Thread 96885123

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!

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Thread question:
>Is there anything you've added to your setting primarily for reasons of "author appeal"?

>>96885123 (OP)
What do you mean by author appeal?

I'm starting to get worried over whether I can ever make all the various factions fit a common theme.

There's the retro-scifi Not!America I made to parody scifi dystopias, the Dark Fantasy Not!China that mocks edgy settings, the High Fantasy realm of Paladins and demons, etc etc.

None of them follow a common aesthetic. I can't make this work. I'll have to make drastic changes.

>>96885123 (OP)
Kys d*scord cancer.

>>96885476
6.

Any tips on creating a trade system in your world? How often would the players come across the same vendor as opposed to their competition?

>>96885123 (OP)
I presume that you added a Gerudo-like culture? I have a question myself, how do you make shit like that for so that people don’t nitpick it being there?

>>96886014
In my game, just having a little tertiary detail does wonders. Most players won't ask more than one question and just accept my world. If they tear into it too much, just be good at improv and right down the shit you make up. Always fun.

>>96885123 (OP)
My entire setting is basically a hodgepodge of stuff I've found cool, or interesting troughout my life, all wrapped under overall biotech aesthetics. I've drawn inspiration from real life biology, anime, vidya, tabletop games (chiefly 40k) all the way to fucking bionicle. So I could say that the entire setting is just stuff that appeals to specificially me.

Real thread
>>96886562
>>96886562
>>96886562

>>96886565
This is the real thread. You purposefully removed the Resources for Newfags links because you are >>96885476 , the mentally ill spammer who has been haunting this thread for years. Go die.

>>96886014
Not sure what you mean by nitpicking? That people complain about Fisher's principle? It's magic (or Wolbachia, in more SF settings). That they should get bred out? Race is a magical mutation passed down matrilineally, so the child of a Gerudo mother is always a Gerudo, and the child of a Hylian mother is always a Hylian. That it's obviously fetish stuff? I don't think so, there's a lot of (almost) all-female races in non-smutty settings that don't get much pushback on that front (e.g. asari, Gerudo, amazons in Danmachi). There's enough interesting resonance in an all-female/matriarchal society that the Greeks made up Amazons in the first place.

>>96886106
>all wrapped under overall biotech aesthetics
I'm so happy you didn't say biopunk.

>>96887535
If that other thread is still around when this one is "finished", someone should post the resource links over there

How do I into religion, /wbg/ bros?
I think I have my world ready enough to start a campaign in, except I have basically nothing for religion other than "idk just use the generic dnd gods"

>>96888579
If you're not interested in a part of worldbuilding, you don't need to do it.

I personally find it much easier to design religions than gods - Islam and Christianity, not Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, Venus, and Saturn - so you can choose to do that. Come up with a decent ethos/overarching structure, and then come up with different religions that contrast with it. One thing to keep in mind with this sort of religion is that in religion, nobody can count past, like, five: the names of the twelve disciples are different between Gospels, the Greeks couldn't agree on the composition of the Dodecatheon, etc. If you make a "realistic" pagan religion, include a "and more gods go here" bit, same for ancestors in ancestor worship, saints in pseudo-Catholicism, etc.

>>96888652
>If you're not interested in a part of worldbuilding, you don't need to do it.
But I do, because things like clerics exist

>>96888902
You can say:
- Players, make up your own gods
- Dawn War pantheon
- Eberron pantheon
- Norse pantheon

Or a dozen other things. Plenty of alternatives to making something of your own.

>>96887803
If one uses the term biopunk to describe an aesthetic style then I guess my setting would fit that, and I have probably used it myself at times to describe the setting. The term however is kind of vague and I given how so much of my worldbuidlign is dedicated towards depicting the actual authorities & factions of the setting rather than the underclass fighting against those powers that be, there at least thus far, is very little actual "punk" in the stuff I've drawn. Though, the setting could serve as a quite fertile ground for such stories given the way I've structured it. Unfortunately my brain has been tainted by rts games I played when I was a wee lad so it is far easier for me to figure out armies and factions than come up with storylines.

>>96885159
>Author Appeal describes when the presence of a particular gimmick or kink is so widespread and prominent that it is interpreted as a specific reason the creator actually produced the work.

like all elves are sluts or other such fetish coomer trash

>>96885790
give items a rarity level. Adjust accordingly.
Give regions major trade goods they export and major trade goods they import or lack.
Create major trade hubs between such nations or designate certain ports or city states etc as the center of trade of the region.
Maybe add trading guilds if you re feeling adventurous

>>96885123 (OP)
>Is there anything you've added to your setting primarily for reasons of "author appeal"?
Yes, though primarily in the sense that things are based on subjects I find interesting. I also have some details that are related to my fetishes, but I've tried to limit that to minor background details that would not come up in 99.9 % of situations. Tbh the main reason I've done it at all is because I foolishly didn't make separate accounts for posting my serious worldbuilding material online and for NSFW art, and most of my viewers prefer the latter, so that way I can occasionally cross over the two and do something that is still related my fleshed-out setting while still appealing to the majority of my viewers.
What I find amusing, though, is that there are some aspects of my setting that I did not intend to be fetishistic but some people seem to consider them to be anyway. Can't say I'm too surprised, though, since one thing that spending any amount of time online will confirm is that literally anything is somebody's fetish.

To be more on topic, have a map. Does this look OK to you? Drawing maps is something I haven't really done much.

