Writing General: 'dragons' editionWelcome to /wg/, the thread for all /tg/ related writing. Whether you're plotting your campaign, trying to come up with a character backstory, or just trying to write some setting fluff, this is the place to post it. You don't even have a campaign, just an idea you want to develop? You're welcome here. While the rest of /tg/ is arguing over monstergirl mating and which way rivers are supposed to flow, we're here to help you turn your thoughts into an actual finished product.As the successor to the Storythreads, we're also open to /tg/ related fanfiction (D&D, Warhammer, Battletech, whatever). In fact, if you've written any vaguely /tg/-related short stories, you can try them out here. We also have flash-fiction challenges from time to time.There's a discord for writers herehttps://discord.gg/6AwKHGFThe previous thread can still be found in the archive here>>97699640And finally an archive of /tg/ fiction can be found here:http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Storythread (dead link, but may be resurrected one day)https://2d4chan.org/wiki/Storythread (page missing, wiki still up)https://1d6chan.miraheze.org/wiki/Storythread
Dragons are one of the most deeply embedded elements of the fantasy genre - in fact perhaps of mythology in general - and yet dragons can be some of the most challenging fantasy themes to write about. Whether it's trying to get the psychology of a hundred foot lizard right or working out how to introduce it without totally wrecking the fights, dragons in a story often lead to a lot of problems.So how do you handle your dragons, anons? Are they dumb beasts, or rich in wisdom and cunning? Are they noble creatures or harbingers of destruction? Are they traditional gold-hoarding lizards, or do your dragons find other hobbies to occupy themselves with?
Incidentally - and I know this probably makes me seem a bit basic - my favourite take on dragons is the Song of Ice and Fire series. Not because I think G.R.R. Martin writes particularly interesting dragons per se, but because they feel *real*. In any modern dragon media my main gripe is always 'that thing must weigh more than a blue whale, no human being has a chance against that'. Back in Medieval times when legends like St. George were being written, dragons were depicted as being barely bigger than a horse. In fact a lot of them look suspiciously crocodile-sized. But power-creep being what it is, dragons have steadily become bigger and bigger, to the point where there has to be a bunch of absurd contrivances for any human to have a chance of defeating them.And G.R.R. Martin took that 'giant dragon' trope and said: nah, they're just going to destroy everyone, and it's not going to be a remotely fair fight.Because of course they would. Of course people riding a hundred ton flying lizard THAT CAN BREATHE FIRE would absolutely wreck anyone who didn't have dragons. That's just common sense. So although the man can't finish a book to save his life, I thank him for that at least.
>>98309525https://nickbostrom.com/papers/the-fable-of-the-dragon-tyrant/
>>98312252Yeah, in many stories the dragon is basically just a stand in for death itself. Death as an active evil, rather than a more impassive, neutral force like the Grim Reaper. I remember seeing the CPG Grey video on that essay - must be the better part of eight years ago now - and I always thought it was a bit neat; they were all thoughts I'd had myself long before that, but I saw the problem more as people actively obstructing the fight rather than just being too resigned and lazy. Sadly the intervening years have only strengthened my belief that in that scenario many people would actively fight to protect the dragon. It's funny, I watched 'The Boroughs' last week (that Netflix show from the creators of Stranger Things), and I wasn't very far in when I realised 'oh, it's another one of *these* stories'. That is, one of those stories that function like the king's advisor in the essay, using empty rhetoric to defend the status quo. It's amazing how many stories in popular media are, when you get right down to it, based on the premise that not wanting to grow old and die is a bad thing. Harry Potter, for example. What was Voldemort's main motivation? He didn't want to die. Rowling starts with the whole race war aspect, but Voldemort's personal motivation underlying all his evil acts is just 'I don't want to die', and instead of the lesson being 'he should have tried to find less evil methods', the lesson is 'he shouldn't have tried at all'. (although, apropos nothing, Rowling's still not as bad as C.S. Lewis, who sent Susan to hell because she wore lipstick). And don't even get me started on the whole vampire genre. Sometimes, I don't particularly like associating myself with artists. When a scientist encounters a problem, he tries to fix it. When an artist encounters a problem, all to often he only tries to make everyone feel better about it. For all my issues with that essay, it's nice to see art used to further progress rather than stymie it.
Doing taxes and I apparently made almost 50 Euros last year from my self-publishing.Which is barely anything, but more than I expected.We all gonna make it!
Finally finished the short story (about 15 pages) I have been working on the past few months. Or at least finished the first draft with some light editing. Probably needs another draft or two before it's worth putting out there with my name on it. So could really use any constructive feedback that I can use to improve my next draft or stuff I should learn for my next story.https://files.catbox.moe/8gr1zc.txtIt's related to a larger project I am working on and very action focused, so some of the stuff isn't explained in detail, but I think the story as a standalone is still decent.
>>98318206Finally got feedback in another thread. Turns out it's garbage and they couldn't make it past the first page. They got super hung up on the hooded men not being fully fleshed out, got bored, and couldn't continue it. As such it's not worth my time to attempt to fix up the story or improve it in any way. It would probably be best to just move on to another story and try to do better next time. Sorry for clogging this thread with my shit.
Curious of folks feedback and perspective on world building and race selection, and looking for input.TL;DR I feel like theres too many races in my setting, and having trouble gauging how to effectively rule on their usage. Curious of how folks determine their racial choices in their homebrews.---For wider context, I'm aiming to run a ToV game. And fortunately (or unfortunately) theres a LOT of races in ToV already; not just the bog standard fantasy but even some refreshing new ones.And while I have a brother and friends who have all already offered wonderful feedback on this...unfortunately, for some reason, my brains struggling to translate that into real impact on my setting.My brother in particular is a relatively accomplished amateur writer, and has been making settings for stories and tabletop for over 20 years, so hes given good advice...(Case in point, he himself does not care for 'racial kingdoms'. He prefers nations and kingdoms of mixed races in most of his settings, rather than "the city of elves" and "the country of dwarves". Make the nations culture, and blend/bend/pick the races to match rather than pick 1 race n 1 culture n bam, etc.)In my setting, theres a cataclysm that resulted in deific intervention.It culminated in an empire collapse as well as at least 3 (so far) races rendered extinct. To me, that felt a bit lacking for driving home the "gravitas" and depravity of the empire.My brother has offered counsel that 3 is honestly a lot, and perhaps rather than extinct races I should focus on restricting their usage or outright removing them from the setting if need be.
>>98321144(Me continuing 2nd half of my post/question)Unfortunately, part of the setting (And OG goal I had with it) was to allow all of us to feel unrestrained for our first ever ToV game (new toys, new tools etc.) so I had a genius idea with the lore that allowed, in theory, for nearly any race to still be playable even if not native to setting; extraplanar visitors as a regular setting observance.Its quite nicely worked into the lore...but ive come to a struggle;By my count, I have over 60 native races/subraces, over 30 planar based/non native races, 3 extinct, and among that mix....17 that are ask/conditional no and 5 hard no's.The first pass of the racial list feels decent but it feels...unfinished. With over 60 native, 30 planar, 3 extinct, 17 requiring DM approval, and 5 hard no's... The "planar factor" means I could easily choose 20-30 of those "native races"l choices n fling em into being planar guest choices, but im having trouble gauging what goes or stays.Faerun, Eberron, or ToV's Northlands or Labyrinth...these are all set settings with set races, to help guide newer players on what to use/not use. But for homebrew, its w/e ya want...but while Im not trying to etch out *every aspect of the world*, id very much like to try and make a reasonable number of races so things dont feel cramped OR overly pruned...and boy im struggling.... So yeah....any tips/tricks/advice for determining what races to keep or not keep? I love them all, its so hard to cull ;_;
>>98321144>>98321146I was about to say 'D&D gets by fine with a lot of races I'm sure you'll manage', but jesus, over a hundred is a lot. It *really* depends on what type of game you're running what races you cull. If it's got more of a traditional High Fantasy vibe then you want to make sure you keep elves and dwarves, if you're running more of a gritty low fantasy then maybe get rid of the elves and dwarves and focus more on races without a lot of history behind them. To be honest, I'm not familiar at all with ToV (in fact I had to look up what that even stood for), so there's limited help I can give you.The most obvious place to start, however, would be to get rid of any that are just slight re-skins of other races. I've said it before (about D&D) and I'll say it again: a roleplaying game can get by just fine without twenty different types of elf. After doing that, get rid of the ones that are just riffs on a similar theme; going back to D&D again, there are a lot more animal races than there need to be. A tabaxi and a lizardman aren't exactly re-skins of each other but they're still just animal-people. And don't even get me started on Giff (who I do have a certain affection for desu, but come on Wizards of the Coast, are you really that strapped for ideas that you had to resort to hippos)?It would help if you could give us a brief rundown - emphasis on the brief - of what different races you have.
>>98323954So basically, to try and minimize restrictions on a new wholly unused system (even if its effectively DnD 5.5 or 5E Lite or w/e), i thought up an idea for a setting where people could either willingly or unknowingly get sucked into/plopped into the setting along certain nexus points or what have you. So its fair to say 'all of them'.The biggest hurdle is, until recently, they didnt really have a TON of overlap....Trollkin are trolls, Werekin are basically shifters, Syderean are basically tiefling + celestial, Smallfolks is gnomes n halflings, shadow n light fey are basically shadow/light elves (recent n one of those few 'overlaps'), shade is kinda unique as is scarith n skelling.Sapopova is frog people, raven n rat folk are self explanatory, Rachisan n Piney are another semi-close (Rachis are basically humanoid onions or carrots n the like, whereas piney is more GW2 sylvari/humanoid treant dryad types)Orcs are orcs, minotaurs are minos, lizardfolk are same as before, ditto kobold n human, hexen is basically the hag race from 5E.Gravewrought is basically frankensteins monsters, goblins n gnolls are same as they were, giantkin is basically giants/goliaths, gearforged is warforged, fateborn is basically racial descendents of those affected by deck of many things effects (pretty unique)Erina are basically hedgehog (to which i once thought "whats difference between them n beastkin quillbacks?" Mechanically, Erina are burrowing small nocturnal skill monkeys. Quillbacks are more small or medium martials. Narrative, hedgehog vs porcupine)
>>98323954>>98324092Past that, Eonic is time travelers warped by lots of time travel trying to prevent a future calamity.Elves are elves, elemental scions are genasi, dwarves are dwarves, dryads are dryads, dragonborn is dragonborn.Dhampirs dhampir, Derro is dark gnomes (but more insane/eldritch horror), centaurs are centaurs, broodlings are fancier ettercaps (spider people), beastkins were meant to be a sort of "general purpose bestial race option" to try n minimize the "theres owlin and arakocra and kenku and aven and dohwar and" repetition. It mostly did the trick, most bestial races that are made, especially after beastkin, focus on a specific race or genuinely try to make them stand out. KP's stance was something to the effect of"Beastkin are meant to be used as the general beast-related lineage that can be built to represent any type of animal-person". Not sure if that means they're more/less likely to make 'bestial races' but it shows they're aware.Bearfolks what it says on tin, and Alseid are basically 'what if centaur but fae bullshit and deer half'So beyond the obvious (asleid/centaur, bear/raven/sapop/beastkin/etc., elf/bright fey/shadow fey, erina/beastkin, and a scant few others) they're all likely fairly different/unique, not just narratively but mechanically...As for setting....moderately high fantasy? It has some degrees of magitech/magitek, but it wont be a focus nor everywhere. Like firearms are a known thing, but the farther you get from certain locations, the more exotic (and harder to come by) the ammo for them is...
