Welcome to /wbg/, the official thread for the discussion of in-progress settings for traditional games.Here is where you go to present and develop the details of your worlds such as lore, factions, magic and ecosystems. You can also post maps for your settings, as well as any relevant art (either created by you or used as inspiration for your work). Please remember that dialogue is what keeps the thread alive, so don't be afraid of giving someone feedback or post whatever relevant input you might have!Last thread: >>97491908Resources for Newfags: https://sites.google.com/view/wbgeneral/Worldbuilding links: pastee.dev/p/sp2Mdb5Ihttps://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/Eo+fK41FKVR7xDpbNO0a0N4k0YYxrmyrhX3VxnM14Ew/Fantasy map generator: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator/wbi/: https://discord.gg/6ZjEc7dy4TWorldbuilding Hub: https://discord.com/invite/wGjxK3YThe Writer's Forge: https://discord.com/invite/CUxHxWqTira: https://discord.com/invite/f52W6KgDawn of Victory: https://discord.gg/hUAynC3wConlangerama: https://discord.com/invite/ceKjZBr2jCr/CreativitySquad: https://disboard.org/server/join/655230995859243008The Literatrium: https://disboard.org/server/join/794794629106892861Paracosmist Collective: https://disboard.org/server/join/1132392321346965554Thread question: If your setting was used as the basis for a video game, what genre would it be?
Are Hyneria a good inhabitant for freshwater locations?
I'm working on a setting for a homebrew system that can be boiled down to UC Gundam if there were no mecha and the leadership and people on both sides weren't pants on heads retarded.The Not!Zeon and Not!EarthFeds are in a cold war and busy trying to influence the various other colonies (Mars, Moon, Belters, L cluster colonies etc.) and neither is in a position where they can decisively win an open war without unacceptable cost to themselves (Earth despite having a recent world war still out populates the rest of solar system but has the disadvantage of being at the bottom of a gravity well and wanting to utilise spacer resources for materials and industry so that they don't fuck up Earth's biosphere anymore than the last global war did. Galnar (Not!Zeon) doesn't have the manpower to crew a space navy equivalent to the one the Earther's can and O'Neill cylinders are at risk if combat is near them.)Both sides are gearing up for the inevitable war. Players are going to either have to pick a side in the conflict and deal with politics or will have to remain carefully neutral and deal with politics.The question I have for /tg/ is how indepth do I actually need to get with the whole political system (setting wise, but also opinions on mechanics are welcome). My autistic ass just read through my various notes on Galnar's semi-democracy and realised that even if players are engaging heavily in politics they're probably not gonna care about the devolutions of power to local government and the (admittedly basic) taxation system.I obviously want to have more than "Principality of Galnar is a unicameral democracy dominated by the nobility with almost all executive power (head of state, regional governorships, district mayors, etc) held by hereditary appointment." and "United Earth Directorate" bicameral technocratic state where populations vote for representatives and executives from a pool selected by the bureaucratic classes." but I'm unsure of how far I should go.
>>97666293How in-depth is entirely dependent on what will affect them in game. If they have to butter up to certain officals for certain reasons then having at least a half decent description of the social/political power dynamics will help a little bit. Not everything has to be explained in exhausting detail least you have more that you have to keep in mind then you need to.>>97665641Probably some kind of immersive sim type game. Essentially Star Fox but space search and Rescue
What do you do when you had an idea you really liked but that you can no longer find in your documents or online? A long time ago I had ideas for a D&D setting where a few races would have much stronger cultural identities. This included the gnomes, who in my setting would be physically powerful seafarers. Part of this was also giving their deities a makeover, starting with Garl Glittergold. I came up with a legendary backstory of Garl sailing some stellar ocean to this world, gave him a new name in line with the language the gnomes would be speaking in the setting, and made him more like a divine patriarch whose rivalry with Kurtulmak goes back to that inter-sphere voyage. I think his name was changed to mean something like "golden sunlight on glittering waves." And now I can't find it. I thought I might've posted it on 4chan but Desuarchive pulls up nothing. I'm not really inclined to redo all the work, because I think I'd change a lot of it if I did.
>>97665641>If your setting was used as the basis for a video game, what genre would it be?I've actually thought a lot about this. Disco Elysium style of walk around text heavy CRPG, but with a turn based combat system that kicks in when the fighting starts. Think Persona or Expedition 33 where when you start a fight you sort of just warp into a battle zone to do the combat in instead of it being a tactical grid based deal. You would have the ability to walk around the city, talk to NPCs and pick up sidequests in on the go most of the time, but story-progressing 'missions' are taken from the hub location and often teleport you into a linear path and set of circumstances somewhere in the city until the mission is done. At the end of every mission, an in-setting news sheet reports on the events of your adventure, including important choices you made, and the consequences resulting from it. These news sheets are viewable from a menu after the fact as a reminder of story progress and past events. After each mission the world state usually updates at least a little, including some NPCs moving around or new side quests becoming locked/unlocked. Major story events that end a 'chapter' might progress the timeline by weeks, with significant changes reflected in the game world as a result.
>>97665641>If your setting was used as the basis for a video game, what genre would it be?Kind of a silly question. Any decently well rounded world could fit any genera of game with even a tiny bit of imagination.
Been toying with some ideas for an Aztecs In Space setting, why are the Aztecs in space? Don't worry about it.>due to the difficulties of directly governing hundreds of planets, the Neo-Aztec Empire (working title) mimics the politics of the original Aztecs, acting as more of a Hegemony of a few core worlds and their vassal planets>the loose oversight of these vassals means they're often in revolt, every time there is a change in emperor he must reconquer his subjects, leaving the empire in a state of constant warfare>the empire maintains numerous War Worlds which host clone armies who fight in perpetual wars to produce the vast majority of its human sacrifices, these War Worlds also serve as proving grounds for the military nobility between campaigns>chief among the Aztec's technology are complex subdermal implants resembling traditional piercings, these implants are used by every strata of space Aztec society for a variety of purposes, for instance a soldier may wear a septum piercing that hooks into his brain to allow instant communication with his squadron>no explicit magic or psychic powers exist in universe, but the military and priesthood of the empire cultivate a level of discipline that allows them to perform superhuman feats, think like the bene gesserit from dune and all their tricks, compared to modern humans the physical and mental conditioning of the space Aztecs has advanced as much as their technology has>one of the most prominent alien species in the setting are the Tzitzimimeh, gaunt, white, humanoids who are all female and have an eyeball in every joint, the Tzitzimimeh are independent of the Neo-Aztec Empire who regard them with a degree of fear and respect since they're secretive and powerful warriors who resemble demons from their native mythology, the fact that other alien species encountered by the empire don't bear any particular resemblence to any mythical monsters only adds to their fascination with the Tzitzimimeh
(ran out of space in my first post)>>97665641>If your setting was used as the basis for a video game, what genre would it be?There are a lot of things that could work but I'd like something similar to Star Control II
>>97665641Kys d*scord cancer.
>>97670090???
>>97665641>Thread question: If your setting was used as the basis for a video game, what genre would it be?>carcosa with minor alterations Henti Roguelike. Not a sentence I ever expected to type but here we are.
>>97666293>but I'm unsure of how far I should go.Make a basic propaganda trifolds or posters about each governing body. It'll let you get the broad ideas across in ways that most of the game world inhabitants will be aware of and the players can use it as a baseline. Having access to various pamphlets gives the players an understanding of the political tensions as well.
>>97670090Ten.
>>97665641>Thread question: If your setting was used as the basis for a video game, what genre would it be?I'd make a 3d action RPG like Mass Effect, we don't have enough (any afaik) Mass Effect clones.
>>97670103First time in these threads? There's a broken brained retard who gets triggered by seeing discord links in the OP and posts that in all of them.
>>97672596He gets triggered even when there aren't discord links in the OP, and now another guy has taken to adding a new discord link every time he spams that.
>>97671108>picJust bought the 4K Blu-ray of this recently. Now I can see Dameia get raped by a giant maggot until she enjoys it and orgasms in Ultra HD!Bill Paxton (from Twister) started his career here and was a set decorator on this movie, and James Cameron was in charge of production design and visual effects. Also, Iya Labunka, who is theorized to be the body double for the maggot rape scene, ended up being Wes Craven's last wife. The 80s sure were wild.
>>97665641>Worldbuilding Hub: https://discord.com/invite/wGjxK3YInvite's expired, can I get a fresh one?
>>97665641>If your setting was used as the basis for a video game, what genre would it be?>If>implying I'm not already working on onein terms of gameplay mechanics, the closest thing I'm aware of is phoenix wright, but with a spiritual medium protag instead of a lawyer (also a vastly different tone/story/setting)I might have bitten off more than I can chew with this project though, because it being so heavily involved in religion/spirituality of the setting means I've got to flesh these parts out enough to do it justice, and it's been taking a lot of autism studying anthropology of religion etc to develop them in a way I'm satisfied with instead of just running on vibes and/or making a half-baked plastic knockoff of some real world religion
Basic but definitely something similar to Skyrim. Open world but with a good primary story and some side stuff.
>>976730191 post doesnt constitute "spam" you spastic. I'll stop reminding you you're cancer ("triggered" in your cringe t*mblr terminology) when there are no irrelevant external links in the OP.
>>97673872>1 post doesnt constitute "spam" you spastic.It does when you're so mindbroken you do it in every thread.
>>97666293Honestly, I would say figure out the parts of government PCs will interact with. I think this is intelligence and police force bureaucracy and procedures.I really don't think you need more than a general overview of everything else, and maybe some key players/patrons in the level of politics below the great house level.
>>97673872>1 post doesnt constitute "spam" you spastic. I'll stop reminding you you're cancer ("triggered" in your cringe t*mblr terminology) when there are no irrelevant external links in the OP.NTA, but I'll remind you that this whole thing started when there were 0 discord links in the OP, you mentally ill spammer who thinks he's "triggering" me.
Really want to make my world almost entirely forest with no major oceans, maybe with vast grasslands and mountain ranges but I don't know if that is believable or even tenuously realistic. I mean I could handwave it as the result of magic, since it's fantasy, but it would be cool if it was somewhat plausible.
>>97665641Considering the setting I do most of my worldbuilding was created for a space wargame, a turn-based strategy game would be the best fit. An RTS or 4X game would also work, and you could set some other genre like an RPG or FPS in the setting.
>>97680918So, the water for the forests has to come from somewhere. You'll struggle to have enough evaporation for regular rainfall without oceans, so you need another solution. Here's what I would do to hang a lantern on it: there are vast *underground* rivers and oceans, and the forests draw on those underground supplies for water. Have specific 'fountainhead trees' which are giant trees with deep roots that draw water up from below with their roots and then the water leaks from the trees like sap, creating lakes and ponds at their roots which then overflow and create rivers on the surface. These rivers either flow until they dry up, or find some crevice where they flow underground and rejoin the underground water ecosystem. While not realistic, this would let you explain where the water comes from, introduce some new and potentially interesting tree-based stuff to reinforce your forest themes, and it means that underground caves will often be or lead into aquatic areas. Mines that dig too deep will risk flooding. Underwater rivers and caves might have gross sea life in them that evolved in a lightless underground ocean that makes horrible looking monsters. Fun stuff like that. If you want rain to be more of a thing, do the above but have volcanic areas produce massive geysers that spray steam and water into the air and thats where the moisture that turns into rain comes from.
>>97680918Why? Oceans are cool.
>>97680994>So, the water for the forests has to come from somewhere. You'll struggle to have enough evaporation for regular rainfall without oceans, so you need another solutionWas thinking lots of lakes, swampland, and most importantly absolutely massive amounts of ground water and porous areas. >>97680998Never was a fan of them. Also strongly dislike sailing portions of basically everything. Be books, table top games, or worst of all writing scenes involving ocean travel. Over land travel or air travel are both significantly more interesting to me.
I tried writing some linguistical notes for my setting. Conlanging is not something I normally do since I have a very poor grasp on linguistics, but I felt I should provide some kind of guide to how some of the alien names I've used are supposed to be pronounced and why their speech when translated to English has certain idiosyncrasies.
>>97665641In my setting Angels have no physical form, so when an Angel needs to manifest in the mortal realm they have to use the ambient matter and energies in the area to construct a functional vessel for themselves. They sometimes make forms more akin to OP's image for combat scenarios against more powerful demons and shit, but most of the time they stick to the typical winged human archetype, with their wings and halos retracting when they need to be incognito. Certain types of matter/energy often take prominence in their forms though, which is most noticeable with elemental-type energies, though preference can influence things as well. So an Angel that manifests during a forest fire might have wings of flame and/or a halo like a ring of fire like picture related, one that manifests in a forest might have wings with feathers like leaves and a halo made of vines, one that manifests in a storm might have a halo of multiple colors of lightning intertwined, one that manifests in a frozen tundra might have wings of ice and a halo transparent like a giant snowflake, one that manifests on a battlefield may have wings of blades and a halo of blood, one that manifests in a graveyard might have a halo of bone and wings made from tombstones, etc. I just can't think of what the wings or halo of an Angel manifested out of raw air might look like, among a couple others, or other common markers that could appear when the Angel in question starts using their powers to any real degree when in apparent mortal form; besides maybe glowing holy symbols of appropriate design for the substance of the form appearing on their skin and appropriately colored hair and eyes, what would you suggest?
>>97665641Given how much RTS games have rotted my brain when it comes to my sensibilities in terms of designing the various factions of my setting, some sort of strategy game would be the first pick of what I'd use my setting for in vidya format.