>>96888902
>>96888579
If dnd type game make a major god for each alignment and 2-4 racial ones
if you want to make a pantheon similar to the ancients in a more realistic/non dnd game the cheatcode is this list.
Hunting/Animals god, Trickster/Messenger god, Earth/Agricultural god, Sky/Storm god, Sea/water god, Sun/fire god, Light/healing god, Love god, War god, Moon/night god, Underworld god, Knowledge/wisdom god

>>96890583
>Map of Seira
Most islands are comprised mostly of tall and steep mountains.
It is only with age that corrosion wears them down and they end up more flat.
So unless everything i see is a relatively new archepelago that has flooded some ancient land creating islands in between you have way too little elevation
I am making the flooded comment because most of the "oceans" are less than one kilometer deep
The average depth of the Mediterranean is 1,5 km and the average oceanic depth is 3,6 km. therefore your seas are way to shallow, akin to the indonesian archipelagos

>>96890801
The "trick" with the map is that Seira is supposed to be 1950s science fiction Venus, complete with swamp-dwelling "dinosaurs" based on outdated ideas of dinosaurs a slumbering swamp-dwelling reptiles (pic related), so I just used an actual map of Venus (the map was only for one hemisphere, so I had to rotate and stretch it to match the proportions of a standard Mercator projection world map, and add some land in the corners where the continents would "roll over" to the other side). So all the elevations are actually based on real elevations, I just chose the midway point to be sea level. Granted, given how different Earth's and Venus' tectonics are, it doesn't really translate exactly to a terrestrial planet.
All the land being relatively low is intentional, though, since the idea is that Seira is an Earth-sized planet but considerably warmer, so there's no glaciers and much of what on Earth would be coastal regions and lowland is instead shallow sea. I probably should have made the oceans deeper, though, since currently a lot of it is much less than the average depth of ocean on Earth. Or just edit the map so the numbers are <4 km and 4+ km (4 km being the average ocean depth outside continental shelves on Earth).

>>96891042
then i would greatly recommend that you include 3 different sea depths. one at the 200 meters, one at the 2 kilometers and 1 for the deeper region.
Denote the shallow seas as the really dangerous swampy seas plagued by the dinos
Dont get me wrong, i was never against having such values for elevation but it is always good worldbuilding to have things make sense if they are a specific way that is different from normal

What kind of evil dude would live in a city sized tower? I'm trying to avoid making them a generic necro.

>>96891227
An alien from another dimension whose colony ship is a giant city sized tower. A demon whose duty is to watch over the prison of a god with his underlings.

>>96891098
Thanks for the feedback. I altered the depths on the map legend and added a region of shallow continental shelf around the continents. That was actually very useful, as it gives a much better idea of much of the landmasses being islands and microcontinents separated by shallow sea. If the climate was more similar to Earth, I'd imagine most of the lightest blue areas would be above sealevel, connecting many of the landmasses into fewer large continents. The shallow areas would also be easier for animals to cross, giving me a better idea of where different fauna could be distributed.

>>96887736
What rhetoric and tactics would earth women use to protest something like picrel?

I was thinking
>They would call earth men who date alien women losers, small-dicked, say they wouldn't want to date a guy like him anyway
>They would praise men who date earth women as good guys
>They'd spout extremely racist shit about alien women and laugh at any negative dating experience a man has with aliens

I wanted the more liberal political party to support working with the alien women, while the more conservative political party wants to restrict it. Would women suddenly flip and become conservative to protect access to partners?

How the shit do people come up with names for their worlds / settings?

>>96896298
pick a couple of naming conventions/languages mix and match to taste and just go with it

>>96894139
glad i could be of help anon. yes, the continental shelf really helps for figuring stuff, either it's navigation, biology, microclimate etc
I would now recommend you decide on an axial rotation, wind currents and therefore water currents and put the very basics on that map because it would surely be very important for navigation and generally help you figure out things

Wouldn't space colonies gravitationally attract each other and eventually collide?

>>96896769
Technically yes, in the sense every object gravitationally attracts each other, but unless they're the size of a small moon and very close to each other, the effect would be negligible. Being slowly pulled into the gravity well of a planet they orbit could be a more relevant issue, but assuming they're orbiting high enough for atmospheric drag to not be a factor the timescale for their orbit to decay significantly would be very long. And in any case you can just correct any issues with the orbit by attaching so thrusters to slightly nudge the colony every now and then to maintain correct course.

>Magic can only be transferred through the mother
>Human societies evolved to compete for young women, often through literal kidnapping or just "trading"
>Marriage becomes a commercial contract between the bride and groom's "families" to produce strong offspring.
>The orgasm is abolished, and children are taken from their mothers like eggs from a hen. Then process repeats.

I'm making good progress on my grimdark fantasy setting where gods farm humans like cattle, using us for both our labor- to build temples and grow food for their offerings- and as food served through endless human sacrifice.

>>96896769
Wouldn't moon and Earth gravitationally attract each other and eventually collide?

>>96891227
Golem, that was created with the task of building a big tower, but his creator died before he could tell him to stop.
At first he figured out he could force squatters to help him build.
Then he figured out that they die from working 24/7 with no food, and so he let them go and come back, but soon understood he needs to motivate them somehow.
Eventually the now city-sized tower sends out raiders to capture slaves and building materials, to keep building the tower.

>>96896298
I just use reconstructed terms.
For example, Ald'kelh mean old hill or Wiga'trec mean war trickster.

>>96896298
Here ya go, newbie
https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/

Is conlanging worth it? It seems like a mountain of effort to do and I doubt I have the autism required for it.

>>96897023
not really, unless you re really into it so you have fun doing it

>there WERE a pagan pantheon of gods
>before The God Wars came and wiped them out
>now they must fall in line as the winner's angels, or be branded as demons
Is this cool? Would you wanna play in a setting like this?

>>96897286
>angels
>christianity inspired
i m sorry anon but its a hard no. real life has created in me such a hate for monotheism and the monotheistic religions that i cant tolerate them in my fantasy games

>>96897382
Reddit is not real life, buddy

>>96897447
never bothered with reddit. grew up in a religious household and just like every person that grew up in such a family they either embrace it or end up hating it. i guess there is a third path of people low key faking it just to avoid the social hustle.
either way i had way too much christianity forced down my throat to tolerate it this deep into adulthood, especially in my fantasy games

>>96885123 (OP)
Why are there so many discords, and how much do they glow?

>>96897286
Sure, I'd play your Shin Megami Tensei game.

>>96897543
Some autist took offense at the discord-hating guy, and decided that adding more discords will make the guy quit or something. So now he adds random discords to the OP.

What traits would be conducive to a port town becoming a large, thriving metropolis by the standard fantasy era?