>>98314482Personally I am fighting this dragon. But yes, a lot of people are in a 'pro-dragon" trance.>>98316450Consider it a bonus on a hobby.
>>98324092>>98324116Actually, a better first step might be finding out what your players actually want to play. If they have some pre-conceived ideas about what race they want to be then let them have their thing, then cut around it. The more traditional the fantasy setting, the more conservative you should be with races. So if you're going with moderately high fantasy, elves and dwarves are in. A bit of magitech? Keep the gnomes. However:>Rachis are basically humanoid onions or carrots n the likeOut.>Sapopova is frog peopleOut>Erina are basically hedgehog Out>Alseid are basically 'what if centaur but fae bullshit and deer half'OutYou're going to have to be harsh, but it's got to be done; you've got too many races for your players to keep track, and too many to give most of them any time in the story. When you look at a race, you should be asking yourself not 'do I like it' but 'do I need it to tell the story' and 'will it leave a hole if I take it out'. Spider people? I love spider people. But I'm betting you could totally erase ettercaps from the setting and not notice the difference. >>98318206>>98321077>Turns out it's garbage and they couldn't make it past the first page.We'll be the judge of that.And even if it is garbage, there may be useful lessons to be learned from analysing it. Unfortunately I just do not have the time to read it right now, and probably won't for a couple of days, but I *will* get to it.
>>98328540Hilariously, 3 potential players among the group are arachnophobic, and the abilities n descriptions were not okay with 2 of em so i just used broodlings as an easy extinct race.Alseid I kept cause of the planar interplay nature of the setting + centaur being extinct. A sort of "nature covers gaps" type development.Sapopova i have a soft spot for cause EQ frogloks...but Erina im ambivalent on.Rachis ive always been sorta eeeeeh on. So maybe ill give them the boot as a planar only race.Ive tried to get a gauge on what races they want, but they all keep telling me "tell us what races u wanna run, and then we'll figure out what we wanna play". They know the general overview of the setting, the basics of the calamity, what race was responsible for the historically horrific empire (and why that race is a big heavy 'probably not playable')BUT maybe its worth circling around again and inquiring, now that ive got a "first pass" list of how the races shake out. Use that to better refine some things and fine tune it...As for the magitek, thats in an interesting spot; the farther from the central nexus of events u get, the more old high fantasy it gets. Guns, gunpowder, ammo, it all becomes a lot less common n straight up magic becomes more common. But major cities/hubs probably still have their brushes with it. And only 2 or 3? races have any real experimentation in the magitek type of deal (goblins being chief among em along with drow lol)But definitely some good advice. I think my first move is to reach out n inquire for which race(s) stand out to people. their top 5 or w/e, and go from there.
>>98328540>We'll be the judge of that.Don't bother. It's a loss cause and waste of time.No one should be subjected to it. It is unreadable boring garbage.
>>98330008Mean.
Looking for some suggestions/adviceMy goal with the current book was to wind down a bit from the constant anime-like battles of the previous and formulate a plot more focused on political mysteries, intrigue between different factions, a subtle plot about two rival villains each trying to get the protagonist to join their side etc. I feel like overall I succeeded, even though I still ended up having a ton of anime-fights in it. Im wrapping up the second-to-last arc I'm planning for this book and moving into the climactic final act. The moment our protagonist goes to the main villain's lair, who we've only seen acting through others and dream-like shadow events. This will be the main confrontation that all's built up to. The mystery being untangled at lastThe problem is I dont really want to end on some big bombastic fight finale. Thats not who the villain is as a character, and also not really what I have planned. Sure, their meeting will have lots of juicy talking, lots of revelations, lots things being discussed, but I kinda am struggling a bit to come up with a good climactic finale to actually end the book on. I have all these characters in this location, these powerhouses, with villains they hate, and not having them fight or really do "something" other than have a chat feels like a bit of a massive waste? Im not sure, anyone's got any thoughts? One idea I had was to have one of those "play a game for the fate of the world" type scenes. Since poker and card games, and card suits are quite literally on the cover of the book itself. The problem is this villain is the "eldritch demon from the dawn of time all about nature and bugs and shit" and the other who is absent from this plot segment is the "clown who has a card suit theme and all that jazz" so it doesn't really make sense for the former to offer to play a card game? Though I could stretch it a bit I suppose
Dead thread
>>98330915Didn't say I'm wrong though
>>98332036I mean, do you want your hero to stop the villain or not? Doesn't need to be a bombastic fight, but somehow hero would stop the villain either way. Might feel cheap for the reader, however.
Where do you usually post your stuff? What are some good places?
>>98334506I don't.I ain't at that level yet. Maybe one day my stuff will be good enough to post somewhere, but that is a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG way away. At most I might share a bit on imageboards for critique and writing advice, but my writing is far too shit to put my name on it. Maybe in a few years if I consistently practice I will be good enough to write something decent but I need to focus on the here and now when it comes to putting the work in so I can one day reach that point.
>>98334327I dont want the villain to be stopped here no. We're in like, book 3 of possibly 7. The villain absolutely needs to end this book by winning. My goal was to have the villain finally gain the protagonist on their side, but I havent really figured out how to connect the climax to that bit yet.
>>98318206>>98321077Okay, so I read it all and... yeah, it's bad. However, I wouldn't call it unreadable. The worst bit is at the beginning; you tried to give your opening some punch and like a lot of novice authors it just ended up overwrought. Before I say anything else I have two questions:1. What country are you from? 2. How old are you?Because my advice might change considerably based on those two facts. However, we can at least address the basics. Firstly, the prose. After the first section it's not terrible but it is a bit dull. You use it simply to tell the reader what's going on rather than trying to entertain. That is, you're often just listing what's happening, sequentially, without really thinking about presentation. And just picking a less common synonym does not make writing more interesting.
>>98340413The main problem with the story itself is that the reader doesn't really know anything about the characters and has no reason to care about any of them. Who is Jak? We don't know. What does Jak want? We only find out a bit of that at the end. Who are the Blooded, and what is his history with them? Isn't addressed at all. Even just a line like:>Jak was surprised to see Gek. He would have thought the Blooded would send someone like Belladonna, or Barnabus, to take him out. But then, they probably hadn't expected these losers to actually succeed. would have added some depth to the story, some sense of the backstory to what's going on. All the characters apart from Jak feel like disposable minions whose only role is to provide him with a slightly more difficult fight. There's *some* exposition from Belladonna but even that really begs the question: if Apex used to be all about the dominance and favouring the Elite, why the sudden change of heart towards the Equalists? Which isn't addressed at all.You may or may not decide you want to rewrite this particular story and try to fix it, but if not for your next story consider- prose is there to entertain, not just to explain. But subtlety and restraint go a lot further than just opening a thesaurus every time you want spice things up a bit.- understand who every character is, what their backstory and motivation are, and how it can be woven into the story in a natural way
>>98340413>you tried to give your opening some punch and like a lot of novice authors it just ended up overwrought.I don't really know what that means in context. But I will work on it and take it into consideration. >1. What country are you from?>2. How old are you?The fact my writings keep getting accused of being "esl" is telling. I only speak/write English. I am old enough. >You use it simply to tell the reader what's going on rather than trying to entertain.I was trying to show the reader what was going on and that the goings on was where the entertainment came from. That said, after several re-reads I did notice I have mistakenly did quite a bit of telling as well. Ideally I would want my prose to be like a glass pane. Clear and doesn't block or distort the view of events. Though in this story I have failed at that goal. >just picking a less common synonym does not make writing more interesting.That wasn't my intent, I just was trying to avoid repetition. Another thing to take into consideration. cont.
>>98341655>>98340427A lot of the lore and background questions come down to>It's related to a larger project I am working on and very action focused, so some of the stuff isn't explained in detailIt being a short story in a larger project it's not meant to explain quite a few things you brought up. That said, I REALLY should have been more clear about Jak's motivation, as you pointed out. That is something I should have included at the very beginning of the story, and should not have been mysterious. If I ever revise this story rather than throw it away, that will be the first and most important structural change to the story. Character motivation should be clear. > All the characters apart from Jak feel like disposable minions whose only role is to provide him with a slightly more difficult fight.That is because they are, both in world and on a meta level, but I wanted to keep the reason why in the larger project. For example>that really begs the question: if Apex used to be all about the dominance and favouring the Elite, why the sudden change of heart towards the Equalists?That is exactly the question I wanted to leave the reader with. One that would make them want to read other stories set in the wider setting to find out. This story is a snapshot, a single night and night of the revival of who will eventually become the main antagonist/rival in my bigger project. However the story it's self has to be better written for anyone to bother, and they have to make it through the first page. So I still have a long way to go when it comes to the craft of writing, before I can really focus on meta-narratives and multi-part episodic storytelling.cont.
>>98341661> But subtlety and restraint go a lot further than just opening a thesaurus every time you want spice things up a bit.You probably won't believe me but there wasn't any thesaurus opining or anything, I talk and write like that typically. I just happen to have weird phraseology and extended vocabulary. I will try to keep it in check in subsequent stories though. It's good advice. I also fully understand that the character work in this story was awful and I should strive to do better. You, and likely anyone who can manage to read trough it, can tell that all but 3 characters that came up in the story are throwaway characters. Ones I didn't care much about and that lack of care showed. I want to deeply thank you for the constructive feedback. I will use what you said going forward to improve my stories.
>reading up on Instagram-marketingI DON'T WANT TO PUT MY FAGGOT FACE INTO A CAMI'm not shy, maximum introverted for sure, but fuck advertising myself using myself more than my actual books. I don't have a nice bookstagram bookshelf to pose, and my smartphone camera is old and shitty. Fuck.
>>98343038If you are not an Ethot, with an OF pipeline ofcourse, or buy followers, insta is dead AF and zuck only knows how their algoritme works because their timeline is not chronological and the recommends make no sense.
