Entomological Edition

Welcome to /wbg/, the official thread for the discussion of in-progress settings for traditional games.

Here is where you go to present and develop the details of your worlds such as lore, factions, magic and ecosystems. You can also post maps for your settings, as well as any relevant art (either created by you or used as inspiration for your work). Please remember that dialogue is what keeps the thread alive, so don't be afraid of giving someone feedback or post whatever relevant input you might have!

Last thread: >>95543309

Resources for Newfags: https://sites.google.com/view/wbgeneral/
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https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/Eo+fK41FKVR7xDpbNO0a0N4k0YYxrmyrhX3VxnM14Ew/
Fantasy map generator: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Thread questions:
>What are the interresting critters in your that wouldn't be featured in a traditional bestiary ?
>What is their relation with the natural enviroment and the different civilizations of the world ?
>How they relate to the magic and spiritual side of your world ?
>Do they have any use as an alchemical ingredient or magical component for spells ?
>Have you or one of your players ever made some creative use of them ?

>>95849839 (OP)
>What are the interresting critters in your that wouldn't be featured in a traditional bestiary ?
Currently developing the elven "nation" that is known as Occidentia. Not truly a thing, it's more a large part of a subcontinent of elven dominance over the indigenous human population.
Because it takes place long into the past, it's basically the ice age and mega fauna is plentiful.
>What is their relation with the natural enviroment and the different civilizations of the world ?
The elves are heavily shaped by the type of environment they live in. The forests to the wood elves, the more open steppe to the high elves, and southern coasts for the dark elves.
>How they relate to the magic and spiritual side of your world ?
Animism for the humans. The elves worship the great mother whom sent them as her fist to subjugate mankind. The sun is her watchful eye, the moon is to be feared(the humans shared a worship of a moon goddess and she's being demonized).
>Do they have any use as an alchemical ingredient or magical component for spells ?
They use it to craft armor, loose semi transparent dresses with a blue tint. This is why human men aren't allowed to wear blue and it's seen as a woman's color.
>Have you or one of your players ever made some creative use of them ?
I'm still developing proper names and languages for them, as this civilization will give ideas to a different civilization made up of a race of women.
They'll eventually be wiped out by other elves and their way of life nearly erased, with only myths and cultural hangups left.

>>95849839 (OP)
>What are the interresting critters in your that wouldn't be featured in a traditional bestiary ?
The most unique "fauna" within my setting are definitely "Cytes" which are essentially sort of designed, biological robots that work sort of like the white blood cells of the biomechanical Mega City the setting takes place in.

>What is their relation with the natural enviroment and the different civilizations of the world ?
The Cytes were originally created to maintain, repair and defend the City's living infrastructure as well as to provide various other logistical, regulatory and utility functions to both the City, it's artirficial ecosystems and it's denizens. In the contemporary timeframe of the setting however they are far more of an unknown and unpredictable quantity, with the denizens of the City having long since lost control of the cyte swarms due to the millenia of civil war the City underwent.

>How they relate to the magic and spiritual side of your world ?
The cytes were created with the advanced biotechnology of the golden age of the City built inherent into their biology, making them inherently capable of "biomancy" (active reshaping of their bodies as well as heightened regeneration) as well as using the "magic" of the setting that is tied to a sort of idea of extradimensional "orgone field" bs that interacts with helicoid structures. In practice, this "magic" allows them to create silk thin sheets of near impenetrable "shield" fabrics, levitate via temporarily "immovable" rods of helicoid anchors, and produce armor piercing lances and flesh lacerating threads of fibers that harden on command.
Picture related depicts a swarm of cytes assaulting a bunch of unfortunate soldiers.

>Do they have any use as an alchemical ingredient or magical component for spells ?
Not really, though many of their constituting organs and parts are highly valued by the denizens of the City due to their advanced nature.

I don't know whether I want to focus on sorcery simply being more 'mystical' psychic abilities, or have it deeply tied to enochian as a magic script, or both. Angels and demons are composed of psychic energy albeit at a density rivaled by no other entities aside from Big G of course, and have it woven into their being. Mortals would have to struggle to learn it, and the closer their script is the more powerful the effects.

(Stupid?) Idea for explaining why you get to be a Special Magic Person in an otherwise science fiction-y setting:

Simulation hypothesis was proven, with careful timing/prep/etc, you can do seed manipulation that gets the odd of your child being born with [admin privileges/cheat codes/console commands/whatever] down to one in a million, which of course everyone does.

Thoughts?

>>95852923
The simulation hypothesis is the worst model for a setting. Imagine having a universe with an omnipotent god, except the omnipotent god can be killed or replaced by any random nonsense in a different universe, and there is no way possible way to influence that universe. That's a flawless combination of the worst parts of Theism, Atheism, and Gnosticism.

>>95850329
>whynotboth.jpg

Is there any real reason not to do both?

>>95853122
Obviously the simulators only care about stars rather than humans, since their simulation is 99.999% empty space and 0.001% stars with all the planets as a rounding error.

>>95852923
"Magic is the universe's programming language/admin mode" is lame. Magic being the equivalent of pulling off memory corruption glitches is better.
If you look at the instructions of stuff like the gen 1 Pokémon glitches or credit warps in Mario or Zelda without any context on how it works, it's pretty much the same as how magic rituals and spells were described. Do these extremely specific and seemingly arbitrary steps, like arrange specific items in precise locations and perfectly execute a complex series of actions and somehow that lets you do something that would be impossible according to the rules the world normally operates under.

>>95853557
I suppose I can't figure out whether to make it standard ESP or not, because once you add in magic scripts it takes on a much more "fantasy" tone with wizards and such.

>>95849839 (OP)
I've been designing some wildlife for my science fiction setting. Though it's mostly stuff you would feature in a typical bestiary, i.e. big or otherwise notable creatures.

Seira, the homeworld of one the the alien civilizations, is supposed to be Venus as envisioned by 1950s SF authors; a humid hothouse world home to various giant superficially dinosaur-like (as envisioned in the 1950s) animals.
Despite the appearance, most Seiran terrestrial life is actually more similar to amphibians than reptiles. They have slimy, usually smooth skin that's semi-permeable, and go through an aquatic larval stage, though for many species the stage occurs inside the womb, and spend a lot of their time in or near water.

>>95856509
One of the most prominent groups of Seiran pseudoamphibians are the palussaurids, a group of midsized to extremely large amphibious carnivores. The smaller species include intelligent pack-hunters that are often kept as pets by the Seirans (like humans keep dogs) and various aquatic or amphibious fish-eaters, while the largest are massive apex predators that are effectively like a cross between giant crocodiles and theropod dinosaurs.

>>95856549
The largest terrestrial animals on Seira, however, are large sauropod-liked herbivores native to the marshy jungles of the equatorial regions, where they spend most of their time wallowing in water and eating aquatic vegetation. Another large herbivore is the greater tabol, an elephant-sized relative of the animal commonly used by the Seirans as lifestock and beasts of burden.

>>95856644
Missed the picture.
The main reason why Seira still has multiple species of megafauna despite being home to an advanced civilization is that the equatorial regions are difficult for even the Seirans themselves to inhabit due to the extremely high temperature and difficult terrain (it's mostly dense rainforests and swamps) so much of them was never fully colonized, with the few major population centers located close to the coasts and the interiors largely untouched. When the Seirans begun colonizing other worlds there was little need to exploit the untouched regions of their homeworld, especially as there was strong support to leave them as a nature reserve.

>>95849839 (OP)
For my setting, I was thinking that the goddess of Life and Death wanted to retire, so she made deals with the god of the Day and the god of the Night to have kids with each of them. She had planned to split the two spheres between each respective child, but they instead they both inherited power over Life and Death, filtered through the Light and Darkness spheres they inherited from their respective fathers. As a result, both healing magic and necromancy have a Light and Darkness variant these days. For Light healing, I was thinking that it would be better at healing people in area-of-effect spells, both to tie into the typical depiction of a fantasy cleric and healing spells and to represent a lantern’s light. Darkness healing, at the other hand, is better at healing single individuals, including the caster. For necromancy, I was thinking that the necromancy would use either Light or Darkness as a replacement for the life force of the body, or as a medium to hit their foes with the essence of death. I would greatly appreciate any feedback you have, especially on the necromancy and undeath angle please. For instance, I was thinking that taking a cue from the White cards from Amonkhet in MtG, mummies could be one of the kinds of undead affiliated with Light necromancy, does that make sense to you?

>>95855403
Pic rel have the same exact premise.

>>95855540
What exactly is the concern? If you have a modern day aesthetic its not as if weirdos in robes are anything new let alone some schizo scribbling non-sense somewhere even though they are probably doing esoteric magic shit.

Unless the contemporary aesthetics plays any real role in anything, it's as much window dressing as whether or not the wizard wears a suit and tie or a steeple hat.

>>95849839 (OP)
I have a whole roster of fantastical creatures for a single country in my setting. It's a small land (about 400km).

Some are used for mutagens. Others are hunted.

I got a prompt, and I'd love feedbacks/takes on it
>alien voyagers from a world so hostile their tools are 'overkill' compared to Modern earth conditions.
Example: Nuclear fission powered-watch, because the pulsars on their world dampen most electronics.

This is for /lit/ but I keep wish-washy on what tech level my heavenly limbo world should be. I'm 80% sure it's going to have little plot significance and I already imagining having technological restraint built in - ie people are taking gondola rides instead of just zipping there. But besides it being baroque influenced, I have little else to really push me in one direction or the other. If anything it's the lack of tension I'm going for that might decide - people using or not using tech isn't some cultural issue.

>What are the interresting critters in your that wouldn't be featured in a traditional bestiary ?
Glad you asked!
>Zaba
No eyes, a spherical greenish body, and a giant mouth, along with two meaty hands and spindly legs. Eat literally anything organic. Immune to all sickness
>Dubine
Looks like a barnacle. Attaches to flesh and basically gives it turbocancer, causing it to grow into gargantuan flesh structures.
>Baka Ladaka
Like a 20 foot tall hairless gorilla if it had a stone horse skull for a head
>"Dread"
Moving columns with sharp tendrils. Literally feed on the physical and mental anguish of others and can cause it in horrific ways.
>Spirit Stag
What looks like a stag but made of ethereal energy. Only lets one person it trusts ride it. EXTREMELY fast
>Brights
Eats your spirit and refashions your soul into another bright-soldier.
>Gluttons
Live outside the bounds of civilization, wastefully gorging themselves. Fat as shit.
>What is their relation with the natural environment and the different civilizations of the world?
Well, it's complicated. The main civilizations tend to avoid everything except for Dubine or Zaba because they're not threats due to how none of the people there are made of organic tissue
>How they relate to the magic and spiritual side of your world?
They just kind of exist here. It's a weird-ass place
>Do they have any use as an alchemical ingredient or magical component for spells?
Actually yes. Plenty. Zaba teeth, for example.
>Have you or one of your players ever made some creative use of them?
No players

>>95849839 (OP)
Kys d*scord cancer.

>>95859124
Sounds interesting, but how would it be relevant? If their Nuclear fission powered-watch works just like a normal watch then there's not much point to it, other than being some background lore.
And one thing that doesn't really matter is the question of how they got to that point if all the intermediate technologies don't work. Like how do you get to nuclear fission if you can't start with ordinary electronics?

>>95849839 (OP)
I make the map first and then go from there personally

I've basically wholly just embraced the aesthetics of elves for one of the factions of my setting, even though I did not originally set out to do so as the setting is not fantasy, but soft scifi, focusing on biotech. Originally I just wanted these guys to have sleek, lithe and elegant looking symbiotic suits of living armor (the warskins) but as I pushed that aesthetic the side result of it was that the look of the people wearing the armor also shifted towards them being tall, and lithe looking. I sort of was caught in the proverbial "gravity well" of what registered to me as "elf" when I drew these guys unarmored so I ended up just embracing it rather than fighting against it.

Lorewise these guys are basically gene enhanced aristocrats whose ancestors altered and improved themselves genetically to a point where they are more or less an offshoot/splinter species when compared to baseline humanity within the setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vobk6CQJE4g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75kJb_aAvKY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfFIO2NSOcM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJDn70jh1V0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v712NiVK5uY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWVij6r4QBw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWo4NDcaUPY
Try and guess the tone of my setting from this music that I felt fit the vibes

>>95849839 (OP)
How about elemental creatures and monsters? I’m working on setting where all monsters and magical creatures are aligned with one or two of the classic mystical elements, like Avatar but with more expressions of elemental powers in non-humans and beings not being limited to solely one element. I’ve got some of the more obvious ideas, like sea serpents being Water aligned, down already, and Chimeras make sense for Fire and maybe Earth, but positive feedback and ideas are always welcome.

Nobody seems to actually engage with anyone else in these threads, they are just kept up by one or two dedicated bumbfags. What even is the fucking point if people don't talk to one another?

>>95878154
IDK

>>95849839 (OP)
>What are the interesting critters in your that wouldn't be featured in a traditional bestiary ?
There are four classes of monster in the world. Beasts, Monsters, Demons, and Tulpas/Egregores. The first three might appear in a bestiary, but Tulpas rarely would. They are extraordinarily rare and hard to classify since they have to be created by particularly powerful and wicked mages, and are pretty close to bespoke constructions.

>What is their relation with the natural enviroment and the different civilizations of the world ?
It's dependent on the creator and the Archon invoked to construct the Tulpa. For example, the Sarcolemmous Hound, which the PCs are currently trying to kill, is a kind of prototypical bioweapon designed to hunt and destroy humanoids at random.