>>96897746
A river wide and deep enough for trade boats to get up to a bigger capital city area.
Maybe some kinda special waterfalls that attract religious travelers
Good ol' reliable fishing industry and throw in some salt farming too

>>96896514
I did some basic stuff for things like prevailing wind directions while adding the climate zones on the map, though in a very simplified "wind is from east to west so east slops of mountain ranges are wetter" way. The rotation of the planet is supposed to be the same as Earth's, i.e. counterclockwise, so the sun rises from the east and sets to west ("silaanai" and "dysilaanai" in the names of the bodies of water east and west of the Lonian region translate to "dawn sea" and "dusk sea" in Lonian, the language most of the names on the map are in, since from the Lonian Seirans' point of view the sun appears to rise from beyond one sea and set beyond another).
As for biology, which is something I know more of than prevailing weather patterns, the areas of shallow water helped to visualize what areas would share wildlife and what would be more isolated. The large equatorial continent and the landmasses bordering the Lonian sea would likely have a lot of faunal interchange, while the continents to the east and west are separated from them by open ocean, which would act as an effective barrier. At the nearest points the continents are relatively close, though, and there's a lot of islands between them, so some species could have made it across by "islands hopping". The southern continent on the other hand is isolated by vast stretch of open ocean, and so would be the equivalent of Australia with its own endemic fauna that has evolved in isolation.

So looking at the palusaurs, the large carnivorous not!dinosaurs mentioned earlier, they're supposed to be native to the equatorial continent so one would expect them to be the dominant predators there and in the Lonian region, with some genera found in the eastern and western landmasses but outnumbered by endemic genera of not!dinosaurs, and not present in the southern continent at all.
So, basically I should design examples of wildlife for at least two more continents.

>>96897023
No, all the worldbuilders who do conlanging are into specifically conlanging.

If you want a conlang for writing purposes, then either:
- Take a real world language, done.
- Take a real world language that isn't Romance or Germanic, reverse the letter order, done.
- Steal somebody else's conlang.
- Have a couple real world languages in mind, mix and match letters at random. Smash Mesopotamian names together with Aztec ones.
- Sketch out a phoneme inventory so that you know what it sounds like (e.g. is it constant CVCV like Japanese, what consonant/vowel sounds do they have), make up a handful of words, then "transliterate" vaguely thematic words into the language whenever you need them (e.g. relatively advanced civ? Techno -> Tekuno. Colony? Newlandia -> Nuranya).

Always tweak whatever you have for readability/legibility/not accidentally naming your country Anus.

>>96899182
I ended up making a silly little font for my setting using font forge but that is about the extent my delving into fucking around with language for my project has ventured thus far.

>>96897286
>>now they must fall in line as the winner's angels, or be branded as demons
Did the religion practitioner knew about this fact?
Like, did the winner rewrite the losers to fit the winner lore?

>>96885123 (OP)
>Is there anything you've added to your setting primarily for reasons of "author appeal"?
Some varieties of elf (and there's a lot of varieties, they're a highly-adaptive cockroach race of the setting, every environment you can think of will probably have a few elf varieties fit to living thejre) don't stop growing their whole life.

>>96900705
Nta, i think using that font as written language and english as spoken one is enough.
You need to have a special kind of autism to make your own language.

Is there any dark fantasy villain that's actually scary?

I'm looking for ideas but I don't have a good sense for horror. Target audience is young men (20-30 age group).

Conlanging is not for everyone and not necessary for worldbuilding.
You just have to keep in mind that if you do not do it, you are a failure as a worldbuilder, and your world is good for nothing but D&D tier games, and has no artistic value in itself, since it lacks the internal consistency that makes the world good.
Have fun being mediocre.

>>96885123 (OP)
Why would there be anything in my setting that does not appeal to me?
What an idiotic question is that?

>>96904408
Au contraire.

Much like there is Underworld of caves and tunnels, there also is an Upper World, of mountain peaks, floating islands, cloud lakes, and other phenomena.
Clouds become pretty dense when coalescing around flying islands, so a fit person can actually swim in them, at least for a while. Of course, if you dive to the lower edge, you fall.

Around 10 km altitude there's a so-called fire layer, which normally doesn't affect anything moving slowly, but causes most things falling from Upper World to burn up as they cross it. It also acts as the upper boundary of the snow layer, so peaks of mountains tall enough to be part of the Upper World are actually snow-less. The fire layer also augments the light of the Sun, making it more intense, so the surface world is warmer and slightly brighter than Upper World.

Since world is vastly different in terms of laws of nature, the air there is thin-ish, but quite breathable, and while chilly, is not freezing. The sky is deep dark blue, stars are incredibly radiant and visible even during the day. Sun is not as bright and looks sharper. With a dark lens you can see the seas of fire, golden mountains, and other features of its surface (from the surface you can just nothing but roiling radiance).
No one has actually been to the surface of the Sun, except in legends and fairy tales, but myths hold it that its where the Allfather dwells.

Some creatures, such as dragons can reach the Moons from the Upper World, but even for the strongest dragons its a tiring flight. The Silver Moon is fairly barren, but has a population of strange elves and weird spirit creatures not found anywhere else. Golden Moon orbits the Sun, and is normally lost in the glare. Very rarely is it seen from the surface, and those moments are portentous to the worshipers of the Allfather, for the Golden Moon is where the angels dwell, and - legend has it - souls of the righteous.

>>96905022
Blood Moon, also called Dark Moon, keeps away from the Sun's light and is only visible at night, aside from times of upheaval, where it shares sky with it in its carmine glory. Eclipses caused by Silver Moon are magically potent, but not inherently bad. Eclipses caused by Blood Moon are times of horror. Golden Moon is too small to eclipse the Sun, nor would it dare.

>>96903905
The Inchoroi, from the Second Apocalypse series.

Full on inventing a language is too much, but a bare minimum is to at least plan out how each language sounds,and make some basic roots. E.g. since evil orcs like death and murder, I have roots for death and murder, which are included in a number of their titles, names, toponims, etc.