>>98341655>>98341661>>98341666Reading back >>98340413 and >>98340427 I feel like I was a bit vague by what I meant by making your prose more entertaining. So lets take this paragraph as an example:>The person operating the chains halted the chains when the chamber's entrance was level with the ground. A few blooded appeared to be staff of some sort due to their crisp uniforms that did not appear military in nature. They began boarding the the chamber after the door hissed open. While they did Jak acted. Using a bit or cloth ripped from his cloths he quickly applied spark gel to it while infusing it with his will. He then tied the cloth to one of his throwing spikes. Using his inner eye he felt rather than saw where the gas lines to the lamps flowed. He threw the spike hard at the line and triggered his spell the moment it struck. A 10 foot high gout of flames poured from the punctured gas line that drew all attention in the area. As those on guard rushed to handle the fire Jak snuck past and entered the gatehouse. He activated the chains and dashed to the already rising chamber. With supernatural strength he jumped high enough to land on top of the chamber. >Jak let out a breath as he laid prone and whispered to himself "Easier than I thought." He then cringed as he felt high frequency clicks and squeaks shiver down his spine coming from the clouds above. "Jinxed it" he rasped to no one in particular. Here's another way you could write that scene:
>>98346020>The platform clanked to a halt and the Blooded began boarding; they looked like clerks, not soldiers, their crisp uniforms starched and pressed. Things really had changed since he was last here; those boys would have been eaten alive by Barnabus' dogs not so long ago. As they filed aboard the elevator Jak ripped a strip of cloth and applied spark gel to it, before tying it to a throwing spike. Then he concentrated, infusing it with his will while at the same time using his inner eye to see - no, feel, like bright sunlight on his cheeks - the fuel lines that fed the lamps. His arm whipped round, muscles flexing, and the spike cut through the darkness. >In the instant it hit he triggered the spell and suddenly all eyes around were drawn to the gout of flame lighting up the night. It was almost too easy, Jak thought; as the guards rushed to help fight the fire, he simply walked past them into the gatehouse. A flick of the switch set the chains clanking again, and with his supernatural strength one good leap was enough to get him on top of the slowly rising platform.>Then he felt high frequency clicks and squeaks shiver down his spine, coming from the clouds above. Yeah, too easy.>"Jinxed it.", Jak muttered to himself. First of all, as you can see I split that big paragraph in two; presentation is a simple thing but it does make a difference to readability, and you seem to have a consistent habit of letting your paragraphs run on. Now, as for the actual content. >The person operating the chains halted the chains when the chamber's entrance was level with the ground.This is what I meant when I said you're just listing what's happening. If you just say 'the chamber stopped', that's all the reader needs to know; they'll naturally infer the rest. I chose to say 'the platform clanked to a halt' because that's more evocative of the machinery than just 'the platform stopped', and a way of implying chains without needing to directly mention them.
>>98346024>A few blooded appeared to be staff of some sort due to their crisp uniforms that did not appear military in naturePhrasing is a little stiff here, and it seemed like a good opportunity to add some depth. >Things really had changed since he was last here; those boys would have been eaten alive by Barnabus' dogs not so long ago.This is what I meant by weaving in backstory in a natural way; I showed the reader a glimpse of Jak's past in the citadel, and also gave Barnabus a mention to build him up a bit before the confrontation.>Using a bit or cloth ripped from his cloths he quickly applied spark gel to it while infusing it with his will. He then tied the cloth to one of his throwing spikes. Using his inner eye he felt rather than saw where the gas lines to the lamps flowed.Again, it's just: this thing happened, then this thing happened, then this thing happened, etc, etc.>Jak ripped a strip of cloth and applied spark gel to it, before tying it to a throwing spike. Then he concentrated, infusing it with his will while at the same time using his inner eye to see - no, feel, like bright sunlight on his cheeks - the fuel lines that fed the lamps.You don't have to try to make *everything* interesting; sometimes it's okay to just be 'this happened, then this happened, then this happened'. But in that case, try to avoid redundancy.>a bit or cloth ripped from his clothsand if there's an opportunity to make a line a little more interesting, take it. 'Using his inner eye he felt rather than saw ' is an interesting concept, but it could be illustrated more vividly with 'no, feel, like bright sunlight on his cheeks'
>>98346028It's all about finding the right balance between keeping your prose concise and fast-flowing, and sprinkling in bits of colour here and there to keep it interesting.>His arm whipped round, muscles flexing, and the spike cut through the darkness. Maybe that's even a little too much, but it seemed more interesting than just>He threw the spike hard at the line >He threw the spike hard at the line and triggered his spell the moment it struck. A 10 foot high gout of flames poured from the punctured gas line that drew all attention in the area. As those on guard rushed to handle the fire Jak snuck past and entered the gatehouse.More 'this happened, then this happened, then this happened'. Notice how I merge bits of those sentences and cut in a bit more flavour; by moving the 'easier than I thought' bit here it breaks up the boring bits of the sentence. It's almost like creating camouflage; you want to break up the silhouette of the basic events of the scene with a bit of colour here and there, feeding the same information to the reader but disguised so it doesn't look like just a sequence of events.>In the instant it hit he triggered the spell and suddenly all eyes around were drawn to the gout of flame lighting up the night. It was almost too easy, Jak thought; as the guards rushed to help fight the fire, he simply walked past them into the gatehouse.
>>98346031And lastly, when you have an impactful moment you want to isolate it so the reader notices it more. That's why I changed the beginning of the next paragraph to>Then he felt high frequency clicks and squeaks shiver down his spine, coming from the clouds above. Yeah, too easy.>"Jinxed it.", Jak muttered to himself. Now rather than buried in another thick paragraph, the moment when the batteraks appear has space to breathe.I'm going to end by saying that I'm sure other writers would do it differently and would take issue with how I've rewritten it, but this is only intended to be an example. Something to give you ideas you can develop into your own style, rather than a manual to follow exactly.
>>98343038I wouldn't worry too much about instagram marketing unless you are already a avid instagram user who has a decent sense of how it works and it's culture. While it can work for some people, it doesn't work for the vast majority. Honestly even using plain old facebook instead might be a better option of grabbing attention. Mostly through building connections rather than being at the mercy of a algorithm and someone's tiny attention span as they flick through bikini photos.That said take what I say with a grain of salt. I never advertised a book. Only services in a particular area. So my marketing experience and knowledge is low.
>>98346040I have never in my life received such detailed and useful feedback on my writing before. Not even in school. I will ponder and take into account all you have written and incorporate this lesson into my efforts going forward. I will have to digest it a bit to have more to say at the moment though. Regardless my gratitude is unexplainable and I am currently at a loss for words.
>>98343038You need boobs and a pretty face (or good makeup) to market on instwhoregrams.
>>98350594How come they are not attacking the boats?
>>98309497>Come up with a scenario>Try putting it to paper>Writing is hardAm I retarded?
>>98357587No, writing IS hard.
>>98357635So how do I get good?
>>98357658By writing
>>98357658Yeah, write. Read a lot as well. Rewrite, have someone look over your writing.Your first results will likely be shit, that's just how it is.
>>98357658Same way you get good at anything else. Practice and constructive feedback. Can't help with the practice part, but once you do write something threads like this a good for feedback.
>>98357658I'll let you know when I get there.
Most orphans did not end up on the streets. The traditional peasant commune or extended family usually absorbed them. labor was the primary currency. Children were not the financial liabilities they are in modern post-industrial societies; they were net-positive economic assets from a very young age.By age five or six, a child could weed crops, scare birds away from seeds, or herd small livestock, or supervise younger kids. Because labor was valuable, relatives would take them in; even if they treated them like second-class, overworked servants (a "Cinderella" existence). Only those with zero surviving family or those from displaced refugee populations, due war, famine, disease, ended up on the streets. Genuine abandonment to street life required something to break that safety net specifically + no surviving kin at all, or a kin network that no longer physically existed to absorb you. Far more common were runaways surviving abuse, or outright abandoned due illegitimacy, or too many mouths to feed.
>>98366043I should try to rebuild that in KitHack Model Club.On a unrelated note, my master outline has transformed into the place I put revision notes and story plans.I am starting to wish I could create tabs and collapsing note sections, but I don't really feel like bothering learning a new piece of software when I just jumped to a proper modern word processor with lite desktop publishing features. A whole other program just for my outline and notes seems excessive. How do you guys handle your notes, outlines, and other planning related stuff?
>>98367641You guys are making notes? Honestly, I wish I knew. I've never been inclined towards making notes but when I do it's literally just another document with them completely unorganised. I suppose there must be some way to set up hyperlinks that either open another document or take you another part of the same document. If anyone has any ideas I would genuinely be interested, although I too do not feel like having to learn an entirely new piece of software.
>>98370571You reminded me I have a lore and worldbuilding note text file filled with references and notes to things too technical to reliability remember but too boring to directly put in my outline document. Think units of measurement, day night cycle lengths, regional temperature and weather ranges, spell components, that kind of thing.I should port it over to something that is organized rather than a random dump of text that gets harder to use the more I add to it.I have seen ads for stuff like world anvil but I ain't falling for a forever subscription just to organize my notes.There has to be a free offline alternative.
>>98362598>Most orphans did not end up on the streets.They got eaten by dragons...
>>98352422Maybe they are macing on each other and the boat people are taking notes on dragons spitting game.Can you imagine the kind of pickup lines someone can come up with after a few hundred years?
>>98357587I have problem where I can't really do dialogues that sounds organic. But then again, I also tend to often dislike dialogues in films and books because they overdramatize the delivery.
Work on a cover may begin soon.
>>98326202I meant to say, if you're looking for some anti-dragon media you might try Pantheon; it's an animated series on Netflix.It's a bit schizophrenic because it's written as pro-dragon most of the way through, but then it takes a *wild* left turn in the last two episodes of the second season. (added bonus: it finished with two seasons so Netflix can't cancel it before they get to the end)
I want to try my hand at some writing. I just wonder what are the biggest writing pitfalls or gripes you have from amateur fantasy writers.I know I can look up and get articles, but those always have a snobby pseudo academic "vibe" to them where here the responses are more attached to the ground of Earth and to me more trustworthy if coming from a genuine place.
>>98392279Apeing DND.
>>98392279>I just wonder what are the biggest writing pitfalls or gripes you have from amateur fantasy writers.In this current age the temptation of AI is constant, especially for amateurs in the fantasy genre. Nothing will retard your progress and skills as a writer more than leaning on AI to generate the bulk of your writing.
>>98392279Have a coherent theme for your world. Neither bore the reader with endless world-building nor just make up stuff on the spot whenever you feel like it.The coherent, inherent theme shouldn't be shoved into your reader's face (unless it's also the core conflict for the story), it should be something subtle that permeates through the world, its people, their stories. A well from which everything else flows naturally.You should world-build, and most of what you come up with should not matter for the reader. It should matter for you, be a basis for your decisions for why things happen the way they happen and why things are the way they are.
I've noticed I care less and less of fantasy stuff and I'm now basically writing snippets of historical fiction. I guess either I don't care enough for fantasy or history is interesting on its own. Granted, none of the snippets required any magic. I wonder if I should commit or find a compromise.
>>98389956Thanks for the recommendation.
Don't care if you don't want to hear me yapping about AI again.I threw the timeline of my current setting into it and had it double-check for consistency, errors, gaps and whatever else seems illogical. Indeed pretty helpful, allowed me to smooth some things out.Also talked a bit about the religion of a country, and my issues with it. It helps, if you don't have anyone else to torture with your autism, but its own suggestions are often garbage. You can explain what exactly your issues are and ask for ways to solve it, like different historical inspirations. The AI suggested something that was in line with some previously established theme, which I didn't think about. But the suggestion itself wasn't great, in the sense that it took the idea too far, too fantastical.
>>98393444History inspired magical realism?Could also be you should could benefit from focusing on character and plot and let the particulars of setting follow from the kind of characters and plot you want to write most.
Thoughts on a episodic series of short stories structured like tv show episodes.I don't mean like serialized web novels. I mean each short story might be connected but each story also works as a standalone.