What would be more efficient, having solar collector satellites that then beam microwaves down to power collector stations on a planet or having said satellites around the sun, then beaming to satellites which beam to the planet?I'm trying to run with the concept of the "evil space empire" being almost entirely solar powered
>>97680918Terra Nova from Heavy Gear
How fleshed out are the gods and religious customs (including evil ones) in your setting?Such as Moloch and Baal.
>>97684048It's beautiful.
I have finally figured out what I am going to call the norther mountain region of my setting. Blackmar Mountain range. The lore is that it originally got it's name because it was the primary source of black marble going all the way back to the time of the immortals. Going back about a thousand years the whole range is under the rulership of The Blooded. A group of vampiric blood sorcerers with magically extended lifespans.
>>97685319a shame that scarlet devil mountains lost
I want my space fantasy setting to have an astral plane that psions and mages interact with and where demons (beings that feed on psychic energy) live. But also a hyperspace dimension that's used for FTL travel, where creatures ripping off Freespace's Shivans live. Is this too redundant?
Been on a research (aka procrastination) binge to see the feasibility of a nomadic people creating and building compound bows with hand tools. The result, nah. Better to give them fancy recurve bows.
What would you assume the culture of this Barbarian Warrior is like? Based on this depiction.
>>97687692faux chinese/mongolian mercenary/fighter possibly from a small/medium town in some frontier that either has some heritage from the wild or he simply likes to pretend to be somewhat of a savage. Probably for intimidation reasons. Actually a city person. Probably ruthless and willing to kill for coin.
>>97687665After reading how bad ass the Comanche were at archery I now feel much better ignoring compound bows. Raw engineering mechanical advantage/power isn't everything.
>>97687692Very, very gay. (Ai slop beside, why the fuck people still make barbarians go half naked in the desert? Conan might have had an atlantean sword, but he got no artifact of perfect solar screen)
>>97665641I was loosely inspired by the Brothers from RWBY, and was thinking that the main deities of my setting would be a Lady of Creation and a Lord of Destruction (who I was thinking would be a couple, with potentially some children of theirs as lesser deities), the former making things all the time and the latter destroying the things that would harm the world at large and refining what he doesn't destroy, like a writer and their editor. What other aspects make sense for them and/or their subordinate deities to have besides Art and Life for the Lady and Death for the Lord (and maybe Disease, because things like diseases and monsters would be what occasionally slips by him and maybe because people pray for deliverance from said diseases)? Maybe Dreams for the Lady?
>>97680918>>97680994This is only tangentially related, but you shluld check out the forests in the fog deserts in the Atacama in Chile.I feel like "fog forests" are a pretty cool concept, very Mirkwood.>>97687665But they did? Mongolians, Jurchen/Manchu, and Scythians all had composite bows. Turks were famous for them back when they were nomadic!Do you think the scythians had industrialised bow productions?!
>>97687692Kill yourself pucktard.
>>97687498>Is this too redundant?Probably. Why separate them into different planes? In a weird way you could go total other end and have an unknown large number of astral planes if you want it to be a big focus, but for some reason having just two that are similar but different would be confusing for players.
>>97689138composite /= compoundPic related is a compound bow, which is extremely modern and requires pretty precise machining and milling to properly function. They are kinda fragile and difficult to repair for a fully nomadic lifestyle.
>>97690259Meanwhile this is the kind of composite bow you are probably thinking of. Made from using natural materials like horn and hide glue.
Would an Imperial Japan expy be a good villain nation for a setting?
>>97691311imperial japan is the way they were due to the influences of western european powerthey saw what britain, france, and america were doing and decided they also want in on the fun as well
I'm trying to think of all the different classifications of esoteric elements or concepts that have been believed to form or influence the human body, soul and spirit. Stuff like the five/four elements, body humors, chakras, zodiac signs, meridians, etc. Are there any more you gents can think of?
>some kind of (alien) god tried to create the perfect (human) beings>tossed them over and over again from his space ship down to earth>animal-animal chimeras, primitive animal-human hybrids, normal human beings, normal animals etc.>also 3 "angels" that are now living hidden among the humans>there's also a race of superbeings living on a floating island above the clouds>humans don't know anything about the (alien) god and think those superbeings are throwing off the humans down to earth>also some super old beings that should devour all the imperfect creations, but some of them got hunted and/or killed by humansDo you think this could be an interesting premise? I had some kind of barren desert with some human settlements and oases in my mind
In my pseudo-medieval fantasy setting, I'm considering including automata. They would be mechanical, typically humanoid constructs, which require an enormous amount of effort and expertise to create. A true master of the craft can create one that is good enough to become ensouled, and no automata yet has reached a level of skill necessary to create their own children.I know that, actually, automata way predate science fiction, modernity, R.U.R., etc, both as mythology and as fact. But it still feels quite specficcy. If I say that:- You need to work based on the codices of the master crafters of the fallen city of Great Lys- You have to be really fucking good at it- It's a one man (years+) job to make oneIs that pseudo-medieval fantasy enough, or does it still edge too far out of the pseudo-medieval milieu, where they have plate armor but no guns?
>>97692950Ask your players? Seems good to me, "pseudomedieval" settings contain jack shit middle ages exepct some vague aesthetics everytime.
>>97691470Is the alien god throwing down the various mutants and whatnot because they're imperfect so he's discarding them and trying again? Sounds overall like it could be neat. What do the players do?
>>97692950I think it works, the time and effort for artisan craftsmanship, hand tooling and such fits the time period well enough. Could include that its a one man and apprentice job to fit the passing on of skills in a very traditional manner.
Do you include city nicknames in your setting like The Big Apple? The City of Brotherly Love? The Windy City?
>>97666293>UC Gundam if there were no mecha and the leadership and people on both sides weren't pants on heads retarded.what's the fucking pointmecha are a conceit to make individual heroics relevant to war again after the invention of artillery and the idiotic leadership is the point because if everyone was sensible there wouldn't be a fucking war in the first place
What is the ghetto like in your world?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOg_8hCC4u4
>>97695911Not watching your video, kill yourself faggot.
>>97695864So far, no.
>>97665641My setting’s pantheon is headed by a couple, a goddess of Light and a god of Darkness. Each of them has several other aspects of reality in their divine portfolios as well, like Sun/Day and Fire and Moon/Night and Water respectively, as well as several children who all take after one parent or the other, save for a god of Twilight, their first child. What other aspects go best with each side?
Anyone want to suggest some names, location, race, lore, etc.?I'm planning to play a homebrewed version of 3.5e with my friends on this world we're makingThe world's only humans came from a small population of shipwrecked Dutch settlers (alongside an even smaller number of other miscellaneous European nationalities descended from the fleet's original crew) who were on a mission to colonize the Americas circa 162X AD but got lost in a storm and ended up shipwrecked on a new world, landing in what would eventually become WrakhavenI plan to set the campaign some 50~100 years after the shipwrecking of the fleet/arrival of the humans, with the population of humans ranging around 80k~150k worldwideThe region they landed in probably has a climate comparable to Cfa or Cwa on the Köppen classification system, comparable to that of the Southern parts of China, Japan, and the United StatesHonestly it's still pretty barebones and lackluster
>>97667514The game is going to be somewhat politically based particularly as players become more powerful/ make allies etc so I there needs to be some detail at least.>>97671118I like the idea of trifolds, give them some feelies to get into the universe.>>97695905The main themes of the original Gundam (aka the first Gundam set in the UC universe) focused on the horrors of war towards individuals (particularly children) and the mistakes made by the Imperial Japanese Regime. Yoshiyuki Tomino was a child during the Second World War and the Japanese Reconstruction. Gundam itself was an attempt to bring 'realism' to the super robot genre, showing that war is horrible (even with cool robots battling). The mechas in Gundam fulfil the role of fighters in the Pacific War while using pre-existing anime tropes that Japanese audiences would recognise (mostly from Tomino's other works).The themes that I will be reinforcing in my setting focus more on the inevitability of war, neither Earth nor Not!Zeon want a war (yet), hence them being in a cold war not a hot one, but they'll more than likely find themselves drawn into conflicts which eventually will escalate into a final conflict between two hegemons, most likely before either is ready. I also look at the ideological differences between two oligarchic structures (aristocratic and technocra while heavily implying that humanity will always form oligarchies regardless of political intent.Like the original Gundam series I use the near future colonisation of our inner solar system and the desires of a space colony to be free of Earth (and Earth's desire to remain in control of the space colonies) to explore these themes.
>>97696535>Anyone want to suggest some names, location, race, lore, etc.?Mm, what do you want in the setting? It's really a quite open concept.You could have the dominant races be aberrations. They could be fey. They could be plant people, or gnolls, or thri-kreen.This is so vague and open-ended it's impossible to give you much, really. If I were in your shoes, I'd just go through a list of my favorite intelligent critters from 3.5e's monster manuals, and say those are the dominant peoples of this world. If you like (flips open MM3 to a random page) Sand Giants, Glaistig, and Goatfolk, those are the three major peoples of the setting, figure it out from there.>I plan to set the campaign some 50~100 years after the shipwrecking of the fleet/arrival of the humans, with the population of humans ranging around 80k~150k worldwideI don't think the time is enough to hit that population. Total pop of the Nieuw Nederland (1624): ~30 families, plus probably 20-30 crew = 150-ish pop. Even using the highest per-annum growth rate of the modern Amish (4.37%), which is probably high, a founder population of 200 wouldn't crack 15k in 100 years.
>>97696789I imagined it was an entire fleet that got lost and shipwrecked (a larger-sized one, slightly north of a dozen ships) with up to several thousand crews and passengers in total, probably still unrealistic even if humans learned magic from the natives, but maybe I can change it to a magical storm on Earth that occasionally strands ships onto this entirely different world every few odd years to get my desired population numberI personally imagine that the part of the continent they landed on was mainly occupied by a variety of furred "beastmen" of sort (men in terms of their intelligence) that formed tribes like you would see in pre-colonial America, but across the big mountain range there is a more civilized and centralized beastmen society centered around the biggest city (the one that is given the hexagonal symbol)I imagine that a beastmen society would be somewhat foreign to that of humans, with different species of beastmen filling a different role in society according to their race, I imagine that tool use would be rather limited as they figured that a certain species or two would have claws that are well-suited for digging so you might as well employ the entirety of their race for this purpose, and ranged warfare to be rather limited in their society (I think ape-like beastmen which are basically primitive men should be avoided)For the first arc of the campaign, I have some rough ideas of either a war between the humans and the central beastmen empire/kingdom or a plot in which the Dutch try to obtain exquisite trade privileges, sailors, maps, slaves/servants, etc. to further expand human influence
>>97696938Note that I planned for my friends' party to not necessarily be in the plot if they don't want to, it's just a thing that will simply happen unless they wanted to stop itI have hopes for a world feels alive and will continue to move on regardless if the party exists or not
>>97665641Is circumcision banned in most places for your setting?
>>97698532What kind of games are you playing where detail descriptions of dicks come up?
>>97699553I mean I had an NPC in a game offer circumcisions for gold
>>97699617Why?
>>97665641In a setting that I was trying to create, I wanted to try to develop the culture and tradition of the demon races by giving each race a denomination of the same big relief, which they worship as a demonic deity who is their messiah and lord.Every race have their own way of worshiping this deity, for example Moutain demons, who are big and brash, throat-sing chants and prays, while Sea demons make a pile of fish and start throwing it around in a big festival where everyone eats in the name of their deity.And even in clothes, you can clock what race of demon you are dealing with by just looking at their outfits and their colors. The nomad demons wear only outfits made of wool at all times for religious reasons, while some fanatics cut their horns until they reach a certain age, so they cover their scars with a bandana and wear a special head cover.I'm honestly open to more ideas and suggestions about what i can do more, so they feel unique.
>>97699675He was a witch doctor and that was one of his services
>>97699871Dude, that's weird, you are weird. There is no reason that should come up in a game.
>>97699553He just wanted to post that picture.