If in a world that presumably didn't have Earth's civilizations and history a death mage is called Necron or Mortus or something like that, its extremely lazy and offputting. Like, is it a bizarre coincidence? Or in their language he's also called a weird mangling or misspelling of an ancient language word, so "Necron"is the closest translation into English?
And if your setting doesn't have that basic consistency and internal logic, you might as well use basic crap like Forgotten Realms or Warcraft world.

>>96897023
I'd want to do a proper conlang, but I'm not good enough at languages. Instead I've just come up with some words and basic rules for grammar. The words are usually just based on a couple of different languages mashed together and some made-up words I've given definitions. I did the map in >>96894139
and most of the names in it do have a definition (few are just references to something, like Kithererea is just alternate spelling for Cytherea, another name for Venus).
Laanai = sea
Sil = dawn/east (depending on context)
Dysil = dusk/west (as above)
Atal = south
Palal = north
Tam = center/central
Ledi = port
Idra = "dragon" (generic Seiran term for the not!dinosaurs)
Nala = name of the Seiran goddess of the moon (Nal is the name of Seira's moon)
Nalarai = Nala's glory
Nalasadras = Nala's throne
Also, Seira is just Seiran for world

>>96897023
Your players are just there to have a fun time playing a game, they aren't going to think any less of you if you haven't spent hundreds of hours coming up with fake languages.

Designed a bunch of ogre warrior types/loadouts for my setting.

>>96906298
I would.

>>96897286
This is naturally how I interpret most pantheons winding up. They either rebrand, join another pantheon and wear a new name, become the opposition and get branded as evil or get wiped out.

Conlang?
I use english as good guy language.
Japanese as eastern language.
Latin as ancient language.
Ancient greek as dragon language.
German as elf and dwarf language.
Russian as the bad guy language.
Chinese as the eastern bad guy language.

>>96912595
based

>>96912595
below pleb-tier
below peasant
this is slave-tier

>>96912798
Кoнтpoлиpyй cвoй бaттхёpт.

>>96912838
I assume that's russian, so you misunderstand what I dislike.
I dislike this
>I use english as good guy language.
>Japanese as eastern language.
>Latin as ancient language.
Its such a basic, generic, overused crap, that only an extremely basic and meritless person would actually use that.

>>96907648
The cow is cute.

In MY setting, martialchads build inner strength, defying fate using nothing but their own two fists.

Castercucks, on the other hand, bend the knee and weave the power of heaven and earth. Their power may be great but it is not their own.

>>96913440
Thanks. Decided to ad an ogre child to it as well. I imagine them growing up at a very rapid speed, and being almost the size of a grown baseline human by the age of 6. The one in the picture is probably around 2 years old.

>>96916369
It's weird how martialfags are so spiteful.

>>96917215
They are like short men being spitefully envious of real people, but for intellectual reasons rather than physical.
It is sad, really.

>>96904408
Any good conlanging resources anyone would recommend?

Would an otherwise earthlike world with no significant landmasses in the tropics end up with just a band of constant storms there because there's nothing to break them up?

what seems like the most interesting type of magic for gnomes to have

>1. they able to speak to anything born of the earth, be they animals, plants, rocks, or machines, imbuing them with a spark of intelligence that allows the gnome to control them through speech
>2. they're surrounded by powerful illusory fungal spores that make everyone around them (including themselves) hallucinate vividly
>3. they have the same powers as 40k orks, causing their magic and technology to work on pure vibes and nonsense.

I am making a random 7 by 7 table for categorizing creatures. Thus far, I have the
seven colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet)
seven metals of antiquity (gold, silver, iron, mercury, tin, copper, lead)
seven classical planets (sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn)
seven directions (North, East, South, West, Above, Below, Center)
seven musical notes (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti).

As you can see, I need two more sets of seven. I was going to use the seven chakras, but the root and sacral chakras seemed a bit embarrassing. Also, I'd like to avoid using the seven deadly sins and seven virtues.

>The BBEG of my setting is based on Alberich, the evil Dwarf that owned the cursed Ring of The Nibelung in Das Rheingold.
>He owns practically every treasure in the universe and guards it with a godlike dragon.
>Someone stole some of his magic gems anyway.
>The hunt for the gems would later lead, directly and indirectly, to millions of deaths and millions more suffering as various factions fought to aquire them.

I'm planning for the thief to be a Loki expy, a trickster who's skilled enough to steal from the evil God-Emperor. But I can't really think of a good inspiration for the gems themselves.

It's supposed to be the background for around one thousand years worth of bloodshed, treachery, and tragedy.

>>96918518
Yes, probably. Quite likely, even

>>96919448
Some zodiac animals? Just pick 7 best ones
Largest stars? Sirius, Vega, etc
Some heraldic stuff?
Some stuff like personality types or socionic archetypes? Just pick 7 best ones

>>96919473
Silmarills, natch

>>96918915
1 is the comfy classic, 2 and 3 are wacky meme shit.

>>96920287
>are wacky meme shit
to be honest, so are gnomes

Is it really possible to create to create interesting cultures that aren't closely based on real world ones, at least without doing a bunch of drugs like that Kirkbride dude with Morrowind? Any tips for doing so?

How do you like this name: The Catfish System.

It's a reference to the Japanese folktale about how earthquakes are caused by a giant catfish thrashing around underwater.

I could also call it The Namazu System, Namazu/Catfish Infrastructure, or the Catfish/Namazu Model.

>>96921096
I prefer the Namazu System, since that makes it clear that it's a reference to a Japanese myth. In English catfish don't have an association with earthquakes so the name would feel like a non-sequitor.

>>96921108
So be it. Namazu System it is.

>>96921223
It's basically just a machine that converts the energy of earthquakes into electricity. A bunch of plates underneath Greater Tokyo that use piezo-crystals to store the stress of major earthquakes.

It neatly solves both the earthquake problem and the energy problem.

Can you have a culture that practices parital nudity and it not be sexual?

>>96921332
....have you never watched NatGeo?