Overhauling my magic system again. Mostly to just add stuff to it. But it's likely to get complicated enough that I actually need to take notes to keep everything straight now. Better to do it sooner into this new project rather than later.
>>98411236I think both serialisation and connected short stories are an underrated artform.
>>98413051I partially figured it out. I will just add things to the system based around the concept that was giving me a hard time.Mostly modifiers that I can keep in a quick reference note for myself. The writing continues.
Character's answer when asked in world what a spirit beast is. >Spirit beast are a walking crossroads. A liminal being. A imperfect synthesis that doesn't belong anywhere but can go everywhere.I like it even if a bit vague and overly dramatic.
Sometimes I worry that the line between creepy and cringe is too thin. I have read too much extreme horror and splatter punk. I need to read more stuff to subtlety in it's horror. Gore and guts is so one note and gets old. Dread, doom, suspense, these things should also be apart of a well crafted horror story. I realize that now.
>>98411236Sure, why not.
>>98417998I mean... that might be verging a bit on the pretentious side.>>98420796>Sometimes I worry that the line between creepy and cringe is too thin.The line between any intense emotion and cringe can be a very fine one. The noble sacrifice of one of your main characters can be the lynchpin of a story, or it can just become farce if you lay on the pathos a little too thick. And as for romance... trying to give romance some snap while avoiding cringe is like tightrope walking on piano wire. But yes, in horror just throwing in more and more gore is both boring and makes it seem like it was written by an edgy fourteen year old.
I've fallen into a funk, where I'm more interested in making poorly drawn pictures of my world and stories as I imagined them than actually writing them down.Writing is hard. Damned hard. Trying to put pen to paper has become more difficult as I've grown older and read "the theory". I used to be able to churn out sprawling, year-long D&D campaigns and my players loved them. But now that I'm trying write "coherent", linear stories for myself, I find it so much more difficult. The creative drive is still there, which is why I'm killing my hand making these mspaint pictures with a mouse.Why am I posting this? I guess I just wanted to share my woes and I'm looking to commiserate with fellow writer's block enthusiasts.
>>98426603Reminds me of those monk drawings or art from illuminated manuscripts.
>>98426603That's pretty good art.
>>98426603For the record, I've finished 3 short stories, but I'm self-conscious about them and they're in constant revision. I've rewritten the first one about 4 times now and I'm still unhappy with it.All three of them have the same protagonist at various stages of his life. First one is about him and a witch finding shelter during war. Second is about him slaying a dragon with mundane and supernatural aid, which is the longest. And third is about him becoming king. The ideas are there and I like them, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.>>98426612That's the idea. I showed it to a friend and he said it "belongs on a church window".I'm also inspired by Ivan Bilibin paintings, a style that I'd like to replicate if I ever get better at drawing.>>98426614Thanks, I'm glad you like it.
>>98417998>>98424469Have a pretentious character say it.
>>98429780Give me the old ice age block mtg vibes.
>>98426603>>98426626I mean this in the nicest possible way, it's kind of amazing how you manage to be really talented and really bad as an artist at the same time. That composition is *chef's kiss*, and perspective, colours, even historical accuracy is all perfect. It just needs... well, more than basic MS Paint skills. You're going to be really good at art when you get good at art. If you see what I mean.
>>98435479Thanks. I know I'm a bad artist, and I haven't progressed since high school, but the drive to create is really strong, and the drive to post it is even stronger. I would love to improve, but to hire a tutor and buy a tablet is out of the question, since I live in a country with low wages and high prices, and I'm otherwise preoccupied with other things.
>>98436727You don't need paid tutors. Simply keep on practicing and you'll get better, and if you feel like you need help there are a ton of tutorials on Youtube. As for a tablet, personally I think physical art will always have an edge over digital art anyway. Paper and pencils are cheap, too. However, that said, it's always worth keeping an eye on Amazon for discounts; you'd be surprised how cheap you can find tablets sometimes.
Would a MC who is basically dressed like a silver age superhero in a fantasy setting be cringe?
Been working on my meta outline again and have come to a very hard choice. When I first conceived of my project I more or less wanted it to be a kitchen sink multiverse type thing. Not just portals to other worlds, but hubworlds of thousands of portals that all lead to other worlds which all had their own hubs of even more. But as a developed plot and started to develop the themes and charcters, it just makes more sense to focus on one "other world" as the main setting. I can even pull in most of my story ideas that would have happened in other worlds into the main setting with rather minor modifications. Though sadly I will have to shelve some of them. By focusing on one setting, one world, I am able to not just get super deep into the worldbuilding, but I can also avoid the nihilism that slowly builds up with a overly large multiverse story. So what I figure is I will do this. I will change the objective the MC is given by the entity that sends him to the other world. The world he is sent to has been sealed off from portals being able to work. He has been given the seemingly impossible task in very vague prophetic poetic terms to break that seal so that the entity can have his way with that sealed off world. The story is contained to MC's adventures in that world. By the end of the story MC does learn how to break the seal, but also finds out that if he does the entity would reek awful havoc on the world that the MC spend the whole story forming a connection to. Thus he sacrifices both going back to earth and the power to travel the multiverse in order to save the world from the entity's chaos. That or if by that point I still want to continue the story and still go in the multiverse direction, then write a ending where the entity is tricked/trapped somehow at the climax to the story after the seal is broken, and follow up with the consequences of portals now working in followup stories. But that would be a future me problem to plot out.
>>98441014As long as there is a good in universe reason for it it's probably fine.
I'M SO FUCKING TIRED OF EDITING MY NOVELMAKE IT STOP
The utility branch of matter manipulation in my setting is called arcane synthesis.I have more or less called it this since I started world building this setting and it's magic system. When I was talking to a friend about my latest writing project and brought up arcane synthesis they complained the name was weird and misleading. I am now second guessing if i should keep calling it arcane synthesis since that is what I have been calling it (in my head and notes) for months or if I should change it before I am too deep in drafting. If I should change it then I am open to suggestions.
>>98449735You doing major revisions or error checking?
>>98455197Last final touch before the release. Mostly, improving the prose. Small improvments. But there are also mistakes from previous editing, like a leftover word from the previous sentence or half a sentence somewhere doing nothing.It's also good to add a bit more detail here and there and I noticed that the region next to the state my story takes place in is mentioned as being east of it. It should be south of it. Not north, not west, south. Why the fuck did I write east when in the map in my head they are coming from the south?I'm the kind of person that says "right" and points left. That's the only explanation.Need to get this done until the end of the week, start making the document for the paperbag, so that the designer has the measurements for the cover. Hope she will do a good job
>>98456059I wish you all the luck in the world.
>>98457447Thank you. Only 160 pages left.I realized that I need to add a glossary
do you guys have any sort of writing resources for retards who want to start making their own campaigns/adventures?
>>98451953Matter manipulation as in just moving objects around, matter manipulation as in changing the substance of an object from one thing to another, or matter manipulation as in creating objects out of nothing?If it's the third one, the name is perfect. If it's one of the other two, then it is confusing because it put me in mind of the third one.If it's the second one it should be called Arcane Transmutation, if it's the first one then Arcane Manipulation. >>98458632>I realized that I need to add a glossaryAs much effort as it is, believe me, your readers will thank you. >>98458966You know, you would think that should be exactly the sort of thing we have. I'm almost embarrassed to say that we don't.Although honestly, you can make a perfectly good campaign with just a basic text editor and MS Paint; I certainly have. A folder each for setting notes, story notes, plans for each individual session, and maps, and you're good to go. Or if you mean resources to give you inspiration and tell you what to write for a campaign, again, it's not that hard. Start with a basic three act structure; beginning where you introduce the players to your world and set the plot in motion, middle where they're tested and grow in their abilities, and end where the plot comes to a head. Try to write situations that test skill specialities your players have - for example, if you have a Rogue or Rogue-like character, plan for infiltration missions - and remember to plan for when they go off the rails. Keep those basics in mind, and you can't go too far wrong.
>>98461537It's mostly used to refine then combine materials (including at the molecular level) using magic, but can be used to shape material into finished products if the person is skilled enough. So for example using arcane synthesis to turn bauxite ore, silicon crystals, and a handful of powdered copper into a ingot of aluminum alloy. With a expert synthesist being able to produce a finished part instead of a ingot, and a master able to combine parts they created using synthesis to create finished complex objects from base materials.So the reason why I used the term arcane synthesis is because its usually used to process and then combine materials. However since the materials are in a state of flux someone who is more skilled can create finished complex objects from unprocessed base materials.Was honestly inspired more by the crafting systems of a lot of video and table top games. Where you bring a list of the right materials to a crafting table while having the right skill level to automagically process, refine, then combine the materials into useful stuff based on recipes and blueprints found in the world. I just didn't expect anyone to object to the name. I think transmutation would fit if it was fundamentally changing one material to another material, like lead into gold. But it doesn't/can't do that. It could change the shape of the lead. Could even use it to plate a thin layer of gold onto lead to fake it. But can't change a base material or element on a atomic level.
>>98461744Actually, now that you explain it I see your point. I think Arcane Synthesis works just fine for that.
>>98445032Reminds me of this...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Dragon_(2004_film)
>suddenly have the urge to turn an investigation chapter into a chaseThe first third of the novel is pretty calm overall, but it's really not like there needs to be action all the time. And other things I tell myself.Tomorrow is deadline (self-imposed), no more rewrites. There will be regrets.
Need ideas/help with a magic system for my homebrew world. It started as a bog standard DND fantasy for the DND games I ran but I've deviated quite heavily from those roots into something that no longer supports the Vancian casting system.Basically, I don't know if I should make magical talent innate, learned, or both, like how only some people irl can be surgeons but they still need years of training. And I don't know if it should be ritualistic or mathematical or bargained from higher/lower powers or maybe all of the above. The only thing I know for certain right now is that I want magic to spend the caster's stamina, and tire them out.Can you guys share some magic systems that you thought were interesting? Be it from books or movies or video games.
>>98469651>talent innate, learned, or both,both, with different users having different sources
Is 3 chapters too long to get into a otherworld/portal story?I feel like the reader wouldn't get a chance to feel out the main character before they are changed by the inciting event if I started the story with him going to the other world within the first page, but it's the standard of the subgenera to get to the otherworld as soon as possible, often within their first few paragraphs.I could probably rework the beginning to get to the premise in a single chapter but then the characterization would suffer since after the inciting event they will be isolated and dehumanized in more than one sense of the word.I don't think the effect of the change will be noticeable to a reader unless they can see the before and after changes in personality, nor will it be as gratifying as they slowly recover to their true self as the story progresses. But none of that matters if the reader doesn't make it past the first chapter, page, paragraph, or even first sentence. I guess I could do a full rewrite in first person and just tell the reader the MC's thoughts and feelings directly, but I prefer 3rd person limited and have the most practice in writing from that perspective.
>>98473640You could always open with an inmediares/flashforward and then go back in time to show the protag doing boring stuff before getting sucked into the otherworld.
