water because ships are cool

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>>94543572
Valor, wisdom, freedom, justice, fate, dream, knowledge, tradition, invention, hunt, art, hero, vengeance, conquest, music, harvest, sailing, journey, party and protection.
In my setting, gods are just glorified tulpa, so, a new god can just spawn with a right condition.

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I'm trying to come up with a name for a Christmas equivalent but everything sounds WRONG. What the fuck am I supposed to do.

>>94547755
>In my setting, gods are just glorified tulpa
How original.

>>94547826
Fuck it. Just call it Christmas. Or yuletide

>>94547835
But there's no christianity
and yuletide sound pretentious

>>94547826
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korochun ~ If in doubt, go with slav alternative: astronomy/season based, sounds exotic, yet close enough to be recognizable. In some tribes, it even included putting random shit on tree before burning it as offering!

>>94547346
>West Wall
>Chain of islands stretching from west to east on southernmost point of known world
Cheeky

>>94548092
The map is obviously Antarctica so presumably every direction is north.

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>>94547831
Never claimed to be.
Trying to be original on world building is a fool's errand.

I've never felt the need to do anything other than loosely base my settings off the British Isles around the 8th-9th centuries. It's incredibly comfy.

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>>94482475
What are some ways to visually show that magic has been corrupted besides it becoming a darker color, manifesting tentacles on either the user or the spells themselves, or having things the spells hit get afflicted with corruption? Oh, what kind of corruptive forces exist in your setting, and how do people fight against it without needing divine magic?

>>94550219
Star Wars, I think, does that thing where using dark magic (Dark Side of the Force) too much drains your vitality and makes you physically older than what you actually are. For example, Palpatine, who seems to be anywhere between 50 and 70, ends up looking like he's 90.

>>94551022
he was 88 when Vader threw him down the shaft

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>>94482475
How would you put a twist on the Amazonian archetype, assuming that you don’t already have some in your setting?

>>94552266
have their society be exclusively made up of amazonian women and twinks

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What are some groups of heroes/warriors besides the obvious Knights of the Round Table in real world mythology or history?
I'm aware of the Argonauts, and the 12 peers of Charlamagne, but that's about it
I'm not necessarily looking for massive orders (aka none of the various Templar orders). I want some stuff with very distinct characters I can point to

>>94552266
As much as I think the setting is stupid, I actually like 40k's answer to this - a religious order loophole that arms women with fire and faith
I'd probably do something like that, or have them otherwise be in some honorary position that wouldn't see large scale warfare. Bodyguards to rulers, courtly hands (who happen to be armed under their dress), or guardians of significant places of import

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>>94552266
Favourite one is this. It's from Osprey's Wars of Atlantis.
It's great, because it's a mix between the Greek legends and the historical roots behind it, with a nice reality check on top.

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>>94552266
>>94554209
tl;Dr
>They are related to the Scythians
>Horse archers
>Both men and women are trained to fight, which means they double their fighting forces but it reduces drastically their abilities to regrow the population if the conflict goes badly

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>>94553313
There's the obvious, let's get it out of the way: all the comic books crossover, like the Avengers, the Justice League...
R.E Howard's characters are also in a shared universe and crossed over on at least one occasion.
You also have a profusion of heroes on the Greek side during the Trojan war (not just the obvious Achilles, Odysseus and Ajax, but also Diomedes, Nestor... You could even throw Agamemnon and Menelaus in there).
There's also the three Bogatyrs, or the three Musketeers.

>>94547826
>New sun celebrations
>Darkest night vigil
>Winter festival

>>94552266
Amazons but pike & shot era

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>>94547755
Thanks for the suggestions. What more can you say on your setting and its gods? Like, what are some of the more powerful deities like? What's the threshold for a new god forming?

I'm trying to justify the creation of a nation in my setting, does this sound sensible?
>a mile-long kaiju from outer space lands on a fantasy world that recently came in contact with its gods
>the kaiju is shitting its children at industrial rates, in all shapes and sizes (from sheep-sized to Godzilla-sized)
>its children go around fucking shit up, eating things, generally turning the landing into a global crisis
>depending on current needs on the frontline, individual gods either "spread" like mists to improve human performance over entire countries, "coalesce" into single hyper-powerful but strategically limited forms, or somewhere in between
>on another continent, there's a bunch of little counties and such with no central authority
>the creatures start invading, and a particularly big concentration is reported as being en route
>one of the counts realises that they have no chance of surviving without a unified response, and given that trade between the counties is pretty strong, they
>there's the base needed to create a single country under a common national identity
>the other counts wouldn't like losing their autonomy, though, so he'd need some pretty serious backing... like a god's backing, for instance
>he goes to the god of justice, begging for support in uniting the counties
>the god of justice agrees, giving him the combat power, inspiring presence, and the explicit political support (including through its already-established order of clerics) to be called a champion of said god...
>...on the condition that, once the war is over, there'll be a document explicitly limiting his power, political participation of the common folk, explicit guarantees regarding personal freedoms...
>he begrudgingly agrees
>eventually, on the first continent, the kaiju is killed
>the new nation suffered modest damage at worst, and is able to affirm itself as regional commercial power
>>94547826
What exactly does it celebrate? What's the big yearly occasion being remembered?

>>94482475
>Thread questions
In my CofD campaign, the "mistake of 30 years ago" refers to Declaration of Alma-Ata, which was spearheaded by Knights Hospitaller and is used as a cover by countries and corporations to perform human experiments in foreign territories.
The twist is that the Knights didn't intend for the Declaration to be exploited that way, so they have to keep up an increasingly expensive task force that investigates and shuts these experiments down.

>>94554351
ChatGPT-ass names

>>94555341
>What exactly does it celebrate?
you know, you right. I should figure out what's being celebrated. That might help a lot.

If a neutron bomb were to go off somewhere like a city, bye bye people obviously but would all the infrastructure be wholly intact save what got hit by the bomb or would like, street lamps and water pipes get irradiated?

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>>94555997
First of all, you need to understand that the "neutron bomb" is still a nuclear bomb, even if its main effect on target is intended to be the immediate emission of neutrons (instead of heat, blast, or fallout). As such,
>heat
It still produces a fireball, which vaporises whatever is inside of it, because a minimum of 20% of the energy release will be heat.
>blast
If you detonate it over (or in) a city, it will still flatten things around it the way a normal nuclear weapon would. Even if it would be less powerful, it's still at least kiloton-range weapon, and a minimum of 30% of the energy released would be used as the blast.
>fallout
Less than half of that produced by a normal nuclear weapon of equivalent yield, but it's not important: even normal nukes don't leave much unless you detonate them relatively close to the ground (because the fireball needs to touch the ground in order to leave fallout), and detonation height is usually chosen to maximise immediate blast damage.
This is why they were intended to be used against columns of Soviet tanks, because they'd be over the German countryside (and thus away from the densely-inhabited cities), reducing collateral damage. I've made a little image using nukemap as an example. It's a normal bomb, but it should indicate what would happen if you used any sort of nuclear weapon over a populated area (312m burst height in this case).

>>94555997
>>94556311
Are you sure? Don't the neutrons basically create lots of activated products in soil and metals via neutron activation? While it _radiates_ it was also designed to create area of denial by turning soviet junkers into radioactive scrap heaps.