>>96921427
I don't want them to be brown

>>96920818
Of course it is. Memes aside, people CAN create original stuff without drugs. People who use drugs do so not because they actually they are necessary for creativity, but because they are junkies looking for excuse.

>>96919448
Just make the chakras or something similar into the seven body parts (armsx2, legsx2, abdomen, chest, head)

>>96918518
not really. continuous wind currents along the tropics, and no continents to influence the environment means no cold currents versus warm currents that causes storms, but raging winds and sea tornadoes would probably be very common

>>96919448
the seven elements
water wood earth metal fire light darkness/void

>>96919473
make each one encapsulate the essence of one of the planets and match them in colour

Orcs in my setting were created by a fertility / war goddess, so as such they fight all the time and breed like rabbits to replenish numbers. Due to importance of breeding, theirs is a matriarchy. The idea is that orc warlords rise to power to ideally return home and father a new, stronger generation, as the orc children inherit the strength of their fathers, to an extent.

However that means that either orc women are scarce, and orc queens are sedentiary birth-hogs, which undermines the whole idea of strength, sounds a lot like Skaven, and in general sounds like shitty magic realm - not to mention implies orc men spend all their raids without women, which means they are either asexual or gay - which also undermines the image of strength. Or serial rapists, which is once again gross magic realm.
Or there are a bunch of orc women who raid together with the men, but then the question arises why warlords would care about queens, if they can father a billion green babies on the march? And why women warriors would be subservient to men in raids, if top dogs are women?

>>96923665


I don't get why women should be scarce, if it's men that get into wars. Matriarchy could be in place because there are more women and beside they live longer and stabler lives.

If the problem is that you really want them to breed like rabbits and die in high numbers maybe you could say that orcs mature fast enough to be efficient soldiers younger than humans, but sexual maturity happens later. Goblins (let's call them this) are "teenagers" and they're more than badass enough, but the fewer male orcs that survive to be adult are true nightmares.

Anyway males could simply be asexual when they don't smell right-age female pheromones. So if you have your warband you don't have a bunch of gay green homo sex, that happens at home.
(don't picture them as hornbeasts when they simply are next to a female, or at least not necessarily: let's say they go back to human-like level of horny when they live with women)

So I'm working on the idea that Humans are distinct from other races by virtue of being one of the extremely few, and rare, beings who were not created by a god making them inherently weaker in many aspects to other races.

In that regard, your physical nature is also an extension of your spiritual nature so the created races have certain features by which their inherent magic is expressed and learning how to manipuate that grants them additional abilities. For example, a race of flying creatures naturally channel their magic in their wings to fly but they could learn how to do additional magical abilities with their wings as well.

That said, what would you consider to be an inherent magic ability of races like Orcs and elves where they don't do the typical sort of casting fireball kinds of magic (which is something Humans do).

>>96924537
Orcs can fist, obviously. A sort of concussive or crushing telekinesis. Or a form of metal control, if they are good smiths, like TES orcs.

Elves naturally should have charms and glamours, like mythological elves.

>>96924565
>Orcs can fist, obviously. A sort of concussive or crushing telekinesis.

I can dig it. To borrow anime inspiration, probably something like Hierro from Bleach but with the ability to extend that effect beyond their bodies in limited fashion hence why an Orc with a stone club smashing humans wearing magic power armor.

>>96917215
It's weird how casterfags insist on ruining every single martial class in every edition of D&D, and then complain when there is backlash.

>>96920818
>Is it really possible to create to create interesting cultures that aren't closely based on real world ones, at least without doing a bunch of drugs like that Kirkbride dude with Morrowind? Any tips for doing so?
1. Learn about real world cultures. Not just generalities, but specifics. Plow culture versus hoe culture. Why do some cultures have bride kidnappings? How the Romans conceived of religion. Why do some cultures alternate between two different social modes? Etc. To do this, get really into anthropology and read books and listen to podcasts. Some recommendations: Legal Systems Very Different From Our Own, the History of Africa podcast, Debt: the First 5,000 Years, any specific ethnology, and almost any primary source that's 300+ years old (probably want to skim, they can drag).

2. Try to think about cultures categorically rather than relationally. Pastoralists include the Maasai and the Arabs, horse nomads include the Comanche and the Mongols, early centralized civilizations include the Inca and the Egyptians, city states include Athens and Florence, feudalism includes France and Japan, etc. This also goes for religion: lump monotheisms together, lump polytheisms together, lump religions without canon texts together, lump lump proselytizing religions together, etc.

3. Using this as a basis, use the standard creative tools:
3a) Mixing and matching, then rationalizing the contradictions;
3b) Doing something different, then thinking through its consequences logically;
3c) Randomizing something big, then building around it;
3d) Coming up with an actual explanation for some cultural motif to be present in your setting.

>>96925495
Bizarre persecution complex.

>>96925609
I don't play D&D. It's not a persecution complex, it's just a fact.

>>96919448
what the fuck do you need a table with 800,000 possible combinations for?

>>96923158
I briefly considered that. Since there aren't many better options, I'll probably use it.

>>96925650
It is useful for randomized tables.

What if I make music part of the world's metaphysics, a la Tolkein, but take it further so that places have soundtracks IN UNIVERSE?

The big, subterranean empire of my world has a peculiar custom. Their largest ethnic group traditionally "disguises" the sex of their kids until they reach the right age.

Which is to say that boys are dressed and raised as girls, and girls as boys, until they reach 7-12, with the exact age being dependent on region. Until then, the family does its best to pretend their children were born the opposite sex.

The tradition developed to confuse evil spirits that may try to gain control over the child until they're old enough to be inducted into their religion (and therefore fall under the protection of their patron deity).

An additional side benefit is that they are much more pragmatic about gender, leading to unusually high female labor participation and boys that are utterly desperate to prove their masculinity by joining the military- even if only for a few months.

People believe orcs are obsessed with war, but the orcs' true need is for bloodshed. Preferably personal, but to an orc, a smith who forges a sword is almost as much responsible for the blood it sheds as the warrior who swings it. While their civilizations rarely leave opportunities to develop different approaches to bloodshed, some orc kingdoms develop fairly complex and ingenious war machines, usually of the melee kind, outfitted with all kinds of blades, and a small, but greater than most expect, number of orcs find employment in human lands as warsmiths, hunters, butchers, and even surgeons, not to mention gladiators and mercenaries.