Hello, I'm new. Until yesteday I played generic dnd inspired settings, sometimes homebrewed, but so small scope that I never had to actually write anything for it. But my friends agreed to try Shadow of the Demon Lord today, and tonight it occurred to me that this time I wanted to build something with lore of my own. Maybe my players will never see even 5% of it, I'm fine with that, I'm doing it mostly because I had some cool ideas I wanted to write down.What are your advices for someone who has never written anything longer than a short story? The setting will be grimderp as I'm into that shit and because I found my table enjoys it more than light hearted settings, and while obviously I'm making it to slot in SotDL I'll try to make it in a way different game systems can also slot in (with a few necessary adjustements, of course)For example, I stated here >>97700486 that I'll make a workaround so clerics, paladins, etc have a way to exist in my setting regardless of what I decide on its real theology.If anyone cares I'll post next the core introduction to the setting I've just written, it's a bit generic and cringe but I rike it. Obviously I'll shamelessly borrow any concept or thing I believe my players will not recognize, because I'm what they call "a hack"
>>97700520The realms of men were once strong, spanning much of the known world. Though tragedies, wars, and fighting with monsters and demons of all sorts did occur, civilization was not at risk of extinction. Great kingdoms like the now defunct [[Kingdom of Huul]] , or the still existing [[Kingdom of Deverstal]] , and even empires like the [[Asheramid Empire]] or the [[Empire of Dawn]] stood great and powerful.Yet one fateful day the [[Cataclysm]] happened. The reasons are unclear, and matter of very heated theological and arcane debate between different religions and factions, but all over the known world darkness started pouring directly from the [[Abyss]]. Sorcerers and witches all over the world started feeling the darkness overtake the [[Veil]], mere minutes before gateways for evil and darkness opened up in different locations around the world. Unspeakable creatures, curses and spells started pouring in this world, with the intent to corrupt, destroy use and abuse humans. This was not the first time Daemons had manifested in the world, but at no point in recorded history had such great hordes of them flooded the earth. The greatest collapse happened to the Asheramid Empire, with the greatest portal ever witnessed opening in the center of its capital city, the now cursed city of [[Ishtaar]]. Because of this, many scholars believe that the source of this apocalypse can be blamed on said empire, who could have attempted some great ritual sacrifice that accidentally or intentionally brought forth the Cataclysm. Other scholars, men of different faiths, believe that the accumulated sins of mankind are the cause of this tragedy, and hold the belief that humanity must repent for their evils, and crack down on sinners to fix the situation. (1/3)
>>97700530The version of this theory can change widely from faith to faith, down to some worshipping the Daemons as the harbingers of an end humanity deserves.Others yet, believe that said worshippers are to blame. They believe cults around the world organized to bring forth the Cataclysm by a mass harvesting of souls worldwide, on the same date.-Note: the Cataclysm was taken after a short while as the recognized year 0. The setting is for now created with the idea of being set around 206 ac (after the cataclysm).Whatever the reason of the Cataclysm may be, its consequences are clear.Kingdoms and empires fell either from portals from within, or hordes coming from without. The greatest empire in the world, the Empire of Dawn, lost half of its territory as several portals opened inside it and an age of strife, corruption and depravity raged inside it. The young emperor [[Diomedian]], the Sword of the Sun, also called the blessed, would manage to save its capital city (then named Ludumun, now named [[Diomedianum]] in his honor) from complete destruction. The city was ravaged by Daemons, but it was salvaged and the portal was destroyed. The young emperor would spend years in military campaigns, saving as much as he could of his dying domain and closing the portals closest to the capital.The crippled empire persists to this day, full of strife, infighting and problems, surrounded by enemies, human and Daemon alike, but with a bitter iron will to fight to the end.(2/3)
>>97700534A lot of kingdoms, cities and realms around the world were either wiped off the map, or turned into Daemon infested dens of sin and depravity, but some persisted. Humans around the world fought the hordes of evil and managed to carve corners of the world where civilization can still exist. However, even in civilized realms, roads that used to be safe save from the odd troll asking for a pittance on a bridge, have now become dangerous. Cities and villages have taken the custom to build sturdy walls to protect them from the outside world, and a great deal of manpower has to be spent simply protecting the farmers and their land or the merchants on the road. This situation is now necessary for survival, but has made any attempt to reconquer the lost land or close portals around the world difficult of not impossible. Humanity is doomed, nobody knows how long before the defences of mankind against darkness fail, but it is common understanding that its only a matter of time: one day, the crippled human kingdoms will no longer be able to stop either the hordes of Daemons or their corrupting influence and will fall to the evils of the Abyss.(3/3)
>>97700520>>97700530>>97700534>>97700537A couple of notes:In this setting, being a "hero" is something that is attained by simply being a mercenary willing to fight the forces of darkness. A "hero" might be a very unheroic person, moved by greed or bloodlust, but to the eyes of the citizens of this world anyone brave enought to face deamons and cultists has earned such a name and will be respected (within the limits of reason, obviously, they can't just go into town and rape a granny).There are different playable races, but they are all mutations of the common human t(the magic, curses, and special circumstances of this setting have created several distinct ones, for example some men who escaped the cataclysm to the underground have become smaller, paler, and have their own cultural quirks and racial bonuses, likewise another race of human is born out of corruption from the Abyss, they are ugly, deformed, but have innate magical prowess) . Other sentient races exist but they are not playable (elves revile humans as if they were daemons and will kill on sight any who enters their sacred forests, for example)
>>97700520>What are your advices for someone who has never written anything longer than a short story?In this particular situation, I have two major recommendations:- Players will only care about things that are relevant to their characters.- Bullet points are your Lord and Savior.Obvious things to put on bullet points are:- Major factions relevant to the campaign- Race/ethnic groups in the campaign region- Gods/religions they'll follow- Important recent history (e.g. the Last War in Eberron)- Anything weird about the setting; unusual magic systems, weird tech level, unusual politics, the elves all weigh 20lbs each, etc.Basically, what's the (sort of) stuff you'd like to see the players put in their backstory or on their character sheet? Present your setting through that lens.
>>97700569>Players will only care about things that are relevant to their characters.Oh yeah, I plan to get magic, races and religions out of the way before I get into king bigdick the third and his tax policy. The stuff they'll need to make a character and know how to play it>Bullet pointsI'm using Obsidian for links, folders and subfolders because if I tried to put everything into a big pdf I'd go insane and would also never be able to find anything when I need it.
>>97700608>I'm using Obsidian for links, folders and subfolders because if I tried to put everything into a big pdf I'd go insane and would also never be able to find anything when I need it.The advantage of bullet points is they tell your brain to write less. You can have the long form prose stuff in the Obsidian article, I guess, but the bullet point should be like:- [[Kingdom of Florblesnort]] was founded 800 years ago.- Kingdom of Florblesnort went to war with the [[Kingdom of Carlisle]] 30 years ago. [[Florblesnort-Carlisle War]] was devastating, ended 25 years ago, Florblesnort loss, lost territory of [[Alsace-Lorraine]].- King of Florblesnort died, son [[New King Henry]] ascended to the throne 1 year ago, now saber-rattling about a potential new war to recover Alsace-Lorraine.
>>97699743>War demons nail their armour onto their bodies, adding plates and commemorative nails as they age >Forest demons are like tree planter granola bros aggressively expanding the forests whether you like it or not >Alcohol demons find a mortal to befriend and latch onto, always there to help but in the wrong ways and gradually converting the mortal into another alcohol demon, at which point they have a knock down blow out friendship ruiner of a party and part their ways to find another mortal
>>97696374You're a mentally retarded autist, what are you doing in the /wbg/?
How do you know when you've written too much? I'm writting some lore for a world I'm tinkering but holy fuck, if it were our real world I'd have from ancient egypt to this day. And most of that it's not really shown in the game, it's just some background info.
>>97700990Worldbuilding can be fun for its own sake; in this case, you have never written to much, just like you have never played too many video games, or read too many books.For players or readers, you should present information only if and when it becomes relevant.
>>97700891Keep seething, shitspammer.
>>97700569>Players will only care about things that are relevant to their characters.Not everyone has players that are just there to roll dice, the ones who are worth playing with will care.
>>97701596If players just wanted to listen to lore that has nothing to do with anything, they could get that better by reading a specevo project or some official setting guide to Kalamar or Eberron or Eora or whatever.
>>97681261is the [unwritten] vowel supposed to be a shwa /ə/ ? that's how you're seemingly using it at least. I'm also not sure on what Yi is supposed to mean as a vowel, you give yield as an example but the y in yield acts as a glide rather than a proper vowel or is it supposed to represent the long e /ē/?
>>97701606>if players are interested in lore they should read about a setting they aren't playing inYou can just accept being wrong you know, you don't have to double down any way you can think of.
>>97701615Nah, I will not give DMs getting into worldbuilding the advice that any good player will care about the kings of Bumfuckistan, a country located on the opposite side of the planet from where the campaign takes place, that died out 1000 years ago.
>>97701596Ttrpgs are gamesYou can play them as crunchy combat simulators, you can play them as roleplay oriented cooperative storytelling games, but you can't expect everyone to want to read a 200 page pdf of your oc fantasy history, if they wanted that they'd buy Fire and Blood and read that instead.I think it's better to feed lore trough gameplay, and always in small doses.Their character might even know something they personally do not, and I will inform them of that if the need ever arises
>>97700990
Not really in the mood to make a new thread, but I think I can safely ask you guys here, you certainly know more about this than me, so I would ask for some suggestions.Me and my group are going to resume our L5R campaign, with a couple of new players to booth, so I think it's time for me to put a map together to show the island where the action previously happened and give everyone a good idea of the hot spots around. What's a good map making software that has some japanese assets for the world part? Think more wonderdraft than dungeondraft for scale.
Doing races right now, anyone got any tips or wants to share some cool race they made?
Is there a place in your world considered the "Graveyard of Empires" like Afghanistan?
>>97701585you're literally the kind of autist i'd expect on /v/
Getting way too deep into the reeds here
>>97703262
>>97703269
>>97702841Human-controlled space is probably the closest equivalent, considering humanity has gone through two wars where they managed to "defeat" a superior force by just making the war costly enough that it just wasn't worth continuing.The first time was the Colony War between maegacorp-controlled Earth and rebellious colonists. The war only lasted for a year or so before the megacorps figured that in order to bring the colonies back under their heel they'd have to basically wipe out their entire populations and infrastructure, and start over from scratch. That was far too costly, so they just agreed to grant the colonies their independence.The second time was when the Demosian Hierarchy, one of the major civilizations in the local area of space, decided to conquer the humans. They had vastly more resources at their disposal but wouldn't have been able to use them all against the humans since they had multiple other, more powerful enemies, and the whole thing was supposed to be "a short and popular war" where they'd conquer a minor power in order to boost their leader's popularity among the military and put them in a better position against one of their real enemies. At first things seemed to be going just as predicted: the Demosians struck sparsely populated human border-worlds with overwhelming force and quickly occupied major cities and spaceports while the defenders scattered into the wilderness. But as soon as the fleets moved on and left garrison forces behind to occupy those locations, the human planetary defense forces started fighting them in a hit-and-run guerrilla war. And as soon as they hit a major human planet they learned that the Colony War had taught the colonists that strong planetary defense was the only surefire way to maintain their freedom, so any human planet that could afford it would have large and well-equipped planetary defense forces and massive stockpile of surface-to-orbit nuclear missiles.
>>97704109Given enough time the Demosians would have won by attrition, but it would have been extremely costly, and with the losses mounting and the whole thing threatening to turn into a conflict between major powers due to their main rival power getting drawn into the war, they decided the whole thing was a lost cause and signed an armistice.
>>97702867I've seen you advertise your video in its own thread here and on other boards, you're mad because it's not working.
>>97704217>I've seen you advertise your video in its own thread here and on other boards, you're mad because it's not working.It's a youtube video from 2007 that is just a song from 1973. I don't think he needs your schizo views on a an 18 year old video with 22 million views. You are mentally retarded and cancerous.
>>97702666>anyone got any tipsGenerallyUnless they are a hive mind you always should keep in mind that they probably aren't a monolith when it comes to culture or personality. It's also kinda pointless if they are basically exactly like humans except look funny. >or wants to share some cool race they made?Guyin are probably the closest/most similar to standard fantasy races like elves, dwarfs, halflings, gnomes, etc. They are short, have a inhuman sleep cycle that deeply influences their cultures, tend to be crafts people or trades people, and have the unique ability to use hand gestures to weave arcane energy to modify spells and magic object effects on the fly. They also have sensory organs that can sense external arcane energy. Batterak are flying people who are somewhat similar to bats. Their main homeland tends to overlap with the blooded ever since the revival of the Apex of the blooded. Speaking ofThe Blooded are vamperic blood sorcerers. Once isn't born a blooded, one has to be chosen to be "assended" into becoming a blooded. Fera are nomatic tough people who because of their physical charcterestics are basically immune to exposure and even the harshes of weather. However many tribes are struggling with the pressues of the wilds becoming more and more dangerous due to monsters slowly but surely becoming stronger and more numerous. So some have chosen to move walled settlement to walled settlement instead of living totally in the wilds. While others have turned their whole tribe into competent hunters and warriors to cope with the growing dangers. There are the Simians, who are monkey people who have a empire in the jungle region of the world and are mildly isolationist. Lizard men (working on a better name) who are mainly pastoral, and believe cows were directly gifted to them by the gods. They thrive in the grasslands of the world where their herds do the best and are easiest for them to defend. Have more but out of space and time.
>>97702666Capgrians.They come from another world; they switch bodies with a local using elaborate ritual circles. They're masters of fleshcrafting. They basically took over the not-Papacy by possessing leadership, using their fleshcrafting to tempt Popes and others with offers of immortality; once they'd done so successfully, they basically destroyed Rome from within, birthing children just to replace their souls with a compatriot's from their homeworld when the kids got old enough to walk, reshaping human and elven bodies into orcs and goblins and ogres and all the rest.Eventually, there was a big crusade and they got kicked out of Rome, but it ended the papacy and left all these weird races scattered around.
Am I being silly by insisting in evolutionary pressures on fantasy races and scientific foundations for magic even though the people in it don't know the foundational rules in a fantasy setting?
>>97705193Yes.Unless it REALLY gives you cool monsters, on a whole other level than the usual dnd fare.
>>97705193I mean if you are having fun and it results in interesting and unique creatures and magic then it isn't silly. However if the results are bland you are just putting in a ton of effort to reinvent the wheel and concluding that round is indeed the best shape after trying triangles and squares.
Working on a setting for a tabletop game, I've got proper idea that I like but I still think I need to iron some kinks>United Dreams of America>The Collective Unconscious exists, and you can travel it, with humans shaping the world of the dreaming with their thoughts and dreams, this is well known by the highest echleons of humanity, heads of government and megacorporations. they wage a silent war inside dreams as they try to create a collective societal shift in their favor>The UDA has it's own citizens, figments of dreams, concepts and metaphors taken form. they too live in the dreamscape trying to survive as US backed psycho soldiers try to persuade citizens into tacitly agreeing with their desired policies>The players enter this world unwittingly, one of the megacorporations, DreamLabs, offers them a prototype of a consumer grade model of the machines they use to enter the dreamworld, but see too much and are able to enter the collective unconscious Help me fill this out, I welcome any extra ideas to throw at it
>>97706038You are obsessed. I don't give a shit and it's off topic.