>How they relate to the magic and spiritual side of your world ?
Tulpas are created by mages who have made deals with the Archons for power or positions in the demonic hierarchy. The mage can access the Archon's essence and imbue it into objects. In the case of the Sarcolemmous Hound, it's basically a dog skin that has been packed full with the Blood of Ysbadadden. The Servitor who created it fled to the North and left the thing behind, and it was accidentally let out, so it's now going around killing random villagers.

>Do they have any use as an alchemical ingredient or magical component for spells ?
In theory a mage who understood what it was could probably find a way to repurpose the Archonic essence, but it would be very dangerous

>Have you or one of your players ever made some creative use of them ?
Not intentionally. They paired with an NPC to cast a spell that allowed them to remotely view it, which incidentally let them see inside a magical library they wouldn't normally have access to. I'm trying to figure out how to dissuade them from trying to go in since there's nothing interesting or plot relevant there, but I might just throw them a bone.

>>95859288
Is the limbo known to people that are alive? If so does its existence affect how mortals live their lives?

The greatest rank a warrior can receive is called "Terror-Bringer" because that's the rank you get when your enemies actively shit themselves at the sound of your name

>>95881057
More, like Turds-Bringer.

I really like "hard SF" flavorings in science fiction - weird alien worlds with traits like deep sub-zero nights that last days, gas giants suspended overhead, and lethal wet bulb temperatures; aliens with complex and distinct psychologies, like protogynous hermaphrodites where dominant group members become male so it's all constant dominance games for them; warp drives that, when they go awry, wind up scraping off all the ship's heat radiators on the jump; and so on.

I also like sticking magical nonsense into settings. What magic system goes best with this sort of stuff? Worm-style shards seem like they'd fit in fairly well, but in terms of canon designs, WH40k seems like it gets the closest, and the Warp gels fairly well, but I'm wondering if anybody else has a better reference, or ideas?

>>95882673
What are you looking for specifically? An excuse to have sci-fi wizards slinging fireballs? Or flavor to allow for something that would be outside of the hard sci-fi aesthetic you're going for but want to include?

What would be the weapons of choice if gunpowder was never invented but everything else pretty much stayed the same?

>>95888058
Guns
If you meant if nothing akin to gunpowder was ever invented then spears but nothing else would stay the same

>>95888312
How about railguns that are musket-like in that they take a long time to reload between charging up the electricity needed for the next shot, or require some kind of manual recharge like those handcranked flashlights?

>>95888058
Medieval stasis is dumb IMO but if you insist on it while also including fancy new gadgets, maybe a full auto slingshot crossbow, unless rubber-like materials are too modern for you? It was in Popular Mechanics if you want more info.

>>95888336
I'm sorry but no. Conservation of energy means that any manual power is absolutely worthless for a ranged weapon since even with massive mechanical advantages armor vastly outpaces it.
Railguns can not be miniaturized with anything approaching modern or near future technology.
There are a LOT of ways to make guns. Black powder is only one explosive, and not even used in modern guns. To make guns inefficient weapons you'd need to make ALL explosives not exist. This means no dynamite, no blasting for mines, no deconstructing with explosives, no avalanche triggering or explosive bonding, etc. etc.

Consider that guns existed as early as 1400 but spears didn't get completely phased out of warfare until around WWII. That means there's a lot of room for other types of weapons in niche situations, and that spears are just that fucking good. Even today various melee weapons see widespread use in areas where guns are difficult to obtain. Consider also that small arms are largely irrelevant for war. Siege weapons like cannons, artillery, and bombs are much more important.

Also, why would you even want this? What's wrong with guns? What issue do you perceive them to cause?

>>95888397
>this kills the Italian,jpg

>>95887743
More like, enabling there to be Specials and Poo People without it being inherently tied to social class (rich people able to afford replacing their gut microbiome with nanobots or whatever).

>>95888397
>To make guns inefficient weapons you'd need to make ALL explosives not exist.
That wouldn't be enough. The Girandoni air rifle was an expensive piece of crap - compared to other guns. In a world without gunpowder or equivalents, you'd use compressed air to get a similar effect.

>>95850136
This is really fun art anon, has the chaotic mass battle detail I really like.

>>95889746
Thanks. I tried to have a similar vibe to it as the classic 40k mass battle artworks have.
You can see more of the art I have drawn for my setting on my gallery here:
https://www.deviantart.com/screeble/gallery/62271545/mundus-carnis

>>95888058
What if gunpowder just somehow didn’t work

>>95888970
I do something else. Magic is NOT an innate talent that some are just better at than others because of genes. Anyone can learn magic, but there are no shortcuts. Even learning to cast a basic spell is a painstaking process that can take around half a year on average

>>95892130
As to why some people are better than others? It's because of two factors
>They were at this longer
>They studied way harder
No ifs or buts.

>>95892130
That collapses back down into "the elites just send their kids to magic school," though.

>>95888970
Have a third party that can bestow power onto people. Their criteria isn't entirely known or understood but there are ideas that seem to attract their favor more than others and it throws people off when the occasional poo person is picked when they seemingly don't fit what "works"

My autism has triggered an auto-immune response.

Would a super-heated blade actually cut better or would it be better to have a super-heated cudgel?

>>95894332
Super heated blades would cut better iff they can transfer the heat to the thing they're cutting quickly enough to melt it, or at least soften it, prior to the physical interaction of actual cutting.
Such a blade would thus have to transfer heat to the air so quickly as to make it unusable, both due to massive energy requirements (the air is an effective infinite heat sink) and to the fact that it's superheating the air around the wielder.
In short a hot knife only cuts through butter more easily because butter melts at just over room temperature. For something with a significantly higher melting point like iron, it's not going to happen.

>>95894685
I'm not looking for realistic or anything, just the fact that I can't overcome the hump of it no longer jelling in my mind so that explanation is good enough.

The whole thing stems from the "science" magic I'm working on where the Humans of my setting have to make do with using technology as a stop gap to overcome the fact they can't throw fireballs or fly or things like that.

The best they can do is control fire and lightning the same sort of way Pyro from X-Men does minus the stupid shit like turning fire into constructs or snuffing out the combustion of gunpowder.

So basically magic fueled power armor

>>95894736

>>95894736
Plasmas can be manipulated with EM fields, which can be generated (at a very high energy cost) from something like that. Lightning and fire can both be forms of plasma too, to boot.

>>95894768
That's the track I was on. Also hopped up on Fire Force I considered how to incorporate cold into it as well but I can't really conceptualize it all that well. I just can't buy the idea of throwing lethal snowballs and shards of ice.

>>95893985
Here's the thing. There is no "Magic school."
The only thing that is taught in schools is the basics, and the rest? Figure it out yourself, jackass

>>95895194
Actually, let me put that into words better. You don't "Go to a better magic school." Magic is an EXTREMELY complicated system that takes a mind-boggling amount of practice. Even the best mage in the word, that being the king, is still finding tons of room to improve despite being well over 3000 years old. The only thing that can truly be taught are the two basic methods of how magic "Works"
>Activating your magical energy
>Controlling the flow of magic in your body
The rest is you trying to figure out how to control it's properties as you slowly work out how to do a spell, which takes an excessive amount of time even for really smart motherfuckers. Mind you, there is no "One way" to do something like a fireball. Think of it like being given a piano and no sheet music and told to just make a song, or being given a blank C# document and being asked to program a game, any game.
Plus their economy is... Weird.

>>95895194
>>95895336
you are big retard
rich kids will still excel because they can afford the time and resources to just sit there and practice instead of having to wage slave for food and rent
>Plus economy is... Weird.
this is your brainlet tier cope because you haven't been able to make it work

>>95895358
This is hard to explain, but their economy works on a very strange set of principles. Allow me to explain the following traits
>"Money" takes the form of these orbs of magical energy that can rage in size from a marble to a beachball. These orbs are able to fuel the user and their magic by extension. It's not like they make your magic better, it's just extra stamina to make a long story short. Basically, you can quite literally eat your money. That or they'll give you useful stuff in exchange for services.
>More importantly, resources like food or materials? It's usually sourced directly from the environment, as this is a society that heavily values exploration. If someone wants to eat, they don't buy fruit, they go out and pluck a bunch themselves or kill something to eat. Why? It's actually encouraged and a proven benefit to do this because it helps you practice stuff like magic, fighting, searching, and other really important skills.
People who just buy stuff are actually at a disadvantage because they aren't practicing anything. In this world, everybody works to get what they need, including the king. Thing is, that kind of stuff is excessively difficult so it's basically survival of the fittest.
It's not like it's the only option, but it's the best option for a society that NEEDS to stay vigilant and make sure everyone can pull their weight in a time of crisis. "Classes" would just be a waste of time when you can just practice it yourself.
Plus nobody is human anyways, they're these weird cute-ish golem people living in a weird-ass world. It's some strange shit

>>95895467
as I said, brainlet tier cope

>>95895529
How?

>>95895614
>How?

>>95895687
Look, I'm just trying to workshop it a bit. The point is that money doesn't really buy you time in this world.
Will you
>Buy food for the day and then practice/learn a bunch of stuff on your own time
OR
>Go out and put those skills to use in pursuit of what you need, learning new stuff in the process

Is there any valid reason to have space fighters? It's such cool concept I have found myself being drawn to designing some recently even though I know it's very on the fi side of scifi

>>95895884
Why is there a reason to have jetplanes?

>>95895884
Actually it's not, so long as you're talking about a multiplanetary scale.
Unfortunately, they're the modern type of fighter, not the cool ones from WWII and earlier.
That is, they just lob missiles at each other from super far away.

>>95895884
in strictly hard sci fi, no, not really, not even >>95895914's stuff makes sense in deep space

softer sci fi has an infinite amount of reasons for space fighters you could come up with though

>>95896477
As >>95895914 this guy; why the fuck are you in deep space? There's literally nothing there.
Fighters absolutely work in multi-planet systems. You need a cheap way to deliver missiles, but if you shoot missiles dry they won't have enough delta-v to maneuver once they near the target. So you need the missiles closer, and their delivery system needs to maneuver to save as much delta-v in the missiles as possible. Hence, a fighter. It's literally exactly the same as modern day fighters, except for flying to another country, you're flying to another planet.
The reason you can't just use ICBM/ballistic missile equivalents is that unlike on Earth, space targets can maneuver as well. So your big slow missile just misses, because the station you were aiming for made a small burn. That's why conserving delta-v is so important.

>>95896635
"multi-planet systems" would conform to deep space in the way i meant it, even going to the moon from earth your fighters would be pointless

in hard sci-fi, then only place where space fighters would make sense is in low orbit, and even there they'd be primarily atmospheric

fighters are pointless in space because their maneuverability and range are both pointless there, so by having them you're just wasting time and resources

>You need a cheap way to deliver missiles, but if you shoot missiles dry they won't have enough delta-v to maneuver once they near the target. So you need the missiles closer, and their delivery system needs to maneuver to save as much delta-v in the missiles as possible. Hence, a fighter.
unless you're inventing soft sci-fi reasoning that would hurt more than help, if your only problem is delta-v you just put a slightly bigger fuel tank on the missile, you don't strap them onto a wildly inefficient carrier that outmasses them by magnitudes and needs to carry its ass back to base afterwards, because you will not be saving anything by involving the fighter in the equation

>>95897378
Moon to Earth is much too short a distance, fighters would be entirely pointless. They NEED to have a long distance.
>only place where space fighters would make sense is in low orbit
Why? You make these wild claims with zero justification.
>pointless in space because their maneuverability and range are both pointless?
Again wild conjecture without any justification. Maneuverability and range are the only things that matter in space combat. If you don't want to engage you can just burn to avoid. If you can burn more than they can or faster than they can you dictate when and where all engagements happen.
>if your only problem is delta-v you just put a slightly bigger fuel tank on the missile
I don't think you have any idea how orbital mechanics work. Especially since you assumed the fighter was going back to base, which is just a ludicrous proposition.
The earlier you burn, the more bang you get for your buck. Thus if you're shooting a missile at Mars from Luna, the target has literally months to get way the fuck out of the way of the missiles. There's simply no way to make a missile with enough fuel to make countless adjustments along the way.
The reason a fighter is worthwhile, is it makes adjustments for ALL the missiles. As it approaches it can opt not to track more than absolutely necessary. Then, when it nears the effective range of the missiles, it can burn rapidly (much faster than the enemy stations/vessels) to reduce the expenditure for all its missiles. You're right that the additional weight of the fighter means this is more fuel, but the important part is how fast it works, and that the missiles stay small.
Once within range of the missiles, it shoots its load and the swarm can achieve coverage of the area the target may be able to burn to, since that area is now MUCH smaller.
I've tried to include a simplified visualization. The point isn't the cost or efficiency; naked missiles win out there. The point is actually hitting.

>>95900395
Let's say the fighter has 3 km/s of delta-v, and the missiles each have 2 km/s of delta-v, just so we have some numbers. Why would it be cheaper to use this, than just have missiles with 5 km/s of delta-v? The fighter has to move the missiles, the fuel, and the fighter itself.

>>95896635
Problem is that you could just take the fighter, take out all the equipment that just exists to keep the squishy organic pilot from dying, and use the weight you saved to stick a big warhead and more fuel on it. Congratulations, you now have a big missile! That also fires smaller missiles. Though I feel you could drop those and use the weight you saved to make the big missile more maneuverable so it has an easier time hitting a target. Delta V is just your ability to alter velocity. Small missiles aren't inherently better at it, as long as the big missile has enough fuel to accelerate and decelerate multiple times.

>>95900466
>cheaper
Try reading the post again.
It's not. But you can actually hit your target.

>>95900590
>squishy organic pilot
You have a violently incorrect understanding of how space combat would work.
Delta-v for missiles isn't about the total number exclusively, it's also about the length of burns. Missiles need to be more agile (and thus burn faster) than their target, else they'll never hit. Burning more quickly requires being smaller.