I'm not much of a writer myself, I want to make a game that will be written by random authors, whoever wants to participate.For that I need a framework that will help authors align, to incorporate world's characters into their sub-plots in a coherent manner.DnD alignment is the first thing that comes to mind, but it lacks the nuance to make coherent complex characters.I present my character-alignment system: two hills alignment.One hill is for fundamental values of a character, what is important to them in life. The other is their modus operandi, what way of acting do they think is correct.Each character has their unique hills that guide how they interact with the world and the others. Each character sits at the top of their hills and sees deviation from the top as "doing too much" or "doing too little".
Example 1: imagine a villain, that would be "lawful evil" in DnD, but that doesn't tell you much about him. Now imagine his hills: "wealth" is the mission, "befriending the right people" is the MO. This already gives you an idea of some billionaire CEO that has a lot of connections and sees corruption as just a way to get things done.His mission of "wealth" implies that he thinks positively about poor-but-aspiring entrepreneurial guys and despises those who don't value money at all. He will think positively of any paperclip optimizer who does horrendous things for profit, but if that causes massive destructions and threatens the environment or the whole planet, this billionaire will be against it, as there's no much point in wealth if you make it impossible to make use of it.He will also think positively of anyone trying to build connections, think that those who don't make connections are silly, and if someone befriends politicians by inviting them to a special island it would look weird and concerning to him.So, this "villain" can be a positive character in certain scenarios, when someone gets too greedy to be sane, or more corrupt than he thinks is reasonable.
Example 2: imagine a paladin, that would be "lawful good" without telling you much. Now imagine his hills: "social harmony" is the mission, "spreading the word of deity" is the MO.He will absolutely fight the criminals and despise them. He will not slaughter the heretics who slightly deviate from the approved scripture. He will not care about deep theological dogmas and mostly care about "be a good citizen" part.This is a kind of a paladin who can eventually be claimed a heretic himself, and he won't care, since the good part of scripture are just a way to make people be nice to each other.
Feel free to steal this alignment framework / criticize it / refine it.There can be more than 2 hills of course, but this already gives enough nuance for a coauthor to decide how would a character likely act. For most side characters overconstraining will be unnecessarily suffocating. Two hills can also easily map to a simple cartesian grid which might help with visualisation.
So, what's your favourite type of narrator? First person, third person, omniscient? What subtype do you prefer? Do you play with it?
>>98482873Close third for reading, distant third for what I prefer writing. Internalality isn't something I am great at writing since I think about scenes visually rather than as a mind reader. If I actually liked drawing I would probably make comics instead of prose writing, but I don't so I use words to construct mind pictures instead. I find when I write first person I make more mistakes with tense and have a harder time editing. There is also too much of a temptation to tell instead of show when writing in first person for me.Second person is fun for actually interactive storytelling but is pretty gimmicky for noninteractive stuff, and only tolerable in limited doses. It doesn't work for a full book, even a short one.
>>98309525Dragons you say?This is Malathrax. Malathrax was a Black Dragon of considerable cunning and interest in magic, who became a lich (yes he's a Daurgothoth expy). I like my dragons capable of reason, with wisdom and intellect, but utterly alien when it actually comes to humanoid concepts laws and rights since they can't really be bothered to understand other moral framework than might makes right.Before I might have been tempted to figure out something truly original, but I'd rather see a cliche done well and enjoyably rather than trying something brave and bold and kind of half-assing it.Does this guy look like a romcom protagonist?
So I have an idea for a campaign. It will likely be dnd or sotdd or something similar, system doesn't matter much.What does matter is that the idea of the campaign is the players start off waking up in a town in the middle of an apocalypse along with many other npcs. The concept of the campaign would be them figuring out how to escape from this place, going through all kinds of weird encounters/escapades/etc and figuring out the rules of the land they're stuck in.My hangup is setting this up in a way that is inherently engaging? I want my players to feel invested in the roleplaying side of things, so going "you're stuck in a land you have no connection to" seems kind of counterintuitive to that. Does anyone have any idea or experience dealing with something similar? Or know of modules I can take a look at?
>>98492341No, I don't like this...>>98473709I don't really like alignment systems at all.>>98473640I don't know about portals, but for example LotR books start with rather mundane life in the Shire, but writing slowly gets more ominous and heroes have to set off on the journey. Some don't like this drag, but I liked it, if it's written right.
So, my group of friends are fighting orcs in the big campaign I am running for them, but I've come at an impasse. Up until now, I had pretty chatty enemies (bandits, pirates, slavers) that they roleplayed with.But with the orcs, I wonder, if it's scarier if they don't talk at all. If they don't even speak the human languages, and don't even make warcries except for guttural howls. I wonder if I should even give them a motivation besides the desire to pillage the area. To go a step further than Tolkien and make them completely subhuman, ravenous monsters. Should I give them a voice, or keep them speechless?
>>98494605>I don't really like alignment systems at all.Any better way to ensure character consistency between authors writing semi-independent side-stories for a set of characters?
>>98503643Same way comics have done it for nearly a century...Which I don't actually know but should look up on the small chance I work on a collaborative project.
>>98503643That's hopeless, if you have alignment system or not.
>>98503643Archetypes.Clear basic simple archetypes at the core of the characters.
>>98507388Maybe not hopeless but pretty hard if you don't have a guy that can veto inconsistent takes early.Anyway, I'd start with simple characters, probably more "action-y" characters (or anyway not really dealing with much introspection), and a CLEAR and short outline of them/their world/their kind of stories.
>>98517767The fuck are bunch of wolf creatures doing in dwarf ruins. There is nothing to eat for them there.
>>98521251Well, same for the dwarves. And that hugeass dragon, which presumably has quite the dietary necessities
>>98521251They eat the giant rats, which eat the giant cockroaches, which eat the poop of the giant bats, which leave the caverns to hunt every night thereby bringing fresh nutrients into the cavern ecosystem.Alternatively, they just eat adventurers.>>98522315That has always been my biggest gripe with dwarves as a fantasy race, because they're always portrayed as this super-isolationist people and yet their entire mountain-fastness way of life wouldn't be possible without extensive trade networks to allow them to sell their minerals and gemstones in exchange for agricultural produce grown by other races.
>>98309549I'm with you on the practical implications. It makes the setting more interesting, so many people are focused on the dragons themselves that they forget their narrative purpose.
>>98520953"IKKŌ-SHŪ could be here" he thought, "I've never been in this province before. There could be IKKŌ-SHŪ anywhere." The cool metal felt good against his bare chest. "I HATE IKKŌ-SHŪ" he thought. Wadaiko reverberated his entire suit of armor, making it pulsate even as the 9 Mon sake circulated through his powerful thick veins and washed away his (merited) fear of Ikkō-ikki after dark. "With a horse, you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.
>>98522917>That has always been my biggest gripe with dwarves as a fantasy race, because they're always portrayed as this super-isolationist people and yet their entire mountain-fastness way of life wouldn't be possible without extensive trade networks to allow them to sell their minerals and gemstones in exchange for agricultural produce grown by other races.This is perhaps more a worldbuilding thread matter, but the first solution that comes to my mind is that the missing link is filled by a dwarven merchant class who are in far more contact with the outside world: as fellow dwarves they're the only ones able to enter and trade with dwarf settlements, but only begrudgingly, as regular dwarves shun them as untrustworthy outcasts and tend to restrict where they can go/what they can do, extending in some places to just "go to the designated outsider market area on the outskirts of the city, sell your shit, buy our shit, and gtfo".On the bright side, this exclusive access to the dwarven market means that the merchant dwarves make a ton of money out of it and live very well on the surface; perhaps they collude together as a cartel and leverage their exclusive access to squeeze as much as possible out of both sides of the trade.
>>98527879The fact that I understand this completely probably means that I've been on 4chan way too long. >>98528227Even with a merchant class, though, you still have the issue that transportation in the pre-modern world wasn't the best and generally cities had to have a large agricultural hinterland around them, or at the very least be situated in a good place for trade. If you build a city up in the mountains, that gets snowed in every winter, and you're relying on some human farmers hundreds of miles away to keep you fed, then the moment there's any kind of food shortage or war, you're fucked.Ancient Rome was centrally located with the sea not twenty miles away, so when there was a bad harvest in Italy they could ship in food from as far away as Egypt. And because they had complete political control over the entire Mediterranean basin, if Rome needed food the rest of the known world didn't have the option of saying no. But if you build a city up in the mountains, cargo ships - which are really the only way to transport grain in large quantities - are out of the question. Barges, maybe, for some of the journey, although you'll still need a shitton of wagons for the last leg. In a *good* year you'd struggle to shift all that food to where it's needed. The moment your trading partners are hit by a bad harvest, or there's some political trouble and an army cuts off the trade route, you're fucked; you don't control those fields, if the local lord decides he'd rather not let his workforce starve - or if a non-local lord is actively trying to make his rival's workforce starve by burning the fields - there's nothing you can do about it. There's a reason Tibet never became a major world power. Mountain empires just don't work... well, I say that with the caveat that anything can work if you're creative enough, but dwarves as they're generally portrayed just don't work the moment you consider the logistics of it all.
>>98527879>>98529186it's the variation of the most famous /lit/ pasta
>>98522917>wouldn't be possible without extensive trade networks to allow them to sell their minerals and gemstones in exchange for agricultural produce grown by other races.Oyster mushrooms' yield per sqm is 10x of the plant crops' yield.Dwarves are also likely to have slower metabolism as they didn't have to adapt to rapid-burst-of-activity lifestyle of human hunter-gatherers.Their drive to mine could be an evolutionary adaptation to create more space for mushrooms.Trading with others doesn't have to be essential to them if you get your fantasy ecosystems right.
>>98500327If they're silent they're alien and spooky. If they can talk they become more of a faction. Communication is key to human understanding of intelligence, but if they're silent AND well coordinated, there's a kind of implicit dread. Like what takes human beings a solid amount of conscious thought to do, they can do on instinct. Just a thought.
How I imagine sentient non-civilized orks to communicate with each other and any humanoids:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YlJJZvZifM
>>98531661And this is why I added the caveat that if you're creative enough, anything can work. But that's not how dwarves are traditionally portrayed. Meat, bread and beer, that's the traditional dwarf diet, and those are the exact three things that are very difficult to get in the mountains (wheat not being something that grows well in mountains, and meat just being rare in general in pre-modern times).I like the idea of dwarves having a slower metabolism; it would explain why their lifespans are longer. However, on the other hand mining is pretty labour-intensive work. And even mushrooms require soil to grow in; rock alone isn't enough. Maybe some kind of underground lakes that are fed nutrients by rivers coming from the surface? But your basic point is right, though: if you understand ecosystems you can get away with a lot. It's just the biggest writers who include dwarves in their settings don't put that much thought into it.It's funny, Tolkien is regarded as the ultimate worldbuilder for all the detail he put into the languages and the history of Middle Earth, but he's really slim on the economics, ecology, technology... really anything to do with anything that requires expertise in the sciences rather than the humanities. And now I'm wondering what Lord of the Rings would look like if it'd been written by Frank Herbert.