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>>94554643
>What more can you say on your setting and its gods?
Well, gods in my setting are not sentient. Sure, they will answer prayer, but, it's because of the prayer's faith than god's whim.
So, i focus more on the believers interaction towards other with different beliefs.
>Like, what are some of the more powerful deities like?
Well, there's the death goddess luna, since immortality is considered as greatest sin in my setting, she's the one of the strongest. Her blessings are effective against immortal monsters.
But, the truth is, luna is the perversion of the everlasting mother, the immortal goddess. An ancient "evil" god.
The perversion happened because her believers defeated by their enemy and the enemy rewrite their believe into the enemy's religion.
This however doesn't erase the everlasting mother out of existence, she's still exist as the other side of luna.
>What's the threshold for a new god forming?
Mortals, doesn't need to be a lot, even one is enough. They need to witness a "miracle" and believe that it's an act of a god. Voila, a god is born.
But, since there are already lot of gods. The newborn god eventually will assimilate to other existing god.
That's why, even if there only dozen who worship ancient evil gods, they're more powerful than new god who have millions believers.

>>94553313
The Merry Men of Robin Hood.
And it's not from history or myths but the Three Musketeers deserve a spot here I think.
The Roman Decemviri can be interesting even if they're not adventurers/fighters.
You said no templars but you can still look at the first Crusade for a lot of heroes and stories

You can also look at Norse sagas (Völsunga saga), Greek and Roman legends (the Trojan War), French chansons de geste (the Song of Roland).

>>94553313
I have my own version of this

>>94550219
In my setting, the corruption happen because of chaos.
The magic become unstable, so it's more stronger and dangerous to the user.
Also, the user's body morphing each time they use corrupted magic, continuous useage will lead to them turning into insane monster.
Even though divine magic exist in my setting. But, there is also atheist on my setting.
Corruption work like tumor, if you can locate it and extract it out of the body, you can just destroy it with fire or freeze it.

>>94547826
Winglebel

>>94555790
>ChatGPT-ass names
Well, I can assure you that these are certified organic.
I wanted to go for something transparent but still setting neutral.

>>94489098
Well, 1632 by Eric Flint was fun.
I've got:
The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood
The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter Wilson
on my TBR list.

>>94498037
Maybe just check wikipedia: Shanghai is one of current megacities and you can just check the population stats and km2 on page.
Repeat ad nauseam with all cities you care to measure.
Make a spreadsheet out of data.
Share in this thread.

>>94498614
...just go with elder futhark.

>>94500183
Still not esoteric. cf. "waking the root chackra".

>>94526023
To turn it into a tool? Like, you know, dynamite.

>>94547838
So go with Yule like we do here in north.

>>94555341
So that was USA with literal manifest destiny + Greek gods vs. Titans + Pacific Rim.
I wouldn't want to play that, but if you can sell it more power to your elbow.

Without science fantasy bullshit tech what would the gravity look like in a dyson sphere?

>>94547826
I give it a name that roughly translates to "Time of Kindness" or "Bea il Yoah."
It's a time when the people care.
Speaking of which I'm trying to work with a language

>>94559076
>in a dyson sphere?
What?
Well, it's up to the distance of the wall off the sphere to the star.

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I'm experimenting with how to present races for my SF setting. What do you think about the way the information is presented here? Too much, too little? The "curiosities" section is intended to provide flavor details that you don't need to know, but can help with characterization or character concepts.

>>94559076
A real non bullshit dyson sphere is actually a dyson swarm, an actual solid sphere would have the gravity pull you towards the star from the outside

>>94559879
>>94561983
Okay, that's what I thought. That one depiction of a sphere in TNG has fucked my perception of them.

>>94527396
It's up to you if you remake it, but my only suggestion would be to add roads.

im trying to world build a porn game but i dont know if i am being too autistic about. i get hung up on creating an explanation for everything and trying to organize all the possible races/phenotypes

>>94561493
With SF it's always bitch to do, because you will rarely hit the sweet spot of just enough info to be interesting and not doing boring infodump. If I would be player looking for info for playable race, your card is missing:
>Min/Max/Mean for adapted gravity, atmospheric pressure, height, weight and lifespan
>Minimal/Optimal life support requirements (what type of atmosphere (or other medium), nutrition (composition/volume), other requirements (i.e. UV light for synthesis of Vitamin D, etc.) + mental acuity cycle (i.e.: humans are 16 hour awake, 8 hour asleep)
While maybe boring, it will give you clearer understanding what to expect. If something breathes ammonia, eats raw carbon, does not have concept of sleep and can survive hard vacuum with 10g, you know that you should bring out big guns. Psychology section should be split into:
>Dominant cultural traits (philosophies, family unit <-> society structure, religion)
>Dominant psychological profiles (this is coupled to culture, but gives you option to flesh out individuals)
>Dominant mental faculties (well described in your card)
Yours is bunched together and hard to differentiate which is which. Maybe emphasis on key terms would be nice. I also suggest to add infant / adult / elder range (if it applies to that specific race).

>>94561493
I only have 2 playable races so far
>Magic golems
>Souls sealed in an artificial body
I know they sound really similar, but they differentiate in a ton of ways.
Anyways, I’m trying to avoid the usuals.
Been considering plant people and potentially insect-fish hybrids

>>94564115
The life support/bio angle stuff is all "big enough range that all races can hang out together without space suits." Even the guys from the 5/10atm planets can handle 1atm, on account of nobody actual wants to have to deal with that. (Humans have a pretty broad range, 0.5atm-7atm, and it seems like terrestrial rockballs shouldn't be expected to go much higher than 1.5g, or maintain atmosphere at much lower, so it seems realistic-ish to handwave it.)

I'm not clear on what "dominant psychological profiles" quite refers to? The general idea with all the aliens is that they simultaneously have *something* about their evolutionary history that makes them tend towards certain personality traits, but otherwise, individuals are about as varied as humans. For Yoke, it's that extreme prosocial tendency, which manifests in multiple different ways, and is mediated by an individual's personality/talents. You could be a soldier defending his people, a scientist seeking the answers to important questions, a politician who would rather die than take a bribe, etc.

Will think about separating out Culture and Psychology, though. One problem is I largely want to avoid the "all the aliens are the same culture-group," partly because it's silly, but also because it is limiting: the setting has just 12 alien species, and I want to include various weird alien worlds, so having cultural diversity helps for that.

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>>94563269
that's gonna be a lot of roads

Ugh. I need help thinking this through.
I've got a species that wears masks as a way to help differentiate themselves due to them all looking the same physically.
I need to think of some good mask looks

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>barbarian prince is fostered in a more civilized city
>seduced by a noble woman of the city
>deflowers her
>is caught in bed the next morning by her father
>father gets angry and only relents after a shotgun wedding
I wanted the noble woman to have orchestrated this entire thing with her father. How awkward would the dialogue be between daughter and father when he goes "yeah basically you gotta fuck that dude".

Also I was wondering how she and her father might subtly suggest a marriage is the only thing that will fix it when he's angry at the barbarian.