>>95900395
>Why? You make these wild claims with zero justification.
because they make sense in atmosphere so popping up into low orbit as a hybrid space fighter is the only niche i can see for them

>Maneuverability and range are the only things that matter in space combat.
why the fuck would they? the laser or railgun cannon a light second away isn't going to miss a 10 square meter target any more than it's going to miss a 1000 square meter target, and relevant changes in velocity are all going to be much slower than a second or three

maneuverability is pointless

range is also pointless because, well, why the fuck would it matter? you mentioned delta-v before which is an excellent example for why it doesn't matter, the fighter is just eating away at delta-v for no reason

>You make these wild claims with zero justification.
>Again wild conjecture without any justification.
hypocrite

>Especially since you assumed the fighter was going back to base, which is just a ludicrous proposition.
>The earlier you burn, the more bang you get for your buck.
if you're talking about a "fighter" that's staying away from its base for prolonged periods, what you have is a normal space ship, not a fighter

>The reason a fighter is worthwhile, is it makes adjustments for ALL the missiles.
that's not valuable, the missiles would still make all of their adjustments more cheaply each on their own

>>95900950
>laser ranges of light seconds
That's so far from reality that it's clear now why you're so deluded.
There's really no point to discussing this with someone without basic physics knowledge.
How the fuck are you pumping that laser, and how fucking big is is the focusing apparatus?

>>95901220
it doesn't matter, i'm assuming hard sci-fi in general, or in other words things that are already shown to be possible apply, and they don't need to be currently practical to apply

as for how you can pump such a laser, it's likely to be limited an expendable method such as a nuclear laser if you're insisting it has to be a fighter, meanwhile if you're dealing with larger ships (which is far more rational) then you're less limited

the story is the same if you're talking kinetics btw, your fighter is going to suck compared to a larger ship for the same reasons

>>95853122
"The [this] universe is a simulation" is the Silicon Valley equivalent of "the universe is a machine".

The universe is a tautology that can never be fully grasped. Therein lies the basis for magic, in our actual world.

I've run into a weird problem that I wonder if you guys could help me out with. I recently for some reason got the notion to make a post-apocalyptic setting, real Mad Max like, my idea was to make it like you'd see from a 1980s B-movie. The world was destroyed in a nuclear war between the US and USSR in the 'near future' of the year 2000, so it's a world where you got road warriors driving the highways in armed and armored old muscle cars, radioactive mutant monsters, tribes of busty barbarian motorcycle riding amazons with giant hair; shit like that. Everything in it is just there because I think it's cool.

But the problem I ran into that's driving me nuts is that I want the main, big settlement in the wasteland that I creatively named 'New Dodge City' to be a real seedy, sketchy hive of scum and villainy, with a nasty, grimy nightlife full of bars, casinos, brothels and strip clubs, and yet I still want it to feel somewhat small and ramshackle and desperate too. I don't want a huge modern-ish city because I want it to feel like human civilization is hanging on by a thread, but I also don't want a Bethesda tier """city""" that's only like 5 or 6 buildings either. My hangup here is scale, I don't actually know what comprises a big city or a small city or whatever. I can't visualize at all what it would look like. Is 5,000 people a lot? Would a city of 10,000 be too much? Could it still feel like a seedy wretched hive of scum and villainy with only 2,000 people or would that just look like some podunk small town?

I don't know why I'm getting so hung up on this detail that doesn't matter much but it really is driving me up a wall.

>>95901717
yeah, simulationists are retarded, it's complete pseudoscience and based on nothing more than simple everyday familiarity with computers making for a convenient analogy, but they act as if it's somehow real in any way

in fact it's the worst kind of pseudoscience there is as far as i'm concerned, the kind that wouldn't explain anything even if it were somehow true, it would just kick the can down the road to the obvious next question of "okay, if we're simulated, then what created the universe we're being simulated from?"

>>95901724
just pivot away from it being the main city, have a bunch of smaller towns all over the place, that way riding between them even starts to make more sense

what do you even gain from it being the only real city?

anyway if you want it to be the only large city regardless, make it a tribal meeting ground or something, there's no real law there because there's nobody supposed to be in charge in the first place

>>95901724
If you're going for maximum 80's action movie cheese then you just gotta accept it.

Maybe have a particular place that is outside of the city where the worse of the worse gather while their crews fuck around, trade/fuck slaves, get gel for their mohawks and new football pads covered in old tires.

>>95900903
>It's not. But you can actually hit your target.
No, there's no reason the target is "more hittable" this way. If you have the fighter with missiles, and then it fires the missiles when it arrives, for the same amount of fuel (actually, less) you could just give the missiles 5 km/s of delta-v. Then they could spend 3 km/s of delta-v on maneuvering when they get shot at, and 2 km/s on hitting when they arrive.

>>95901818
>>95900903
The only reasons missiles are fired from fighters in real life is aerodynamics being harsher on small projectiles than large ones

There's no aerodynamics in space to worry about

>>95901759
You misunderstand, it's not the 'only' community I had thought up, it's just the biggest one, the main hub where all the trading and bartering and whoring happens. But my problem is that I can't actually figure out how populated it should be that it could feasibly provide all the services and feel 'big' and bustling by the standards of a world destroyed by nuclear war. Originally my idea was for it to have a population of 2,000 people, I thought
>yeah that sounds like a bustling but still ramshackle post apocalyptic shantytown
But then I googled a bunch of small towns in the southwest, and I got for example Van Horn Texas, population 2,000 roughly, and this just looks like a sleepy little small town to me. There is no way there's enough people here to have a bunch of brothels and strip clubs and casinos and illicit back alley drug pushers unless nearly everybody in town was an employee of one, right?

That's what I'm getting lost in the weeds over, I can't really visualize how many people it would take to make a city feel big enough that it could be described as 'bustling' but still small enough that it also feels like it's the crappy best the remnants of humanity can slap together, you know what I mean?

I know it's retarded and I should just slap any random number on it and say good enough and move on, but these are the kind of autistic walls I run into when worldbuilding. Tiny shit like this that just nag at me.

>>95901986
if you go for the tribal meeting ground approach the population can vary massively from month to month too

the sleepiness of a town is also not just about the number but how spread out it is and how many people are passing through, if your town is a trade center then there can be a lot of activity regardless

>>95901841
It's actually because of flight time. You can't launch a ballistic missile halfway across the world to hit your target nearly as fast as a loitering drone can drop a payload on something.

>>95902041
I guess that's a tactical consideration too, but i don't think it would matter in space either, it's just "be the first to hit the other guy" there, and loitering isn't something you need to put effort into if you for some reason need to do it, a missile can just wait around fine

Okay, I'm toying with a mid-future, "cyberpunk"-ish setting, but the main thing that bothers me is how corporate power is always subordinate to state power historically (see: British East India Company, Khodorkovsky, Cœur, etc). Do you think it's plausible to invert that, IF all the states are really weak/small? As in, nobody's bigger than the Netherlands today?

>>95902662
that's literally what every corp in every cyberpunk setting does

>>95895697
Let me explain how this world works. I specifically constructed it to shut down stuff like "Why don't they expand?" and "Why isn't there rich and poor people"
>The main sentient society is NOT at the top of the food chain and likely never will be. Going outside their area of the world results in death 99% of the time. They are protected from the wackiness of the rest of the world via a bunch of gigantic monoliths connected by some kind of maze-like superstructure. They seem to make the area they encircle an instinctual blindspot to the more powerful/dangerous monsters and whatnot. Only a few people have ever been able to actually go beyond the monoliths and come back in one piece, with the record for a return trip being a few miles.
>Even when they're in the monoliths, monsters and all kinds of dangerous anomalies are still a thing that prowl around. Just not the super-dangerous ones. Think like, the bottom 5% of the nonsense.
>They don't really have a "Rich-Poor" system. Not communism, it's just that with how money works in this world, being rich doesn't change much for you.

I'm brainstorming a vague connection between dnd's great wheel cosmology and xianxia. The inner planes are easy, yin and yang replace negative and positive and the five chinese elements replace the four greek ones. What about the outer planes though? What's xianxia's best analog to dnd's law-chaos and good-evil axes?

>>95902979
Take your pick of confusion philosophy, folk religion, and buddhism/taoism.

None of them really point to some singular cosmic force of good or evil the way abrahamic religions tend to

>>95903010
Yeah, that's kind of why I got stumped after getting the really nice and natural result for the inner planes.

>>95903022
Unless you're just that determined to go in a particular direction, you could do what wizards never did and actually make an asian style setting/interpretation that feels like D&D rather than kung-fu movie tropes pasted on top of D&D.

It's really my main hang-up with monks is that they feel so discordant with the D&D setting as whole.

>>95902019
>if you go for the tribal meeting ground approach the population can vary massively from month to month too
I think I get what you're saying but I also have a defined idea of what the factions are, as in, there's more or less civilized people who live in settlements and homesteads and trade with eachother by sending heavily armed convoys up and down the highways, and are always getting attacked by crazy raiders and having to deal with wacky wasteland tribes of all different flavors, from actual descendants of injun reservations to the aforementioned big titty glam amazon bikers. Tribes are their own thing I plan on thinking up more of to just add for a bit of flavor here and there.

Although I do kind of like the idea of the population being in flux dependent on trade though because that sort of fits the wild west theme I went for in naming it New Dodge City. Only instead of the city being periodically infested with drunk rowdy violent cowboys after a long cattle drive like it's namesake, it's instead periodically infested by convoys of drunk rowdy violent road warriors and traders after a long drive spent getting harassed by raiders and sandstorms and shit. That actually fits really nicely with what I had in mind. Might be the justification I need to just keep it vague and move the fuck on.

>>95902667
A) No, most cyberpunk settings still have fairly large states. They often balkanize the USA, but even then, many rump parts are larger than any European country.
B) Most cyberpunk settings are nonsense, because they greatly increase corporate power without any strong reason other than "because."

>>95902979
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Land

Eight Great Hot Narakas + Eight Great Cold Narakas (for lower planes), various Pure Lands (for upper planes).

But also the Great Wheel sucks.

>>95904274
It doesn't suck, only Sigil sucks

>>95904337
No, anon, the Great Wheel sucks. A mix of unplayably meaningless box-checking (Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash, anyone?), content designed to be so intractable/overpowered that even a level 20 PC can't interact with it meaningfully (e.g. Blood War), all stuck in a structure that's neatly symmetrical for no real reason.

>>95849839 (OP)
In the Tomorrow City RPG, the eponymous Tomorrow City stands upon an axle, the city itself divided into three concentric circles, each of which rotate independently around a central spindle.

The game makes several points in explaining the logistical problems this creates, such as cables and pipes needing to be detached/re-attached throughout the day and entire roads/railways/tunnels being blocked off. The thing is, the game doesn't actually give any explanation as to why a city would be designed like this--it's evocative, sure, but ultimately nonsensical.

What theories do you have as to why a city would be designed this way?

>>95901724
For a group of people to regularly cohabitate in a hedonist, lawless town and get along well enough that things don't completely collapse out of control, then you need to give them a common ground that the agree with. A common ground that, if disturbed or destroyed, would prompt a "everyone disliked that" kind of response. It would need to be universally beneficial to keep intact or in supply for everyone, and the only ones who would dare to mess with it too harshly would be cult-like/deranged people that want everyone to die unconditionally or someone who is public enemy #1 and has nothing left to lose.

This common ground could be a resource that is known to be more abundant in this place specifically, which is why it is the largest known area where people come together. You could even have it to where it is necessary to travel outside the city to reinforce or gather more of this resource and the city just came about naturally when more people arrived.

The most obvious resource is water, something like a large lake. It would benefit literally nobody beyond those with a death wish or foreign faction to fuck up the largest water supply. However, what happens to the water once it's out of this lake can be subject to all kinds of scenarios to your liking.

Also, try brainstorming on non-physical resources for common ground, if you're setting permits it. For example, there is a bright orb that orbits over the city at all times, but if it is ever publicly acknowledged, then those people immediately vanish/disintegrate/explode/whatever. Just pulled something out of my ass. Can even be something belief-based to keep the city functioning in some way, and those who don't believe are known to somehow publicly execute themselves every single time with a specific mark on their chest.

>>95904374
Except those aren't bad things unless you're trying to make the players the overdeities of everything

>>95904374
It all flows from the purpose of the great wheel cosmology. The inner planes are not supposed to be a primary narrative realm. They're supposed to be antarctica, or the deep sahara, or the southern pacific. It's crucial to have them even though, usually, not much happens there.

The symmetry of the planes is also there to help them serve their purpose. They exist to give context and affinity to arcane and divine magic, mostly the inner planes for the former and the outer planes for the latter. If they weren't symmetrical, you'd also make magic asymmetrical. And since the prime settings, where you're actually supposed to focus most of the narrative playtime, are supposed to be at least somewhat generic, you can't bake something non-generic into their cosmology. That's not the appropriate place to put such a thing.

>>95907427
Level 20 characters should be allowed to change the setting, sorry. The idea they shouldn't is actually insane given how powerful they are. Get back in your cuck chair and watch the infinitely powerful NPCs fight an infinite swarm of NPCs while you do nothing because it's a prerendered cutscene you can't interact with.

>>95907548
No, this is just cope because you grew up with the Great Wheel and need to justify liking it.

>>95902662
Having at the very least some areas where state power is weak and as a result corporate power is strong is pretty normal for cyberpunk from my understanding.