>>98534803>And now I'm wondering what Lord of the Rings would look like if it'd been written by Frank Herbert.Bad?Never understood why Herbert is somehow hailed as a great scientific WB, anyway. He did a passing work on getting you something about desert ecology, but that's it. The rest? Technobabble. I mean, he DID start with interesting technobabble, I think overall he did nail how to do a feudal future justification with small touches of mostly believable scientific loopholes, but that's it. The rest is definitely social sciences, and your mileage may vary on that.That being said Tolkien is particulary funny in how much he didn't give a flying fuck on food growth. Like, the Misty Mountains? Full with goblins with a penchant for meat, while Eriador is almost empty.(don't think the dwarves per se are particulary bad tough. Always figured they simply imported their grains)
>>98534803>It's funny, Tolkien is regarded as the ultimate worldbuilder for all the detail he put into the languages and the history of Middle Earth, but he's really slim on the economics, ecology, technology...He focused more on what he knew best and liked best, like linguistics. It's like how whole of Arnor is empty, due to plagues or whatever, in the past, but it's been hundreds of years, it just doesn't make sense.But it was not that kind of story anyway.
>>98534837Forget Herbert's science for a moment. He at least understands that an economy is necessary. If Tolkien had written Dune the Fremen would just have been these romantic desert people living inexplicably in a totally barren wilderness; he'd have devoted a couple of pages to their language, a few more to their rugged barbarian culture, and the only thing he'd have said about how they actually survive in the desert is something like 'they know a lot of bird calls which helps them track birds who can find water'.Whereas Herbert understands that for the Fremen to survive in an environment like that, they would need Stillsuits, they would need things like dew traps and water reclamation. But he goes beyond that as well. When Paul first goes to a Sietch, he sees that the Fremen have industry; small, portable industry, but they can synthesise chemicals and manufacture plastics. I think his worldbuilding on that score is a lot deeper than you give him credit for; easily overlooked, it's hardly the most memorable part of the books, but even if Herbert doesn't go into a huge amount of detail he at least understands that that stuff is necessary to make the Fremen feel real.He also mentions how Harkonnen spice extraction operations have affected the Fremen, and how they trade spice through smugglers to buy off the Guild. George R.R. Martin asked 'What was Aragorn's tax policy', and then proceeded to write a bunch of books that barely touch on the logistics of the Seven Kingdoms at all. Herbert did it thirty years earlier and he did it better. >>98536804And I don't begrudge Tolkien that. My point was more that the fantasy community holds him up as the paragon of worldbuilding, when in reality he put a lot of detail into one or two areas and ignored vast swathes of the rest.
>>98540367>Forget Herbert's science for a moment. He at least understands that an economy is necessary.I can concede that. Indeed, never really got the fremen appeal too much - give me more Landsraad sheaningans, less desert warriors wanking
>>98536804>>98540367I'd argue that Tolkien was trying to lean more into making an original mythology rather than regular fantasy, in which case>George R.R. Martin asked 'What was Aragorn's tax policy'misses the point about as much as if he asked the same about Gilgamesh or Agamemnon
>>98540715Yeah, but people miss the point in that Gurm was asking it as a rhetorical, to show differences in story. At least that was the context.
I may have a cover.Looks good. Actually two, two different perspectives. Have a bit of time to decide which one. I'm overall pleased with the result.
>>98540715>>98542898Martin understood that Tolkien had deliberately set out to create a story that was more like an old legend, but his problem with it was that that had - at least when he started A Song of Ice and Fire - become the template for fantasy as a genre. The direct quote is:>Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy?and then he goes on to the real meat of his problem with Tolkien, which I think often gets overlooked next to the 'What was Aragorn’s tax policy?' soundbite: >And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?His main criticism was that Tolkien wrote in a very simple moral universe, but very rarely throughout history has war been a simple case of good guys vs bad guys. And I see his criticism: Tolkien gives his characters some challenges in the physical sense, but they never actually have to face any hard moral choices. Even with Smeagol there's never any ambiguity about what Frodo is *supposed* to do with him. A modern author would at least tease the reader with the possibility that Smeagol might actually betray Frodo at a crucial moment and his compassion would have doomed everyone, but Tolkien is always very clear that Frodo *should* be compassionate to Smeagol, and rewards him for doing so. Tolkien's stories do not have the moral complexity of real life. And that's deliberate, but I think it's fair for Martin to question whether that should be the whole fantasy genre, and try to do something different.
>>98545285...except he doesn't, really, because the Starks are very clearly the good guys and the Lannisters are very clearly the bad guys, no matter how he'd like to pretend he's writing morally grey characters. Okay, the good guys can lose sometimes in Martin's story, which is something, but they're still very clearly the good guys and will probably win in the end in some form or another. Which once again brings me back to: Herbert did it decades earlier and he did it better, because Paul Atreides is a real subversion of the Aragorn archetype. Huge spoilers for anyone who hasn't read the books by the way, if you're waiting for the film series to wrap up, skip this: The outsider who overthrows a corrupt ruler and leads his people to freedom and prosperity by defeating the forces of evil... except his people are a bunch of religious fanatics and by unleashing them on the galaxy he starts a war that kills billions of innocent people. For all his noble qualities, at the end of the day Paul selfishly manipulated the Fremen and thought nothing of all the little people out there who'd be destroyed by his bid for power.
How little worldbuilding do you think I can get away for a minicampaign?I was thinking about a fantasy Monster of the Week thing set in a rundown little hamlet in a dark cursed forest that regularly spews out a new monstrosity for players to tackle, but I can't figure out a good setting to put it in. I don't really feel like making my own other than the bounds of the forest and maybe a local lord who technically owns the forest but mostly ignores it cause curse.
>>98545574>How little worldbuilding do you think I can get away for a minicampaign?I mean I have done minicampaigns where I improvised the whole time, or just used random maps that sort of fit, along with standard session prep. So to answer, as little as you need to run a fun session. If you can't really improv on the fly, then you need more stuff build ahead of time.That said, it's good to have a basic conflict driver so you can always fall back on it for something for the players to do, which you appear to have with your cursed forest that generates monsters. Grab a vilage template/map, sprink it with a few NPCs that are both useful and amusing to your players, then whip up a few monsters and encounter maps for the forest edge.Bing bam boom, you got all the prep you need to run at least one session and see how it goes.
>>98545574You can probably just wing it. I would suggest having some cool locations tough, even if it's just a list with some details, saya) old cemetery - actually kinda comfy for ruins? - lots of brambles and shit tough, difficult to navigate
What do the dragons need all that gold for anyway?
>>98546752Whatever fits the story and it's themes.Or in the case of lore building for a game, D&D more or less explains it's to do with their life cycle and preparation for death. The rare times a dragon in that setting dies of old age their treasure is converted into energy or whatever and becomes part of their spirit as they pass on.So in a way, dragons can take their worldly possessions with them in death. With the more they have converts into more soul power in the afterlife. Though it's been a long while since I dug into the lore and probably got details wrong. That said if something else works better for your setting or story then go with that instead.
In my setting, I like treating dragons as more of a natural force or natural disaster, rather than an actual creature. I almost treat them more as colossal elementals.I also like naming them after dragons in irl mythologies (Fafnir, Ladon, Nidhoggr, Typhon, etc)
>>98545574Worldbuilding is generally like seasoning on a meal: sprinkling a little on top can really take a simple steak up another notch.But if you don't have it, you still have the steak.Players don't generally notice that stuff too much, especially over a short campaign. I always think it's worth investing in good worldbuilding for a big project; while players don't generally notice fine details individually, they do eventually get the feeling that they're walking through a theatre set rather than a fully-realised world. However, for a simple Monster of the Week minicampaign, I doubt they'll feel the difference.Although, just as a suggestion: if you're worried about worldbuilding, just do it as a historical setting (well, fantasy-historical, obviously). Black Forest Germany, late 14th century, or maybe eastern Poland if you want to crib from the Witcher. Then if you need a detail you don't have to bother making it up, you can just look up the actual history online. But your players probably aren't going to know the history in any great detail so when you want you can ignore it and just go based on vibes.>>98546752Traditionally, dragons were more than just big lizards. They were sort of physical embodiments of evil, or sin - especially greed, and vanity. That they don't really need gold is kind of the point, their lust for it is - kind of like dwarves but moreso - a character flaw designed to demonstrate a moral lesson. >>98546865Also a good way to use dragons as embodiments of certain characteristics rather than just big lizards.
Better question, what do the dragons need the virgin maidens for...
>>98552182https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR2rGt_4T4A
>>98318206Your sentences are so short. It needs some sort of pacing/punctuation fixes as it reads like a list
>>98552182I honestly can't recall any stories where that trope is sincerely used. I have literally only seen parody or it used as a joke.
>>98553986How far into the story did you make it?
>>98554651Why does it matter?A bad opening makes for a bad story overall. Also the formatting is aggressively unpleasant to the extreme.
For some reason, I enjoy humilliating and embarrassing my MC. I guess it is because it allows her to drop or tone down her swagger and reveal her inner core.
>>98556039Anon...
>>98554597Saint George and the dragon Well, the dragon doesn't actually demand virgin sacrifices, the town just chooses people by lot and George just happens to come along the day the princess - presumably a virgin - is chosen. But since then the motif of a noble hero slaying the dragon to recue a virgin girl has been firmly embedded in dragon lore. Although it goes further back even than that; the legend of Saint George and the dragon was probably borrowed from the story of Perseus and Andromeda (in that case Andromeda was going to be sacrificed to a sea monster, but same principle).
>>98560820Makes sense then, where the trope comes from.
>>98469651I did the following: Clerics and Paladins get their shit from Gods. Sorcerers and Wizards can draw from the big primordial soup of magic, but with caveats. Sorcerers can access it innately, but with risks of mutation, whereas wizards need longer time to start, but it's much safer.Warlocks get their magic from another sufficiently powerful entity that is not a God.Druids get their shit from the lifeforce of the world they're on and this works as an incentive to keep things green.Biggest problem is the spell slots and knowledge how magic is structured. I like man made structured magical systems that main cast uses so it's surprising when a bad guy has some wild shit in their pocket.
>>98570442A shark dragon? Something about it feels off, but full marks for originality.
How good for a setting is late 17th-early 18th century for a rogue?
>>98575013Extremely. You get pirates, revolutions, flintlocks and all the good shit. The Three Musketeers come from that period.
Does anyone here have a pantheon of gods/deities in their setting and if so then tell us all about them?
>>98575249Only 3 (technically 2) so it's not much of a pantheon. Sun/energy Father SolEarth/matter Mother SorMoon/mystic knowledge daughter Sou, but Sou isn't actually a real god and is worshipped erroneously due to mistakes in the historical record. She is actually a Immortal and has on several occasions tried to stop the worship of herself without success. Spirits are more present within the story though.The true gods can't directly interact with mortals in my story/world.Spirits very much can and often do. I also mostly pants making up spirits that are tailored for the portion of the story they appear.
>>98572856That guy (arvalis) on Deviantart has a lot of wird dragons.
>>98575947>arvalisOkay clearly this guy is talented but is it just me or do most of his pics have some kind of uncanny valley to them? As in, they almost look natural but not quite.
>>98578775No idea, have something different.