>>94561493
Seems pretty fine to me. Hits exactly the sweet spot you were looking for of giving just enough to make it enticing and memorable without infodumping.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to search for a Yoke girlfriend

>>94561493
I'm going to use that as a template for my own fantasy race I posted earlier

I'm making a future english conlang for a group of people that worship the founding fathers about 800 years after the collapse of the modern worlds. So far all I have done is the phonological evolution and next I will evolve english grammar. I wanted it to evoke both germanic sounds and latin. Here is a sample of it, pronounce each letter phonetically and the 5 vowels only make one sound each.

In ve begining, ven ve vor vas unamed an vil, ve Saked vafers came dov vom ve viramen, baring vifin vir hans ve divine bwepin ov a new nasyon. Gevre ve Fit, vashingon of ve Potomac, vas ve eles among vem. vif his sor fored ov unyiling vil, e cyaved ve vileres, an vom it sang ve fir citis ov ol.

Beside im sod ve varyor-Sibe, Jeferon ov Monichelo, o soke ve vor vat vowl become Lav. is kil eted ve comanens ov fedom ono ve paren ov ve yar, so vat no tiran vowl rule over ve pipe.

To comete ve tiniti, Benamin ve vise, Fanin ov ve Liting, gased ve syes vemseles an dev dov ve novede ov ve gods. e aresed ve veri esene ov ve sor, besowing it upon manin as a gif ov lit an visom.

In vose das, ve Saked vafers sumoned vor ve godes Ladi Liberi vom ve osin's deps. er vor vas miti an radyan, cowed vif seven sikes ov enitenen, an se el alof ve tor ov etenal vigilane. er sin vas ov bone an er voyse vas as ve ror ov disan vaves, siking ov fedom, jusise, an pise. An vus, in vis pimoryal time, Liberi vas given er name, an se tuk er pase as Godes, er lit iluminating ve vay vor ve new pipe.
1
But tve Ladi's desen vas not vifot cos, vor vom ve dar corers ov ve ur arose sadovs vat sat to exingvish er fame. vese vere ve fores ov Igorane, Tirani, an Desayr, an vey conired to enare manin in bonage. Yet, it is sayd vat ve Saked vafers sud unyeling at er side, bating ve dar vores in a gvat var nov as ve Revolusyon.

How do you guys like this, the sounds of it specifically?

>>94569477
Why are there so many goddamn "v's"

Could you maybe switch some of them with a B?

>>94569537
I could. I did a blanket w to v shift but I could switch some around for b. Anything else that sticks out?

>>94569574
Also did a th > f > v shift. I could take those and shift it to b

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>>94569477
>In ve begining, ven ve vor vas unamed an vil, ve Saked vafers came dov vom ve viramen, baring vifin vir hans ve divine bwepin ov a new nasyon.

>>94570347
It should read less goofy when the grammar changes get solidified. Should read more as a distinct language and not just goofy english.

>>94492194
>>94492399
It's bad advice.

Writing your politics as being write about everything-
A. eliminates any form of conflict.
B. comes across as extremely dystopian to anyone who you disagree with.

It's much more interesting to think 'what do I think would be the solution to all of lifes problems' and then ask the question of 'and how would might those solutions go wrong, or why would people not like them'. That creates both conflict, and a dialogue within the story.

An example: In Star Wars George Lucas believes in Democracy, but he also makes it clear it's not a perfect system, hence in the prequels the Republic could have fallen to the Empire. There's a dialogue there on the nature of Democracy which is way more interesting than the litany of Teen Dystopia novels out there.

>>94567074
Look up Bionicle. Similar concept.

>>94552266
I like the idea that the Amazons had a massive Amazonian Empire that left roman styled ruins all over the place. And the remnant of their ancient empire is Amazon Byzantium.
>>94553180
This man has taste.

>>94567074
Look up tribal masks of a few different cultures, identify common themes in each culture like feathers for native americans, the eyes of african masks, or the common shapes of polynesian masks, then pick one or two of those ideas you like and mix and match them together to form different masks.

>>94570373
>A. eliminates any form of conflict.
Just the way it would be if it was actually implemented.
>B. comes across as extremely dystopian to anyone who you disagree with.
Sounds like a (They) problem.

>>94570373
You mean to say that the dumb joke meme breaks down when taken utterly seriously? I'm shocked! The only reason I fleshed my answer out beyond a one-off laugh is because I'm "lucky" enough to have step 1&2 be contradictory.

Honestly if I wanted actual masturbation I'd just do that but aside from it being good taste to play things where stories (fuelled by conflict) can be explored it's an axiom of the setting that all societies, absent outside influence, are destined to collapse. >>94525540 is a stab at that particular "utopia" (already a creepy place to any not already onboard) to decay into something universally monstrous.

>>94552266
There are a few, most notably as successors to discount Bene Tleilax. Life on a radioactive hellworld created a divide between those surrogates who lent their unmutated wombs to the sperm and egg bank contents they watched over and everyone else. Memewar happened and the populace got Screwfly Solution'd bad, "fortunately" they were able to pervert the intended "kill females and die out" directive out of sadism. Instead womankind were reduced to dead-yet-dreaming axolotl tanks and sterile drone-daughters.

Being unable to think of women as people makes you likelier to underestimate intelligence and sadistic compulsion leads to cognitive locks being enforced so they can experience more pain. The tanks were eventually allowed to develop a sort of second-person sapience in the form of "in-vitro imprinting" engrams which were composed of the experiences of previous daughters edited and passed onto the next batch. The revolution was swift and silent, the men had had next to no idea of the shackles they'd loosened. Womankind was not emancipated, daughters remained workers in a eusocial hive and the tank-queens aren't psychologically human anymore let alone women.

The androgynous troops you'll meet in the field are still girls though and among them may stalk a mobile, 'borged-up pre-queen "princess".

>>94570412
Yeah. And what if your audience is one of the 'thems'?

Utopia implies Utopia for all people. Stalin was yucking it up, that doesn't mean the Soviet Union was something we should idealize.

Need a name or regular region description for oklahoma, missouri, kansas and arkansas like I did with Missisippi/Alabam = Magnolia a while ago. The areas around it are way easier for stuff to come up with and Missisippi is already taken.

>>94570381
Here's something you should know about this species
>They have no face
>They all have the same body type
>Their bodies are artificial, like mannequins
So they wear masks and other accessories to express an identity

>>94568822
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Stuff like that actually happened IRL.
Within a certain cultural context, the implications should be obvious enough
>Well, see this barbarian? He could be a good match for you.
>Wouldn't he try to... escape his obligations?
>I can ensure he doesn't
(...)
>What a disgrace! Either you lawfully vow for what you illegitimately stole, or this infamy will have to be paid in your blood, barbarian!
Obviously you'll have to build up a bit more over that, but that's the kind of tone you can go for.
Bonus point: the daughter actually lost her virginity a long while ago, that's just a way her dad found to still find a use for her.

>>94571706
Not dissimilar to Bionicle. They don't describe peoples features, but if the toys are anything to go off of then they are identical to one another. Most species have identical body-types with differences in color-schemes. So their masks express most of their personality.

Anyway like I said, go check out the wiki. You'll at least see a wide variety of masks with different features that could give inspiration.
>>94571377
Great Plains? Trans-Kansas? Corn Belt? Flyover Country?