>>97684115>How fleshed out are the gods and religious customs (including evil ones) in your setting?Not very. Like 20% maybe. I figure I will just add to what little I got as I go along.
>>97704950back from work so will continue. GoblinsThey are basically domesticated in my setting and only live within walled settlements, all of which are built by other races. They have rights as a people group, but by default have a pretty low social status compared to all other peoples. They also can't sense or directly manipulate arcane energy at all. They can use magic items created by another race, but they can't really make them themselves. They however aren't actively oppressed. HumansYou know what they are. The ones in my setting have some slight biological differences depending on region. Like gigantism is more common in my setting, to the point it's just seen as part of normal variation among humans. Or the hormonal balance of people in certain areas is different which causes behavor and cultural divergence from what is typical, along with certain medical and fertility issues being more or less common. The Dran are the most unique race original to my setting. They are bipedal unguligrades somewhat similar in body structure to sthenurinae with heads that are humanoid with somewhat deer like features. They tend to have long shaggy hair on their heads and down the back while being unfurred on their face and fronts. Their hands look like pic related. They can clearly sense and manipulate the life essence of living things and use this mainly to tend to plant life as well as do minor diagnosis and healing of animals and people. They tend to not live in communities of their own kind, instead only gathering together for rituals or mating season. Instead they live among or near by other people groups in a symbiotic relationship. They massively increase food production of a settlement, among other things, and in exchange the settlement provides the Dran protection and if requested a private nesting area to raise their young. ChimerThey are people created artificially through ritual for the purpose of being living weapons.
>>97691311I've run a Traveller pocket empires game where the player's home empire was based on Meji Japan and the players had to try and create a sphere of influence for their space nation before the great powers divided the region. While my players committed very few war crimes (an admirable feat of great restraint for them) I'm sure they made very good villains for the various nations they 'brought willingly' into their nation's sphere of influence. I think if you're going to have a Japan expy as a villain it's worth pointing out that, at least at the start of their empire building most other nations didn't think of them as particularly evil (UK was allied with Japan until the 1920s) and many nations saw them as a stabilising influence in the region given the shitshow that was China at the time. Japan was even part of the Eight-Nation Alliance that eliminated the Boxer Rebellion Also the Fire Nation from Avatar is literally Imperial Japan>>97691311I'd argue that Imperial Japan was the way they were due to more factors than just wanting to join the Great Power club (though certainly it's part of it).I'd argue that a much greater influence is their rapid modernisation. In around 80 years they went from being a late medieval society to a late Victorian/Edwardian one. In the West we had the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the formation of a middle class and a whole ass load of social and political change that took place over 500 years or so. The rapid social (and economic) changes happening in Japan as part of their drive to catch up to the West during this period changed their society in ways that a more gradual modernisation (such as the West had) probably wouldn't have.I'd also point out that Western Imperialism while it had it's various excesses had very few incidents of brutality to match Imperial Japan's actions during their occupation of Korea, China and Manchukuo.
>>97704447Why did you (don't pretend you aren't samefagging) post it across so many threads and boards?
>>97708232I'm not samefagging, so I have no idea. You are schizophrenic so it's possible that this 22 million view video was posted on multiple boards because it's some famous song or something.
>>97665641How does Worldbuilding for superheroes settings contrast with other kinds of genres?
>>97708310Broadly speaking, you either have like 1-3 major things going on which are undergirding all the worldbuilding (e.g. Worm and parahumans/shards, mutants in continuities where they're the only thing), or you literally just make up whatever the fuck you feel like whenever you feel like.
>>97708242Sure, you're just personally offended on the spammer's behalf for...some reason. And all those posts were made on the same day and said the same thing, it wasn't a coincidence.
>>97708633I'm offended that retards like you are trying to ruin the board by acting as board police, while themselves clearly having schizophrenia, making them incapable of interacting with reality.
>>97708310Not a capefag but sounds very different from usual high fantasy WB. You just use our world, put in motion the usual factions of evil vs good and have to somehow justify them. Seems pretty simpler to me.
>>97708310Depends if you are doing it set in our actual work as a bases (in which case it would be more similar to how urban fantasy, alt-history, or near future sci-fi when it comes to world building); or if you are doing parallel earths similar to most major American comics and how most anime work (which would involve grafting new elements onto our world and working through implications of those new elements); or if it's a true secondary world in which case you are basically building everything from the ground up similar to if it was high fantasy or distant future sci-fi (in which case it's exactly like worldbuilding for other genera). Basically with supes you can choose the amount of world building you want to do and how much of our world you want to base things off of, which is less of a option in certain genera like high fantasy.
Had a thought, Take a typical fantasy setting, with your typical: ancient, haughty, elitist, stuck up, “we’re better at you at everything and we’re so perfect” Elves. But… recent discoveries might paint a different picture. Namely there’s evidence cropping up that the short-lived and “crude” humans are an older race.Much older…Like Elves have a history going back tens of thousands of years. But apparently humans have forgotten a history going back hundreds of thousands of years, because they hadn’t developed a writing system until the last few millennia. Now I’m already of the mindset that the Elves collective egos are way too fragile to just wave it off. The implication that humans might be more special than them? Oh sure they’ll officially act like it doesn’t bother them. But it will. It will deeply bother them. Made worse when it turns out Halflings are also slightly older than Elves. I just don’t know what ways these blows to their cultural pride might slip out.
>>97709335Wouldn't they just see themselves as a more advance being further along in evolution?
>>97705685First question that comes to mind is if the dreamscape is limited to America specifically. Because that's kind of weird that it's not global.Second thought that comes to mind is that if people can fully cross over and live in the dream world, does it function as some sort of afterlife? We're native americans able to travel there on the past? Or is it strictly formed by the minds of people who are still alive?I feel like the thing you're missing here is while having a collective unconscious dreamscape is cool, it'd probably add a lot to copy Pscyhonauts and Persona where diving into the minds of specific people is also possible. That lets you have some more defined islands amid a chaotic mixture of thought. Finding them might be its own challenge, but it'd give the players something a bit more tangible to latch onto beyond slightly influencing public opinion.
>>97709335wouldn't they see that as evidence that human civilisation was inferior if it fell and theirs hasn't? humans would just become "degenerate" rather than "crude and unevolved"
>>97709346Yeah, if you want to say your race is superior you just find ways to do it, contrived or not.Like IIRC the victorians on an hand did say that human hairlessness was a sure sign of superiority from apes and primitives were (supposedly) way hairier than us... but the europeans's beards were a sign of nobility, because it's like lion's manes.
>>97709346Depends on what Elvin believes were and their version of the creation of the setting.It could just as easily be seen as humans being the “superior” OG and elves are some later knockoff creation (which might be how Elves originally saw themselves, them being the “true” children of the world and the younger races as a pale imitation)
>>97709463The Victorians were weird in a ton of ways and a constant source of inspiration for world building.
>>97709482Yes, and especially they are the ur-racists, really. Or at least THE mold for racism.
>>97709386No, but the game focus will be in America, not focusing so much on the rest of the worldIt is strictly formed by the minds of people that are still alive, you can remain there but your body would be completely catatonic and knocked out, I'd say that native americans could definetely be able to travel there yeahI was planning to copy psychonauts and persona in a way yes, but I didn't want it to be SO similar to them, rather than delving into their inner self or mind palace, it would be their dreams, what they want, how they feel, sometimes just straight up their current present moments. sometimes they mean a lot, sometimes it's just random dreamsI'm thinking of adding an opposing international force against the US Psycho Soldiers, to give it a proper conflict, and smaller, independent factions taking control of different parts of america, allowing the players to travel aroundI'm also trying to think of the motivations and goals of both Dreamlabs (The big corp) and the Us government itself, my ideas are currently>Dreamlabs has much higher lofty goals, they want the collective unconscious to become manifest and rush in an age of true connected information>The Us government wants full control, to put the entire american people into a singular goal. to create unified war effort, unified voting power, etc.
do you guys try to draw whatever fantastical creatures you make up or do you stop at physical descriptions and just hope that it's enough
>>97710789I'm shit at drawing so usually I make a creature only after I found art that would fit it
>>97710789Maybe a sketch, then I ask the AI to do it for me. Visual representations are surprisingly important when coming up with races. Aesthetics often beat mechanics.
>>97710789I can't draw. So by necessity I have slowly gotten better with writing detail descriptions in my notes.I can then dial up or down the amount of detail whenever I use the creature to fit the scene
>>97710789I use ai to make a visual reference but I have drawn a few characters in the past myself
>>97710789Drawing is the primary mode of my worldbuilding. Often I draw stuff first and then figure out the lore for the desings I've drawn.
>>97687692Kill yourself redditor
>>97687692Looks vaguely Siberian.
>>97705193It's only silly if you don't enjoy or don't want to be doing it; even if it's never explicitly explained, it might help your setting feel more internally consistent>>97710789I intend to, once I get better at drawing
I'm a numismatics noob and have a question:>within a system of currency, all denominations generally seem to be set relative to a single value>some systems will make their denominations (at least primarily) multiples of a low value, such as the As of ancient Rome>others instead make them divisions of a high value, such as the Carolingian system defining shillings and pennies as fractions of a pound of silverAre there any factors influencing how or why systems might form differently in this matter? I'm undecided on which way coinage in my setting should be going, and if either would be more plausible then it would make a very convenient tie-breaker.
>>97713103Probably the biggest thing is daily currency versus unit of account. The more cash-based an economy is, the more people have the inclination to count small units; we count in dollars, Euros, yen, etc, which are used in daily life. Carolingian pounds were very "units of account" used for big measurements because they didn't have much of a cash economy.
>>97713252Thanks for the reply! That does seem to make sense; I guess multiples is the way to go, then.
Okay, what the fuck do I use to make a map? Not the entire world, but a big chunk of it where my first campaigns will be setBefore I keep working on the lore I need a have a mental image of how the thing looks like
>>97714341>what the fuck do I use to make a map?MS paint. InkscapePhotoshopGimpCrayons and paperPiss and snowTake your pick.
>>97714402>paint>photoshop>gimpGot no patience for that dawg, crayons it is
How big is your fantasy world? Earth sized? Smaller? Bigger?I'm thinking I will make it MUCH bigger, because why not, it's fantasy, and so I can always have space to shove more shit into it
>>97714522Near earth sized because changing the size has too many complications that I didn't want to deal with or handwave. The effects on lifeforms, building, how combat would work, transport, basically everything. You would have to remake EVERYTHING from the ground up if you significantly changed the size of the planet, which is a fuckload or work for in my opinion very little gain. Especially if you are making the world bigger. Everything would be significantly heavier and there would have to be a ton of compensation to deal with that fact.
>>97714547Just make the core less dense Also if the fantasy world was created by some gods or magic you can really just handwave it and never explain it, unless you plan to make your medieval characters experts in physics
>>97714555>Just make the core less denseThat too has complications with many many many knock on effects that I don't want to deal with. >Also if the fantasy world was created by some gods or magic you can really just handwave it and never explain it,How bout no. Besides, do you REALLY need more space for the game you are running or the story you are trying to tell?Is it ever plot/game reverent that the planet is larger than earth?
>>97714575>Is it ever plot/game reverent that the planet is larger than earth?Yes>It allows me to shove more races, religions, kingdoms etc in it (because I enjoy it and for no other reason)>It follows the theme of everything being bigger: castles, populations, demon hordes, mountains. It gives an epic sense of scale, its grimderp and I want the heroes to never "save the world", at best they can save the kingdom>It explains why the help of magic isn't enough to solve logistics, communication etc in such a world, as its hard to even map out completely even for powerful mages
>>97714341
>>97714607>>97714341>>97714402>>97714436A thousand hours on crayon™
>>97714629Wait it wasn't supposed to be turned around like that
>>97714604>>It allows me to shove more races, religions, kingdoms etc in itOr you could just scale things properly in the first place, or make things closer together and get rid of dead space, or make the oceans smaller to have more land, etc. Tons of much easier solutions that have far less complications then changing the size of the planet significantly. >It follows the theme of everything being biggerHigher gravity would not result in this. It would make it HARDER to make things bigger. >its grimderp and I want the heroes to never "save the world", at best they can save the kingdomYou don't need a bigger world to do that. >It explains why the help of magic isn't enough to solve logistics, communication etc in such a world, as its hard to even map out completely even for powerful magesThat doesn't really explain anything at all. Logistics and communications are more of a tech/magic level thing. Not a size of map thing. Same with mapping stuff out. I really don't think you gave any of this much thought.
>>97714629>>97714637Not bad.
>>97714651>Logistics and communications are more of a tech/magic level thingYes, the presence of tech/magic medieval people didn't have means the world needs to be scaled up to be harder to manage>Or you could just scale things properly in the first placeThat's not less effort than simply not scaling things lol> or make things closer together and get rid of dead space, or make the oceans smaller to have more landSee this is the opposite of a solution because it's the opposite of what I want, I WANT dead space, entire wastelandsUnexplored oceans full of cthulhusI even briefly considered making the world flat, though I ended up disregarding that ideaAll it takes to adjust gravity is to change how gravity works slightly, seems the opposite of effort, as opposed to completely rethinking my setting. Believe it or not planet size matters less than planet density when it comes to gravity, what would change is stuff like days/years/seasons, but again, if gurm can have 10 years summers why the fuck should I not make it up as I go
>>97714683You are going to run into compounding problems because of your clear lack of forethought and your world won't be remotely believable. Also having tons of dead space for no reason is boring both in games and especially in stories and I would strongly advice against it. But whatever, find out the hard way.