Tell me if it's gas or ass:What if the cliché fantasy got up to the Renaissance and decided to invade orientalist fantasy? That’s how we get Ultegra a land on a break from plundering and pillaging.Aicantar is a racist half-elf antiquarian clerk pretending to be a High Elf because he desperately wants to be somebody other than a bastard.Orsa is a seven-foot half-orc woman pretending to be human because getting work is simply easier when people don’t immediately sort you into “orc muscle.” They meet when Aicantar steals the wrong ring during a perfectly planned heist and accidentally becomes warlock to one fragment of a dismembered archdevil; Orsa catches him, four smugglers show up, they kill them together, cover it up, don’t exchange names, and then immediately get hired onto the same archaeological expedition.All of this happens on an overseas colonial frontier where the Empire rules through charter companies, mercenaries, missionaries, aristocratic treaties and enough bureaucracy that even gods have to be officially registered. Outside the port cities it’s jungle, ruins, kobold territory, orc raiders, abandoned forts and local religions the colonizers only half understand. From there the two frauds get dragged through archaeology, mercenary work, corporate dirty jobs and increasingly illegal relic hunting while collecting the archdevil’s other eight pieces across Ultegra, the imperial homeland and eventually Hell.It ends with archdevil gets enough followers to become a legally recognized god, at which point Aicantar technically becomes a paladin and they found that world's equivalent of USAYes, this is me finding an outlet for big green muscle lady fetishes
>>98581491Fund it.
>>98545285>>98545294Definitely a good point. It's actually something I struggled to articulate in a conversation a little while ago. I do have general issues with Dune though. It's entirely consistent with Herbert's simplistic moral reasoning. Paul is presented as completely correct in his worldview. Herbert just had an equally black and white view from a weird messianic utilitarian standpoint. Correct me if I'm wrong, I have read the books for a few years.
>>98591267It has also been many years since I last read the books, but doesn't Herbert set Paul up as the hero in the first book then essentially rug-pulls the audience and shows that in many ways, Paul was the villain? He definitely referred to the second and third books as inversions of the first. The theme of the series is essentially 'this is what you get for believing in heroes'; that part might just be my interpretation though.Although I don't know why I'm bothering with spoilers since the trailer for the third movie was apparently made by a marketing team whose sole brief was to cram in as many spoilers as possible. Even knowing roughly what happens I was still kind of annoyed.
How do you come with with a plotline?
>>98608079Have something you want to tell.
>>98608079Plot comes from character. A bad writer decides what's going to happen and then tries to work out how to get his characters to play along. A good writer works out their characters first, then comes up with an inciting incident, and if they know their characters well enough then the story writes itself. The question becomes not 'how do I get my character from point A to point B', but 'if my character starts at point A, given their personality and how they react to things, where do they end up?'. And both character and plot come from setting. People are generally defined more than anything else by the environment which they come from, and your setting gives you the range of possible inciting incidents that can occur. A high-powered lawyer who'll do anything to win his case but has never touched a weapon in his life makes perfect sense in present-day New York, less so in a barbarian hill fort in a fantasy world. And vice versa for a dragon attack (although that would have made for a hell of an episode of Suits).Of course, it isn't entirely that simple. You can certainly design your setting and your characters to work better with certain plots. But generally speaking if you focus on following the natural consequences of environment and character, you'll find your plot easily enough and you'll be a better writer too.
>>98608079You made me realize I don't have anything resembling a method or structure in generating plots. Ever since childhood I just always had a few dozen at any given time just waiting for a way to be birthed into reality. It's picking out the good ones and then refining them into good stories that takes effort.
>>98614871If you consume a lot of stories of different media, you can easily get an instinctive understanding of how a story should be structured.It's still very worth getting into the craft of structuring plots, like the three acts, and also what plots exist (albeit, the exact number of how many plots exist within fiction is a silly and ongoing debate).
>>98608079What does the character want.What gets in his way.
>>98309525Dragons are beasts without empathy or really a spark of divinity. They are slaves to their baser natures which includes avarice, jealousy, rage, and hunger. They embody the typical aspects of the demonic and act as the physical embodiment of the 7 sins, which is why in most stories their counterpoint and foil is a hero of virtue, as it's representative that even small acts of good can defeat overwhelming established evil even if many good people perish. The liberated treasure being a representation of prosperity for overcoming odds and defeating a great evil. In a competent story, a dragon should be the greatest hill in said journey.
>>98482867"Excuse me ma'am. I apologize for bothering you but I couldn't help but notice that peculiar book you're reading. What is the title if you don't mind?""Oh this? It's called "A thousand little tragedies." Dramatic sounding I'm sure but it's a collection of short stories of people who meet...Unfortunate accidents and taken from the world even as they deal with their own unique problems. I think the author was trying to say something in particular."
>>98309525To Baliéf, he is very old, and he regrets the fanaticism he instilled in these poor people so, so long ago, when the caves of Guillot were small, and not filled with the riches of his ancient plunder of Erinland and Yookay.This of course, has not made him any less dangerous, though sated now, he believed that 300 years ago, and he still remembers fondly the scouring of the Angel of the North, colossal wood Golem rasied by desperate druids to stay his wrath, and remembers, deeply, the pure fear in the eyes of the fools who raised it when he revealed his great breath of fire.He attempts to calm this, and tells himself he has achieved all he has wanted to, and for his last 500 years, should look to tend to his Kobold Flock teach them the civilised ways he sees when flies over Erinland and Yookay from far above the sky, to look upon the works of the Little.He may not always remain so steadfast.I've only got the one Dragon in my setting and the gimmick of lapsing Tyranny Addict is a bit old hat, but hey, if the hat still works.
>>98309525I recently added dragons to my biopunk setting.I call them Shenshiryu (because I am a hack fraud and just combined "warrior" and "dragon" in japanese to a word). These are some rough concept sketches I drew for them today.The gist is this: they are sapient bioengineered beings created as autonomous aerial war organisms. Their bodies are long, lightweight and highly streamlined, with elongated necks and tails, predatory, vaguely reptilian/avian heads, powerful jaws and four limbs extensively adapted for flight. The forelimbs form the main wings, while the hind limbs support smaller secondary wings used for maneuvering, giving them a four-winged silhouette.Their bodies are covered in overlapping feather-like scales that function as lightweight armor. Beneath translucent regions lie chromatophoric tissues capable of vivid color displays. Their wing "feathers" are a type of artificial tissue within the setting that essentially enables levitation, called suspension vanes that help to reduce their effective weight and allow unexpectedly agile flight.They possess 2 clawed gripping digits on each of their limbs, reinforced wing spurs, powerful tails that grow a type of "living fiber" tissues that can stiffen into cutting lashes. They have glands in their mouth that can spray acid, venom or flammable fluids, serving as "breath weapons". Their resonant, echolocating voices can become destructive sonic weapons. Additionally they were designed to incorporate various weapon symbiotes.Their sizes varies greatly depending on the species: smaller ones are roughly 4.5–6 m long, while the largest Dragons commonly reach 15–18 m and around a tonne in mass, with some females approaching 20 m in lenght. Their females are typically larger than the males. They reproduce by laying eggs and the females are the primary caretakers of their offspring.
>>98624927They posses a strong oral tradition and culture, and have essentially a sort of vague "civilization" based around ancient shared traditions, sacred sites, territorial politics, and mutual understanding of just how dangerous they can be to one another. Thus, while perfectly willing to kill one another over disputes, vendettas and conflicts, they tend to not enact violence without reason. They do not have human minds or human sentiments though they are just as intelligent as humans, and can speak like humans. They are more akin to sapient, large predatory cats mixed with birds of prey.Speech is just one component to their communication. They produce speech trough their chests and deep in their throats, not their mouths. In addition to speech, they communicate via undulating calls, whistles, gnashing of their teeth and jaws, rumbles, growls and purring like sounds produced in their chest. An important part to their communication, but also sensory experience are precise cyclic clicks they produce that essentially serve as means of echolocation for them, allowing them to perceive and scan their environment with sound as much as they can with their sight. Thus when a "dragon" is observing someone closely that observation is felt and heard as much as it is seen.Song and singing plays an important role in their culture, especially in their territorial displays, kin identification, diplomacy and courtship. Their singing is a combination of all their vocal systems and has vague resemblance to whale songs combined with avian and human vocalizations. Female dragons tell their histories to their offspring via both just lessons and song and when males court females they sing to them. Males also are extremely proud and protective of their own songs and will view it as an insult and transgression if another male starts copying their songs. They are willing to kill over it.
>>98624929Importantly they are essentially a race of "peoples" rather than just war steeds and what not and their interactions with humans are shaped by their predatory psychology, history and territorial behavior. Large species may essentially treat humans as subjects if they inhabit a territory they claim as their own, demanding tribute etc, while smaller ones may extort or predate on human communities or view them as competitors or sometimes as allies. They are however immensely proud and often outright vain creatures and take offense to being treated as tamed beasts.Many regard having human vassals, tributaries and vassals as a sing of prestige and both male and female Shenshiryu engage in the behavior of trying to get humans to serve them rather than preying on them if they can help it. They want humans in their lairs and roosts because humans have hands that can decorate them to be pretty and also paint and ornament the bodies of the dragons themselves. They are however not at all above killing and eating humans if that is what they require to sustain themselves. They are also willing to kill and eat each other and when two Senshiryu come to blows and one is slain, the victor almost always consumes the slain individual. They view it as honoring the slain foe or prey as their strenght has the privilige of becoming part of something stronger.What they value more than pretty trinkets or even servants are weapon symbiotes. The wild and feral ones cannot grow them themselves, and thus they are willign to enter compacts and bargains with human factions for access to such bioweapon systems, that their bodies were engineered to accept. They thus often can operate in a mercenary like nature, though some bloodlines of them maintain generational pacts with some human factions for access to these symbiotes and augmentations
>>98624943They remain fiercely independent because from their point of view, their rightful masters (their creators) are all dead, and no human faction has the right to command them. They refer to ordinary humans as servants, commoners, peasants, plebians, peons, subjects and as lesser beings. The descendants of the cadet families of the ancient imperial house who created the Shenshiryu, get the honor of being referred to as "Royal Scions" or just Scions and thus are given greater deference and respect, but they are not viewed as the masters and rightful lords of the dragons, and thus they recognize no inherent obligation to obey them either. They are more willing to enter into compacts with the factions lead by such scions but these are more akin to political alliances than any master/servant relationships.The dragons regard themselves to being the servants of dead masters, and as their duty to endure and survive until their masters return and reclaim their rightful dominion over the colossal City the setting takes place in.The holiest places for the Dragons are the spiretops of the City (map related) which they view as their rightful roosting places and as neutral ground between all dragons. Spilling Shenshiryu blood upon a spire is their gravest tabboo. Spires serve as places where the dragons can gather for what passes as diplomacy and social gatherings across species and lineages for them. The fact that the Concordat (a faction mostly led by humans the dragons do not recognize as their masters) denies autonomous and feral dragons access to the crown spire of the City is a great offense to the dragons because they view it as the holiest of the spires and the tallest/first roost where their masters once adressed them.
