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: >>97665641Resources 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/1132392321346965554The Shadow Cabal: https://discord.com/invite/38ZY6CD3rUThread question: Do you use any lesser-known mythologies, histories, or regions as inspiration? If so, which ones, and what appeals to you about them?
>>97784855What qualifies as lesser-known? Lots of people know about the Celts, but if I'm basing language on Manx, does that qualify?
>>97784855Kys d*scord cancer.
>>97786426Eleven. You really are a stupid fuck.
Would it be believable for a space setting to have FTL travel but not FTL communications, and you end up with an interstellar Pony Express carrying messages to and from the frontier?
>>97786572what's stopping people from just building a relay of multiple automated ship that jumps back and forth between jump gates/nodes/points to deliver messages?i feel like any digital mail is going to be highly automated if possible, especially if your setting's ftl method is unhealthy for living creaturesphysical mails and posts might go on a cargo ship if travel time is not a concern, but express mails and posts might qualify for the "pony express" treatment just like they go on aircrafts irl
>>97786572This is a fairly common trope, used in Traveller, Dune, and 2300 AD, among others.Realistically, I think there are three metrics under actual physics which plausibly create FTL (wormholes, Krasnikov tubes, and warp drive). Warp drive specifically requires an "engine," and thus communications can't be faster than ships (though you could have unmanned devices with warp drives that shuttle messages faster).In general, this is the major limiter: if you need an "engine" to move between A and B, then comms will be limited to vessels. Otherwise, you can probably get around any limitations of the FTL via comm buoys - a simple device at individual systems which receives laser/radar/whatever signals and relays them to the destination, by hopping in and out of hyperspace, popping between Alderson points, or whatever else.
>>97784855I'm thinking of going all the way back to original Indo-European myths for inspiration. Not sure if there are many sources, though.
>>97784855>now adding random unrelated discords You need to stop dude.
>>97786572It wouldn't be believable to me on the face of it, but if there was a decent in world explanation as to why then I could buy it.
>>97786807>You need to stop dude.I'll stop when the kys d*scord cancer guy stops. He refuses to, though, so there will only be more Discords.
In this episode of putting far too much brainpower into a tiny detail that doesn't actually matter: Eating utensilsStarted with the thought that the exclusively meat eating culture of the lizardmen (still working on the name of the species) might use only knife and skewer, not bothering with other utensils. Then I thought about how different peoples in different areas with different cultures might develop their own utencle combinations. Like chopsticks+spoon, sporks, skew and spoon, no utencis instead having a culture of making everything in a finger foodable form, etc. Then I thought how I didn't want to many earth connotation so probably chopstick and spork would break immersion. So that would mean coming up with new names that also don't sound dumb as dumb sounding names would also break immersion. But yeah, been thinking about utensils and the cultures around them a lot. Like a lot a lot.
Can you make a hard scifi setting constrained entirely to the solar system because FTL is impossibe fun and interesting?
>>97786945Eclipse Phase minus the wormholes. Cyberpunk 2077. Ghost in the Shell. Transhuman Space.Yes.
>>97786945I personally can't but if you mean in general most certainly yes.
>>97786945The solar system alone has capacity for a star Empire that dwarfs most galactic empires in fiction. Once you consider every asteroid all the way to the Port, cloud, you could have an enormous empire that makes even today's superpowers look like a lone tribe in the Amazon.
>>97786916Oh no, I found out kitchen tweezers are a thing. I must try them for possible world building reasons now.
>>97786916ever heard of kitchen scissors? as in scissors used to cut stuff like meat or pizza?
>>97786916You know what kitchen utensil I didn't know I needed till I moved to Korea. Meat scissors.Changed my fucking life - it's so much easier to just use scissors to cut meat into slices or chunks for frying/stewing etc. than using knives and chopping boards and it just wasn't a thing I'd ever seen before coming here.
>>97786945I've thought about doing one around a blue giant. If a star is many times as massive as our sun it would have many times as many planets, right?
>>97787526>or pizza?We don't do that here. >>97787526>>97787529But yeah , have heard of and used kitchen/meat scissors. Personally prefer knife for the style of cooking I do most often.