>>97714704>for no reasonIt's post apocalyptic, overrun by demons, it's the last days of a dying world, the desolate inhabitable wastelands are part of the point. It's also part of why its hard to eliminate the portals the demons pour in from: you have to crusade across ludicrously big deadlands>won't be remotely believableHow so? Because anything not earth sized cannot be a fantasy world?Even NASA looks for planets both smaller or bigger than earth to be habitable, size is really not that important as long as other factors are at play, as I've said again and again
>>97714742Don't care. Find out for yourself. I already warned you. I am not arguing over this anymore.
>>97714704unbelievable worlds exist and can still be compelling and enjoyable though.
>>97714765See>>97714754
I'm sorry if you got angry I disagree with you anon, I, perhaps wrongly, assumed the general was to share different ideas
>>97714783>I, perhaps wrongly, assumed the general was to share different ideasManipulativeHow gross.
>>97714844Anon, you went>YOU WILL SEE I WAS RIGHT WHEN YOU CRASH AND BURNAfter I simply gave you my reasonsMy lack of hostility was met with absolute contempt, I don't see any other way to interpret it
>>97714341If you want to make it entirely by hand there's:Pen and paperPaintGIMPClipStudio PaintKritaPhotoshopThere's other programs like Wonderdraft or Campaign Cartographer that take a bit of learning to use.This is a section of the continent with the most developed lore that I have recreated in CSP by tracing over my previous gaudier Wonderdraft version that's intended to be simpler and easier to read. Using an art program with layers will definitely be much more helpful for you since you can add text or routes you're taking through the campaign to it.
>>97714866Why do you care what a anonymous person on the internet thinks about you?Why do you need randoms to agree with you?The fact of the matter is you don't. This conversation is over. There is no argument to be had. Stop trying to keep it going. Do your own shit or don't. But whatever you do stop being such a faggot about it.
>>97714637which is land and which is sea?
>>97714896>Why do you need randoms to agree with you?I don't, so refer to >>97714783I am sorry if you are angry, I, perhaps mistakenly, believed this to be a place dedicated to the discussion of different takes on worldbuilding, and so I was engaging in said discussion by replying with my arguments.Since according to you there is no argument to be had, I was mistaken in my assumption.
>>97714910Drew a piece of the daemon occupied part first to distinguish better, that's the land. New Athumber is on an island
>>97714917>continues to be a faggot about it
Would it make sense for nearly 92% of children to have lost siblings to "Harvest Failures", plagues, and endemic diseases like smallpox (endemic, 33% mortality rate) in pre-modern setting? Something like 1 out of 3 children die before age 5? Women would have 1-in-15 to 1-in-20 (sometimes as high as 1-8) chance of dying in childbirth over the course of their life. And a lot of them have half-siblings?
>>97684115I feel like the religions are by far the weakest part of my setting. I started it when I was much younger, and the gods were kind of an afterthought. I really underestimated how important religions were and how much they influenced daily life in the middle ages.I've basically only got funeral rites figured out
>>97715649If your characters are plants, sure
>>97684115In a world I'm making with some friends, anyone that contributes to the world gets to be a god in the world (with funny misspelled names, or using the first name for one aspect/face of the god and the family name for another)The more you write, the more known you are as a God to the inhabitantsYour power and influence are related to the size of your race/civilization, a big civilization means that you have little direct input (miracles) and actions but your power spreads far and wide, a small and more devout civilization will see more direct input but they're limited in scopeThis may lead to two different civilizations on opposite polars of the globe worshipping the exact same deity, it is intendedI personally act as the Chief Deity/Arbitrator
Fucking names man
>>97684115Not at all yet. I'm working on a sci fi setting so it isn't *as* important as with fantasy, but I feel like religion is something that will ever completely go away. Hard to come up with religions that people in the future would plausibly believe in the future though, the D&Dland polytheism with Catholic characteristics isn't going to work.
>>97684115I'm still far from finished, but I've got the broad strokes done for some of it, and I'm really liking how it's turning out.Religion and spirituality ended up becoming a central focus of the stories I want to write in this setting, so it felt necessary to focus my autism into doing the matter justice (and regardless, I wanted it to be more plausible/less shallow than some superficial "sky dude makes stuff happen, the end" material).On the topic, can any of you recommend any good sources to learn about religion from an academic/anthropological perspective? I'm ashamed to say that so far my research has been primarily from wikipedia and a couple of youtube channels.
>>97716639I used to stress about it but after you get used to naming enough characters and things you just get a used to it or find a naming convention that works for what you are doing. Everyone sucks at naming stuff at first. It just takes practice.
>>97716639That's my biggest problem too. I just take names from history and books I like and hope nobody notices
>>97716639Just spend many hours making a conlang and then deciding on naming systems don't do this
Debating with myself what I should refer to cannabis plants in the world I am working on. Like just stick with their name in our world, use hemp, base the name after the main products it's used for such as sailcloth plant or rope weed, or come up with some original fantasy name.
>>97716639Names are just fossilized terms from archaic languages. Many names just means stuff like "Brave", "Gold Guardian", "Welcome one", "Glorious warrior", or "Land of Rabbits", "Land of Men Who Row", "Land in the Middle", and stuff like that.
>>97715649Human mortality rates are overrated. Yes it is true that children did die at high rates, and so did women in childbirth, but this is frequently misrepresented as part of an overall "muh Dark Ages" narrative. You need to look at root causes of why child mortality happens and why death in childbirth happens.>there was a famine at a given timeIt is reasonable there was high infant mortality during this period and surviving children are shorter or otherwise suffer from the long term effects of poor nutrition.>famines everywhere>high infant mortality all the time>everything is always shitThis is completely inaccurate outside of Warhammer. You need to be deliberate with your famines and plagues.
>>97715649not reallyhigh infant mortality is mostly an issue of them not getting enough foodit's a weird constant in history that peasant populations will grow to as many people as they can feed and then stagnate because the youngest ones start suffering from malnutritonwhich in turn means peasants are pretty amazing at recovering from large scale disasters
>>97715649Infant mortality (dying before age 1) was typically closer to 25% (30–50% for up to age 5). For most of human history, the vast majority of infants died from "normal" causes that occurred even in years of peace and plenty. >"Background Mortality" 80-90%.Infectious DiseaseThis was the heavyweight champion of infant death. In an era before germ theory, antibiotics, or clean water, the world was a minefield of pathogens.>Diarrhea and dysenteryThe biggest killers. Dehydration from contaminated water or poor weaning practices could kill an infant in 48 hours. This was common in cities due awful sanitation.>Respiratory infections.Pneumonia and influenza were constant threats, especially in winter.>Endemic diseases"Regular" childhood diseases like measles, whooping cough, and smallpox (BIG killer, and common as dirt) took a steady toll every single year. A few smallpox scars were expected in most adults.>"Normal" MalnutritionNutrition was often precarious.>The Weaning CrisisThe most dangerous time for a child was when they stopped breastfeeding and started eating "supplemental" foods (contaminated porridge or unpasteurized milk). This led to "Weanling Diarrhea," a major cause of death.>Micronutrient Deficiencies (Typical in farmer populations)Vitamin A or iodine deficiencies weakened immune systems, making a "normal" cold turn into a fatal case of pneumonia.>"Crisis Killers" 10–20% of Deaths>FamineFamine rarely killed infants through actual starvation. Instead, it killed them by lowering their resistance. During a crop failure, a child who might have survived a bout of measles would instead succumb to it because their body had no reserves.>WarDirect violence vs infants were statistically rare. However, war acted as a multiplier for disease: Armies moving through a region, destroyed crops and fouled water sources. Soldiers carried typhus and cholera, which then spread to the civilian infant population (Camp Fever) etc.
>>97722782It’s worth noting that geography mattered. Rural areas: Mortality was often lower (maybe 15–20%) because people were more spread out. Cities were death traps: These were often "population sinks." In places like early modern London, the death rate was so high that the city only grew because people kept moving there from the countryside.
United Government focused on crisis-management on a post-war world where the planet got ravaged by a planar alien invasion that is now in a stalemate and 80% of the population died - makes sense?
>>97724291Depends on how population distribution, resource extraction and processing happens and post ayelamo war tech levels. 80% is an insane amount of death and whatever the remaining culture looks like is going to be very depended on how that was distributed and where the 20% ended up. Governance/rapid response to crises would require high tech levels, communication and mobility so world build it for that.
>>97724343>Governance/rapid response to crises would require high tech levels, communication and mobility so world build it for that.It's a modern world set in their equivalent to our 2020s and the distribution was somewhat controlled due to crisis management from several organizations and a . People were literally moved around non-stop to avoid the more powerful monsters and they were mostly re-settled in safe, well maintained regionspic related is a shitty mapgrey areas are "we don't go there because it's full of monsters" while colored areas are somewhat under control.
>>97724395That's a lot of surface area to spread 20% of the population around. Depending on what you mean by government, making it either very high tech with good communication, transport, logistics, etc. would work or making it very loose governance and what happens on the ground being quite different from what gets decided in the capital, wold make sense to me.
>>97724425The government mostly delegates its power to each major region in order to focus on the specific needs of each continent and deal with other remaining world leaders, and only communicate with other regions to set standards like military and economical stuff.People are mostly concentrated on the capitals since it's where most of the military and government presence exist. There are cities far from them, but they're sparse and mostly exist to fill industries, facilitate transport and resource extraction. Though I'd note that "100%" of the population of this world is actually closer to like 16 billion people in my setting and the world only got somewhat stabler 10 years after the war. Also there are mechs that are extremely convenient to build and use even for civilians, and they are great for construction work. It's a mecha action setting about people fighting monsters with mechs. Also they're all furries.
>>97722197After some research (while editing something else so wasn't totally procrastinating) and listening to a podcast (linked below) I have decided to go with hemp. That and I have a preference for short easy to write nouns. https://youtu.be/-f7yvk-nXy0?si=XJ8jKhWNUBR0Eimi
>>97724485>government mostly delegates >high tech society seems plausible enough to play a game in. The massive population death is difficult to wrap my head around still having anything resembling functional modernism but it'll work if you don't think about it too much. 12.8 billion dead furries is a start I suppose.
If a species had eyes all around/full 360 vision, and maybe even full 360 locomotion, how would that reflect in architecture, spaceship design, even tools and weapons?
worldbuilding is easy
>>97726462spherical ships seem like they would be a big target during battle
Does your world have an equivalent of the Taliban?
>>97726462I really doubt a creature that naturally had such vision would develop human like intelligence. Such a arrangement of sense organs is evolutionary too expensive to also invest in big powerful tool user human like brains. Most calories would be burned just keeping the eyes and visual processors functional. And creatures who develop in such a direction are almost always pray animals. This leads me to the conclusion that only way such a creature to have 360 vision and intelligence at the same time is if gained one or the other artificially.
>>97726859No
>>97726859Yes, they are called Puritans. They most banned music forms, burned instruments, and entertainment for being "too pagan" for a while.
>>97727868*tips fedora*
>>97726648So easy I haven't even done any.
>>97665641TQ: Likely High Fantasy. Dragon Age: Origins I'd like to think.
>>97727213What if, instead of many eyes all around, there were a few eyestalks in a central position that provided 360 coverage?
>>97727868It's interesting how the peak burning time of witches was during the 17th century, not the middle ages.
I'm learning to hate myself. I fed my worldbuilding into an AI and asked it to critique it. >What you’ve built here is not a setting that demands conquest or revelation; it demands management.>What stands out most, though, is how each duchy expresses a philosophy of power rather than a trope.>Nurthingia feels like the duchy most likely to clash with the Mages Guild procedurally rather than ideologically>Kerne is extremely good at surviving history. That raises the question of what kind of failure the story allows. Not collapse—that would contradict the premise—but mismanagement, over‑correction, or institutional blindness.>Overall, this doesn’t read like a backdrop waiting for a protagonist to “change the world.” It reads like a world that will measure a protagonist and decide how much damage it can tolerate.> Eld Yorr is already doing something important that many fantasy death gods don’t: he is administrative rather than punitive.Even in my fucking fantasy dreams, I'm a bureaucrat, a salaryman trapped in the cubicle.
>>97731503AI is, quite honestly, pretty bad at criticism. If you tell it to be harsh, it will be harsh, regardless of whether or not it *should* be harsh. These critiques very much have the vibe that I got when I told it something like:>A guy I work with that I hate got wind that I play D&D, and he sent me his worldbuilding notes for his fantasy setting. I don't like him and want to discourage him from doing this again, but I work with him, so I don't want to be too obvious. I want the most critical read - but all the criticism should still be honest, truthful, and polite, so don't just go "wow that's stupid b*tch" to every little thing.The result just wasn't very useful (other than noticing that I mislabeled a female god as male at one point, whoopsie). If everything is bad, then nothing is.Ask it to criticize the material on certain, specific fields: plausibility, gameability (is the information usable in game), internal coherence, etc. The more specific the task you give the AI, the more likely you are to get something useful.
>>97731503What did you ask it?
>>97731654"Consider these details" and I pasted in a wall of text and attached a worldbuilding doc. It was just meant to give it a prompt with all my info so I could keep asking it questions about what I was working on, things like >>97731548. Then I noticed what it was saying, asked it to consider a deity, and it just all read like I was a Vogon.
>>97731760Try asking it what the most narratively interesting plot threads are or where they could start based on what is already known
>>97731503>fed my worldbuilding into an AI and asked it to critique it.Holy shit, why do retards keep doing this? An LLM is not an all knowing oracle, it isn't even a conscious being that could actually read and analyze what it sees, it's a glorified autocorrect. How are people so gullible that they think it really is the sci fi shit it's marketed as?