>>98624951The existing Shenshiryu lineages all fall under these broad species categories.Donoryu — Great Dragons: The largest Shenshiryu, commonly 15–18 m long with 12.5–14.5 m wingspans, and around a tonne in mass. Oryu are immensely powerful, long-lived and heavily built aerial predators that dominate vast territories. They are patient, lineage-conscious and politically minded, with females fiercely guarding matrilineal territorial inheritance.Senryu — War Dragons: Large dragons around 8–11 m long with 9.5–11.5 m wingspans, combining considerable strength with greater agility than Donoryu. Senryu are famously fierce, proud and sensitive to challenges, but socially flexible enough to cooperate with kin, other dragons and Humans. They frequently compete for territory and status beneath dominant Oryu.Karyu — March Dragons: Lean, long-winged dragons around 6.5–9 m long with 8.5–10.5 m wingspans, adapted for ranging across great distances. Cunning and opportunistic, Karyu maintain relatively loose territorial attachments and readily pursue temporary alliances or profitable bargains. Mated pairs often form unusually persistent bonds.Shuryu — Flock Dragons: The smallest common Shenshiryu, around 4.5–6 m long with 7–8.5 m wingspans and roughly 100 kg. Individually weaker than greater dragons, they compensate through tightly bonded maternal clans, cooperative hunting and collective violence. Shuryu are affectionate toward their kin but notoriously vindictive, with feuds capable of becoming prolonged clan wars.Tsuryu — Water Dragons: Aquatic and littoral dragons around 5–8 m long with 7.5–9.5 m wingspans, specialized for hunting fish and exploiting waterways. Tzuryu are often unusually sociable and tolerant where food is abundant, sometimes cooperating with Human fishing communities. Scarcity transforms this affability quickly, making them fiercely territorial competitors for productive waters.
>>98624954The Shenshiryu can live for centuries and remain in peak conditions for most of that time (oldest ones have been around 300 years old) they are not immortal, and eventually their biology begins to rapidly fail in their last decade or so.Most Shenshiryu do not live that long however. Only the largest species have such a long lifespan. And even among them, death often comes trough violence and other natural causes besides old age.Upon death, a clear sign of their engineered nature shows as their soft tissues begin to rapidly decay and disolve. It begins within minutes after death, as remaining living tissues begin an engineered process via which their soft tissues liquify and their DNA begins to rapidly degrade, thus denying the utility of biological sampling unless samples are secured within moments of death.Additionally, living Shenshiruy have a powerful compelled feeding instinct that the smell of a dead dragon emits, that drives them to tear open the carcass and consume soft tissues from it. They do this to kin and rival alike. Offspring will consume the corpses of their mothers and mothers that of their offspring, while mourning them at the same time. To the Shenshiruy, this is not horrific, it is cultural and natural. In their view, only a dragon is permitted to feast upon a dragon.The fact that both elements of their biology and psychology are engineered security features their creators wove into them is unknown, and even if it was known, they would propably not care. To them, consuming their own dead is their equivalent of a funereal and honoring the dead, allowing their strenght to continue in the living dragons.
>>98624957My overall goal with the "dragons" was to desing them in a way that they made sense and fit into the setting itself and importantly, did not start warping the whole setting around themselves. Dragons are in my view, kind of like mecha. They have their own gravity, and thus inevetably warp the setting they exist in around themselves in some way or form. I chose to limit the size and ultimate power of the dragons precisely because I do not want the setting to be about dragons, but just have dragons as one of the strange nonhuman elements in the setting.A dragon is not invulnerable of mythical/magical beast in my setting. An anti-air battery can take one down. They are however cunning, intelligent and agile aerial predators that were made for warfare, and with both inate weaponry, enhanced senses and biology adapted for aerial movements and agility. Additionally, their designed nature to be able to incorproate bioweapon symbiotes makes them formidable when properly equipped. An augmented dragon can posses biolasers, quil launchers (sort of target seeking mineralized spines), needlers (venom crystal launchers), stingers (banks full of small venomous spines), seeker wyrm hives (nests of symbiotic flying worm things whose bodies are essentially engineered to deliver various payloads) and other advanced weapon as well as defensive systems, making a properly armed dragon essentially into a living, breathing, an
>>98624924Interesting bit of lore.>Angel of the North>colossal wood Golem rasied by desperate druidsDon't give Anthony Gormley ideas.>>98624927>>98624960This is all really interesting, and very well thought-out. > Dragons are in my view, kind of like mecha. I think that's a really good way to approach them. Something that dominates the battlefield but isn't invulnerable and has its own constraints. Although I will point out - and you may or may not care - that the Japanese word for warrior is 'Senshi', not 'Shenshi'. Japanese doesn't even have the 'she' sound (which is bizarre since they can combine 'sh' and any other vowel, but whatever), so what you've got there looks kind of Chinese. Also, at its most literal Senshi means 'war-man', so Senshiryu would essentially be 'war-man-dragon', which doesn't really make sense because obviously, they're not men. The more natural way Japanese would do it would simply be 'Senryu', 戦竜, although you've already got that. I'm not sure why the name for the whole genus would be 'warrior dragon' anyway, it feels like their name should be something to do with their origins. Something like 皇竜, Kōryu - Imperial Dragons - feels like it fits better. Anyway, my linguistic pedantry aside, it's still a great concept.
>>98628330Thank you.I originally called them Senshiryu but felt that it was too close to the Senryu term hence the adjustment of "Shenshi" which does not mean much but Shen has some sort of divine connotations in Chinese and I felt that it was appropriate for them given that their name is supposedly mean something akin to "Warrior Dragons of the Heavenly Order" etc. Koryu would be a good term for them as well given the meaning it has.My approach to the usage of Japanese and Chinese and other east asian languages what not has been pure hackery and smashing words together. In universe, these terms are relics of old dead languages and the actual language spoken in the City is some bastardized unholy merger of major world languages, chiefly asian ones, but with hints and surviving elements of all major world languages in it as well. Plus it is not just one dominant language but multitude of languages spoken across the city. However, my autism is limited, and I cannot for the life of me start conlanging the language.I use japanese and chinese mostly because I like the way certain words in it sound rather than proper linguistic accuracy. The spires of the City for example also tend to have japanese/chinese names, for example one of the spires I have named due to the narrative I am working on being located near it, is called Mizunoseiki which basically just was me fucking around with google translate for japanese terms, until I found an assortment of ones whose sounds I liked, and smashed them together.Mizunoseiki roughly translates to "Divine Tree of the Waters" in the setting because the particular spire is located in the Great Sangam region of the City in this map >>98624951
>>98628330>Japanese doesn't even have the 'she' soundしぇ
>>98628442Really, it's fantasy, being linguistically accurate to actual Japanese doesn't matter. Although... I just kind of felt like Shenshiryu didn't flow off the tongue very well. I kept wanting to say Shenshinryu.>their name is supposedly mean something akin to "Warrior Dragons of the Heavenly OrderWell that's just begging to be a yojijukugo.There are a class of four-character compounds (yojijukugo) that act as one unit, often originally borrowed from Chinese. They are generally phrases, idioms, expressions, and so on. Stuff like 一期一会 - once in a lifetime opportunity (literally 'one time, one meeting')十人十色 - different strokes for different folks (ten people, ten colours)正々堂々 - fair and square (fair, fair, bold, bold)and one that I found out just now when I looked up yojijukugo that I quite like弱肉強食 - law of the jungle, survival of the fittest ('weak meat, strong eat', which is also kind of snappy in English)So to me, Warrior Dragons of the Heavenly Order really feels like a yojijukugo, which would be something like:天令武竜 - Tenreiburyu天 - heaven令 - order, law (or more rarely auspicious or good, as in the regnal name of the current Japanese emperor 令和)武 - warrior竜 - dragonAlthough 'tenreiburyu' doesn't exactly roll off the tongue for English speakers either. >Shen has some sort of divine connotations in ChineseI did wonder if that was what you were going for, so you could also have:神龍子 - Shinryushi - Children of the Divine DragonI feel like if there was a Dragon Emperor once upon a time (as in, a human emperor that used dragon symbols) and he styled himself the Divine Dragon, then he went and used biotech to create a bunch of actual dragons who still look up to him, they would call themselves 'Children of the Divine Dragon'. or there's 神龍嫡子 - Shinryuchokushi - Rightful Heirs of the Divine Dragon Although 'Shinryuchokushi' is kind of clunky too
>>98628442>>98633233Wow, I am getting way too into this.>However, my autism is limitedMine is not, apparently. Feel free to ignore this whole thing, I just apparently have too much time on my hands.>Mizunoseiki roughly translates to "Divine Tree of the Waters"Ah, but it doesn't, because that's not how Japanese forms compounds (pic related). Seiki could mean a dozen different things (that's why the Japanese still use kanji, because there are *so* many homophones), but my personal favourite interpretation would be 'Genitals of the waters' (although if you want to be boring, if you just said 'seiki' out loud with no context a Japanese speaker would assume you meant century).Also, I don't think 'mizu' is ever really used for a body of water. Japanese has no plural so 'mizu' isn't waters, just water, so Mizunoseiki would mean 'Century of Water'. Which is a cool name for an apocalyptic flood, but it wasn't what you were going for. The pronunciation of 木 (tree) in compounds is either moku or boku, so divine tree would be something like 'Shinboku' 神木 (I actually just guessed that but I looked it up in the dictionary and apparently that is the Japanese word for 'sacred tree'). So Okawa-no-shinboku - 'sacred tree of the great river' would be more accurate to what you were going for. However, if it's more about aesthetics than actual meaning, that may be too long for you as well.I think if you take away one thing from all this wall of text - and you may well not - it would be that the easiest way to make compounds out of Japanese words isn't to use Google translate. Go to jisho.org and type in the English word you want to translate. On the left it'll give you a list of words, but on the right it gives a list of kanji characters associated with the general concept. Put a couple of kanji together until you have roughly what you want, then use Google translate to read them out loud (don't trust the written transliteration, for some reason that's shit).
>>98628494Now use it in a sentence ;)
>>98633233>>98633410I appreciate the input. I know jack shit of japanese so I have just been using google translate and vibes. While I am willing to let accuracy slide for the sake of coolness etc, I also don't want the words I use for shit in the setting to mean something retarded or silly because I didn't know better. I'll take this into consideration but as it is almost 3 am here I will have to leave that proper consideration for after I have gotten some shuteye.
>>98552182Unicorn bait. How else do you think dragons live so long?
>>98633233The more I mulled over the term Shinryushi in my head I think it works ultimately better than Shenshiryu as a name. It is more distinct from just the dragon names and the various translations it leads to have the proper connotations.The more I look into Japanese terms and words the more maddening this shit gets. I have to fix the term Mizonoseiki because if it does not mean what I think it means then it sounds stupid. Apparently at least according to fucking google, Shinju for example, can translate to divine tree as well, but also means fucking double suicide. What stupid fucking language.I still want the actual rough translation of it to refer to the place where it is on the map, "The Divine Tree of the Waters" is a fitting name for it because it is set in a place where many bodies of water and rivers, and canals meet in the City. In general the spires of the City are called "divine trees" in both archaic tongues, as well as by people who worship them.
>>98635415After some fuckign about, I might have found a suitable arrangement of moonrunes for the fucking name I want:水合流の神樹 (Mizu Gōryū no Shinju), which should, at least to what I was able to google and figure out, translate to "The Divine Tree of the Confluence of Waters."I ought to have taken japanese courses while I was in high school.