>>97786572It depends on what is meant by FTL and how hard or soft your world is. You could easily say something like >You can't transmit a laser through subspace>You can't propagate a radio or microwave through the interplanetary medium fast enough to negate transmission lag anyway>Building a transmitter and receiver station in a system is just like building 2 FTL starships >>97786626He didn't say anything about whether they're automated or not, so I'd assume they are. It opens up opportunities like intercepting a drone to hack into its secure data storage to access secure message data.
>>97786945That alone doesn't make it hard sci-fi but the answer is yes. Look at Ender's Game.
>>97786916I started doing something similar for a harpy race. Then I decided it didn't matter if the players weren't likely to encounter them in their native land, and only meet expatriates.
>>97787532It would also last many times fewer years.
>>97786626Yeah, would assume something like that is what would happen. That being said if anon's thing is to make communication slow (but not as slow as physical transportation), I think it could be done. Imagine that there is your old network of space jump nodes (because I mean, what else were precusors to do with their time if not preparing a nice way to space opera for us). Every solar system has at least two: if you just want to communicate from planet A in sistem As to planet B in system Bs, you radio to the robotic relay standing close to the node. Then on the other side of node in system Bs that relay communicates to planet B. Some hours and voila. Clearly faster and cheaper than the months/weeks/days you have to use to transport shit through the same node.But to communicate to planet C in system Cs, you have to use the other node, quite possible at the other end of the system (hoursx2). So time accumulates and in the end yer space empire DOES communicate cheaply and relatively within close planets, but from the extreme systems it's not really an effectively zero-time communication like we've had from the beginning of last century, or even before with trans-oceanic cables.
>>97787562>Building a transmitter and receiver station in a system is just like building 2 FTL starshipsI'm stealing this one. It could be really interesting to use in my space vampire idea.
>>97787529I find something very weird and morbid about cutting meat with scissors
>>97786945Easily. Look at the expanse and the various realistic space battle cgi movies
>>97786945I like to think my hard sci-fi one solar system wars of the diodachi in space setting is fun and interesting
>>97786637I have some bad news: it doesn't exist. Since the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived roughly between 4500 and 2500 BCE, long before they developed writing, we don't have a single direct scrap of their original stories.However, the good news is that we have Comparative Mythology. By looking at the common threads between Vedic India, Ancient Greece, the Norse, the Celts, and the Hittites, we can somewhat "reverse-engineered" the original myths. By looking for the cognates (words and names that share the same root) and the mythemes (story structures that repeat across the globe) you ended up with a lot of parallel elements.>Sky FatherNearly every branch has a "Sky Father."-Greek: Zeus Pater-Vedic: Dyauṣ Pitṛ-Roman: Jupiter -Norse: Týr (originally the chief, later displaced by Odin)>The Twin and the First Man: Manu and YemoManu ("Man") and Yemo ("Twin") travel the world with a primordial cow. Manu sacrifices Yemo to create the world (Yemo's bones become mountains, his blood the sea, etc.).>The Chaos Kampf (Striking the Serpent)A hero or god (usually a Thunder God) must slay a multi-headed serpent or dragon that is "blocking the waters" or causing drought.-Thor vs. Jörmungandr-Indra vs. Vritra-Heracles vs. The HydraIndo-European Poetry and Myth by M.L. West is the absolute "Gold Standard." It breaks down everything from how they described the dawn to their specific poetic metaphors.For world-building, keep Georges Dumezil’s "Trifunctional Hypothesis" in mind. He argued that Into-European society (and their gods) was always split into three roles:-Sovereignty: The priests and rulers (The Law/The Magic).-Force: The warriors (The Muscle/The Storm).-Fecundity: The farmers and herders (The Wealth/The Earth).Most of their myths involve the interaction (and often the conflict) between these three groups.
My world has a parallel world for druids that I've been hinting at because one of my PCs is a druid and the player is really into druidic lore. The idea is that instead of fae insanity like the Feywild it's more like what the world would be like without human intervention, so I guess basically like the Emerald Dream from Warcraft except without the dream part.So far it's only been in the background, but the way the story is going, the PCs will be going there for a romp soon. Any ideas for where I can steal ideas and material?
>>97790709>it's more like what the world would be like without human intervention,Unironically read up about the pleistocene.