>>95907632
>Level 20 characters should be allowed to change the setting, sorry.
They are, they can change faerun for example, there's just a setting beyond that setting that they can't, because that gives context to what they're doing on faerun

If you want to go past that then you have epic level rules, but you know what the main reason epic levels are mostly considered boring is? The fact that there's nothing to contend with at that level anymore, the exact thing you're complaining about

>>95907632
>this is just cope because you grew up with the Great Wheel and need to justify liking it
This is just cope you created because your MMO-addled mind can't handle the idea that the entire world isn't an artificial disneyfied theme park.

>>95907676
>they can change faerun for example
No, they can't change Faerun, that's the exact setting where this shit happens and the exact reason this shit happens. Ten million level 20 characters all perfectly canceling one another out.

>If you want to go past that then you have epic level rules, but you know what the main reason epic levels are mostly considered boring is? The fact that there's nothing to contend with at that level anymore, the exact thing you're complaining about
So at level 20, I can't do anything about the Blood War, and then at Level 21, I can end the Blood War without any issues or struggle? Do you even listen to yourself?

btw, level 20 is Epic Level already; OD&D only went to 10, you stop getting new spells at 17, and nobody plays that high.

>>95907695
>complains about Disneyfied theme park
>while defending the existence of ten different Planes of Good which are barely-distinguishable Disneyfied theme parks

>>95907706
No, mister strawmonger, epic levels actually go up a lot higher than 21

>>95907721
>No, mister strawmonger, epic levels actually go up a lot higher than 21
Okay. What levels can I interact with the Blood War meaningfully at?

>>95907706
You're the one arguing in favor of removing everyone that doesn't fit the theme park mold. Just leave antarctica alone, retard.

>>95907737
>theme park mold = something players can interact with in any meaningful way at any level
These books are supposed to describe a setting to play in. How much time should a book set in the modern day spend on describing the attributes of Proxima Centauri b?

>>95907755
>antarctica existing means that earth doesn't have anything to interact on it!
What the fuck is driving you into these mental gymnastics?

>How much time should a book set in the modern day spend on describing the attributes of Proxima Centauri b?
I mean, since you are capable of going to the plane of ash in the great wheel with a mid-tier amount of capability, so obviously it's not analogous to the modern day, unless you think you can go to proxima right now?

>>95907786
Okay, so players ARE supposed to go to the Plane of Ash, but not do anything there? You're the one engaged in increasingly deranged mental gymnastics to justify this page-wasting turd.

>>95907794
They're supposed to go to the plane of ash if they want to. The information of what it's like there and what to do there is fairly sparse, but it's not nonexistent either. It's equivalent to a random forest that doesn't have much of a description, the gm just comes up with some reason to be there and some interactions to have there.

Why are you personally angry about this? I don't get it, anon, it's absurd that you're so offended by a random setting detail not being a theme park.

>>95907807
>Nooo, see, there are many reasons the players might go to the Plane of Ash
>Such as?
>Wow, you want everything to be a theme park, huh?

>>95907824
>many
That's why I'm saying you're theme park brained. There don't need to be many reasons. There just need to be some. There aren't many reasons to go to antarctica, the sahara, the deep ocean, and so on in real life either, but they still fill us with dreams and wonder.

If you can't see this you're just shitposting and you know it.

>>95907841
>sees word "many"
>uses it to avoid responding to the question
>continues "theme park" allegations even as he fails to identify any reason whatsoever for the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash to exist or players to interact with it
Content in the books should be usable and superior to what I would make up if I was a particularly uncreative child.

>>95907807
>Why are you personally angry about this? I don't get it, anon, it's absurd that you're so offended by a random setting detail not being a theme park.
If I had to express why I hate the Great Wheel, it would be: a) the Blood War being the stupidest shit I've ever read, completely toxic to gaming, and b) this dogshit got forcibly shoved into Eberron where it was unwanted and made the setting measurably worse. Before your trash got shoved into a good setting, I was content to ignore it and never think about it.

>>95907873
>Content in the books should be usable and superior to what I would make up if I was a particularly uncreative child.
You have to first not be a particularly uncreative child to judge whether it's superior or not, though.

>the Blood War
If the blood war is your main beef, then just ignore it? It's not very important anywhere other than the lower portion of the outer planes and maybe sigil. Everywhere else it's just "demons are evil" and that's it.

>>95907889
>You have to first not be a particularly uncreative child to judge whether it's superior or not, though.
If you think the "Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash" is something that's sooo incredible and creative, your brain may be made of literal pudding. (I do get spontaneous compliments on my worldbuilding, but you don't have to be a chef to tell food tastes like shit.)

>If the blood war is your main beef, then just ignore it?
I do ignore it, because I don't use the Great Wheel, because it's shit. See?

>>95907910
You're just shoving your head in the sand. Which is fine, but stop having strong opinions about things you're deliberately ignorant about.

>>95907921
>nyooo you don't understand, the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash is the most creative thing in the world, no I won't explain why or how
Concession accepted.

>>95907932
I already accepted yours five posts ago. If you can't see the potential for great stories in places like antarctica, you're just shitposting, and you know it.

>>95907964
>guy says you think it's theme park to ask for something to do with things in an RPG book that page count is spent on
>says there can totally be amazing stories set there
>can't name a single one, just keeps saying "it's like Antarctica" over and over
>accuses YOU of being a shitposter

>>95907995
Yes. You're shitposting right now. And you DO know it.

>>95908018
>Yes. You're shitposting right now. And you DO know it.
This conversation is a lot like the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash, in that it is totally valueless and included only out of an autistic desire for completeness.

>>95908029
Being deliberately small-minded is only a detriment to yourself, anon.

>>95908078
Autistically and endlessly defending things just because you're used to them, rather than reconsidering whether they add value, is a form of small-mindedness. It is not small minded to look at poop, call it poop, and refuse to eat it.

>>95908085
>nooo you don't actually love this thing that you've enjoyed for thousands of hours, you're just used to it
autist

>>95908600
Yes, you have enjoyed the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash for thousands of hours.

You know I wonder, my setting hinges on christianity being real and other worlds (in the universe, separate solar systems) having psychic powers as well as their own deities that are fallen angels/demons/spirits masquerading. I really wanted it to be a "Narnia in Space" thing, with planetary romance involved. But I'm now realizing I risk pissing off everyone from theists to atheists if I do this wrong. Part of me wants to overhaul it and use stand-ins for my themes, but it feels like I'd be lobotomizing my work. I guess it comes down to, "do I trust myself to write this without botching it?" I don't know whether to listen to my cold feet or not, I've never been confident about my creative process.

>>95909651
The traditional problem of writing Christian theology from a secularized perspective is not making God Good. The traditional problem of writing Christian theology from a religious perspective is treating all non-Christians as stupid/evil. Don't do either of those and it should probably be fine.

>>95909651
I have the Christian God in my setting.
Surprisingly, He respects the boundaries of a God from a world that is not His.
God created everything but there's more than one "Everything."
Wrap your head around that

>>95849839 (OP)
what should an underwater settlement of Deep Ones/Zmey in the Black Sea be called?
“Just use Balkan/Greek/Slavic lore” I tried there isn’t really anything applicable, besides some “claims” that the Greeks believed the Black Sea was connected to the Underworld

>>95912193
you're making me think of olms

>>95912247
Olms are sweet water Italian, Bosnian, Slovenian and Croatian salamanders, sometimes associated with the fictional subterranean realm of Agartha. Fictional Giant Olms are sometimes telepathic. I do not see the resemblance

I'm currently setting up a campaign about a very Kowloon walled-city inspired cityscape that people are forced to go to to live out their days in exile from their home dimensions(?) as a sort of dumping ground for criminals and undesirables. Because you have to go through a dimensional portal(?) to get there, there is very strict customs and gun control meaning most people are just unarmed in this city full of foreigners and cutthroat criminals; and you also can't leave. So people began to turn to the ancient traditions of martial arts to survive and defend themselves. Basically it's a kung fu crime setting/Yakuza with some Fist of the North Star-tier overpowered martial arts mysticism in there for good measure.

However my problem is trying to figure out exactly where these refugees come from. I don't want it to be a prison planet with sci-fi (though that is certainly an option) because I don't want it to be "too" cyberpunk feeling and have that near-modern feel. I also really like the idea of having a small selection of nonhuman/strange character choices but they have to be bounded to be within the sphere of human ability and size (because of martial arts).

So I'm currently trying to figure out what the best set up for this campaign setting is. My current ideas are;
>Alternate timelines where people developed different martial arts cultures; mingle in the "everyone died of a plague so the city is intact but nothing else is left" timeline to dump undesirables
>Alternate Dimension setup to explain different laws of physics/"dimensional nexus" to allow for silly martial arts and maybe different human evolutionary paths
>Near-Future Sci-Fi with biohacking/biomorphing twist to explain certain elements
>Just leave it unexplained(?)
>Other?
Any ideas for this?

>>95907873
Isn't the main purpose of the Blood War just to explain why the demons and devils aren't constantly fucking around with the mortal plane (they're too busy fighting each other most of the time)?

I thing this would be of interest to anyone looking on how to monsters/fantastical creatures could be used by civilized peoples
https://youtu.be/svHmquHoFoI

>>95895884
If you can come up with an equivalent to torpedoes, then you can have a small, cheap anti-ship weapons platform, which you could hypothetically adapt for in-atmosphere ground support missions, and can be more easily stored and concealed. They might also be useful in anti-piracy/smuggling operations where using larger ships might not be cost effective. Or for piracy.

>>95909661
Nuance. That'll take time to get down.
>>95910298
I'm partial to Narnia's approach, that God still exists in that world under a different name.

>>95914427
I do not know what the main purpose of the Blood War is. Perhaps it's supposed to be "oft evil will shall evil mar" but the only reason it's necessary is because they say there's infinite demons. Mostly it's fucking stupid, though.

>>95922229
It's more that God respects the sanctity of something that existed without his input.
He didn't make it but that's okay. It isn't doing shit to him or his world

>>95932216
How did you design this?

>>95913479
The Stasis Realm is set apart from the 6 Realms being an infinite void that sits atop of the Hot and Cold Hells giving it shape and form.

It's a prison, purgatory, and vault for things kept secret or things that threaten the balance of the 6 Realms.

Many are forced into the Stasis Realm and others enter willingly to perform whatever sacred duty their sacrifice entails

>>95939537
that's the official flag of the Chernyshevsky district in Russia

>>95853122
Works alright for patently absurd circular logic + non-sequitur cosmic horror. For the most part though it's up there with Solipsism in terms of dead-end philosophy.
>>95855051
By that logic they give nary a shit for Baryonic matter and instead are in it for the dark stuff.
>>95855403
I liked the Bit Player series about sapient NPCs in an procedurally generated slop MMORPG multiverse "travelling" between worlds (in search of a fabled one with warped enough physics for them to bruteforce their way out of the overtaxed engine) using "mandalas". Basically the correct unlikely combinations of shape and colour rendered into their private frame of reference caused the game to copy their un-wiped mindprint into the cue for "generate fresh placeholder NPC in X world". It's a plot point that the gothic horror verse has tons of blood crimson and unsettling greens all over the place but no cheerful yellow. Getting colours that are scarce by genre convention could be a fun sort of seemingly innocuous fetch-quest for players.
>>95859124
Feels like it'd fit more for energy being foreign to our reality. It'd be pretty amusing if the Colour Out of Space was simply a case of the stranded hue not being sure what scanners caused cancer in puny local life.

>>95882673
hahahahah, where the fuck in 40k is there anything but the slightest veneer of hard sf? If you're serious your best bet is to look into sf that takes itself seriously but pushes to tech levels where Clarke's third law takes effect. The bullshit achieved in the Xeelee sequence and Revelation Space come to mind.
>>95888970
In my thing's Mentat-type feats of idiot-savant hypercognition (stuff like kinetic empathy or near-precognitive synchrony) can be cultivated in just about anyone with the limiting factor being expense. Rather than augment the average Joe from scratch it's more cost effective to subtly warp all the poo people in maladaptive ways so that a few among them are more cheaply compatible with savantry augs.

Larger candidate populations mean less maladaptive warping or greater candidate harvest. Adaptation towards one sort of savantry tends to be mutually exclusive with others so there's an opportunity cost which leaves human space divided between fiefs with demented masses fuelling hyperspecialised cutting-edge elites and more generalist "poo populations" who are overall resilient while providing control groups to compare the ongoing memetic diaspora against.

PCs are another thing entirely, minds layered like onions and twisted into Klein bottles. They go mad from the revelation same as anyone else only for the outermost gibbering layer of self to slough away like rotten skin leaving them none the worse off but for a little amnesia. No predicting them except tossing people into the grinder and seeing who comes out more intact.

>>95922229
Eventually fails pretty hard on the "non-Christians as stupid/evil" front. Gene Wolfe's a bit better imo notably in the exchanges between Silk and Crane in Book of the Long Sun. The latter's skepticism and rationalising doesn't come across as arbitrary, he's just not privy to facts we the readers are and Providence irl (assuming there is any) isn't as in-your-face as Wolfe writes depicts it in his works.

>>95944512
>hahahahah, where the fuck in 40k is there anything but the slightest veneer of hard sf? If you're serious your best bet is to look into sf that takes itself seriously but pushes to tech levels where Clarke's third law takes effect. The bullshit achieved in the Xeelee sequence and Revelation Space come to mind.
Aliens that are actually alien (though none of the major species beyond the tyranids), inhabited planets with strange climates, a sense of appropriately massive scale that actually comes through because no story involves going from one planet to another unless that's all the story is about. A planet in Star Wars with a 150h day sounds weird; it fits right into WH40k.

Hypertech like Revelation Space and Xeelee is the opposite of the direction I'm interested in. Technology naturally distributes primarily to the most powerful groups in society. That's why I want to slip in magical nonsense.