>>94571838
Thanks. Although I intended the noble woman to genuinely love the barbarian in a twisted, possessive sense, so she actually does give him her virginity, if only to bind him to her.

Chase a bag, kid, never chase a dame

I need help thinking of more sentient races

>>94574871
Tell us what you have so far

>>94575227
Uhhhh these guys
>>94484458
And also two other races
>Souls imprisoned in artificial bodies out of punishment
>Plant people with very advanced tech but poor magical ability (Not sure about this)

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What kinds of things would a police state ran by wizards do to maintain control of their country?

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>>94575283
The Constructs seem interesting although I wonder how they eat without a mouth.

As for ideas of sentient races, Bas-Lag has some really cool ones you could get inspired by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas-Lag#Politics_and_society

You could always take one of those races and modify them to suit your setting.

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>>94575630
I was going to talk shit about battle wheelchairs, but then I realized that's actually a canon that's been fused with a human. Carry on, anon.

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>>94575688
Bas-Lag is an interesting setting. I imagine if there WAS a battle wheelchair the author would find a way to make it work

>>94558367
I don't really see the USA bit, what reminds you of that? Also, I really shouldn't have used the word "count", as the political system in place was different.

>>94575630
I’m trying to create other races that exist in the Abyss

>>94575471
Make everyone keep some kind of trinket that allows them to be tracked or affected remotely.

Make people submit to some kind of mind reading thing to check their thoughts for whatever reason.

Specifically punish people that do things that could disrupt their ability to remotely view you for any reason.

>>94580771
I don't see how you couldn't use one of the races I proposed and modify them for the Abyss.

If you don't like them, I don't know what specifically you are looking for in an Abyss race.

>>94581089
I'm trying to create this sense that this is an incomprehensibly vast world that cannot be truly tamed.
The other two races I listed
>"Fallen" or whatever the fuck you might call that shit
>Humans who were sympathetic to Constructs and tried to lead a rights movement. Were forced into new bodies and sent to the Abyss to join said Constructs as punishment.
>Tend to live on the outskirts in a nomadic lifestyle
>Said humans their memories fucked with to damage their sense of identity as a form of dehumanizing them, removing things like names, dates, faces, voices, locations and so on. The only thing they can recall are the general gist of events in their lives, their general behavior patterns and what they incline towards. IE "I remember liking a specific show but I can't recall the details" or "I remember someone cared for me when I was a little kid" or "I'm feeling kind of standoffish"
>The new bodies thing is mostly a "Oh, so you sympathize with them? Then how about we fucking MAKE you like them you traitorous fuck," but is also partly a way to fuck with their identity by making them all look the same.
>Memories can be recovered but it's something that takes time and effort for even a simple face or name. You need to jog it properly, but remembering can actually help a "Fallen" to develop and unlock magical abilities, referred to as Mementos for cool factor.
The other race is something I haven't developed as much, but they're basically a bunch of plant people with advanced tech who think they're hot shit and are very clearly on a path towards destruction at the hands of the Abyss' really dangerous shit.

>>94578055
United States under a god of Democracy. Sounds like yankee wankery. Same shit as Manifest Destiny personified.
With added bonus of One Nation Under God!!!1!one, really, you should have stuck to Mind Your Business
And it makes no difference if you use kings instead of counts: it's kinda obvious that you are talking about colonial governors.

What is the most difficult magical ability in your world?
For me, flight is considered one of the hardest abilities that doesn't go into the realm of the spiritual

Ever write up something for your setting then realize it completely removed something previously there? In my case, I used to have this idea in my main fantasy setting that the world tree isnt an actual tree that holds up multiple dimensions, but a fascia of timelines growing from the center of the astral plane, with "roots" being the origin of the timeline, the ends of "branches" being the ends of the timeline, and "leaves" being the result of someone time traveling (which also creates a new timeline branching from the point someone travels to)

that got fucked because I came up with a 3-directional triskelion model of astral time, with one leg being the past, the second being the future, and the third being the impossible. I cant easily bullshit that into the old tree model, so it's just kinda gone.

Ultimately its just writing autism, so I dont feel especially strongly about it, but i feel a bit bad i did a thing that now has to be either forgotten or moved to another setting

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>>94586016
Long ranged magic. It's not about skill, it's about having raw power to fuel it's magic from such a distance, which takes a lot of time to accumulate.

>>94586016
Going against the second law of thermodynamics. Simply put: Destruction is easy, creation is hard. Magic users have a tendency to spontaneously explode when they try to work against that principle.

>>94543572
>what spheres of influence do your gods have
I don't make one god for any single concept but kinda mix them together based on my feelings of what would fit together and make an interesting god.

They're always born by pair of antithetic magics. My current gods are:
>Un, the Gold Dragon, God of Kings, Ambition, Victory, Success and Fortune. Null, the Caged Bird, Titan of Slaves, Needs, Failure and Misfortune.
>Ordo, the Weaver, Titan of Arcane and Order. Chaos, the Frayer, Titan of Entropy, Decay and Upheaval.
>Vifae, the Sower, Titan of Life. Dabumerja, the Reaper, Titan of Death.
>Lagann, the Knight, World Soul of Light, Altruism and Fraternity. Speira, the Uroboros, World Soul of Shadow, Loneliness and Madness.

>>94589106
>or moved to another setting
I clone the setting and have two versions that coexist until I have to choose. Or I "create" anecdotal, generic settings that I never develop just to store a cool idea into something that's not a void. Where everything that's not written extends my homebrewed generic fantasy framework.

In the end my main work is a patchwork of cool ideas that fit together and those that don't are in different worlds until they can join.

>>94496715
You make the villains sexual deviants into inflation.

>>94589347
Creation in my world is completely impossible, but you know what isn't impossible? Storage

>>94482475
>Are there any conspiracy theories in your world and what do they say?
Mostly concerning aliens, and it’s all the same stuff you always hear
>How true are they?
They’re almost onto the truth, it’s all staring them in the face. But these conspiracy theorists and ufologists keep getting in their own way to see it.
>Is there a conspiracy no one actually knows about?
Well nobody on Earth knows about it, even though it involves us. See, in the eyes of the greater interstellar community humans are a primitive, irrelevant species living on an unimportant planet that’s orbiting what, quite possibly, might be the most boring star in the Orion arm. By all accounts we should be left alone just out of sheer disinterest. Yet somehow the solar system, if not Earth itself, keeps getting caught up in major interstellar events for which it has no business being in, and this happens again and again for one reason or another. It’s probably just a series of uncanny coincidences, but there’s probably billions who just won’t accept that and concoct all kinds of absurd conspiracy theories. Similarly baffling is how none of these events actually effects the population enough to significantly impact their cultural development despite no one actively trying to avoid cultural contamination. It just seems to work out that way. It’s weird and there’s those that refuse to accept ‘dumb luck’ as the explanation despite all serious evidence supporting it.

In a post apocalyptic setting where salvage is the only way to get metal would bearings work as currency?

>>94591810
No.
If there's metal salvage, then there's metal process. So, people can just make bearings and make it worthless as currency.

>>94591867
>If there's metal salvage, then there's metal process.
Yeah I guess if it's industrial salvage but what if it isn't industrial?