>>96927849
This is helped by the fact that their race (they're humans) doesn't really have much sexual dimorphism. Males don't have any more facial or body hair than women, and their skulls tend towards neoteny.

It's genuinely hard to tell a male and female adolescent or even teenager apart until they're around their 20s or so.

>>96924537
My take...

Some orcs could invoke a contagious rage. This maniacal aura removes the sensation of pain or fatigue from all nearby orcs - making them truly fearless warriors. Orcs which have cultivated this ability to the utmost extreme enable orcs to fight past death - even without their heads. Of course, these re-animated berserkers truly die once the contagious rage subsides. Individual orcs may also possess the ability to merely shrug-off a fatal wound through force of will alone. However, each time an orc defies fate in this manner, it suffers a loss in its cognitive ability. Thus, over time, the orcish warrior becomes a mindless killing machine, nearly devoid of sapience and unable to function in orcish society.

Elves merely enhance nature with their very presence. Isolated communities of ancient elves will cause flora and fauna to grow larger, stronger, and effectively immortal. The domains of the truly antediluvian elves would be filled with speaking giant animals and massive trees wise in the secrets of the natural world. On an individual level, any animal or plant in constant proximity to an elf shows exceptional health and intelligence. Rumors tell of natural animal life nurtured on the blood of elves developing the ability to speak and possessing the rudiments of elven culture and knowledge.

>>96923665
NTA, but I always viewed orcs as a creation of black magic. Initially, the dark magician conjures evil spirits and guides them to places of burial. Essentially, like a simulacrum or perverse inversion of birth, the corpse 'gestate' in the grave and is 'born' by the next 28 days - clawing its way out from the earth, fully formed and ready to kill. The orc isn't 'undead', but an abomination - an affront to the laws of nature.

Of course, when creating an entire army of orcs, the Black Magician will dispatch his dark disciples to remote burial grounds, potter's fields, etc. These adept magicians will 'seed' numerous graves in the cover of night, secretly. By the next lunar cycle, a new 'crop' of blood thirsty minions is harvested.

I'd also be inclined to believe the corpses of murderers, soldiers, etc. would yield exceptional orcs of great ferocity - or orcs which would possess qualities superior to the common orc (physical beneficial mutations, a propensity for black magic, etc.)

>>96927695

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis

Maybe this can be a starting point

>>96927849
>>96929094
Stop blogging you reddit spacing tranny fetishist newfag.

>>96920818
>Morrowind
Morrowind is heavily influenced by real world cultures, especially Native American and East Asian though.

>>96907648
>ogre
I hate that shit. Ogre means a thing and it isn't a race.

>>96932421
The fuck are you talking about?

>>96907648
Designed a bunch of weapons for them.

>>96932001
"Reddit spacing" is a meme to trick newfags into outing themselves. Using double linebreaks between paragraphs is how people space long posts on every single fucking board, actual reddit spacing would be double linebreaks after greentext, but you're too stupid to understand even the most basic things.

>>96933338
what's your artstation or xitter?

>>96933609
I don't have an artstation, (should probably make one tho), I have instead a deviant art gallery.
https://www.deviantart.com/screeble/gallery/62271545/mundus-carnis
I do have a twitter account however.
https://x.com/Screeble_art

>>96933535
>implying
Spacing to that degree is excessive and looks like shit. If you want to get into the basics of English, you only space paragraphs when a new thought is introduced, not at every other modicum of it. In conclusion, lrn2English and eat shit retarded tranny.

>>96933807
Not even the anon you were replying to. Go back to /pol/, or better yet, r/TheDonald, actual retard who wants every paragraph to be 18 lines long because he doesn't understand how to write and is just a subhuman troll with a subterranean IQ.

How important do you find working out the religion and cosmology? Do you prefer putting up some generic pantheon and just get on with it, or do you have some alternatives? And do the gods actually verifiably exist, or are they vague, contentious and mysterious like IRL? I've just started to develop homebrew to play something more creatively liberating than forgotten realms.

I've personally been quite attracted to some concepts of gnosticism, where the god of creation is a lesser being who is keeping partially or wholly divine souls imprisoned in his creation while being an emanation of grander divinity. From this I've gotten the idea that a roughly gnostic christian belief system is objective truth, and a more mainstream classic christianesque religion worships the creator god. The creator god (and perhaps other divinities on his level who also meddle in materiality) also emanate other dieties that could be said to form pantheons of other religions, knowingly or unknowingly being part of the same corrupted creation. This way different cultures can have different religions without having the issue of their priestly magic working while being predicated on objective falsehoods from the cosmological logic perspective.
I consider this to be foundational to the rest of world building, but some people tell me it "Wont come up". Maybe they are right, but on the other hand I like having this type of internal logic so I can keep the logic of existence consistent in my head and hopefully enable me to formulate answers to questions I hadnt thought of before more easily.

>>96934206

Highly depends on the game. Generally pretty low.

>>96934206
It's only as important is to what you're attempting to have the PCs deal with. Otherwise, it's just a detail that means anything only to you.

>>96931099
I actually really like these. Especially when helping me to really defining the setting specific Orcs and Elves.

One of the features that I had for Elves is that, in spite of their intelligence and societal refinement, they are very much a product of nature such that they have no trouble killing and eating other sapient beings. This comes in handy as due to their long life span and relations with a faction of Humans, they essentially get free food and loyal soldier/subjects who have no problem giving their dead to the Elves to be eaten in return for fairly good lives considering the world they are force to live in.

>>96933921
>subterranean
Kek. Imagine being this confidently illiterate.

>>96934721
Kek indeed, retard. Go away. You contribute nothing to any thread you're in. The board would be better off without you.

>>96935441
Keep projecting, retard. So far your only input in this conversation has been muh pol and go away so shut the fuck up.