>>95944512
>The bullshit achieved in the Xeelee sequence and Revelation Space come to mind.
Like what exactly?

>>95849839 (OP)
Thoughts on the world map?

>>95951068
It's fine.

If you want to sperg out further, it looks like somebody took a cookie cutter or something and separated a bunch of islands out that way; island chains are produced by lines of elevation, so they generally taper along the lines of flow, rather than have big chonky squares everywhere. Some are fine (e.g. Borneo), but every single one of your islands is separated along long, flat axis.

If this is artificial (e.g. ancient civilization of canal builders) or otherwise, no real notes.

wip world map, just got my continent and major islands shaped. thoughts?

>>95951812
Looks like an alien organism, why's that?

>I have this big empire, and I need to give its ruler a title
>"emperor" is lazy, and "high king" will sound like I'm ripping off Skyrim
>what do I do?
>hmmm...
>ah yes, "imperator"
>anon, you did it again

>>95951845
Gods shanked the chaos dragon to create the land.

Not explicitly /tg/, but the worldbuilding thread on /lit/ is archived right now.

Rough map for a planned more detail map that details the World in the 2030s/40s after a catastrophic proxy war between the US and China

>>95952332
Oh yeah, literally any critique/advice/feedback you have to offer is appreciated.

>>95952003
Im always on the "the chad forger of worlds" side of things, but I would make it less apparent that it was a giant creature at some point. Sort of in the way schizos now think vaguely human shaped hills are the bodies of dead giants, or that plateus are giant petrified tree stumps.

>>95952332
Why is Africa suddenly disputed? Africa has no interest in getting involved in a world war, and would not be. African countries also love respecting borders.

>>95952561
This is set after the war. The reason Africa is disputed is because of the inability for France/the UN to "keep peace" in the region. The more stable countries, or the countries that have been held back by the aforementioned (Kenya, Ethiopia, Niger, etc;) are the only ones that I could identify as being able to keep some semblance of a coherent/consistent state in the shadow of global conflict. The other reason is the contest between East/West (whether via proxy or direct conflict) for rare Earth minerals, uranium, gold, lithium (although the demand will likely be lesser after such a conflict), and oil. Im not Tom Clancy, but I still think this is relatively realistic. Once again, any feedback is appreciated.

>>95952729
Should be noted that Im still working on a rough timeline of events. The map honestly almost serves as my scat sheet for everything thats planned. Once I have that written out I will post it here, maybe along with an updated version of the map.

Rough draft of the timeline:
>War between Iran/Israel goes hot, for the last time.
>Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, drawing in China and Pakistan, who rely upon their oil.
>The US is drawn into the conflict on the side of Israel
>Russia attempts to stay out of the conflict at all costs, having a weakened military in light of the Ukraine conflict, and no real national interest in the region
>France and the United Kingdom pledge support for Israel in the conflict, sending troops and aid to assist the United States.
>Russia begins to support China with supplies, attempting to broker peace alongside the United States
>South Korea and Japan pull away from the United States, not wanting to become involved in the conflict, forming the Eastern Defensive Pact
>The oil wells on the Persian gulf are ignited by an unknown force
>China begins to deploy troops in the South China sea, in an attempt to secure oil reserves amid a fuel crisis spurred by the war and the inability to import Iranian oil
>Massive casualties are sustained in Iran on the Western side as they approach a ground victory
>There is civil unrest within the United States, leading to government crackdowns as their power begins to falter, spurring further controversy as the situation spirals out of control on a domestic level
>Note that Chinese/Pakistani and American/French/UK forces are in direct conflict in Iran at this point
>There is massive civil unrest in Israel, as Jewish diaspora begin to flee elsewhere
>Tactical nuclear weapons are deployed, first against Israel, and then Iran, by unknown forces
>Israel and North/Central Iran are rendered temporarily uninhabitable
>Both Western and Eastern media attempt to deny the development of World War III
>The United Kingdom and France immediately pull out of the conflict
>Covert strikes against oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico/America by China begin to take place
>China takes Taiwan
1/2

>A coup detat takes place in China, leading to what I have come to call the "PRC (Peoples Republic of China) II" (ala Vatican II)
>A peace deal is brokered between Russia and NATO, which at this point does not include the United States as a capable ally
>Russia peacefully annexes Belarus and forcefully annexes Ukraine as part of the pact.
>Armenia and Ajerbaijan request to join the Russian Federation of their own volition, the term "United States of Russia" becomes a viral meme abroad.
>A ceasefire between China and the United States is reached, fearing further escelation
>A coup detat takes place in the United States, leading to military/intelligence and corporate powers gaining control over government forces
>Cuba is taken by the United States due to a lack of Eastern support
>Egypt claims the remains of Israel, and absorbs a destitute Jordan
>Saudi Arabia absorbs the UAE and Kuwait
>Oman remains independent as a direct effort of the Western intelligence community
>France struggles to keep control in Africa, as it shifts its focus there
>The Alliance of Sahel States is now in direct conflict with French Foreign Legion
>Somalia begins to increase pirate activities, leading to Yemen and Kenya attacking them directly, taking roughly half each
>Ethiopia takes Eritrea with support from the Kenyans
>China begins support of rebel/seperatist militias in the United States, the most prominent of which being the ANU (American Nationalist Union)
>US government crackdowns on their civillian population increase
>The US government again begins to covertly strike China
>As a result of the collapse of Western support, India is forced to cede land to China and Pakistan
>Kim Jong Un smokes a blunt and holds a massive party on the lawn of his palace in Pyongyang, Dennis Rodman is there
>John Bolton jerks off into the American flag
>Holden Bloodthirst (R), a respectable biparistan, grows demon wings and descends into Hell
2/2

The story begins here.

>>95952729
African countries are weak, but have no interest in territorial exchanges (mostly because all their borders are obviously arbitrary so one country is as vulnerable as the next). The Second Congo War, one of the bloodiest wars in human history, ended with no border changes.

In your outlined scenario >>95953127, I'd assume any territorial conquests would be two step. On step one, you back local groups/partisans and help them seize power; on step two, they voluntarily choose to join your country. So (say) Kenya formally aligns with the Federal Republic of Somalia, and Yemen with the Republic of Somaliland, and they help smush the pirates and then have the local governments join a federation, etc.

Even putting aside the unlikeliness of a war of all against all, some of the most stable/functional African states are: Botswana, Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal, Namibia, and South Africa, which you have here as part of the DISPUTED.

>>95953118
Keeping Iran-Israel into WW3, it seems more likely to instead go:
- Iran-Israel War escalates, US troops/carriers sent to try to calm tensions
- Get hit by Iran or Israel (by accident), gets attributed to Iran, leads to increasing American involvement, possibly even physical invasion (with French/UK support, if you want)
- Seeing the US/NATO busy, China goes for the gold with Taiwan
- America tries to defend Taiwan, but finds its East Asian allies aren't interested in getting into WW3, and ends up holding the fort alone, letting China win Taiwan

>>95952003
Okay, is it fully dead?

>>95961522
Its blood became the oceans methinks. Naiads, river dragons, the Sea God, etc, are its "children." But it is dead.

>>95945420
"Actual aliens" who are functionally irrelevant to the plot don't impress me much, espcially accounting for the fact that they're as likely there as "slay the Xeno" easily-outgrouped murder-fodder than actual exploration of mindkind believably emerging from alternate avenues. If Star Wars is the benchmark you're comparing things to then you're already lost and for what it's worth 40k's scale is utterly retarded when taken as anything more serious than a campy metal smorgasbord. While your aversion to RS + X is understandable 40k is again an awful point of comparison. Tech stagnation because the Admech enforce a monopoly is is exactly the "primarily to the most powerful groups in society" you claim to be avoiding.
>>95950868
Bump better fag.

>>95952003
Shame. I'd hoped it was an extra-thicc Qu.
>>95952363
Also worth bearing in mind that death throes and alternate biologies like spiders' pressurized limbs could further blur the outline before erosion, flooding etc...get started.

>>95963683
>Tech stagnation because the Admech enforce a monopoly is is exactly the "primarily to the most powerful groups in society" you claim to be avoiding.
Are you illiterate?

Magic lets you just say "yeah, random farmboy is now stronger than a rich noble child." In WH40k, this is psykers, not technology. Technology FUNDAMENTALLY will always be used first by the rich.

>>95963714
40k is a setting defined by tech monopoly and stagnation, even psychic powers (such as navigators) have a monopolised eugenic aspect. You are making a terrible argument if you think it is somehow a "power to the people" sorta setting. That random psyker farmboy? Odds are demons will get him, he's fed to the Emperor or AT BEST becomes a bomb-collared cog of an empire which despises him.

>>95963830
Okay, so you are illiterate. Probably low IQ too. Filtered.

>>95963884
Filtered? Because I actually read hard sci-fi and know what the term means? Cope however suits you best, it's obviously something you've had a lot of practice with.

I'm making some fantasy setting.
I really want guns to be available for player characters that want them, but I want them to be extremely rare in universe, and for them to be almost unusable by anyone other than the player characters who pay the opportunity cost to get to use and repair guns as opposed to just them being usable by anyone who finds them.
an idea I had was to make the setting's guns be made of some very dangerous material that's literally extracted from demons, and actually having control over them requires some sort of "attunement" that just breaks normal people
is this to silly or what's some decent way to justify guns being limited and very special in this setting?

>>95966785
I mean, that works fine, though it implies a lot of second order worldbuilding (if you like it, then cool), but what's wrong with them just being very expensive?

>>95967139
>second order worldbuilding
what does this mean?

>but what's wrong with them just being very expensive?
because then there's nothing cool about the gunner character, the guys with actual magic powers might as well just steal the guns so they can shoot AND cast magic.

>>95966785
That works, but I don't think you even need to go that far. You can also make guns require special training akin to magic (and perhaps expensive or this training is highly restricted to limit NPCs). You can also do a predestination method, although PCs tend not to like that as much. By that I mean the guns only work if you were born with the special gene to activate them or perhaps while there was an eclipse or some other astronomical event signifying the gods' blessing or whatever. You have a lot of options there, but since it's something you're generally just 'given' by another entity rather than have earned, it can feel cheaper.

How does your world deal with the homeless?

>>95849839 (OP)
>What are the interesting critters in your that wouldn't be featured in a traditional bestiary ?
I have kind of been playing with my own setting and TTRPG. I break off the "Bestiary" into volumes. "Primal" "Fae" "Dragonic" Demonic" Primal is for normal creature, Fae is fantastical, Dragonic is dragons and dragon like, and Demonic is your dark otherworldly.
>What is their relation with the natural environment and the different civilizations of the world ?
The same as in the real world. Those that bother settled part of areas are hunted down and sometimes moved elsewhere.
>How they relate to the magic and spiritual side of your world ?
Some creatures don't, though the ones that do depending on what magic they tapped in. Which people often hunt to make armor, weapons, food, etc
>Do they have any use as an alchemical ingredient or magical component for spells ?
>Have you or one of your players ever made some creative use of them ?
I try to have my creatures have loot that can be for weapons, armor, magical components, alchemical ingredients, or food.

>>95966785
>I really want guns to be available for player characters that want them, but I want them to be extremely rare in universe, and for them to be almost unusable by anyone other than the player characters who pay the opportunity cost to get to use and repair guns as opposed to just them being usable by anyone who finds them.
why

settings i've seen do this have usually done it by making being able to use guns a special talent in the same way being able to use magic is a special talent, such as for example by mages needing a strong magic affinity, gunners needing a strong lack of magic affinity, and the average person just has average affinity so they are suited to neither

but honestly, why? why the fuck do you want this? just have guns if you want guns, why do you need to force some kind of medieval cliche that never even existed in the first place? i get that guns are way more respected in the modern collective subconscious, but getting a bullet in your brain isn't any more deadly than getting a blade or arrow in your brain

>>95967577
>what does this mean?
All the demon extraction stuff and what it implies about the setting (demons, ability to extract them, figuring out who will/won't get broken by a gun, etc).

>because then there's nothing cool about the gunner character, the guys with actual magic powers might as well just steal the guns so they can shoot AND cast magic.
The guys with actual magic powers might as well just steal the swords so they can swing them around AND cast magic.

>>95970105
>but honestly, why? why the fuck do you want this?
because I just want it?
setting is more cavemen + weird gifts from aliens than pseudomedieval

>>95970286
ah yeah demon stuff is already central to the setting
>The guys with actual magic powers might as well just steal the swords so they can swing them around AND cast magic
yeah, guys with magic powers already wear armor and carry weapons by default

>>95969196
I've actually got a whole background thing going on where the space corporations are funneling refugees from destroyed colonies towards the Star Trek favored utopian earth in order to destabilize it.
Otherwise, homeless aren't allowed on central corpo planets, those places are aggressively controlled to be middle class only. The corpo factory zones can have rotating homeless populations who dip in and out of work on the factory lines but nobody gives a shit about them beyond wrangling them up occasionally to keep the street minimally cleaned up. There's some weird shit down in the most dilapidated areas that's probably leading to nothing good.

>>95970567
Interesting stuff.

>>95969196
They don't because they don't do shit like that

>>95970567
>I've actually got a whole background thing going on where the space corporations are funneling refugees from destroyed colonies towards the Star Trek favored utopian earth in order to destabilize it.
Surely someone is realizing what's going on.

Thoughts about tribals in an advance setting? I thought about something like James Cameron's Avatar.

>>95979173
Just because they are tribal doesn't mean they have to be primitive. They just choose to live that way and focus on technology that allows their culture to be the way the want, stragglers and outcasts not withstanding. Hell, you could even have that sort of cultural tension as a point to why the aliens are PC'able characters

>>95979173
They're cool. General problem is having them not be isolated to a tiny chunk of the setting, in any large setting - the Na'vi work because they're on one of the only two worlds that matter, while the Ewoks only matter on Endor.