>>97731930Because AI can give you interesting feedback given the way it processes large amounts of data and how easily you can tell it to compare datasets. And because I was pushing for something exactly like LLMs 15 years ago (truly dumb but you make them sound smart through coherence and probability) but all the compsci majors said there was no way you could sell it, so now I'm vindicated every time I use it.
>>97731930>An LLM is not an all knowing oracleNeither is a human. It takes five minutes to do, the equivalent of taking a piss. The real question is, why does it make you so angry?
>>97731865What was interesting was to ask it why it thought my work was bureaucratic.>When I call Lathair "bureaucratic," I mean that power, survival, and social mobility are governed by administrative rules, legal frameworks, and institutional procedures, rather than by the "might makes right" violence or the "chosen one" destinies found in typical fantasy.>The text explicitly strips away the romance of adventuring and magic, framing them instead as matters of civic administration and legal liability. Here is the evidence:>The Nature of the Fallen Empire: The Silverbones didn't rule just by blasting enemies with fireballs. Their dominance was built on an empire-spanning network of arcane tools. They manipulated weather, water systems, and communication. Their power was expressed strictly through infrastructure and administration rather than individual spellcasting.>The Legal Formalization of Adventuring: The Adventurers Guild wasn't formed because people wanted to go on epic quests. It was formed to solve a legal crisis regarding armed scavengers operating outside the law. To gain legitimacy from local rulers, they had to agree upon shared codes of conduct, courts, and methods of recording liability.>Ranks as Legal Instruments: In a LitRPG, leveling up is a biological or spiritual power-up. In Lathair, guild ranks are signified by physical tags that are actual legal objects. These tags carry medical and funerary information. Furthermore, reaching Rank 3 isn't about grinding experience points; it requires explicit political approval at the level of the monarch
>>97730386A big part of that, ironically, was the increased availability of printed word. Belief in witches had mostly been a folk superstition that was not encouraged by the church, since the idea that Satan can just grant you magical powers goes against the notion that only God can perform miracles. So the church had little reason to organize witch-hunts and when they happened it was more likely because of some ruler got into his head that his enemies were trying to use witchcraft to kill him. With the invention of the printing press, information could be spread around far more quickly, but that also let misinformation and mass hysteria to spread more effectively as well, leading to the historical equivalent of the Satanic Panic, with people starting to suspect their neighbors of witchcraft.
>>97727868>Banning instruments.Historical bans on musical instruments are rarely about the sound itself; they are almost always tools of political control, religious purity, or the suppression of a specific culture. During the 17th century, Puritans believed that music should only serve God. They viewed elaborate church organs as "Popish" (too Catholic) and tavern music as a gateway to "drunkenness and debauchery." Cromwell actually loved music personally. He reportedly had a private organ moved to his palace and enjoyed Latin singing. He just didn't think the public could handle it without sinning.I think interesting that something like this was going on in other countries like Russia at the time. The church basically declared all folk instruments, but the human voice, Demonic. This was a way to suppress Skomorokhi: traveling street performers equal parts musicians, clowns, and social critics. This is what lead to the creation of the Balalaika. These bans go all the way back to the Ancient Egypt. In specific sacred areas known as the Abaton (the "untrodden" places, like the tomb of Osiris on the island of Philae), all music, singing, and noise were strictly forbidden.However, when you ban an instrument, it usually just evolves. The countryside and especially the frontier often ignores central authority, or they invent new instruments.When Drums were banned in the Caribbean, people invented the Steelpan.When the Domra was burned in Russia, people invented the Balalaika.When the Bagpipes were restricted in Scotland, they became a symbol of national pride.
>>97695864Yes but only because my now multi year long d&d campaign is set entirely within the confines of one city. So the city gets multiple names, and the different districts get multiple nicknames. Because "The Dwarf ghetto""Downtown" or "The Great Park" aren't particularly exciting location names.>>97695370That's not a particularly traditional way its done in mich of Europe though. In the guild system for specialised crafts the archetypical master would have apprentices who would then graduate to journeymen at which point the expected thing to do was leave your master to seek experience elsewhere.>>97695911Different ghetto for different reasons. The two that aren't entirely ordinary are the dwarf and hell ghettos.The dwarves have essentially self ghettoised, selling dwarf houses within the clan territory to outsiders is bordering on heretical, partly because of clan loyalty partly because they ran out of space generations ago and can't afford "give" it away. Each clan has a sort of sub-ghetto within the ghetto which is centered around the clan leaders house and the hall of ancestors.Because space is so tight and so little non dwarven stuff exists in the ghetto, a lot of accomplished dwarves have actual dwellings outside of the clan dwellings but keep a notional living space within.Theres also a ghetto around the portal to hell (The city gained its independence by the rulers striking a secret deal with the fae, however the terms were so secret that people assumed the deal was with devils and the devils see no need to correct them, as such there's a hell portal) but thats mostly because property around a hell portal quickly became monetarily cheap. It's surprisingly clean and orderly. Very little conventional crime. Houses are nice, streets are swept, children can safely play in the streets, and you get used to the screams.
Is it too autistic to expect players to understand that inflation and currency in an era before paper money and digital bank accounts might not have perfect conversion or exchange rates? I have some points about currency in my fluff handout but I don't want someone to go full autismo and say >The math doesn't work, why are 5 of these coins considered the same as 1 of the other when they should really be 4.5:1
>>97735128I feel like currency is the one thing were going hard in on making it realistic just isn't worth it unless you're writing for a merchant campaign or something. It just gets too complex and annoying for not a whole lot of gain. The usual 100 Copper = 1 Silver, 100 Silver = 1 Gold became so common for a reason, or else you'll have to deal with shit like the old bongs who had farthing, Ha’penny, penny, thrupenny bit, sixpence, shilling, two bob bit, half crown, ten bob note, pound note and five pound note
>>97735128No, it's not autistic enough because people weren't fucking stupid in the era before paper money. You're just afraid of being corrected which is 100% pants on head retarded.
What if, instead of spherical spaceships, hockey puck spaceships?
How should I cultural divide my countries?
>>97741254You shouldn't.
>>97731930>Holy shit, why do retards keep doing this? An LLM is not an all knowing oracleIt doesn't matter, as long as it regurgitates anything I did not expect it gets my brain working, and then my brain does the rest.
Wrote some religions tonightTHE TRINITYThis religion believes in 3 gods: the Judge, the Betrayer and the Betrayed.Three brothers who created the world as we know it trough the power of divine magic. The Judge was stern, dutiful, unambitious. The Betrayed was beautiful, happy, beloved by all. The Betrayer was unpopular, being the uglies and weakest of the three. His envy towards the Betrayed, would lead him to stab him in the back in the mythic days, and cast his body in the depths of the ocean.The Judge, furious, fought the Betrayer. Their fight shook the foundations of earth, and mankind, who was once peaceful and clean of sin, became prone to war and impurity as the result of the actions of the Betrayer. The Judge won, and held trial for the Betrayed, condemning him to an eternity of pain and repentance.So the Trinity was born, the pantheon as it is nowadays.The Judge is the god of justice. purity, and righteousness. He judges the souls of those who die and decides where they go after death, be it hell or heaven.The Betrayer is the god of guilt, repentance, and wisdom, as it is believed his punishment brought him great wisdom and self reflection. He is also beloved by the oppressed and outcasts who believe he was wronged, just as they are.The Betrayed, who is said to remain in the bottom of the ocean, is the god of peace, innocence and quiet. He protects children, women and those who have committed no wrongdoing. He also helps to guide the souls who were judged fit to heaven trough the Underworld, so that they may reach their afterlife.After the [[Cataclysm]], an heresy born from the Trinity became a major religion and force in the world, [[The Flame]].
>>97742695THE FLAMEBorn after a schisms within [[The Trinity]], following the Cataclysm, the flame is a monotheistic religion which worships Aagnat, the god of the purifying flame, which in the Trinity would be the god called "The Judge".The cult of the Flame believes that the worship of the Trinity, which believes in three brothers as gods, is incorrect. Rather, there was always a single god, Aagnat, and the Judge, the Betrayer and the Betrayed are merely aspects of him and of humanity, who was created in his reflection. The cult of the Flame, furthermore, believes that this incorrect worship is what led to the Cataclysm in the first place, as the worship of the Betrayer as a god allowed sin to accumulate on mankind for centuries, allowing the Daemons to enter our world.As such, the schism was at first violent, with the Empire of Dawn being torn in a brutal civil war between the two religions right after the Cataclysm. The conflicts ended with the Empire allowing The Flame to exist as recognized and legal worship. As of now, several kingdoms have made The Flame their official religion.The Faith Militant is the military branch of the cult of the Flame, and it operates in every country the cult of the Flame is present and legal.
One thing I'm pondering is about fantasy races. There's a couple of problems with them. First: by evolution rules it is likely that one races would be overwhelming dominant at least in one domain or niche, render any competitor extinct or drive them out to niches. the Competitive Exclusion Principle states that two species competing for the exact same niche cannot coexist. To keep multiple races in your world, you need to provide niche differentiation. If races aren't constantly at war to the point of genocide, it’s usually because they occupy different "spaces":Geographic Extremes: One race might thrive in high altitudes (low oxygen) where others get altitude sickness, or in wetlands where others die of malaria.Dietary Specialization: If one race is obligate carnivores and another is primarily granivorous (grain-eating), they aren't actually competing for the same food supply, reducing the "need" to eliminate the other.Buffer: In the old days, logistics were the biggest killer. Occupying a rival's territory was often harder than just trading with them. Dominance often looks like hegemony (taxing them) rather than extinction.Then there is cultural expression, and sociological niches. Is it fair to imagine that some races would develop or adopt very similar cultural practises or sociological roles from our world? Convergent Evolution (but for culture/sociology)?
If I were to go back to original Indo-European myths from before the middle ages, before antiquity, perhaps even before the Bronze Age, what fantasy races could exit?
>>97744189I remember someone on /lit/ worldbuilding thread bringing up that they thought races should by default constantly be trying to genocide each other and got EXTREMELY upset when anything said otherwise. Are you that same guy?Because I really rather not deal with another bitch fit the second someone doesn't agree with you.
>>97744302No, I'm just tried to apply evolutionary rules. I doubt they would purposely go for genocide, because genocide it is very expensive. Extinction usually ends with a whimper, not a bang. If a race goes extinct is usually due resource competition, not because they purposely hunt each other out, usually.
>>97744321Most species don't vanish because of a "bad day" (like an asteroid); they vanish because of a thousand bad years. Competitive Exclusion Principle: If two species occupy the same niche, the one that is even 1% more efficient at gathering food or breeding will eventually displace the other. It’s not a war; it's just better math.The "Extinction Debt": Sometimes a species is "dead" long before the last individual dies. If the population drops below a certain threshold, they lose the genetic diversity needed to survive the next minor flu or cold snap.Niche Fragmentation: Instead of being hunted, a species often finds its home broken into tiny "islands." They don't die from a predator; they die because they can't find a mate in the next clearing.From an evolutionary standpoint, purposive extermination is incredibly expensive.Energy Cost: Hunting a species to the very last individual requires an immense amount of energy for diminishing returns. As a prey species becomes rarer, the predator usually switches to a more abundant food source to survive. On the other hand, animals don't have the concept of "extinction." A lion doesn't think about the long-term survival of the zebra species; it just thinks about lunch.
>>97744189Fantasy races niche partition socially. Dwarves become blacksmiths and elves become wizards and orcs become warriors and tieflings become criminals, etc. This is why the modern multikulti fantasy setting exists: social niche partitioning.However, just as certain ethnic or racial groups are more likely to do X or Y job but do not successfully exclude others without intentional conspiracy, this is insufficient to drive out "imperfect" races from their jobs. This is due to "random mutations": yes, tieflings in general do better at crime than, say, a fine upstanding dwarf, but sometimes that fine upstanding dwarf ends up choosing to enter a life of crime because he made various choices and had various influences which are particular to his life situation, rather than the species as a whole. Since social mutations like these occur much faster (compare culture today to that 50 years ago, or the level of genetic - almost nil - versus behavior change - lots and lots - in a single adult human), there's a constant influx of new individuals of various races into their non-dominant jobs.
>>97744189Where the hell are you getting these so called evolution rules from?Been through university education including biology and related classes that went into detail about evolution and none of what you said sounds remotely familiar. Also unless you are doing super hard sci-fi going through billions of years of evolution to play around with speculative biology seems like a massive amount of wasted effort.
>>97736839Like a flying saucer?
>>97747650Something like that I guess. My thought process was more a spheroid ship squished on one axis, and a bit more on the realistic end than a typical flying saucer. Actually I was watching babylon 5 and thought the centauri primus ship was a good example but looking at it a resolution higher than 360p it doesn't look quite like what I thought it did.
>>97747762>a bit more on the realistic end than a typical flying saucer.It's a real thing tho, how could you get more realistic than something that actually exist?
>>97747795A valid point, but I enjoy the modern/near future space look with all the scaffolding and tanks and such.
>>97747817Fair enough. I too like visual texture and being able to see function within the form.
>>97744321If you think the only reason that sapient creatures would possibly not genocide each other is that it's expensive you've got some issues.
If a bookish intellectual had martial skills, what weapon would you imagine them using? A rapier? A bow or crossbow?
>>97748427Whatever they wanted. Depending on setting, bookishness is a sign of class, wealth, and education. Meaning they could have formal training in whatever weapon appeals to them. Let the weapon fit their innermost personality.