>>96934584
:)

Another idea:

Elves derive their sustenance from the life energy of the surrounding nature. Not in the way a vampire would, but through a synergistic/symbiotic relationship relative to the health of the surrounding ecosystem. In their secret glades, they neither eat, sleep, etc. - they straddle the line between physical and energetic beings.

Obviously, forces of evil would seek to destroy or corrupt this harmony.

Recall the flora and fauna which are enhanced by their proximity to the elves. During times of conflict, these enlightened creatures willingly give their lives to the elves. The skin, bones, sinews, claws, fangs, antlers, horns, etc. become the raw materials for the enchanted elven armaments (bear in mind, elves would never burn wood - let alone smelt metal)

Sacred skins would become armor as strong as steel, yet light and supple. Antlers, horns and fangs are crafted into weapons which are as durable as anything forged from metal - but aren't nearly as fatiguing to carry or wield. Obviously, the greater the age of the materials, the more power these arms possess.

I'd say any outsider who is greatly favored by a group of elves would get a boon of rebirth. This special ritual would take place near the end the being's life. A fallen tree (the ancient, magical kind) is formed into a kind of dug-out canoe, and the dying being is placed inside. The canoe is then sent adrift. A few days later, the canoe returns, and the honored being is now reincarnated into a newborn/infant with the privilege to raised by the elves. This being enjoys the benefits of any other natural being which dwells with the elves.

What other kinds of beings do you have in your setting?

>>96936788
As the original idea. Humans are unique because they evolved naturally instead of being created. The major races at place are tied to their patron gods in various ways.

Dragons are particular because they are semi-parasitic in a way with their creator god being a mindless immortal lizard that comes to life to seek a creature to consume its flesh and begin the cycle anew.

This creates an interesting situation since Humans were forced into this world as the Immortal lizard woke up and allowed its flesh to be eaten causing Humans to turn into Dragons rapidly competing with the old dragons (no one remembers what they were before). The Humans who survived the transformation keeping their minds became the progenitors of their new race while the mindless ones are little more than animals and are ignored.

As of current, The ones who became "true" dragons turn other Humans into dragons by having them ingest some of their blood as well as mating with them giving birth to hybrids.

>300 Years ago, an advanced human civilization appeared in the solar system.
>They came out of a wormhole and claimed to be from 1500 years in the future.
>Turns out they came from a different future. Big whoops.
>Still, at least it confirmed Multiverse Theory.
>Created a flying continent, colonized the many planets in the solar system- including moons- and then started turning all of Earth into a resource extraction site.
>Allowed lots of immigrants from iron age civilizations to do work they could totally automate, but don't want to because it would be expensive.
>300 years later, in modern times, only around 10% of the population are descendants of the original Downstreamers. 10% more are mixed race. The other 80% are immigrants with no citizenship.

The immigrants have started to wonder why they don't get to vote despite running the economy, and are screaming for democracy. The Downstreamers are already democratic, but they don't want to open citizenship to normies.

Important thing to note is that the Downstreamers are genetically augmented. They are genuinely just physically superior. They don't get sick or old, they are stronger and fitter than we'll ever be, they have mental enhancements that let them communicate with machines etc.

They have basically decided to leave the solar system and colonize others. They're not cruel enough to just kill the normies, but neither are they tolerant enough to coexist. It's the best compromise they can give.

They also plan to create an entirely robotic workforce in their new system to avoid such problems happening again.

>>96929094

My inspiration is Elves, who are stereotypically androgynous superhumans, and certain Turkic tribes.

Hey fellas, tell me if this makes sense. I barely even want magic in my world but from a logical and story standpoint it has to be there.

People derive their magical abilities from their latent WILL (stat). Magic can only bend reality, not BREAK it - it is not within the purview of mortals to break the will of the gods nor their domains. A skilled Pyrokinesisian cannot create fire from nothing, fuel heat and oxygen must be present and their WILL must be strong enough to manipulate them. Similarly, a healer can accelerate the recovery of tissue and remove toxins via chemical manipulation, but cannot regrow tissue that no longer exists nor reverse the natural process of decay. Some things are simply impossible for the perishable, such is their nature.
>>96904408
I am doing it but not letting it stop the creative process.
>>96924537
Cool idea anon, I like it. Orcs magic would rely on emotion and elves on high concepts like aesthetics (feng shui for example)

Are there any exceptions to the Thucydides Trap? Any conditions where two major Superpowers would cooperate rather than compete for power?

>>96938269
mutually assured destruction

>>96938263
Sure, no problemo.

>>96938294
That doesn't actually prevent competition, let alone cause cooperation. It just ensures they won't go to war.

>>96938269
The UK slowly let the US become stronger and stronger before eventually disassembling its empire and handing over the title of King of the World to the US.

>>96938824
Yes, I believe that's the only known case. And even that only happened because the Brits were busy dealing with rivals that were much closer to home.

I'm making a setting that lampoons Germanic morality and its obsession with eternal war.

>The story begins when the blind, malevolent deity named The Oathbreaker enters the mortal realm to do evil.
>It begins to offer mortal warriors resurrective immortality- ie they will resurrect after death, but only as long as they will commit to dying in conflict.
>This basically leads, in 1000 years, to all of the planet becoming a massive warzone where millions are slaughtered every year in unending wars between immortal warriors
>To keep peasants from fleeing this hell, the Oathbreaker erects giant walls as tall as mountains to enclose his realm and trap the people inside. The seas are filled with monstrous beasts that destroy all unmarked ships.
>To keep constant war from just killing every normal person through famine or plague, the Oathbreaker sends his demonic servants to teach humans all the secrets of agriculture, medicine, and biology in general.
>The final thing he does is make it so that women are always fertile, always survive childbirth, and always give birth to healthy children. This ensures there's always more meat for the grinder.

I like to consider it a fantasy dystopia.

I feel kind of dumb, I have a civilization built around a dyson sphere in my scifi project and for the longest time had most of their tech powered by combustion engines and hydrogen fuel cells. Though further thinking about it now how do you make an electric jet fighter?