>>95979173
I have them be a very unique sort of "Tribal."
>They're actually more technologically advanced than the main civilization
>But there's one big thing: They cannot use magic, which outdoes most technology. I mean it, there's a part where someone invents a gun, only for someone to say "Why would you do that when you can just magically hurl a pebble faster than a bullet"
>And it's not like they're in conflict. In fact neither civilization wants outright war due to how it's not productive at all.

>>95978791
Stop noticing things

If you have a spaceship where the main* weapon is a front facing particle accelerator beam, and the secondary armament was banks of lasers, would it be better to have said lasers in fixed positions on the sides, maybe angled so they can aim up or down? Or would it be better to have fewer and stick them in turret assemblies?
*Everyone knows the real main weapons are rows and rows of missile racks but those are gay and I don't want to talk about them

>>95981717
Fixed is absolutely stupid as even a single arcsecond deviation will mean a miss by a massive margin. They absolutely have to be turreted. There's also not a very good argument for having multiple smaller lasers over one bigger one. MAYBE for PD purposes, but I'm not sure even then.

https://files.catbox.moe/3qysz4.pdf
could i get some input on the worldbuilding for this setting? its my homebrew game and i wanna clean up any internal inconsistencies. what feels missing?

>>95981717
It makes sense for them to be on turrets. Look at cannon firing naval ships for layouts

>>95988558
It's a cool premise. I would personally cut down on word count; it's a tall order to process the whole thing.

>>95969196
Wildly depends on the city. They could be forced into manual labor, kicked out into the wilderness, experimented on, have their soul fed to a god of emptiness and have their withered husk serve as a slave until it breaks down, made to stare at a river for the rest of their life, or there's a few where they'll just be generally cared for (provided they abide by the strange laws and customs, at least one city will require a minimum number of tea parties per week).

>>95974679
Actually, let me explain:
They don't have an issue with homelessness because most people build their homes themselves. They don't have a housing market like we do because their economy functions off of entirely different rules

>>95989224
Thank you very much anon

>>95988558
To be honest I didn't get through the intro blurb. The font is very disagreeable, the border thing looks half-baked, and there were a number of basic grammatical errors that put me off. On top of that I just didn't find the premise remotely interesting. Too far into the future; the tech would be wholly alien and there's no point of reference for me.
Not really addressing your question, but something to consider if you're planning on pitching it to players.

>>95990072
Thank you very much anon

What are some good tools to help make planet accurate looking maps?

Do you use MSpaint or other resources?

>>95992609
https://www.cartographersguild.net/

Why is stereotypical elf food always so simple and boring? Salad, fruit, maybe a mild cheese. These fucks are nearly immortal. They've had the time to acquire every acquired taste, and they're rich arrogant shits who absolutely would demand it. Elf cuisine should *start* with fermented everything and only get more fucked up from there.

>>95993094
Stop fighting imaginary stereotypes, or at least name where you think they come from. I've never heard of any of what you just claimed.

>>95993109
nta, but vegetarian elves is a well established trope.

>>95993141
Literally source?
The only incidence I can think of is DF, and the most popular stereotype stems from LOTR where they're definitely not.

>>95993109
>at least name where you think they come from. I've never heard of any of what you just claimed.
In the hobbit movies, elves were shown getting blackout-drunk on wine and a bit of cheese in the barrel cellar scene, and the dwarves complained at being served salad. In the LotR books, their whole deal is lembas, which is described like a cross between a honey roll and hard tack. If you google "elven feast," you get plates of fruit and salad and roast meat. The only *exceptions* I can think of are DF and Elder Scrolls, where woodsy elves are also carnivores.

>>95993368
>and roast meat
In the LOTR books sausage is also a big deal for them.
Honestly it sounds like people just saw nature and assumed it baselessly, despite direct contradictions to their assumptions being present.
As for the Hobbit movies (which I haven't seen), it just sounds like a common Hollywood fuckup where they ignored the source material. I looked up the scene on Youtube and it seems more like the elves purposefully refused to serve meat to spite the dwarves, and of course the dwarves likewise mistreated the elves' hospitality. Whether the writers intended that or not I have no idea, especially without seeing the context around it.

>>95988558

I like the setting. I did pretty much gloss over the rules, since you were specifically asking about worldbuilding, but I did really like it. It's weird and its thought through in such a way as to at least be internally consistent for most of it.

It will definitely stick with me, at least. Very striking imagery.

>>95993456
The point that I was making is acquired tastes. Stinky tofu, that civet-crap coffee, balut and that worm cheese. Elf food should the canned shit that kids on tiktolk film themselves gagging while trying to get down because that's what a thousand years of eating lembas will do to a mf.

Sausage and honey cakes are the opposite of that.

>Worldbulding general
I'll ask my question here, instead of making a new thread
>Coral it's a sedentary animal, that grows on colonies
>It can grow on most rocky surfaces
>It filters it's food, so it just needs the right kind of salt water and light to prosper
How far fetched would it be to grow coral in special stone pots, like if they were flowers, but for an oceanic playable race?
I already got the "toxic, brittle and sharp" thing covered, by studying how morays secrete slime out of their skin

>>95993504
Isn't lembas meant to be food for long travels and trips? It isn't supposed to be extravagant or fancy food for elves, it is basically their equivalent of pemmican or someshit like that.

>>95993771
Anon, people grow coral in special containers/on fixtures in the real world today. Right now.

>>95993771
This gives me an idea of using coral as building material in itself. For more biotech stuff I mean, as in using coral structures to create biological water filteration systems and what not or organic architecture in general.

Do you guys have any recommended reading on psychics/psionics? Preferably documenting real history of its study. Good fiction is acceptable too, anything that'll get my juices flowing and has interesting ideas.

>>95996607
I don't know about real history stuff but a lot of Hindu/Buddhist mythology features saints and holy men exhibiting the sort of powers one would consider "psychic powers" such as telepathy and such.

Other than that, it depends on the sort of flavor you're going for. I prefer something akin to the BG sisters from Dune and tacking on the stuff I would like

>>95996607
"Real" is debatable, but I'm really fond of the experiment with the Zener Cards
Also, there's this theory about a correlation between poltergeist phenomena, and latent teenager PSI "energy incontinence"

Trying to draw upon some initially strange sources of inspiration; Horizon Zero Dawn and the Chimera Ants from HxH.

The idea is a race of bio-mechanical creatures whose original purpose was to optimize a sustainable method of resource extraction and refinement/use. They were swept up and seperated from their creators but still continue to advance their primary directive as well as beginning to adapt and evolve in ways outside of their main purpose.

The whole point of this is to eventually introduce a new type of this creature based on Humans after they encounter and begin to process them.

>>95996822
Don't know those sources, but it sounds like a specific type of von Neumann machine; a machine which can make itself. They are typically considered an existential threat and the lack of them as some evidence for the lack of significantly advanced life.

>>95996607
Ghost Hunt

>>95910298
Kek you really think you're being smart aren't you? A transcendent god exists outside of everything so the other universes would still be in his domain. You can't make a jealous omnipotent god that wants all the attention coexist with other gods.

>>95998550
Kek, you really think you're being smart, don't you? Nope, he's only transcendent in this universe.

>>95999131
Those are your rules and your pseudo-Abrahamic god. In reality multiverses (if they exist) are still a facet of reality, how can they constrain a being that exists outside of it?

>>95997696
So my references refer to what I imagine they would be like. They are supposed to be artificial life forms whose purpose is to maximize the efficiency of the environment they are in. They are not native to the place they are now similar to Humans and the Chimera ant reference refers to the fact they attempt to assimilate things to help them develop. This acts as a double edged sword because in assimilating an intelligent life form (humans) they slowly begin to take on their traits which makes them equally dangerous but also not as readily powerful as they would have been.

>>96000780
Easily. God only exists in the universes I say he exists in.

>>95998550
Because He is aware that this other plane is not His and He should not tamper with something He did not make, as that would be cruel.
Does tampering with something that doesn't belong to him sound like something God would do?

>>96004256
That and the plane itself literally told Him to fuck off because it's a sentient being and therefore not His to just control the totality of

>>96004264
Actually it’s a long story.
Basically, here’s how it went down
>Humanity left behind God and just fucked off to another plane of existence because he was being a horrible dad effectively speaking
>He had a thousand years of loneliness and isolation to reflect on his misgivings and bad choices
>However, new life sprung up in the form of these elemental people, and he resolved to make this species his greatest second chance at being a good “parent.” He metaphorically “Adopted” this new race and took a more small scale approach to it
>Instead of asking for worship or doing great miracles, he gave this new race basic guidance and wisdom in a more intimate way.
I wouldn’t say it’s the Christian God but it’s more like a weaker version of God who has regrets over his bad choices and resolved to try and be better.

>>95849839 (OP)
Hey, what kind of animals make sense as being associated with each of the Seven Deadly Sins, since it might add some variety to demonic appearances? Rabbit, Bonobos, Roosters and Dolphins might work for Lust, Bulls, Lions, potentially Dragons, and Honey Badgers for Wrath, and Dragons again and Griffins for Greed, literal Sloths, Sheep, and Koalas for Sloth, Bees and Flies for Gluttony, etc., Peacocks for Pride, and creatures that mimic others like Chameleons for Envy are easy options but what else could work for each Sin?

>>96005608
>gluttony
Lots of birds will stuff themselves to the point of not being able to fly anymore, some even to death. But pelican are particularly fitting I think.

>>96006491
Yeah, Pelicans tend to eat like lunatics

Thoughts on warrior cultures?

>>96005608
All birds edition
>Pride
Peafowl
>Greed
Magpies
>Lust
Cuckoos
>Envy
Vultures
>Gluttony
Gulls
>Wrath
Owls
>Sloth
Pigeons

>>96006926
Yeah sure. My scifi setting has alien space frogs with a very book Starship Troopers cultural approach to militarization, which is to say they put it on a pedestal. While you can technically not be a part of it, the cultural reverence for the military things is so ingrained that's just how they are.
I went with a single gender species where under the right conditions one of them will change and get a bunch of growths on its back which are fertilized by being in the same general area as other members of the species which haven't gone through this process. This leads to a very communal sense of raising young which neatly aligns with a strong sense of duty and loyalty.

>>96006984
Some of these are obvious, but what about the rest? Like, why Vultures for Envy, or Owls for Wrath? I presume that Cuckoos are because they leave their eggs in the nests of other birds?

>>96006491
>>96006763
Huh, didn’t know that they were that bad. Thanks for the suggestion. What about non-bird ideas, BTW?

>>96007585
Vultures because all they do is covet. They soar around in circles waiting, waiting, waiting. They want and want want. And what do they eventually get after spending all their time and energy waiting? They get to scavenge. Seems ripe for a parable about envy, to me.

Owls for wrath cuz they're just mean motherfuckers seriously. They've gross as fuck and violent and hella mean. But maybe that's just me personally.

Cuckoos because they just wanna fuck and dip and leave you to clean up the mess they make.

>>95849839 (OP)
Besides making some of the gods or some famous hero LGBTQ, what are some ways to make settings being more accepting of such individuals and relationships (especially medieval fantasy settings) organically?

Anyone came up with underwater societies?

>>96006926
My "Warrior culture" is a bit different.
Every civilian is expected to know to fight not for war or conquest or anything, but because knowing how to defend yourself in a world where 95% of the wildlife wants to kill you is VERY important

>>96004256
What an idiotic statement. He's the fucking creator, everything belongs to him.
>>96004468
Your "god" is anthropomorphised and emasculated, why even bother calling this thing a god?

>>96010562
He's the creator of a single plane of existence. He created Heaven, Hell, Earth, and no more.
Everything else just kind of "Manifested" in the same way He did at the dawn of creation.

>>96011149
Or something idk.
That’s not really the important part here.
Point is that God fucked up so hard that his creation created what was basically a second Tower of Babel out of sheer spite just so they could fuck off beyond his reach forever. This was a reality check of biblical proportions, and after a long time of just him being unresponsive from sheer despair, he noticed that a new form of sentient life began to emerge from the ashes of what man left behind. And he’s just “This is my second chance.”
And so he tries his damndest to nurture this new race in the most ginger way he can. No big miracles, no immense punishments.
Just quiet acts of kindness to teach them to be kind. Quiet words of wisdom to teach them to be wise.

How much do you develop the world outside the immediate area where your story/campaign takes place?

>>96011149
>>96011214
I'd say that God respects free will so much that he just allows everyone to do as they please, even if they are creating their own realities for some reason. I like your explanation more because it's tied to your worldbuilding and what I wrote is also my personal explanation to Epicuro's Paradox. Free will means you are truly free from God's interference and that your every choice is actually yours.

>>96009569
There were traditional equivalents to LGBTQ in real life (and still exist in some places, e.g. kathoey). You just have a preordained social role for such figures. You're not allowed to just do whatever you want and reject labels and fuck dudes; you're a specific kind of dude who acts in a specific kind of way, and are treated differently from other men, and then you get to fuck dudes. This only applies if you are the one on the bottom, and/or consistently and only fuck dudes; it's not gay to do it with your homies from time to time, or fuck a femboy.

The basic insight is that premodern people were always *sexist*, but not necessarily *misogynistic*. They saw men and women not just as being different (which even moderns do, since they are), but as having different social roles, which should be followed by every single man and woman. In The Book of the City of the Ladies, Christine de Pizan is complaining about male treatment of women, claiming that Minerva was a Greek woman who invented ironworking and was then mythologized and that Ovid was exiled and castrated for pervertry - but when it comes to the question of if women should be judges, she says (basically) "they don't have the right constitution, and we have enough judges anyway."