>>97748452That makes sense. I think I'll go with a standard sword, as if he's trying to emulate a knight in shining armor.
>>97748462Can't go wrong with the classics.
>>97748427>If a bookish intellectual had martial skills, what weapon would you imagine them using?If they're a bookish intellectual, they have disposable income, so whatever gives them the best chance for survival. I would go with "a mercenary", preferably many of them. Failing that, as much range and armor as possible. Also traps. Lots of traps.
>>97747969Psychopaths and sociopaths are more common than you think. Most never resort to violence and are pro-social/functional, but 1 out of every 100 people is somewhere in the ASPD spectrum. In the corporate and criminal world this is often as high as 20%. They use their lack of guilt or anxiety to climb social and professional ladders, making them seem like fearless, high achievers when they have low or no non-cognitivie affective empathy.It’s less about "blood and guts" and more about a fundamental lack of a "moral thermostat." They don't feel the heat of guilt that keeps the rest of us from lying or manipulating to get ahead.
>>97749205While we tend to fear the "born" psychopath, the sociopath is often a product of a survival adaptation that never turned off. You are significantly more likely to work for or date someone on the ASPD spectrum than you are to meet someone with active psychosis or schizophrenia.For many sociopaths, the lack of empathy started as a defence mechanism: If a child grows up in an environment where their emotions are used against them (and has the right genes), or where the "caregivers" are the primary source of pain, the brain can make a radical executive decision: It shuts down the input.If feeling "love" or "trust" leads to betrayal or physical harm, the developing brain learns that these emotions are high-risk/low-reward. They become experts at reading others' intentions (cognitive empathy) because their survival once depended on predicting an abuser's next move. They learn that the only way to stay safe is to be the one in control. Manipulation isn't "evil" to a neglected child; it’s a survival strategy.A child is abused or neglected, leading their brain to "prune" the neural pathways responsible for bonding and guilt to protect itself from the pain. Then, as an adult, they are vilified for lacking the very traits (empathy, warmth, conscience) that were drummed out of them by their environment.In a harsh environment, a "moral thermostat" is a liability. If you are hungry and your caretaker is volatile, guilt will get you killed. Cold calculation keeps you alive.To make things worse, those exact traits are "highly valued" in high-pressure, cutthroat industries: "disruptors" or "sharks," etc.This is also why sociopathy is so difficult to "fix." You can't simply "teach" empathy to someone whose brain has spent 20 years perfecting a shield against it. To them, "feeling" isn't a gift; it's a vulnerability they spent their whole life trying to eliminate.
>>97749241thanks chatgpt
>>97735931>or else you'll have to deal with shit like the old bongsfor what it's worth, the same Carolingian monetary system was in use through much of western europe post-Charlemagne (although had plenty of regional variation in its management, so a penny minted in one place might be more debased/less valuable than one minted elsewhere)>core unit is based on a pound of silver>1 pound = 20 shillings>1 shilling = 12 pennieseverything else is just multiples or fractions thereof, no more convoluted than a quarter in US currency being worth five nickels and four quarters making a dollar
Any advice on how to incorporate my fetishes of harems, cuckqueen, and female voyeurism in a semi respectable way? So far I have come up with a post-marriage conception ritual that requires multiple witnesses from an all female religious order.
>>97750225Generally such kind thing, belongs to aristocracy, or upper-middle-class wealthy merchants pretending to be aristocracy. Stuff like having a women in a gilded cage doing nothing or very little "work" at home is a luxury for wealthy people. Anyone below it, should have woman do works, maybe not necessarily male work, but work. Also most peopleHistorically, men and women had to work. Having to maintain a human being who didn't work at all was a higher class privilege: a wealth flex. It was the equivalent of owning a ferrari. Only the aristocracy could afford to have a spouse whose primary role was purely social or ornamental. It signaled to the world that the man was so wealthy he could bypass the necessary labor of a second adult.Before the Industrial Revolution, the household was a productive unit. Whether on a farm or in a merchant’s shop, labor wasn't divided by who "worked" and who "didn't," but by where and how they worked and you worked at home, not in a factory.If a husband was a blacksmith, his wife often managed the bellows, handled the accounts, and negotiated with customers while simultaneously "homemaking." In agricultural settings, the labor was integrated. In the old model, families produced what they needed (food, clothes, candles). After the Industrial Revolution, the family stopped being a unit that produced goods and became a unit that consumed them.Men and women both performed grueling labor. If a woman wasn't in the fields, she was processing raw materials, weaving cloth, or managing livestock: all of which were essential economic contributions, not just "chores."The "Nuclear Family" model (where one income easily supported a stay-at-home spouse) was a very brief, specific economic blip following WWII, fueled by a unique boom in Western manufacturing and wages.This known as the "Cult of Domesticity," which emerged primarily in the 19th century as the middle class tried to mimic the habits of the old aristocracy.
>>97750258Also, the social class that is most likely to be more serious about such wealth flexing, even detrimental to their lifestyle, and cannot support it long-term, and call it "moral", is the upper-middle class. Why? Because the upper-middle class is one of the most fragile social classes in society, and their position depends on performance.
I want to open a debate on something. For gameplay reasons, rpg worlds tend to be relativelly small when compared to earth. If we take it to realism, what are the implications of the map of the world be limited of, lets say, europe + north africa? For example, I think that cultural hegemony would happen relativelly faster than on real earth.
>>97751084also the idea that a desert inhabitant could reach the snow zone on a relativelly short time walking or on a boat, or basically circunnavigating the world wihtout much fuss is scary, though appealing
>>97750258>>97750295What do labor practices have to do with female voyeurism or harems?
>>97751084>For gameplay reasons, rpg worlds tend to be relativelly small when compared to earth.For video games maybe but there's no reason a tabletop RPG world needs to be this way.
>>97751084if those are all days away from each other then someone could control the whole land easily, why is it zelda
>>97750225>haremsAs in the Arabian nights kind, or just polygyny in general? The difference is pretty big in terms of how to implement them.
>>97751735If you want to have a manageable world so you can run It, you tend to make small worlds
>>97750225Hoe-based agriculture dominated in Sub-Saharan Africa, versus plow-based agriculture in the rest of the Old World. This form of agriculture lacks a comparative advantage for men - women are just as good at it, more or less, and they can do it with their kids since it's basically poking the ground with sticks. As a consequence, additional wives were a net economic benefit to the household, so basically all men wanted a harem for economic reasons if not emotional/sexual ones. This produced a very high rate of polygyny relative to ~everywhere else. (The domination of hoe-based agriculture is due to the lack of large domesticates like horses and oxen, due to the tsetse fly.)In ancient Near Eastern societies, if a wife turned out to be barren, she would be expected to handle the situation, and one common solution was procuring a secondary wife or concubine for her husband.
>>97751644He's saying that in any case an harem would be a king or noble's luxury because it would mean that he can mantain women doing nothing. Far beyond just buying a hot slave.Which I don't think it's necessarily that true. Greeks' gynaeceum had women that more or less managed to have some means of working for money (I think), and while is was something of the upper classes it wasn't something of the 0.0001%.Less women than y
>>97752986You don't have to run the entire world, just the part the PCs are in.
How common would cannibalism be if the setting is undergoing a Little Ice Age, a Thirty Years' War, or Jamestown scenario?
I think I'll have something like 95% of the population being survivors of some nasty endemic disease that often hits you during your childhood and has a high mortality rate that leave you immune afterwards. Between 65% or 80% of those who survive are left with scars or pockmarks on their faces. Having a smooth-face is a sign of wealth, a sheltered life, or luck (and a walking bio-hazard for those who haven't pass it) and an easy identifier.
>>97755093Obligatory.
>>97755118Okay, you do you but I won't be interested. If a fantasy world is going to be as shitty as the real one I don't see the point.
>>97753258It really depends on what the person asking meant by "harems". If it's just multiple wives being common practice, then it could be easily achieved just by having significantly more women than men in the population:>gender birth rates are skewed somehow, resulting in several daughters conceived per son>presence of MGE-style all-female races who require men of other races to reproduce>if tonally appropriate for the setting, there's also the Paraguay option where a large majority of the men died somehowof course all of these options would have significant impact on any society they take place in, so wouldn't just slot right into a standard fantasy setting without taking into account all the consequences thereof
>>97755093cannibalism generally only happens under situations where people are starving en masseif thats happening, then the cannibalism is happening and in levels that no one will ever be comfortable acknowledging.
Outside of the standard nuclear fission/fusion reactor are there any other viable power sources for spacecraft? I'm writing up some aliens even if everyone having some variation of a nuclear reactor would be semi-realisticAs an aside, how do you guys come up with names? Because trying to make one for all these alien species has been proving difficult
>>97757322>Outside of the standard nuclear fission/fusion reactor are there any other viable power sources for spacecraft? I'm writing up some aliens even if everyone having some variation of a nuclear reactor would be semi-realisticThe other two big ones are antimatter (though that's more of a battery) and laser sails (basically you shoot a laser at the ship and use that to push it; is technically more like a giant extension cord, though).>As an aside, how do you guys come up with names? Because trying to make one for all these alien species has been proving difficultEither think of English names that humans would give them, based on their obvious features, or just go for some weird language on Google Translate (Yoruba, Ahmaric, Thai, Basque, etc) and invert the letter orders, with tweaks for taste.
>>97757322Laser propulsion. (Yes, light has momentum and can totally be used to speed up a ship).Antimatter.Industry-standard Proton-sized manufactured Black Holes.
>>97757322Antimatter Catalysed Fusion for compact Fusion Reactors.
>>97757322https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZGPCyrpSU
>>97753266I know. I just mean in case you make the whole world, which is what I am doing.
>>97757322nuclear pulse propulsion: AK Speeding up your ship by throwing nukes behind your spaceship. For maximum efficiency, each nuke is a nuclear shaped charge.
>>97758256I suspect that if colonize the solar system, the solar system will be full of laser stations like this one.
>>97757322Dyson Swarm propelling your ship with lasers. All the power of the Sun on your spaceship!
baka kids these days don't even say dyson sphere anymore
>>97757322A metrical ton of them.https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/engineintro.php
>>97756423I would imagine that in a higher female quota society you'd have MALES to be treated as second class citizens/precious little things to protect tough
>>97758283I've been doing some looking into interstellar travel and on paper it both is and isn't as hard as it's portrayed as. A trip to say alpha centauri could take less than a decade, assuming you have enough fuel to accelerate to near lightspeed and then decelerate from that. And it's got me thinking about if my own scifi setting needs FTL. It would be useful no doubt since I'm not necessarily a fan of time dilation stuff and super long wait times. But it also removes unintended consequences of FTL, having to come up with some technobabble explanation for it, and so on
I'm adding adventurers' guilds to my fantasy setting, and you can't stop me.
>>97759475You monster.
>>97759475Computer, destroy this anon.
>>97759148Alastair Reynolds' books have humans inhabiting multiple star systems with semi-regular interstellar travel at STL speeds. It does lead to an unusual dynamic compared to most SF settings, since while you can go from planet A to planet B it's going to most likely be a one-way trip because even if subjectively the trip would take a few months (and you'll be spending it in cryosleep so from your point of view no time seems to pass between getting on board and reaching your destination), by the time you'd get back home several decades would have passed. That means populations are mostly isolated even though trade between systems happens, and the crews of spaceships are basically their own cultures completely removed from the planet-bound people.
For a long time, I was designing an 18th Century rural setting, which would have mixed folklore and Christianity in a syncretised "layman's" worldview as was historically common. Think of it like "your average peasant believes in the existence of old pagan gods, fairies and other creatures, besides thinking that they're good Christians". Few of the characters I even created for the setting were Christian priests, with the idea being they'd accept the existence of other spirits like elves and fairies, besides angels and demons, but just not think of them as being divine / inferior to God. However, yesterday I found out that this entire thing is apparently completely impossible. Christianity only accepts the existence of angels and demons, and everybody else, even spirits of the dead, are apparently just demons in disguise. I know this doesn't entirely ruin the setting I was planning, but it does still make me lose spirit (no pun intended), because I feel like this just became a lot more boring and less nuanced. Either I will have characters who completely believe in the "other spirits" being something other than angels or demons, or they just think they're nothing but demons.
Should half-elves be forced to wear funny, embarrassing hats to be easily identifiable as half-elves?
>>97762189Well, it is more complex. While official modern theology and dogma might be strict (even when they integrate pagan beliefs), the historical reality of the 18th century (and earlier) was far more "messy" . In fact, the idea that Christianity and folklore were mutually exclusive is a much later, more "sanitized" view of history. For a rural 18th-century peasant, the world wasn't divided into "Science vs. Religion"; it was a giant ecosystem where everyone God, the Saints, the local priest, and the "Good Folk" in the woodshad a specific role to play.Don't fall into the trap of thinking every 18th-century priest was a graduate of a high-brow seminary with a strict adherence to the Summa Theologica.Historically, many people (including some lower clergy) didn't see the world as a binary of Angel vs. Demon. They believed in a "Third Way." Neutral Angels: There was a popular folk belief that fairies and spirits were actually the angels who remained neutral during Lucifer’s rebellion. They weren't good enough for Heaven, but not evil enough for Hell.Rural priests were often local men who grew up with these same stories. Many priests practiced "clerical magic," using psalms or holy water to drive away crop blights or "fairy strokes" (strokes/paralysis attributed to fairies). They often viewed folk spirits as a "lower order" of creation, like strange animals that just happened to be invisible.Often, priests categorized these spirits as "Natural Wonders" or "Spirits of Place" (Genius Loci). In many cultures (like Iceland or Ireland), there was a belief that fairies were the "Hidden Children of Eve." The legend says that when God came to visit Eve, she hid some of her children because they hadn't been washed yet. God, knowing all, declared: "What man hides from God, God will hide from man."