Run down so far

So after Octavian empire fell into different factions all trying to reunite the empire and all leaders claim the title of imperatoris solaris

The frontier cities were all abandoned due to the fact they couldn't be defended by elf raids but of most of humanity lives in the major cities on the coast all look like Roman cities but in ruins and filled with slums beggers and criminals


Elves are still salty about human legions kicking their shit in and will actively be dismissive to humans

Drawves don't care they want to profit off the human war


Orcs are mostly traders, pirates and steppe nomads/traders

>>96939596
You know people would take it all at face value and consider it utopia, right?

>>96940082
Google ionic engines. They exist, just are inefficient at current level of technology.

>>96940082
Have you tried googling it and answering your own question before posting it here?

Damn, now I want to include steampunk dyson sphere that is uses sunlight to boil water for steam-powered engines.

>>96940564
My two cents: In any conflict like that, you will have traitors revealing information that helps the other species. I'd say allow some subterfuge, but sprinkle it in slowly.

>>96940708
I hope so, that will make it funnier when these assholes start losing.

I'm working on a concept right now for a new campaign. The gist:
>Wizard creates underground lair
>Is obsessed with curing a rare elven disease
>Lives centuries but eventually dies
>His constructs have bad programming so they just build a huge tower
>Obsessed with their creator
>Build a city sized tower
>Constructs start to spread
>People go missing or show up "Converted"
>Constructs aren't actively hostile, but have weapons capable of destroying the countryside
>Just want to fulfill their creator's goal any way possible
>Constructs are normal, sentient beings with fear of death, but some are murder drones, every one is unique
>Players are allowed into the city to be "converted"
>The rest is a mystery to be discovered.

>>96939596
>waaa waaa war bad cowardice good
Let me guess, you also think Starship Troopers is ironic mockery?

>>96941833
The book? No, it's what Heinlein felt was the ideal model for society that week (he wrote a lot of books that were based on his views on how society should be run, and greatly changed his views on that at different points of his career). The film? The director has explicitly stated that it was written as "the kind of film fascists would make", and that it is supposed to be taking a piss at the concept. It's basically the film equivalent of Normal Spinrad's "Iron Dream", which is an intentionally shlocky science fiction novel where the joke is that it's presented as a book written an an alternate universe Hitler who never became a politician, and instead moved to United States and became a fantasy/science fiction writer. So the book is chock-full of obvious nazi imagery, but since nazis never existed in the universe the book was written none of the in-universe readers would have gotten it and the claims by some analysts that the novelist Hitler may have been an antisemite were considered ridiculous.

>>96938269
>Any conditions where two major Superpowers would cooperate rather than compete for power?

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas

>>96938269

Sure, but not in EVERY area. I mean, the idea itself of an emerging power threatening the ruling power's number one position is one in which development causes competition and hostility.

That being said I think you might be asking something among the lines of "I have two growing empires, how to make themselves cohexist peacefully?". I would assume in this case the answer is having non zero-sum areas in which said development happens (I dunno, commerce) or making one empire focus on one thing and the other on another without saying that each other is "better" at making said empires more important (let's say one empire focuses on magic and the other on exterminating monsters).

>>96885123 (OP)
>hey, here's a world-building thread!
>... leave it and come to this dozens of random other sites instead
OP, you had one fucking job and you blew it.

Due to all the halfling threads I've decided to put them into my setting. Now, due to the way the game system's built, I feel obligated to come up with a fourth and final race to take the slot of the elves in the "Core Four" but I don't have any ideas. For reference
>Grand dwarven empires to the west
>!Grecoroman humans to the southeast
>!Arabs in the south
>Halflings, men, and degenerate mountain-dwellers in the middle
>Undefined, generic Humans to the north.
The region's medditeranean in climate. I've no idea what fits - I would like to reserve mythological creatures and beastfolk to enemies and NPCs only.
>>96939596
>Die in a war, retvrn to fertile germanic Madonna-wife
The people who think you're parodying won't play it, the people who want that will.

>>96943514
Anyone else retarded enough to stare at this post for like 5 minutes wondering what a grecoro man was?

>>96943514
Some idle thoughts, not to answer your question but hopefully to help your process:
>What about tieflings? Are they a thing?
>What about dragonborn? Are they a thing?
>What about orcs? Are they a thing?
I ask these because these seem to be the next most common races players want to play.

>>96942424
You're overusing the word "superpower"
Spain and Portugal were powerful, but also had to account for Britain, France, Austria, and, in this case, the Pope himself

There exists a clan among the nomadic peoples that is ruled by a woman, not unusual. It is is primarily populated by women, and their children. Its also home to widows and runaways, its relatively small, has little influence during the grand council of the nomadic clans, and contributes very little during confederation war efforts. So my plan is having the party encounter a runaway who is being pursued by a former suitor or rather a member of his clan. So now I'm wondering if there should be some lore that makes it illegal to kidnap women of this tribal confederation, or just make it a societal taboo?

>>96938034
Kill them all. Mount their heads on pikes. Bathe in the blood of their young.
Earth is for humans, not these universe hopping planet stealing autocratic triple niggers. Go the fuck back.

>>96943514
>The people who think you're parodying won't play it, the people who want that will.
The people who love that idea are morons who won't even get that I'm making them play a game that mocks their ideology.

That's my goal. Laugh at these idiots as they make fools of themselves.

>>96941833
No, I think Starship Troopers (the book) is fascist apologia written by some nerd who didn't even fight in World War 2 despite being military.

>>96945372
Anon, read the first line. They're humans.

>>96940802
Are you for real?
Of course anon can just ask google, chatgpt or grock.
But anon use this instead because anon want to talk with real human bean.
To anon, having someone replied to his post is enough to feel something real.

>>96946117
Humans are much smarter than any AI.

But they're also much more likely to lie out of malice, so there are cons.

I want a punny name for a "brand" of genetically augmented geniuses, based on Von Neumann, that can pass on their incredible intellect to their children.

The OG idea was to call them Von Neumann Von Neumanns, but my sister tells me that's a stupid name.

>>96946314
New Men?