If you have rules for L, G, B, and T people that are just as strict as those for cishet men/women, then it will feel much more natural.

>>96011149
That sounds like the god of Joseph Smith, not the Christian god.

>>95981717
phased laser array, a laser turret without moving parts

In my fantasy setting, there are nine ancestor gods. The ancestor gods are the apotheosis of various cultural heroes from across the world. There are lesser ancestor spirits, but those are more culturally linked.

The nine gods’ main domains are: love, revelry, war, trickery, evil, wisdom, knowledge, art, artifice. I am considering adding a mythic event wherein the god of evil killed the gods of good, and law (as in, two gods). The setting is intended to be fantasy medieval, and not particularly grimdark. Does the story sound too grimdark? I’m not having an active god of good or an active god of law (too straightforward for PCs), either way.

>>96012726
>the god of evil killed the gods of good, and law (as in, two gods)
>Does the story sound too grimdark?

>>96011782
They didn’t “Create their own realities.” Those planes exist outside of him.

>>96007585
Pigs obviously
>greed/envy
Magpies/Corvidae
>pride
Cervidae with big antlers, as well as lions and their mane, maybe mandrills. And many colorful tropical birds.
I would really not put lions in the wrath category btw, they're too chill most of the time.
>wrath
Honey badgers for sure, also add chimpanzees. Maybe bullet ants and piranhas?

Where can I find a good list of tools typically used by paranormal investigators and how they are utilized?

Because I always loved reading about the paranormal, it’s like folklore for the modern age to me and I want to do the paranormal investigation right.

And that means knowing the tools of the trade and how they will be best utilized,

>>96015740
Probably the ghost hunting reality TV show websites.

>>95849839 (OP)
>What are the interresting critters in your that wouldn't be featured in a traditional bestiary ?

The setting is firmly planted in the paranormal so there’s lots of different aliens, cryptids, ghosts, and other such miscellaneous things that either have very open-ended “rules” but also have their own twists to them unique to the setting so that players can’t 100% rely on personal knowledge of the usual tropes.

>What is their relation with the natural enviroment and the different civilizations of the world ?

They are strange phenomena that simultaneously fascinate and frighten.

>How they relate to the magic and spiritual side of your world ?

Well magic is quintessentially supernatural and this setting is paranormal, so there is no magic, I will repeat that: there is no magic. The quote about “Sufficiently advanced technology” is meant to imply that super-advanced tech may APPEAR like magic, but it is not actual magic. There is a difference.

But that doesn’t mean that witnesses to the paranormal phenomena won’t misidentify what they experienced as something spiritual or mystical in nature, that’s just an added layer of challenge for PCs to decipher what is actually happening and what the witness think is happening.

>Do they have any use as an alchemical ingredient or magical component for spells ?

Again, no magic, no alchemy. But there has been… things that have happened as a result of paranormal interactions. For example, in this setting the CIA started project MK Ultra in the late 60s after learning about a number of young adults who tore through a Southern California town after ingesting a psychedelic substance of extraterrestrial origin and having a bad reaction to it.

There are people who believe in gods and attribute some aspects of magic to their faith. The magical education required to use it is taught entirely within the religious institution and both the clerical practitioners and laypeople believe it to be a faith miracle. If you traveled to the other side of the world you would find people who believe in different gods and practiced different magic within their local religions. Is this a good idea? Do players expect a definitive "yes your god is real and exists and here's where it fits in a pantheon the whole world shares"?

>>96011782
God used to be all "Worship me or die."
Then after humanity fucked off he just sat there realizing how bad he had been to them.
He doesn't pamper the next race, but tries to be more hands-off and kind

Above the surface of the planet Neu Valais hangs the derelict nodesphere as an ever present reminder of the war that the cybernetic CYCOL race brought.
The nodesphere was crippled with an experimental energy cannon which ripped away a distinct piece, but even after that damage it was still able to disgorge attack forces and weapons fire onto the surface, devastating the colony and the defenders below.

Has anyone ever thought about what would be the best comfortable pant design for catboy and catgirl society? You'd think eventually an easy-to-put-on design would become wideapread, but what would it be like? A hole is no good, S you'd have to additionally grab and bend your tail to stick it through the hole and this would fuck up your fur. I guess an ass-cropping would be the best move? But you'd need a belt that would have to be put on around the pants each time you put em on to let the tail through when putting them on. An ass-flap might be an option - loose enough at the bottom to let the tail through, but tight enough above the tail to keep the pants on your waist. So, would the most logical fashion for catman society be back-opening pants with no features on the front? But what about comfort clothes like sweatpants? The whole point of those is there to be no-bullshit when putting them on. And god damn, now I am thinking about undergarments - those would be a pain to put on and I'm unusre if they'd stay on with a full tail cropping

>>96020213
I thought I had a reference for it but the idea was that there is a flap sort of like the front of the pants.

For pants with softer material, you could have long pieces of cloth that you can wrap around the waist and tie off after you get your tail situated.

>>96020213
If they're furry, there's no reason for undergarments, or possibly even clothes as a whole.
If they're only furred on their tails and ears, I think a cutout would make the most sense. Basically a V or U shaped hole in the cloth. The belt would just go over the tail. Underwear is no problem, it's not that high. There would be no lowriding pants though, people would have to actually wear their pants at their waists, not their hips. Sweats and pajamas would probably just be worn below the tail, and fully unacceptable in public rather than merely frowned upon (assuming similar sexual standards). Longer loose shirts can help cover the area too, or anything people wear to conceal a firearm.
I quickly drew the lowest pants I think you could manage. But I'd imagine a much deeper cut to be standard (green dotted line). With this you could add a flap to cover the exposed skin after the pants are put on.
Also, skirts and dresses are going to be much more attractive for women. The largely fell out of favor IRL because of the massive increase in average weight (fat thighs=chafing), so if this hasn't happened just letting the tail be in the skirts is probably fine.

>>96020213
A drop flap like on a onesie, except split in two so you can adjust.

Got a question for any metallurgy/sword folks:
>vaguely late medieval to early modern setting (not trying to model it on any specific time/place; it's flexible so long as it's still internally consistent)
>metal training sword, of typical bastard sword size
>because of reasons I won't get into, rather than replacing it when broken, it must be remade using as much of the original metal as possible
With this context and use case, how might such a sword's construction differ from a regular one?
>being exclusively for training, it obviously wouldn't be sharpened
>should be durable enough for extensive use including sparring (with protective gear, of course)
>ideally not too complex/expensive to periodically remake (balanced with durability where relevant) for the sake of being economical to keep
>as long as it handles as close to a "real" one as possible, anything goes
To my layman understanding, bronze is more trivial to work with than steel; could it be viable as an alternative material?

>>96020515
I have not heard of a sword breaking in normal use. They get dented and chipped, and will require repair, although much less for dull ones. Repair is expensive no matter what.
Bronze is an awful metal for a sword. To my knowledge even during the bronze age swords were more ceremonial than practical, and extremely rare. It works better for spears or daggers--many bronze age 'swords' were really daggers.
I don't think you would change anything at all for your purposes. You'd need to repair the sword, and honestly it's always going to be with new metal because the metal lost will be unrecoverable. It's going to be expensive unless this activity is somehow extremely common and there are tons of smiths doing it rather than it being quite specialized.

>>96020515
you don't need a metal training sword, a wooden sword is adequate for training

if you think this sounds wrong, look up how much real swords weighed

>>96020608
Thanks for the response!
>I have not heard of a sword breaking in normal use.
I probably should have specified, if it makes any difference: this would ideally be intended to be kept as an heirloom and actively used over generations. Again, I'm no expert on the matter, but I had been assuming that if done for long enough, it might be more likely to end up fatiguing/fracturing.
>Bronze is an awful metal for a sword.
So not viable then, got it.
>You'd need to repair the sword, and honestly it's always going to be with new metal because the metal lost will be unrecoverable.
Occasionally having to dilute the old metal with a bit of new is acceptable. I'd already considered the ship of Theseus problem regarding it and concluded that in this case, it's still the same sword so long as too much isn't replaced too quickly.
>It's going to be expensive unless this activity is somehow extremely common and there are tons of smiths doing it rather than it being quite specialized.
From the concept in my head, any vaguely noteworthy branch of martial aristocracy would probably have a couple, and would be highly incentivized to keep them in active use; I'd like to imagine that would be sufficient.
>>96020816
I'm well aware, thanks, but wood doesn't have the same lifespan, and can't really be repaired; this is more about how to keep using the same material for as long as possible, due to setting reasons.
Now I have wood in mind though, it occurs to me that sparring would be far less harmful to the metal sword if only done against wooden wasters that'll get the worst of any contact between them. A wood one might not have the same [REDACTED] value for training with, but a mentor could use it while their student uses the metal one.

>>96020953
>this would ideally be intended to be kept as an heirloom and actively used over generations
Ah. Well, they eventually will break due to some freak accident. Normally any actual break or severe enough damage will 'total' the sword in the same way a car gets totaled--it's cheaper to just buy a new one. But if they're committed to repair for cultural reasons, it could be done. It's still going to be a pain in the ass and very expensive, but if it's for aristocrats money isn't an object. That's the class of people who had castles commissioned for aesthetic purposes, massive gardens and fountains made because they could, paid for entire schools of artists, and had gilded marizpan figurines of all kinds of shit for parties.
The bigger question is how long it can last before it'd have to be fully reforged. I don't know, but if it's seeing constant use I'd guess no more than a few decades at best. And reforging is a different process than just repairing, so I'm not sure it'd be the same sword any more. It could be an entirely different shape after all.

>>96020608
> Bronze is an awful metal for a sword. To my knowledge even during the bronze age swords were more ceremonial than practical,
Not true. Swords first appeared in the 1700s BC and didn’t start switching to Iron until 1000BC. But they weren’t just ceremonial, Greek Hoplites would typically use swords as secondary weapons.

As for Bronze as a material, it’s actually quite serviceable for this function as technically Bronze can be as hard as Iron, retains its edge longer, and can melt at lower temperatures making casting a lot easier (just pour liquid bronze into sword mold and when cool, pop it out and sharpen).

But bronze has it’s drawbacks that lead to it falling out of favor and lead to the rise in iron swords (and tools in general):

1: Bronze is strong, but brittle, means that under abuse it’s more likely to chip, crack and/or shatter than to blunt or bend. Making fixing the thing nigh impossible and instead having to completely melt down and recast the sword entirely.

2: Tin is actually quite rare and not evenly distributed. Which makes Bronze expensive, and its availability inconsistent (since access to tin would be subject to the proximity to major trade routes and your kingdom’s relationship with whatever nation is sitting on top of the local tin deposit). This is really the major factor in what pushed a lot of civilizations to move to working with iron despite being more difficult to work with (and for benefits that probably would’ve seemed marginal at the time). It’s because iron is freaking everywhere in plentiful quantities.

>>96021025
>But if they're committed to repair for cultural reasons, it could be done.
In as few words as possible without going into other setting autism: the longer it has been in use for, the faster/easier it'll be to train with. For a martial class who have to train to fight for a living, it seems like a worthwhile expense that only becomes more worthwhile as the sword gets older.
>And reforging is a different process than just repairing, so I'm not sure it'd be the same sword any more.
As long as it's the same metal, it counts as the same sword, even if it's been melted down. Honestly this is more what I had in mind regarding remaking them.

>>96021154
>Bronze is strong, but brittle, means that under abuse it’s more likely to chip, crack and/or shatter than to blunt or bend
Yeah it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about, not only equating steel to iron but also bronze bends very easily and famously.
Comparing bronze to iron, bronze is a clear winner. Comparing bronze to steel, bronze is a joke.
As for their actual usage, they were secondary weapons at best, like you mentioned. When compared to swords which were primary weapons both on and off the battlefield, it's just not the same. A quick google reaffirmed my knowledge that they were relegated to the high-ranking and special status bearers, as opposed to steel blades being common not only among all professional soldiery but also militias and even civilians who carried them for self-protection or dueling. Bronze blades have to be chodes due to the weight and propensity to bend. This makes them inherently better as thrusting weapons, but they can't be made long and thin like thrusting swords are. So it's just not a great metal for swords; you can't have the reach to thrust or cut effectively.

How comfy is life for the average farmer in your setting?

>>96021411
Farming?

Do you like to think your homebrew world is accessible via the Phlogiston?

I'm not even sure how this would come up in a campaign but I'm curious how you all feel on the subject.

>>96023840
>Do you like to think your homebrew world is accessible via the Phlogiston?
No, I hate D&D metaphysic and it makes me angry that Eberron is supposed to be in there somewhere.

>>96023840
I don't even know what Phlogiston is. My setting has no multiverse and any dimension beyond the material world can only be traversed by astral projection.

>>96023840
>Phlogiston
I doubt it's accessible via an outdated theory of fire.

>>96024007
We'll never know for sure unless we set ourselves on fire.

>>96023994
>any dimension beyond the material world can only be traversed by astral projection
What are these dimensions?

>>96020213
>Has anyone ever thought about what would be the best comfortable pant design for catboy and catgirl society?
It would be best to just treat it as a third limb.
> S you'd have to additionally grab and bend your tail to stick it through the hole and this would fuck up your fur
I think you're forgetting that cats can control their tails. It's not like they just control the base and everything else is completely unconscious. Lining it up with a hole and getting it through wouldn't be an issue. What might be an issue is hair getting caught and forced backwards which would be uncomfortable.

However, if getting their tail hair messed up were that big of an issue, they'd just use a tool to fix it. Humans have tools to get dressed. That's what shoehorn is. It wouldn't be that hard to clip a ring around the base of the tail tied to a string and pull the ring out through a pant sleeve to get hair going the right direction again.