>>94591810
Well no as >>94591867 pointed out. But I think there’s a… few questions about the premise that needs addressing. Namely why is salvage the only source of metal? How’d that come about? Is it rare metals like gold, tin, platinum, uranium, etc…? Or all base metals? And how the heck does that work? Since most industrial metals are either aluminum or iron which are the 3rd and 4th most abundant elements on earth, your sooner going to deplete earth’s entire water supply than its iron deposits. copper is another big one that’s not going anywhere anytime soon. So why is mining new metals not an option anymore?

>>94592486
Well seeing as in present time all easily accessible surface metals have all been but mined out any society trying to gain access to any sort of metals has two choices. Deep mining, which requires a pre existing industrial base and a quite a bit of knowledge or salvage which would be plentiful in a post industrial society.
Mainly I'm just trying to think of a plausible "currency" for a thundar the barbarian type game. I'd like the currency to be heavy so that my players can't haul so much of it they can out right buy an entire stores stock.

>>94592742
You could just make it so functional parts are what's valuable, with certain rarer metals being more of a trade good.
You probably don't even need it to specifically be a currency. You could just say they have X pounds of salvage for barter.

>>94575471
This made me think of an idea I had for a magic communist system.

In 3.5, there is a Prc where you are some adventuring wizard part of a club or school or something. Anyways, the main point is you get some item that connects you to a well of magic where you can load spells to and draw from.

Taking this idea, the socialist/communist type magic nation would all be bound to a communal source of magic energy where they can give and take spells that they need. The twist is that certain kinds of spells automatically work on you without your notice and that there are certain people who are more equal than you who can not only take priority when taking magic but can also straight take them from you.

>>94592762
True. I was just trying to simplify it for my 5e only baby players while keeping it post apocalypticy feeling.
Thanks for the input guys.
"X bearings for 1 sword etc..."

>>94592742
> Well seeing as in present time all easily accessible surface metals have all been but mined out
Also not true, a 10-second google search reveals that there’s still plenty of near-surface mineral deposits. Especially for iron, sand, gravel, and coal.

Which is kinda funny because coal is not a huge issue if near surface deposits disappeared since you can turn wood into coal quite easily, not at the speeds mining can do but still.

Just understand that any red-colored rock is actually an iron ore and you can begin to understand exactly why no one’s talking about iron reserves dwindling.

But if you want a Thundarr the barbarian thing going on, then don’t say the deposits are gone, just say that most people alive don’t know what metal ores look like or how to refine them (maybe say that the last civilized generation didn’t need to know because it was all automated), and for aluminum that works really easy because as plentiful as it is refining it is a bit tricky.

Then relying purely on salvage makes sense, it’s technically already refined so they can just melt it down, they don’t need to know how to refine ore.

>>94575630
>>94581089
I'm trying to think up swordfighting styles in this world.
Constructs don't fight with each other often, and war is basically unheard of due to an incident in which a smaller-scale conflict lead to several villages being wiped out by monsters that were attracted by the constant fighting.
Shit's bad

>>94591144
>We want to blow up the world!
I guess they could be a beastmen cult

This seems like the place to ask.
I want to do the "precursor aliens with sci-fi-level tech, believed to be gods by an ancient (collapsed) empire. Ruins containing this technology are still in tact and are more or less being just now discovered, so there's a gold rush of ignorant quasimedieval adventurers and other organizations scrambling to claim these long-lost exotic artifacts" thing. Ideally for a shortish campaign that, if the players discover a bunch of crazy alien tech like hyperadvanced sentient AIs and orbital lasers that still work, I just wrap up the game, ask "okay, what kind of world do your characters create with all this power," and then run in the altered setting after ~4-5 extrapolated generations of their inheritors almost certainly fucking up their new world order.

Aside from "The alien-worship empire was built exclusively on a newly-discovered continent" what other convenient excuses are there for this to all be a total mystery to the current population, aside from maybe a handful of particular scholars and maybe a despot or two? That seems like the easiest, and is good enough for me, but if anyone's got any suggestions I'll take 'em.

>>94594664
It sounds like you've already got a pretty good excuse if all of the alien ruins are on another continent. Though that also loses some of the impact, because the current population on the other continent won't have any frame of reference for that collapsed empire.

If you set it up a bit more like an Atlantis situation, where the current continent was aware of that empire, and might even have a few leftover scraps of technology, then the discovery of the ruins of the heart of that ancient empire makes a bit more sense.
And plus it might help explain why there are a few scholars or despots who might have their hands on some bits of technology here and there, even before the discovery of the new continent.
Makes it so that relics and artifacts from that land aren't entirely unheard of, and also gives all of those adventurers and organizations a frame of reference for just how valuable the relics in those ruins are.

Got a worldbuilding question
Church-run orphanage, should it be inside the city, or in some distance from it in medieval fantasy?
Logically I understand that there is no way anyone would allow land in the middle of the city to be used for it, but still can't decide whether it should still be inside the walls, or at best on the outskirts.

>>94594664
Maybe the region is a Green Sahara situation? The Sahara had grasses, trees, etc, from ~14kya to ~5kya, when it went back to just being uninhabitable sand.

Another continent works fine, though. That's the explanation from At the Mountains of Madness.

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How much of the world that is beyond the reach of the audience have you developed?

>>94597713
Yes

>>94484458
You know what? Watch this
Some of the known areas to Constructs:
The Fields
>Where most Constructs live. A grassy plain that has a somewhat foggy atmosphere
>Villages are commonly built in this area, and usually within an hours worth of casual walking, as being too far apart could make helping each other difficult.
>Herbs tend to grow here, and said herbs have magical properties.
The Forest:
>A large, fertile area that stretches for well over a million acres. Most Constructs get food from here.
>There are fruit trees, with the most common fruit being this roughly cantaloupe-sized fruit with a very strong sweet flavor. For some reason, said juice is naturally rather chilly and doesn't warm up without being exposed to at least 100F temps. The juice also has unique properties when mixed with other things, which is why it's usually the basis for potions
>Vegetables that grow here are mostly limited to "Root" types, with said veggies usually having an oddly spicy, earthy, or even salty flavor.
>Mushrooms also grow here, although they don't taste like anything. Yet they also have magical properties.
The Maze:
>A series of gigantic constructs (Not the species) that resemble towers stretching off every which way. Best described as kinda like the city from BLAME. Some Constructs (The species) take residence here, although the villages they establish are hard to reach without proper training or practice with navigation.
The City of Tears:
>An empty city on a high cliff waterfall that has a constant rain for some reason.
>Was clearly made by someone, but nobody knows who exactly, as it's architecture is not like the Constructs in terms of both style and in scale.
>While similar to the Maze, it's far more complicated and
>Very potent ingredients grow here, but taking up residence is something that's not advised due to the Constructs not knowing where it comes from.

What would be a good geopolitical title for a planet in an interstellar setting that’s recognized as being a sovereign planet belonging to its denizens, despite said denizens not having a world-government. (Kinda like how Earth today has no actual world government, but it’s still ours to fight over how we see fit)?

>>94536942
I would love to hear more about your angels. Like, why do you have so many types? Do they serve different gods?

>>94599895
Plurarchy of Earth?