>>97790747Megafauna is a good idea and something I've had on the cards. At one point I was even thinking going full Permian with giant insects and weird reptiles, but decided that wouldn't really feel druidic at all.I want there to be magical aspects to it too though, and that's what I'm most having trouble with: getting that magical wilderness atmosphere without leaning too much into fairy territory. I guess (mostly) non-sentient magical beasts could do the trick. Not yet entirely sure if I want there to be any sentient natives there.
"The sky over Golgotha is the color of a bruised plum. A false prophet screams from a soapbox until a Centurion's spear silences him. In the shadows of the Temple, the knives are already drawn. You have three silver pieces, a rusted gladius, and the absolute certainty that tomorrow will be worse."The Gutter-Born Sicarii: You hide a curved sica dagger in your filthy robes. You are a zealot and an assassin. You get a bonus to striking from the crowded marketplace, but you are marked for death by the Roman garrison.Fallen Zoroastrian Magus: You followed a star from the East, but you found only misery. You wield ancient, esoteric fire magic, but using it risks drawing the attention of both the paranoid local kings and terrifying astral entities.Defrocked Temple Butcher: Your life was slaughtering hundreds of lambs and doves for the wealthy Sadducees, until you saw something you shouldn't have in the Holy of Holies. You start with a bloody cleaver, heavy guilt, and a terrifying secret.Sun-Scorched Desert Ascetic: You survived on locusts, wild honey, and hallucinogenic roots in the Judean wastes. You are unarmored, deeply unwell, and occasionally hear the voice of an extremely angry, apocalyptic god.Jerusalem is a powder keg suffocating under the brutal, exhausted grip of Rome and the treachery of wealth hoarding temple elites. Here, miracles offer no salvation, healing the sick or multiplying bread are reality bending omens that drive crowds to panic. Out among the tombs, chained wretches snap their own bones and scream in forgotten tongues. To counter this desert sorcery, grim Imperial priests gut prisoners and birds alike, reading bloody entrails to maintain their stranglehold. The heavy scent of frankincense and myrrh fails to mask the stench of endless temple sacrifices and the rotting, crucified flesh lining the roads. Everyone knows the apocalypse is mere weeks away, and the desperate are prepared for atrocities.
>>97790900In a fantasy nature, you could also have:- Native animals have human-level intelligence (but animal motives).- Non-animal things have sapience or at least beastly intelligence (e.g. treants/dryads for trees, naiads for rivers, etc).- Some kind of incredibly big/powerful apex predator that is extinct in our world.(e.g. t-rex) that holds a given territory, warping the local fauna and flora accordingly.
>>97786945Yes absolutely. We're working on one right now.
>>97786431Make that twelve, you discord fuck.
>>97791082>combining jew and islamAnon, ftl is more believable on hard scifi than that.
>>97786945Yes. People tend to forget the scale of the space. Our solar system is huge. If you want unique planets, you can just terraform mars and venus. You can even create thousands of space colonies with the asteroid belt. The only advantage of galaxies scale scifi setting is aliens. Even then, you can just biologically modified human into strange alien-like being and you still can call it hard scifi.
Would players attention be held by a handout written like this or is it too much: >With his new wealth, Dowda embarked the royal fleet on a visitation of the Seafringe. Openhanded, with neither net nor sword, Dowda paid for fish and rays and puffins from dozen upon dozens of fishing vessels before planting his standard on the sands of Marnie's Bay. Yet the 80 galleys and towerships were as much a threat as any army, word of their presence sailing with the fishermen and birdcatchers who returned to their homes unmolested and flush with silver.>Ottar IV was compelled to come.>The fleet of the Marshalcy was the most skilled and experienced in our land, it is true. It was the father of fleets and a paragon of sailcraft. Of old, Gelertingia had forged it from the people of the skerry-bounded coasts, and it had survived the fall of that grand old kingdom. Assembled in its glory and led by their distinct drake-headed longships, the hundred and twelve ships which made landfall upon the strand were the flower of the Seafringe and the last living symbol of Gelertingia’s glory. >Prince and marshal met upon the sand under the banner of truce. Over bounty and beer, a bargain was struck: A marriage for Maelle, Ottar's youngest daughter, and fleets for Dowda’s expedition in exchange for a bridegelt vast in silver and gold. With victory in war would come recognition of Kermeneur’s ancient rights, blessed by the touch of a king. The Marshals were to be marshals again.