So yeah, I think the simple solution is the easiest. 3rd pant leg along the length of the tail for cold weather. Short leg for summer to preserve modesty. Just an open hole below the pant waist for immodest catfolk that want their ass crack out.

The places you'd run into issues would be shit like wet suits/dry suits, hazmat suits, flight suit, and space suits. Basically anything super awkward to wear without a tail. But I don't think any of those present any problems that couldn't be solved with proper fitting, elastic, zippers, gaskets, and maybe some lube.

>>96020213
My solution was basically just pants that have a hole just straight under the waistband that lets the tail slip out of the pants, as you can see in this drawing.

>>95849839 (OP)
How do you revitalize the fantasy races like elves, dwarves, etc. in your setting? Make them more than just copies of Tolkien’s/the classic approach I mean.

>>96019555
Corporate forces on the planet represented a higher quality of military force, being both better equipped and trained than the colonial militia. However, the corporate interests were in defending their assets and VIPs. Early in the war the corporations, through the Universal Corporate Council, were willing to provide materials to the colonial forces on a delayed payment model. Neu Valais was considered a command hub but wasn't on the front lines. However once the planet itself came under direct assault, UCC ground troops were ordered to focus on exfiltrating valuable hardware and VIPs off the planet. The UCC pulled back in stages, considering ground fighting on the planet to be too much of a loss.

>>95849839 (OP)
Which way?
>Child is a half-breed
>Child inherits race of father
>Child inherits race of mother
>Boys inherit race of father, girls inherit race of mother

>>96040293
>>Child inherits race of mother
This one. Race is a magical infection that passes from mother to child in the womb.

>>96040293
Racial incompatibility or hybridization.

>>96040550
Always this. Best all around fix. Works for vanilla, works for magical realm, just works. Purely "male races" can't exist without exceptions. but those are rare compared to the female only.

>>96040293
race is unrelated to parents

>>96041210
>Purely "male races" can't exist without exceptions. but those are rare compared to the female only.
Okay, so what does a single-sex race of either sex need to make sense besides a way to reproduce?

>>96043869
Don't act like you care faggot

I wish I had the confidence to make my setting weird. I keep having interesting root-ideas that throw off lots of neat offshoots, but not quite knowing what to do with them and killing them off to preserve a fairly standard modern setting, no more alien than most foreign countries in real life.

>>96048948
The trick is to bluff past the first thirty seconds of your audience's first impressions (I assume players but this applies to readers as well). If you describe something weird, but with conviction, then it stops being "this weird thing our GM is doing" and it becomes "this cool thing our characters are experiencing". Your enthusiasm for the idea becomes their enthusiasm, or at least their acceptance.
>But not quite knowing what to do with them and killing them off to preserve a modern setting
stick them in the fringes of your setting. They don't have to have a point or a purpose. "In the House of Tom Bombadil" is one of my favorite chapters in Lord of the Rings, and it's just Tolkien putting in something he liked, without a larger narrative point.
What weird things have you come up with?

>>96040293
>Child inherits race of mother
Isn't that literally The Elder Scrolls?

>>96048948
Just add on what's already there

In my setting, there are two universal pantheons. One of them is the "Primordials:" Sun, Sky, Ocean, Death, and Nature.

The other is a collection of nine gods; right now, they're named Ixcuina, Mars, Moloch, Dionysus, Saraswati, Anansi, Huangdi, Nisaba, and Tenjin, as a way to keep track of them and remind myself not to monoculture them, give inspiration for details, etc.

Should I have the nine gods be actual human beings who ascended to godhood, or should they be more like powerful spirits of the human experience?

>>96051217
Like, how do I put this?
Take a look at stuff like Frieren or Dungeon Meshi kinda, where it takes the classic fantasy world and tweaks it in ways to create an entirely new story

>>96049480
For the most part. Technically in Elder Scrolls children inherent mostly the race of their mother but with some minor contribution from the father so that over enough generations of interbreeding you can end up with what are essentially half-breeds, but it's basically the same.

>>96040293
>Child inherits race of mother
This. Best way to have universal interbreeding between biologic races. You don't need to worry about problems with hybridization and you don't need to worry about issues with the mother being unable to carry the pregnancy or with egg formation or nursing or anything else.

>Child is a half-breed
Don't get me wrong, hybrids are fun to conceptualize, but they're a headache for worldbuilding. Albeit if you do want universal hybridization, you can *technically* work around it, but it's a pain. As an example from sci-fi, you can have all sapient races actually be engineered by a precursor race to be able to freely interbreed.

>Child inherits race of father
Objectively bad and only really used for goblin/orc rape porn

>Boys inherit race of father, girls inherit race of mother
Dumb

Also you forgot
>All children are artificial organic, magic, and/or material constructs designed by their parents

>>96039883
Is this loss?

>>96021411
>no rolled hay stacks
soulless

Anyone here ever ran a game where Illithids took over the surface world and everyone is a slave and basically everything sucks? Like Midnight, but with Mindflayers, and a lot more factories/pipes/smoke/etc (illithids are from the future and conquer planets looking for resources/conscripts to fuel their war against the Gith)

>>96040293
Equal chance of being the mom or dad race or species.

>>95849839 (OP)
What are your "I know this will make my world less marketable/less able to take seriously, but I'm keeping it in" features? For me, it's:

1. Furry races.
2. Sexual and non sexual nudity and nude scenes.
3. The bad guys calling the good guys "fascists" despite being technically fascistic themselves.
4. The good guys are working for the evil empire or lawful neutral asshole empire.
5. Some villains are three dimensional and deep. Other villains are two dimensional, written either as hate sinks or annoying bad guy sidekicks who get abused by the other bad guys on their team and die in hilarious ways.
6. Realisitic political struggles.
7. LGB relationships and romances, sometimes done for the sake of political worldbuilding. Seldom featured, though.
8. Female characters with huge breasts or other sexualized features. Some of whom are furries.

>>96068474
Slavery being commonplace without any antislaver faction. It's a bronze age analogue. You lose the battle, you die or get enslaved. There are no other options, everybody does it, there is no 'good guy nation'. Also, I'm still working it out, but my next city-state will be based around a goddess that rapes bachelors and delivers babies to their doors, which encourages marriages at extremely young ages. I'm sure that will be seen as fetish fuel at worst and unpalatable to a mainstream audience at best.

>>96068517
I like it. Not into femdom, but everything else is hot. Especially slavery. Even better if all the slaves are naked except for their chains and irons and they're paraded in public, nude.

>>96068474
The "sexy all-female warrior chicks" race in my SF setting (asari, amazons, syreens, night elves, etc) are actually protandrous hermaphrodites (around 12-14, they flip from being male to being female for the rest of their lives) so the adults all have sex with what, from a human perspective, is a prepubescent child, and they have no plans to stop just because it grosses out humans.

>>96068573
It's not even really femdom because they don't even know it's happening; they just wake up raped with no memories. She's also a goddess of sleep/dreams type stuff. I mean, I guess it is in a way, just not what was intended. It's more 'stealing their seed' than dominating them.

>>96068879
holy based

>>96068474
This entire sex pervert faction but as they are integral to the setting, they have to stay, plus sex perv shit is fitting for biotech stuff anyways.

>>95849839 (OP)
Conflicted on whether to keep stereotypical dwarves, or just have them as humans who are culturally dwarves, 'delvers'

>>96072671
You could go for lore accurate and have them be elves that are culturally dwarves.

>>96011372
I try to make it so while there's an obvious quasi-Europe center of things where everything happens, other areas are about as dense far as concepts go. Not actual development, I'm not going to write out eternal spider-on-fey war Brazil with webs the size of the Amazon and fairy-made mandible piles bigger than some smaller mountains, or Polynesia littered with goblins, wild gods and warring undersea kingdoms set up by actually important, distant sea gods as safe faith farms, because I'm not going to set anything there. But I do want them to exist and influence the main area sporadically, and for really inqusitive players to have the option to interact with faraway Fuckoffistans if they feel like, in some slight way. That way, hopefully, it feels less like it's all cardboard cutouts surrounding the place I actually bother to focus on.

>>96068474
>sometimes done for the sake of political worldbuilding
How does that work?

>>96068474
Extensive focus on/exploration of religion in the setting: more specifically, my aim has been to go in-depth on all the spirituality/philosophy/metaphysics stuff supporting it, rather than just the superficial "big dude in sky makes stuff happen" part.
To this end, I've been doing (and am still doing) a ton of research studying various real world religions, trying to develop a broader and deeper abstract understanding of the field in hope of making something:
>believable/plausible
>original, instead of just a plastic knockoff of a real one
>actually has substance behind it, instead of new-agey bullshit that just tries to sound profound with no actual depth
I clearly bit off more than I could chew when I made the decision to write a deeply religions protagonist in a highly spiritual line of work, but I'm finally reaching the point where it's starting to come together into something coherent.

>>96068474
This is a great question, hope that you ask it again next thread. I’d love to to hear more on your villains if nothing else.

>>96079110
What are some of the resources you use here? And I’d love to hear more about this concept!

>>96068474
1. I've put some thought on how different species reproduce, since that's a major aspect of biology. It's not something that would likely come up, but exists as background detail and some of it could be seen as fetishy even if that was not the intended (well, some of it actually is, since if I'm the one writing the setting I might as well tailor some details to my preferences)
2. Humans are ultimately a fairly minor power, and just get focus because the narrative is from their point of view
3. The major power humans are loosely allied with is arguably worse than the other major power that acts as the primary antagonists, but the latter is actively expansionist and tried to conquer humans while the former assisted humans because they had a common enemy.
4. Earth is a cyberpunk world that's depending on how you look at it either everything wrong with late-stage capitalism turned to 11, or a model society if you're Peter Thiel or someone like that. Either way, I suspect somebody would be pissed.
5. There's probably too many Russians. That's just something that ended up happening more or less by accident.

>>96068474
While political commentary isn't usually in-your-face, the universe is built where four of the major factions fall into the four major positions on the modern political compass. Each one of them is highly flawed in the ways where going fully into their ideology of choice would lead. I've already had people compliment my work IRL when noticing it critiqued their political opposites, but then later get twisted up that their favorite politics got the same treatment. I personally try not to play favorites to prevent myself from making a spotless Mary Sue major faction.

>>96079170
>I've put some thought on how different species reproduce, since that's a major aspect of biology.
Please do tell, I’d love to hear this, especially if you have any thoughts or advice on this concept in general.

>>96079411
It's the part I normally avoid posting here, since from previous experience I know it's not a subject people generally want to hear about, but OK.

The major non-human species in my setting all have a somewhat different method of reproduction.
Seirans are ovoviviparous, having eggs but the eggs hatch inside the mother's womb. Biologically they're similar to amphibians, with an aquatic larval stage, and having evolved to have that stage take place while in the womb let them be less reliant on presence of clean bodies of water for reproduction. Functionally it doesn't really differ much from viviparous pregnancy, so it doesn't really effect their society in a different way than the human method of reproduction. There is a minor issue in their reproductive being tied to season of their homeworld which may get screwed up on other planets with different seasons, possibly making them unable to reproduce without artificially triggered ovulation, but this is easily handled with the correct medical treatment.

The Demosians lay eggs. The eggs are usually hatched and the offspring raised together with those of other members of the extended family, with the raising being done by servants or by whichever female family-member are available (it is common for Demosian males to have multiple wives). Because of this, while the Demosians keep track of who their father is (the typical Demosian name consists of a given name, patronymic, and clan name), they place little importance on the mother's identity. Because the period of time the mother is inconvenienced by gestation is relatively short, Demosian females have taken an active role in their society for longer than human ones, though Demosian society is at the same time strongly gender-segregated, with different jobs typically considered the domain of males and females.

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>>96079526
(Continued)

The Ni-hir are eusocial, which is central to how their society is structured. The standard Ni-hir societal unit is the hive-city, each of which is ruled by a queen. Most hive-cities have a single queen, while the largest have a primary queen and a handful of secondary ones. In any case the queens are the only sexually mature females in the hive, with the majority of the population being their children (there's also a small amount of consorts, usually males from allied hive-cities married off to the queen to strengthen political ties). Because the majority of the inhabitants of the hive are siblings and are never able to reproduce on their own, the survival of the queen and the hive is synonymous with the survival of their bloodline. That leads to them having a strongly collectivist attitude that places the survival and well-being of the hive-city above that of any individual. It also means the average Ni-hir is basically asexual, as the idea of sex as anything other than a method of procreation is largely alien to them and most of them never have sex (only the queen's consorts get to mate with her, and the only females they're likely to ever meet, unless you count the workers which are technically haploid females, are their mother and maybe a handful of sisters since the overwhelming majority of administrative-cast Ni-hir are male).

Some other species have more unusual methods of reproduction, such as hermaphrodism or laying "seeds" that extract nutrients from soil through specialized roots. But those are more of "background aliens" that I haven't established a lot of details about.

Sketch idea for a small colony ship. The idea is the ship enters the atmosphere, discards its detachable heat shield (which lands a reasonable distance away with a controlled parachute fall, so its material can be recovered later). The ship lands and the ring on it becomes a premade perimeter wall. The variable arms holding the rest of the ship adjust and lower until the bottom of the center is on the ground. Heavy cargo and prefabs get moved out. On top, the large space engines detach and are briefly piloted as independent vehicles, and landed next to the colony to be repurposed. The flight pad on top of the structure is extended and supported with an additional strut.
This initial colony is a little cramped, but a good foundation that is built to be secure, able to support air traffic, and able to support basic agriculture.
I'm picturing it being several families worth of people.