>>94595446
>Logically I understand that there is no way anyone would allow land in the middle of the city to be used for it
Logically, such land belongs to the church and everyone else can fuck off with their opinions about what the church can or can't do with it.

>>94601079
Zoning laws were invented in 1904 and it's all been downhill since.

>>94601079
Not really, church knew how to count money very well. So good land was always used for cathedrals and shit, including replacing old buildings when land suddenly became "good"

>>94595446
A lot of ways to go, depending on how important the church is in the world. Examples:
1. Church is very important. Easiest to write. Church does what it wants.
2. Church is culturally relevant but being left behind practically. The orphanage exists inside the walls and is paid lip service but doesn't get the funding it needs.
3. Church is on the cultural outs. Maybe the culture is just sliding atheist or maybe a new religion is coming in, but in either case the old ways are going out of fashion. The church is outside the protective walls and only is funded by the few old believers.
4. The orphanage is run by the new religion in the region. It exists outside the walls, funded by new converts who are pushing it.

>>94595446
>>94601163
Part of that seems like it'd depend on what this fantasy church is a church of. If orphans and charity are a more key aspect, then having a temple that also serves as an orphanage would work just fine. Or maybe there's just a pavilion outside the orphanage that serves as a playground yard most days but also regularly holds outdoor sermons.

If it's an orphanage because this is just a much more generalized holy church, or if their priorities are elsewhere, then what >>94601164 said about how much cultural sway the church has in the city becomes much more relevant.

>>94601163
Oh, a church is quite likely to decide to put the orphanage on some land outside or on the outskirts of town, or make it part of a larger abbey too, and put the rascals within to work on the fields. What I'm writing against is the silly notion that, in a medieval setting, it needs to ask for permission to do so. It's already their land (due to inheritance, gift, tradition, whatever), after all.

>>94601243
>If orphans and charity are a more key aspect
It is
So yeah, I decided to go with the town outskirts, outside of the wall, so that the kids could not only help with the heavy(heavy for the children) labour in the neighbourhood, but could also gather medicinal herbs in the nearby forest.
Still kinda wonder how orphanage in the middle of city would work, can easily imagine it in after industrialization, but not in the medieval and the renaissance.

>>94601307
Cities, even medieval cities, were still a place of work. Just because it isn't a textile factory doesn't mean there's a shortage of tasks that could use extra hands.

Either way, the outskirts still works just fine. Especially since there's more likely to be plothooks with the orphanage being in danger that way.

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>>94563269
what about now? if its even viewable on this downscaled version

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>>94482475
>>Are there any conspiracy theories in your world and what do they say?
Yes, my main setting is a mix of Gallic, Saxon, Illyrian, Persian, and ancient Anatolian culture so bardic / storytelling traditions lead to an abundance of rumors. Some are true, most are either hearsay or for entertainment value.
>>How true are they?
Depends on the conspiracy. The conspiracy that a certain remote mountain grants wishes to those who reach the summit is true, for instance, while the conspiracy that the hosts of seaborne Ape-Men who raid the coasts are paid off by the local evil empire is untrue (for just two examples).
>>Is there a conspiracy no one actually knows about?
The 'wise masters', a consultative panel of experts who are anonymous that the government consults in times of crisis, actually consists of a bunch of mummies / demiliches entombed in a necropolis beneath the capitol. Their advice is generally pretty great, but people would lose their shit if they knew that they were an organ of government.

Aside from the thread questions, I am at the very early stages of mapping the main island chain the adventure is set in. Any surface level thoughts? Hoping it's aesthetically pleasing and reads as semi-plausible.

>>94591780
I realize that I should clarify that this canonical universe was the result of looking at the myriad of alien species claimed to exist by abductees, ufologists, conspiracy theorists, and quantum mystics and giving their appearance and lore a redesign so they’re less like rebranded fairies, and more like a actual creatures from another world.

The rest of the setting kinda grew out of that and, at times, having to explain how these species interact with one another.

What are some races who have the in-universe role of "face"? It's such a common character trope, but I'm struggling to think of one. There are races in D&D with a Charisma bonus, but they're basically all sorcerers rather than having the Cha bonus because they're likeable. Anyone know any good ones?

>>94606070
Half-Elves are an obvious one. Changelings would also qualify, though they're obviously more deception focused.

>>94606070
Hobbits/Halflings are often treated as being well-suited as merchants.

How much trouble would a kingdom or nation get into if they hand over someone to a foreign kingdom to be executed to warm relations. Say if someone decided to kill members of the foreign nation to stoke tensions or to express their support for the leadership and was sentenced to death. But rather than have the headsman raise the axe, they sent them off to the kingdom who's people they killed to be given their version of justice before they ultimately die. Bonus points if it's a gruesome death

How would that effect relationships between the leader and its people and would the foreign kingdom accept such a honor?

hi first time GM/retard here
What's the best way to mantain a timeline of events? I'm thinking about just drawing it like a map or something.

>>94606424
Let me make sure I've got the situation correct
>Murderer from kingdom A goes to kingdom B and kills people from B
>Kingdom A arrests him and their law would declare execution
>Kingdom A is debating whether to send him to kingdom B so that they can enact justice
What you're describing here is just a pretty basic form of Extradition. Sending a killer back to the country they committed the crime in so that they can answer for the crimes.
I'm not sure what complications you're expecting to arise from that. At least beyond the obvious where the murderer has a lot of public support or people are convinced that he's been falsely accused. But those would be trouble no matter where he's getting sentenced.

As a side note, that sent me down a rabbit hole of finding out about an Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty from 1259 BS which had some extradition provisions. So this isn't exactly a modern concept either. Though since the provisions weren't exact, it seemed only tangentially relevant.

>>94606451
So, you need to set it up like TRC used to.
You have a starting point, then a bunch of nodes players may or may not interact with.
Otherwise you need to railroad it - which is not inherently bad - but requires a lot more prep per instance.
>>94606424
It depends on the culture. If it's top-heavy (Inca, China, Egypt) it'll be no real issue.
If it's used to violence / has low value-per-life (Rome, Aztecs) it'll be no real issue.
If it's a nomadic people or ones with high individual rights (Mongols, Turks, Greeks, Celts etc.) it'll probably cause an uproar.
Alternatively, if you have a society which sees a leader as an expendable resource (half of gaul, Venice, Carthage) it'll be less dire.

>>94606424
As >>94607085 said, while in fantasy they always try to make a drama out of it because it somehow would make king look weak, irl only time it was an issue when government was clan based. Or if murderer is from royal/big noble family.

>>94606070
The Dark Eye (specifically the default Aventuria setting) has the Norbard human culture/race, travelling merchants and tinkerers, who are some parts matriarchal Gypsies, some parts Jews, mostly something else though and generally well-liked in-universe. To enhance the "face" role you can also get classes (TDE2 and TDE3) or professions (TDE4 and above) like Trader, Minstrel or (magical) Charlatan.

what would you say is better in general for newbie GMs who want to build an original setting for their games, top-down or bottom-up approach?

>>94607085
>If it's used to violence / has low value-per-life (Rome, Aztecs) it'll be no real issue.
Rome is a curious case. They didn't have much of a problem with violence, yet were still quite protective of their own. See: Julius Caesar's reaction to Ptolemy XIII handing him Pompey the Great's head.