Back in early 2024, I made this setting and ran a brief game (of *Badass Kung Fu Demigods*) in it. Encounters included a battle with a dragon mage inside a submarine filled with 1989-style supercomputers.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cKI4l1V3CwTVA28qw_498Xp6-iRt0miSwKLwSEWlha8/editUnfortunately, the setting was very poorly received by the players (who apparently wanted something grittier, more grounded, more realistic, low fantasy, and so on), and the game went nowhere.I am thinking of taking this setting document, polishing it up with more player-useful information (e.g. what PCs could possibly be, clearer campaign hooks) and some brief overviews for the other big empires of the world. This way, I could run it for a different group of players.Should I bother doing so?
>>97786572Depending on the FTL method it makes perfect sense. Like if the only way to move faster than light is to use a warp drive/hyperdrive/whatever you call it, you can't exactly strap a drive on a radio signal so you have to send a ship (or at least a probe equipped with a drive) to the other system to deliver the message. The way I handled things in my setting is that the only way to travel FTL is by using a warp drive, but there is a form of FTL communication taking advantage of quantum entanglement. However, it's limited in that each communication terminal only connects to the one terminal it is "linked to", and the bandwidth is limited since you send data by altering the spin of a single electron and reading the spin direction as either 1 or 0 and you technically can't transmit and receive at the same time (this can be solved by having the terminals constantly swap between transmitting and receiving, but it effectively means you'd half the framerate). A low-population planet might have a single communication center in the planetary capital that has a terminal connecting to another planet that acts as a communication hub, which has terminals connected to other planets, so if you need to send a message to another planet it has to pass through the hub. Most communication is limited to short text messages because of bandwidth limit and real-time communication isn't practical (they're not going to put all off-system communications on the planet on hold because you want to have a phonecall with grandma). Only big corporations, the government and military have their own networks that are more likely to allow real-time communication, and only the extremely wealth and people of great importance like heads of state and military leaders get their own private terminals (usually something like from the CEO's home to the corporate head office, or from the admiral's flagship to the naval HQ).
>>97792636That just seems so particular to the question asked that it's kinda crazy you have such a exacting match to that particular question in your setting.
>>97792374Why not?
>>97792636what stops you from using multiple electrons in parallel to raise the bandwith?
>>97793634Nothing in theory, but the system necessary to keep the electrons in a perpetual state of quantum entanglement is complex and expensive enough that it's usually not worth it, at least not for the public communication network. Military and and people who can afford to drop several million to stream high-quality video over interstellar distances can do it if they want to, but for the public network the operators rather have multiple terminals sending separate messages than chain them together to send one at higher bandwidth.
>>97792374What is your goal with this setting info? Is it meant to show the world player should be putting themselves into and be conscious of, or is it background flavor?If it's background, then it's fine. You can plausibly focus things down to end of the cold war attitude, the tension between the superpowers, and just treat this as window dressing for players to know how to act, what they can use, and consider what abilities they and their enemies have access to. You just need to drill down and tighten it around where you reasonably expect the players to go.As just a setting, there's problems. I immediately started asking questions.>Magic and psionics. What's the difference?Is this tied to lineage or whether you have immortal blood? Why split it? Why not just have chi since you already have Chinese influences?>Late 1980s, late 1990sThere is a pretty big gap in capabilities between these two eras, especially if you're talking consumer technology rather than just the machines and tools you'll encounter in sessions. Pick one and stick with it.>Thermonuclear warIs that really a problem? You have a population 40-60 times what the real world population was in 1980, and there's a limited range to ICBMs. This wouldn't matter to most people unless they're worried about fallout, which is the only reason we stopped using nuclear weapons in our world. Or will you focus down specifically on the potential frontline, the Hawaii/South Korea/North Osea region that would actually pay the price for thermonuclear war?>UndeadWhy 1%? When you say 1% people start thinking "1.5 billion zombies are made every year." Just use "vanishingly small."