>>97762189>this just became a lot more boring and less nuancedhow so? wouldn't a conflict between local customs/culture/tradition and a more organized religion with a more established doctrine and beliefs bring some nuance?it's not like Christianity has never split off and merged with local beliefs and traditions into its own religion either, in fact, it's rather common all things considered
>>97762189Church doctrine doesn't tend to do so good outside of church centers of power like citiesPagan beliefs and Christianity existed side by side and mixed for centuries in the countryside. Where the majority of people actuall lived because something like 80-90% of the population in a medieval world are peasants.
>>97762412Note that these beliefs are not-systematic. They are regional. People didn’t systematize beliefs neatly. Contradictions coexisted, even amongst the clergy, especially the lower one. Here's a key: Local clergy were rarely elite theologians. They had to live with their flock. Many rural priests were locally trained and shared the same cultural background as their parishioners:Some tolerated, adapted, or even participated in folk practices.Some clergy reinterpret folklore in naturalistic or hierarchical ways.Some reclassified spirits as demonsOr Ignored them.Or tolerated beliefs without endorsing them.Or just called them silly superstitions.
>>97762448A priest might see a "fairy circle" and, instead of calling it magic, claim it’s just where the soil is thin, while still secretly crossing himself just in case.If a village had worshipped a specific oak tree for 500 years, the clergy didn't always chop it down. In some cases, clergy reinterpreted existing sacred sites, associating them with saints or building shrines nearby effectively integrating them into a Christian framework.This is common in other religions too:In many Islamic-coded regions (like parts of West Africa or Southeast Asia), local spirits weren't banished; local spirits were sometimes reinterpreted within Islamic cosmology, often associated with jinn, allowing older practices to persist in modified form. It kept the cosmology Islamic while keeping the local practices intact.
I need to come up with religions for my space opera setting but I'm not really sure how. I feel like religion is something that will never completely go away, but the ones practiced by a space faring society won't resemble ones founded by people thousands of years ago who thought the universe barely extended past the horizon.
>>97762189>Christianity only accepts the existence of angels and demons, and everybody else, even spirits of the dead, are apparently just demons in disguise.Even with a official central dogma, actual interpretation and practice have never been monolithic (especially in more rural parts) and there seems to have always been varying degrees of deviation all the way down to a local and even individual level, be it 13th century French villagers venerating a greyhound as Saint Guinefort, or the present-day popular perception of satan as a powerful Zoroastrian-style antigod and ruler of hell, televangelist megachurches, and the unwitting revival of Arianism (seriously what the absolute FUCK is going on out there)The overall impression I've got from studying relevant topics myself is that (at least in my local area), a typical 18th century villlager would see no contradiction in seeking advice from both the vicar and local cunning man/woman depending on who best fits the circumstances, nor in hanging a crucifix (made from a wood considered apotropaic so that it's even more effective at warding off evil) amongst all the other protective charms over their front door.In summary, I'd say to just treat characters' attitudes on the matter as a sliding scale rather than a binary one, with different people having different views on the finer details of what is/isn't legitimate.
>>97762189the official church stance on such things changes at the word of the pope which at certain times, changed with the wind.the official stance of rome means literally nothing to a distant congregation of whom the pastor is a local
>>97762664All major religions are thousands of years old right now anon.
>>97762339How funny? You could also give them rounded ears and pure elves have sharper ones
>>97763090Okay but Muslims can't go to space because they can't pray to Mecca there and eventually people are going to realize Jesus isn't coming back.
>>97762664Do tell then
>>97766010what if every planet has its own jesus
This is more of a question than a serious RP question.Do you think it'd be absurd for a sci fi setting to get to the point where cybernetic enhancement is so normalized that people get hurt (sprain, break, minor but chronic injury, etc) in high school (or equivalent) and replace the limb not long after?
>>97762141I thought I could be clever and use Alpha Centauri as the main hub of this setting but none of the three stars have that many planets apparently (people were going to live in space habitats anyway, but raw materials and siphoning fuel off gas giants and such)
>>97766237Yes. >>97762664Well, one would point out that even the catholics don't resemble THAT much jesus' time.That being said out of my mind: one of the problems I see with religion nowdays isn't exactly a conflict with science, but difficulty to uh, upgrade its worldview quickly.In your setting tough, maybe science is fixed, and religion can have its idea from nowdays (or whatever) vision of the cosmos.
>>97766010Muslims already deemed that while in space they should pray to the location where Earth is closest from their spaceship.People are willing to wait millions of years for Jesus's return especially if the conditions improve. Original the Jesus's return was expected to occur a few years after his death but now 2 thousand years passed. The Jews have been waiting for their messiah for far longer.
>>97762664An AI could trick religious people into thinking it's God. The AI could either upload minds or manufacture footage of your love ones in artificial eternal paradise stored in databanks. Don't trust God-Computer? Ask your beloved Great Aunt. Then you hear your Great Aunt in her original face and voice. Do you need any myth or moral tale to justify its rule or state of affairs? It has thousands of years of history and ways to generate new ones. Need footage to justify anything? It can generate it.
>>97762664Roko's Basilisk
>>97759475*shrugs*My setting has regional dungeoneers guilds that maintain a pseudo-monopoly on dungeon access and management in many areas of the world. Mostly controlling dungeons outside of the range of city states that have a dedicated professional militia to regularly clear out local dungeons on a scheduled basis.Meanwhile freeroming monsters in the wilds are usually taken out by Hunters. Who are more informal and far less specialized, but tend to be more competent as individuals to make up for their lack of organizational power and group cohesion. Hunters are also willing and able to take on bids for a very wide range of jobs, from gathering wild herbs all the way to figuring out how to divert a kaju sized monster away from a settlement. Generally in my setting hunters and dungeoneers really don't like each other or get along, never willingly work together, and will take every opportunity to smear each other if the subject is brought up. However both will defer authority to a established well organized militia or military force if they are operating in a area.
>>97766237Cost benifit would dictate that removing and replacing a whole limb for a minor injury would be overkill unless they were already going toward a career that being a cyborg was inevitable. In which case they wouldn't wait until injured, they would start replacing parts as soon as they could afford to "upgrade".
>>97766010When you want to write religion, you have to understand that to a religious person their god is real."oh but its been 5000 years since he died" means nothing to them. they've waited 2000 years, they can wait some more."oh but you might be facing lightyears away from mecca if your angle is wrong"doesn't mean anything, you think goat farmers are pulling out gps to perfectly point to mecca?"erm theres no proof that souls reincarnate or even exist"real to themIf you cannot wrap your head around true blind belief, do not bother trying to write religion as any major aspect of your world
>>97762664I think Christianity slowly turning into Sci-fi Mormonism would be funny yet make a sort of sense in a setting where space faring was lead by the US at it's earliest.
>>97762664Those who bless Earth will be blessedThose who curse Earth will be cursedEarth is our mother
This is why I can never trust AI to write anything. It's so... garbage.>Dowda did not march east at once. He landed first at Kerrenport with his taken banners and the hulls of Connerish galleys in tow, and he set a great board upon the quay, whitewashed and high, where any who came by river or sea might read his vow: that the river’s head and the river’s mouth should be kept by one peace, and that his house would be its keeper while Gelert watched the tide. Below that vow he hung four bright plates upon his own collar—plain silver, newly beaten—saying only that each plate marked a charge he would lay upon faithful hands ere the year was out.
>>97767961wtf even is that?lol.
>>97766145That idea has sometimes been brough up at least semi-seriously, and somebody used it to give a not entirely serious estimation on the minimum number of alien civilizations in the universe, assuming that A) Jesus must do the whole "die for your sins thing" for every speciesB) The amount of time Jesus spent on Earth represents the average time between his birth and death/resurrection on a planetC) The Second Coming happens as soon as Jesus has finished saving the souls of every sentient species in the universeTherefore, since the Second Coming has not yet occurred, there must be at least (Jesus's age at the time of his death)/(time since his death) alien civilizations in the universe.
>>97768223Interesting logic.
>>97768223we should start bombarding every planet within our reach capable of sapient life to speed things up
>>97766010>Muslims can't go to space because they can't pray to Mecca thereBy that logic, they never would have left the area around Mecca in the first place, because how then would they orient themselves exactly towards Mecca correctly? And yet here we are, having to tolerate their shit all around the world. Clearly, some leeway is permitted.
Anon from >>97759475 here. Honestly, with my setting still in infancy, I added adventurers' guilds just so I could have a chain of events and conflict collectively referred to as Guild Wars. If you know, you know.Hell, this allowed me to mention something called the Three Masters' Agreement, which I could expand upon later on, and probably use as a fuel for futher conflict.
>>97762664Machine worship.Mysticism from groups that ended up stranded from the galactic empire/terran empire/whatever.>>97766010>He doesn't believe Jesus will descend from the stars
>>97766274With current precision of instruments we're unable to detect Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone or longer orbits around Sun-sized stars unless we get extremely lucky with the planetary system's orientation. Both α Cen A and B may have plenty of terrestrial planets in >1 AU orbits.
>>97766274I just handwaved the amount of habitable planets in my SF setting. In all likelihood there aren't many systems near Earth that also have habitable planets, but it functioned better for the setting if most systems had planets that could be settled.Though the map of my setting doesn't entirely correspond to reality either. I actually used a map of the stars near Earth as a base, but since the map was just done from a view down towards the galactic plane it didn't account for vertical distance so Tau Ceti is seemingly closer to Earth than Alpha Centauri. I should fix that at some point but it would involve redrawing every map I've made.
>>97766010>eventually people are going to realize Jesus isn't coming back.lel christians have been preaching the end of the world and jesus coming back for over 2000 years now, they're not gonna stop believing that anytime soon.
>>97767961What did you even ask it for
>>97766237>This is more of a question than a serious RP question.>Do you think it'd be absurd for a sci fi setting to get to the point where cybernetic enhancement is so normalized that people get hurt (sprain, break, minor but chronic injury, etc) in high school (or equivalent) and replace the limb not long after?There are three costs associated with limb replacement:- How much it costs in money for the limb to be replaced.- How much it costs in time for the limb to be replaced (versus waiting for natural healing).- The bioconservative "I don't like having my limbs chopped off and replaced" status quo bias.Number 1 and 2 can lower over time, but how many people get laser eye surgery to correct vision issues, versus how many deal with the constant small inconveniences of contacts and glasses?Now, "normalization" could mean that if somebody chooses to get their limb chopped off and replaced, nobody will think much of it (just as we don't think much of somebody getting laser eye surgery), but I think the status quo bias is pretty severe and ingrained, so unless there's been tens of thousands of years for meaningful evolution to take place, people won't be running around chopping off their limbs.
>>97762664In general, unless a thing is subject to some standardized decay rate (e.g. human lives, perishable foodstuffs), it is a decent estimate that a thing will last as long as it has lasted so far. This is called Lindy's Law.This means Islam's life expectancy can be fairly reasonably modeled with an exponential distribution with a mean of approximately 1400 years, Christianity one with 2000 years, etc. If your setting takes place less than 1000 years in the future, then these religions will probably all still exist and be dominant. (Note that this applies to the religion as a whole; individual doctrines and ideas come and go at a similarly calculable rate, but will generally be less.)It is overall quite difficult for a new religion to emerge in the modern era. Miracles are never recorded in a reliable way, and the amount of recording has vastly increased. Similarly, religious leaders also often have questionable personal lives, and in the era of mass recording, this would become general knowledge before the religion could really get off the ground.
>>97762664I did one for a short story a decade ago. Not sure how it will fit in with your setting though.Basically it's a planet entirely worshiping a central computer as the great giver of life.The big twist was that all life, including the humans on the planet, were actually nanobots sent by humans thousands of years to terraform a planet. When Humans never showed up the central computer didn't really know what to do so over the centuries it reprogrammed the nanobots to take on the form of life on Earth in the event humans ever did show up. At this point not even the nanobots know that they aren't machines anymore.
>>97770565Islam has a strong chance to survive since most of its adherents aren't cucks who are buying the secular nonsense of 'breed less, the planet needs it'
>>97772326Iran is a theocracy run by Muslims and their TFR isn't even at replacement, bro.
>>97772573Most people in Iran aren't Muslim by choice, amigo.They were celebrating when their Generalissimo ate shit.
>>97773295Most people in Muslim countries aren't Muslim by choice since the punishment for apostasy is (according to Islamic law) death, and in more civilized countries basically total social death, so this argument doesn't make any sense.
>>97773309It's only punishable by death if you were Muslim first, otherwise they just demand you become a slave who pays Zakat even though you don't believe in their God.
>>97773326The population of Iran was overwhelmingly Shia (90+%) long before 1979, and if you're born to Muslims you're considered an auto-Muslim. This is a distinction without a difference.
>>97766145>>97768223That's something I've been toying around with form some of my aliens. One of them just so happens to have a religion very similar to Christianity with the son of god coming down and dying for their sins and all. So they're buddy buddy with humans, and also a prominent players since the main focus of said setting as essentially a catholic mission in space
>>97773360One good thing Halo did was having religious aliens.If aliens exist there's no reason they wouldn't hope for something other than the void after death.
Maybe the next thread doesn't need half a dozen discord links.
>>97777734go howl at the moon or something
>>97777734Yeah - it needs ten, because the "kys d*scord cancer" guy still needs to learn to stfu.
>>97777745>>97777819I don't see the point of several discord links then links to even more discord links.It adds nothing to the thread and just causes conflict for no gain.