>>94608178
Your example isn't about being protective, but more about them being friends
But generally yeah, if culture looks down on another, they wouldn't want to give their people to it

>>94608130
Bottom-up, by far. It's much easier to start with just a small location and then build upon that. Especially in the context of a newbie GM who would be better served by just running the campaign soon so they can get more practice and experience in the actual game part.
Top-down design has many pitfalls for a new GM to get stuck in, focusing on the big picture and getting caught up with revising all of details of continents and the cosmos and missing the trees for the forest.

>>94608251
In the best case scenario where a new GM manages to continue the same group with the same setting for more than a few sessions, how do you avoid the usual disadvantages of starting only with the barebones? i.e session 1 was only contained around a single village, a couple of sessions later and your players are in a city or otherwise have discovered 5 other villages. Since all five were essentially standalone locations, how then would you tie them together that makes logical sense IF your game comes to the point where you would need them to be part of a larger whole?

>>94608456
Your "barebones" are:
- A fleshed-out location the game will likely take place in this session.
- A solid write-up of the neighbourhood they will likely reach between the end of this session and the end of the one two sessions from now, with some negative space left to fill in when and if needed on the spot.
- A high-level overview of the area they are in, and how the locations detailed above fit into it.
- The same thing for the social fabric of the space (organisations, families and so on instead of locations).
- All the accumulated data from the previous sessions.
What's a "location" in this context can vary from a single house or manor (murder mystery!) or dungeon, up to a whole star system in an epic spacefaring adventure. The basic premise remains the same.
HOW MUCH you write up for each is up to your time constraint and tastes - I tend to end up above 2k words for a planetary description, including a bunch of keywords for a bunch of locations on it, when I'm prepping BattleTech, but that might already be too much for a typical game. But then, I love worldbuilding, so I don't care.

>>94608456
Thinking of it as the barebones is a little backwards. A starting town can be the very heart of your campaign if you want it to be.
>a couple of sessions later
So 2+ weeks, which gives you more time to detail the surrounding area of the starting town or work on the connections to anything else.
It's not as though the relationship between villages and cities is particularly complex. They probably trade goods or bring food into market.
A post-hoc rationalization for five villages and a city from the bottom-up isn't really any more difficult than the top-down. It just means that you've actually already successfully run several sessions of the game and the players are enjoying themselves enough to come back multiple times. And they didn't need to immediately know how the economy of the starting village related to each other village in the region in order to have a good time.

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>>94598958
I need some help with figuring out Construct anatomy.
They don’t have mouths but are somehow able to bite and chew food. Maybe they do it like picrel

>>94613001
They pull out their stomachs like it's a vacuum cleaner canister and put the food in. Shortly after, you hear muffled blender noises.

>>94613086
That would be a great gimmick at a table as long as the player wasn't quirk chungus

>>94613216
Now the real question is, do they poop?

I have a problem, /wbg/

I'm building a modern world, one with tech up to late 80s/mid 90s, and I've only done one hemisphere. The western hemisphere is just...blank.

I haven't written *all* of the history yet of this world yet, there's a lot of blanks to fill, but what I have written so far is embarrassingly contained to the one hemisphere I have written. How should I go about "back porting" a second hemisphere?

Technology progression *roughly* follows real life's from about 3000 BC to 1985 AD. Before that, things are sort of murky, and after that, I've already decided what changes.

>>94613435
>I haven't written *all* of the history yet of this world yet, there's a lot of blanks to fill, but what I have written so far is embarrassingly contained to the one hemisphere I have written. How should I go about "back porting" a second hemisphere?
>
>Technology progression *roughly* follows real life's from about 3000 BC to 1985 AD. Before that, things are sort of murky, and after that, I've already decided what changes.
Model it after:
- sub-Saharan Africa (bottle continent, only valuable export is slaves, becomes suddenly prominent/interactive in 1880 when quinine makes malaria no longer an issue)
- Australia (bottle continent until 1788, when the first British started colonizing it)
- Antarctica (bottle continent even today because it's uninhabitable).

If you have them, remote island countries could possibly be moved to the other hemisphere, too. e.g. Indonesia could get stretched to reach to the Americas, Madagascar could be moved there, etc.

>>94613435
Depends what your current hemisphere is like. But what >>94613468 said would be an easy way to do it. Say that the other hempisphere is basically just a massive island chain where the biggest parts are on par with Greenland or New Zealand and so if there are colonial or exploration efforts, you can minimize the impact of it.

>>94613086
They’re not really robots. They’re magic on the inside and a hard shell on the outside
>>94613372
They use the solid mass to heal themselves

>>94613001
Also, here are some common Construct foodstuffs. While Constructs technically don't need to eat, food is considered good as it actually helps to energize and refuel them without having to impart magical energy into them.
Bread:
>Their version of bread is odd because it's much more akin to biscuits in terms of texture rather than any bread we usually associate with the word. This is the basic thing they tend to subsist upon.
>It usually has a bluish green look that might make it come across as moldy to a human, but worry not, it's just because the flour has a similar tint.
>While they don't have access to the exact same ingredients we have, they make use of other, similar things to create a similar item with the same processes.
>They use a powdered up bluish-green grain, water, a powdered up edible mushroom, salt from a rock formation, and dried up boiled tree sap that they crushed into chunks.
Fruit
>Most Constructs eat this specific family of fruits. They usually grow in the forest, and are roughly the size of a small melon. They have relatively tough flesh and skin on the outside, but are filled with glowing juice on the inside. The exact flavor of the fruit depends on the color and shape, and it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes. VERY messy though, and it's not unheard of for an especially messy eater to be assumed to be injured or even dead due to how much the juice resembles Construct "Blood."
>Can be fermented into a cheap wine if left in the cold for some reason. It's extremely high in alcohol content for no apparent reason.
Vegetables
>Their main two veggies (That I have so far) are these somewhat spicy roots and these bitter bulging leaves that're like thick lettuce. I know right?
>They go best when paired with something else.
They also prepare stews and other dishes with these ingredients

>>94613607
>>94613607
If they're just magic inside of a shell, you could give them a magical form of consumption.
Say they just create a small flame in front of their 'face', and then any food they burn up there they taste and get sustenance from.

Could even be that some of them have made variations on the spell, like a sort of drain effect if they shoot something with it. Assuming they shoot something edible, of course.

>>94614919
Shit that’s good.

>>94512655
>french guys show up in iowa
>hear some guys calling their neighbors "shitfaces"
>start calling the place "The Shits"
i am shocked at how accurate the name turned out to be

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working on my fantasy race

do you think it makes sense so far? Bit too rambling and long?

>>94491109
>Piss Libertarianism where magic is infused into urine. Ureamancers heighten their power by exclusively drinking piss instead of water. Some Ureamancers have become so powerful from their unchecked pissery that it as has started a pissquisition, with pisshunters bashing down doors and dragging Ureamancers from their homes, harvesting their urine until they're bone dry and magicless.

>>94616201
Seems fine to me. Reminds me of the Kossith / Qunari back when they weren't just 'people with horns'. Clip-Clops is also a slur that I can immediately hear some crusty caravan driver sneer in a cockney accent which is a plus.
>>94616340
If it wasn't for the magical realmery, this would be a really amusing sidebar for a setting. Reminds me of IRL Piss Alchemists who made whole careers off shit that's *barely* less unhinged than what you're describing.