>>97793724I did something similar for my solar system only setting. Large fleet flagships have QE devices to communicate with each other and headquarters. Everything else is routed through short-range radio or shuttles. Colonies make do with the latter two unless their patron is especially wealthy or has a share in the QE cartel.
Are there any theorized methods of going ftl? Or at least approximating it? I'm trying my hand at hard sci f, but 7 year transit times to even the closest star, while I can work with it, it just feels a but much. Even a single year would be better
>>97793881The Alcubierre warp drive is something that's been proposed, we don't know if it's actually possible but it's the most likely candidate we have.
>>97792636>they're not going to put all off-system communications on the planet on hold because you want to have a phonecall with grandmaTakes me back to the dialup days.
>>97793881Alcubierre Drive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ed4v_T6YMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk5bxHetL4s
>>97784855In 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?
>>97794227shana with a blue archive halo?
>>97793881Wormholes, Alcubierre drive, Krasnikov tubes.FTL isn't really "forbidden," per se, under modern physics, it's just that under relativity, any FTL method can produce a time machine. Not *all* FTL trips will, but all FTL methods *can*; it's dependent on the relative velocity of the two points. Backwards causality occurs if you move back and forth between points A and B, with relative velocity v, at a speed faster than c^2 / v (at exactly c^2 / v, you appear to take 0 time from the reference frame of wherever you're arriving; any faster, and you appear to take negative time, i.e. to arrive before you left).There are, afaik, three ways around this:- You always move with pseudovelocity c^2/v (or less), and don't appear in the intervening space (so you can't decelerate or whatever). Thus, you pop between Alderson points or whatever "instantaneously," but nothing interesting with causality can happen.- You have a wormhole network which *theoretically* allows backwards causality, but whenever it would form a loop, the network collapses on itself (due to virtual particles multiplying towards infinity at the point where passing through it takes 0 time).- You have traversal through hyperspace, which itself has a preferred reference frame (probably CMB). Thus, all the funny time dilation stuff always happens with the same reference frame, and you can't go backwards in time.
>>97790637Has anyone tried looking at potential connections between the Chaos Kampf and Ancient Near Eastern creation myths? That description kind of reminds me of Marduk vs. Tiamat, Ba’al Hadad vs. Yam, and the Old Testament’s references to Leviathan.
What can you do for power generation in space if you're somewhere like the orbit of neptune or pluto where the sun is basically another speck in the sky? I like the idea of 'those weird people who live out on the edge of the solar system' but then I got to thinking about all the logistics of itAnd as a follow up, what would travel times be like? I read that probes have taken more than a year to get to these places but in a future scenario with more space infrastructure and travel and whatnot, what could transit times be cut down to?
>>97796423Nuclear or wind or harvesting energy from Neptune's magnetosphere if it's a gas giant. Otherwise just nuclear.
>>97796423nuclearthose outer planets move incredibly slowly so your transit windows are far about if you're using orbital slingshots, less if you're using ship's propulsion I guess? depends on what kind of technology you have
>>97796423There's a very marginal amount of antimatter captured in orbit around various planets in the solar system, don't think it's enough for a civ, though, so it's just scraping hydrogen to use in a fusion reactor.
The more I research street sociology and the lives of urchins and teen delinquents, the more I realise why some of them would rather try their luck on the streets rather than endure a "charity" like an orphanage or a workhouse. Holy fuck. You get figures like 87% mortality rates in some of them (and I found one, Dublin Foundling Hospital, with 99.9% mortality rate where literally only 1 survived in 5 years) vs 25-50% on the slums/streets and the social stigma was awful and dehumanizing. It’s no wonder characters like the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist resonate so much. Also fun stuff like Baby Farming where people were paid to adopt orphans, only to murder them with opium, so they would get paid again, and repeat the process.
>>97796423When you have nuclear fusion, even an asteroid in the Oort cloud it is viable, and you can make a lush colony with it. Also, you could technically send energy from inner colonies by using lasers.
>>97796588There's the concept of antimatter-catalysed fusion. You can build a smaller fusion reactor if you use antimatter as a catalyzer for nuclear reactions.
>>97793742I did show this to my players back then.You raise good points. Thank you. I have received other actionable feedback here: >>97792803I will think about what to do with this setting if ever I decide to return to it.
>>97784855I 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? Asking again.