>>94617519
Worse than that anon, piss was a source of saltpetre making it a monopoly of interest to the government when gunpowder came into its own. Genuinely have it as a prized asset in a setting btw as for lore reasons human flesh (and waste thereof) is magically potent, the gongfarmers are treated like Venice's glassmakers.

>>94589106
Don't see why not, the impossible can merely be the farthest tips of the branches and roots which don't really end so much as bifurcate infinitely until distinction is a moot concept. Ever seen those ring-knotwork world trees? Like that in a sense, to be properly ineffable some level of contradiction with how it's presented in-world is a must imo.

>>94594664
The aliens are slinging Clarketech so antimemetic properties aren't beyond the pale. Same way a moth trying to escape a house is terrified by the "force field" of glass between it and free air we've wandered beside the ruins for generations none the wiser as animals humanely warded away by its design. Something (perhaps a wizard aping radio broadcast) triggered the "there is minimal sapience present" sub-routine of the automated precursor systems, perhaps to safeguard a child or the mentally impaired rather than a fully fledged person but enough to blur the "camouflage" and allow us to perceived it while it decides what must be done. Adventurers are an odd oft ostricised lot and maybe being off kilter is why they're better able to perceived the ruins through their "screen" or else they can't see them any better than anyone else but like conquistadors are desperate enough to gamble it all in pursuit of their promise.

I have a sudden need for ideas for sexual dimorphism in griffins

>>94620198
Seems like the overlap would be pretty direct. Male lions have impressive manes, male birds sometimes have colorful and impressive plumage.
Could take it to a further extreme and make it so that female griffins are what you'd expect from a griffin, being swift aerial pack hunters, but male griffins are less aerodynamic due to the extra display plumage, and while they can still fly, they're much more dangerous on the ground, and they're how a flock/pride of griffins would take down larger prey or defend territory.

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>>94617519
Thanks. I never played Dragon Age but the Qunari seem interesting. I actually based the Lungmarian's unity and nationalistic identity off the Fire Nation from Avatar.

I wrote a bit more, any ideas on the creative issues I ran into?

>>94620598W
Entirely self inflicted.
Not actual issues.
Just write your shit.

I have a sudden need for ideas for gender traits for griffins

>>94620198
>>94621953
Never heard of a Keythong before?

>>94620892
Any ideas for
>name of the radioactive dust breathing technique
>ways to make the mutated version look more mutated

I was considering adding two horns like a rhino to the mutated form's nose area, since rhinos are odd-toed ungulates like horses.

>>94511000
Torreadors?

>>94622510
>name of the radioactive dust breathing technique
Radsuscitation.

>>94622652
It's meant to be a technique that shoots radioactive dust out as a breath weapon, not something they inhale

I think I'll just call it the "Death Breath", rhyming isn't so bad

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>>94621985
Nope, looks awesome though so thanks.
>>94620443
Combined with the above Keythongs may indeed have wings but their manoeuvrability is subordinate to display and combat. Where female griffins and juvenile males are adapted to flight older men get the equivalent of orangutan face-flanges as wings thicken and furl functioning to "puppeteer" the mane and deliver crushing blows in grapples with rival suitors.

From a magical perspective the lion's roar and eagle scream could be blended and amplified. A mane raised and backed by arranged wings would act as an acoustic mirror, useful for announcing territory across the echoing crag and also a useful sonic weapon up close. Dudes would look like pic with more of a mane-hump except when the wings lash out to deliver a surprise blow.

Humanity kicks off earlier, and complex civilizations arise in a time where the Sahara is still savanna, and the Arabian peninsula is relatively green. What are the geopolitical implications of this? A vast bantu expansion that reaches both ends of the continent? Mediterranean empires totally colonizing Africa and bleaching their jungle bunnies with BWC?

>>94624875
Sahara had nothing to do why rome and carthage never colonized central africa
Real reason because it was even bigger shithole than even england of that time, with no value in it

>>94624875
if you want your white guy fucking black girl fetish anon, you should just go with it and write an explanation later

>>94624875
The Bantu expansion went the way it went because the Bantu had an agricultural package that worked well across equatorial Africa; they wouldn't go far north, as in OTL they stopped before what is today South Africa/Namibia until Europeans brought their crop package.

The logistics train of the huge inland movements required would still be crazy - hard to imagine the Mediterraneans getting that far south that early. Further south than OTL, sure, but not hitting Cameroon or anything. It's not covered in tsetse flies, though, so it will probably get colonized earlier than OTL Sub-Saharan Africa.

Most likely, you see more kingdoms and empires in the style of the Sahel (horses, heavy armor, knights, etc), since the Sahel doesn't have tsetse flies either. You also probably see the transfer of writing, agricultural packages, etc, earlier, since there's more a flow of sedentary populations north/south (Tunisia-Nigeria) and east/west (Ethiopia-Gambia). The Niger might become an equivalent to the Nile, since it's also a fuckoff huge river.

You might occasionally get some huge gigachad empire based out of Lake Chad or the Maghreb Sea or something that reaches the Mediterranean, but landlocked empires are much harder to build than coastal empires. Such an empire would probably be closer to something like Persia: distant, occasionally touching Rome (or whoever), but with its core safe and unable to really threaten the other's core.

With a more sophisticated, larger population and numerous internal trade networks, you might also see some type of domestic proselytizing religion succeed, an African Christianity or Buddhism, or some type of formalization of pagan beliefs, like an African Hinduism or Shinto.

>>94624875
Doubt much changes in the grand scheme of things. It would have been a great place for an early civ to develop in, but south it would just be increasingly thick forrests, leading to jungles which are malaria town. Ultimately it could lead to a widely different cultural landscape depending on how that civilization develops, but from a purely material perspective it would only mean that North Africa would be a place with serious geopolitical powers through all history. It might slow down history by making Rome or Rome-type nations more Med-focused as its a way bigger, harder to conquer and juicier pie than OTL. Roman input to Central and Northern Europe could be more limited. Most radical scenario is if a proseperous enough Empire unifies Med and doesn't bother with expansion north, Europe never becomes a Hunger Games arms race between hundreds of petty kings and Mediteranean empire just sort of acts like European version of China, with progress being very slow due to a lack of incentive to advance.

>>94484458
>>94575630
BTW. Some Construct illnesses
>Weeping Syndrome: Causes them to start leaking their inner light until they're a burnt-out husk. Symptoms are hidden until the weeping starts, and then it's readily apparent the Construct has at most a week left to live. Usually they start to panic and go into a sort of half-conscious state as a coping mechanism. There is a treatment that prevents the "Dying" part, but it's not pretty. In fact some might say death is preferable.
>Kage: A form of mental sickness born from a combination of severe trauma and obsessive behavior. Symptoms initially involve a more callous or uncaring attitude after a traumatic event. Eventually, they worsen until the Construct becomes flat-out self destructively obsessed with the source of their trauma. Constructs who have this are a danger to both themselves and everyone around them, as there is no risk they will not take, including suicidal-levels of dangerous magic.
I need to think of more stuff that suits their unique non-organic anatomy

>>94622634
bull fighters?