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Anonymous10/13/25, 10:54No.96743359/wbg/ Worldbuilding General
Academy edition
Resources for Newfags: https://sites.google.com/view/wbgeneral/
Worldbuilding links: https://pastebin.com/JNnj79S5
https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/Eo+fK41FKVR7xDpbNO0a0N4k0YYxrmyrhX3VxnM14Ew/
Fantasy map generator: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
Last thread: >>96515130 [/tg/thread/96515130#p96515130]
Thread question:
>Do you only focus on kings and saints, or you create a variety of great people for your settings?
Thread prompt:
>Tell us about any great painters / composers / writers in your setting. Do you have descriptions of their great works? Or even, for madlads, examples?
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Anon10/13/25, 10:56No.96743361
There's The Songsparrow. Who is basically a modern day popstar who sings ballads for noble courts and peasant alike and dodges angry husbands.
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Anon10/13/25, 11:24No.96743454
One of the world-shaping events of my setting is an incredibly advanced pre-human civilization creating a machine that had to destroy all their enemies, on a metaphysical level.
This led to a last-ditch attack before it could be completed. In current version, the attack is performed by combined might of Angels and Demons, despite the whole setting revolving around the clash of Light and Dark.
I can't put a finger on it - would presenting a threat that made Angels and Demons work together, even if briefly, actually make for a cool moment in lore, or it would undermine the central conflict?
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Anon10/13/25, 17:30No.96745477
[/tg/thread/96515130#p96743297]
I have a setting with periodic cataclysms on a smaller time scale (basically the same as what you suggested initially, like a thousand years or less) so I can say what I've done at least.
I think it's a good way to make a setting dynamic and interesting.
>It feels stupid to fit multiple such cataclysms into a timeline measured in thousands of years. If a cataclysms destroys everything...
It doesn't have to destroy everything. Mine are usually strong enough to basically reset civilization back to a baseline, but it doesn't erase all the knowledge hoarded before the apocalypse. If any pockets survive, they pretty rapidly are able to resettle and it can mean a civilization/society in a bad spot at the end of an era that manages to survive all of a sudden ends up in a dominant position. Seers and prophets can also potentially foresee the disaster and prepare for it, making the position even more secure.
>why care about the struggle of good and evil if the slate will be wiped clean
The obvious answer would be to make the 'evil' responsible for the cataclysms, but either way focus on the continuity between eras too
>Not to mention forests and animal populations which just wouldn't have time to spread again.
Unless you're talking about something on the order of the dinosaur-killing asteroid, you'd be surprised. Some study said that life had returned to the literal Chicxulub crater within three years after impact. And that was just on an entirely different scale in terms of how destructive the event was. Treat the first couple hundreds years after the Cataclysm as a "recovery" phase, like forests are growing back, new animals are recolonizing the lands. It can be an interesting period to play around with as well for a setting.
>Plus for long-lived races, such as Dwarves and Elves, this would be stupid.
I personally cut the lifespans of my dwarves and elves, but I think playing with the idea of the "proud race perseveres through the cataclysm" is cool too.
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Anon10/13/25, 21:30No.96747053
Is this the thread to discuss VTTs and map-making tools? I'm looking at RPTools' MapTool, free and open-source, not sure if anyone got any feedback. I want to playtest an rpg with my cousin and we live in 2 different cities so need VTT until we meet up again. Needs to support hex grids cause muh GURPS.
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Anon10/14/25, 03:30No.96748753
Hi guys, I very infrequently visit /tg/ (like once or twice a year, if that)Anyways, I want to make a game that's basically a dungeon crawler, that scales into party management and has 4X elements, with simulated economies and factions and stuff. I've been using ChatGPT to roughly hash out and refine ideas, since I can basically throw shit at it and it'll group things together and narrow down how I *actually* want to approach things. Anyone else doing that sort of thing?Since I wanted to have a focus on deep finance (contracts, derivatives and the like), I figured the easiest way to have it mirror modern conventions was to just use magic... but if magic was so widespread, it would create other issues. So then my thought was to have some kind of extraplanar being manage stuff, so I ended up going with Djinn - they don't care about mortal politics, are very contract/oath oriented, powerful magicians, and being nonpartisan allows them to just build wealth up (as opposed to say, vampire lords or dragons or demons, though they might participate to an extent).The other hurdle I need to clear conceptually is how to justify dungeons popping up everywhere and why collecting millions of gp in loot won't distort the economy. My thought here was that depending on local conditions (stability, religion, wealth) would affect the kind of dungeons that would appear, such as bandit dens appearing near borders with low stability, that sort of thing. And lairs would probably just have a ton of mundane crap in them (a few coins, art objects, weapons) and the wealth would come from fulfilling contracts or developing the player's own faction economy.For magic, I'm leaning towards D&D sort of logic for now, having a discipline (transmutation) and a catalyst (divine, arcane) as a placeholder, until I get more of the fundamentals figured out. It's something I've just been sketching out on and off for a few years, but this is the first time I've really posted about it anywhere
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Anon10/14/25, 10:27No.96750093
Okay, the timeline got compressed to 50 thousand years since the world took on a stable form. That's a big improvement from my original plan that made it 1 million years long.
The world was creates a while before that, but the concept of time wasn't really around, and it was just chaos with Archangels and First Demons clashing over churning elements for what mortals would have perceived as many millenia.
Crap like Deep Ones and Serpent-Men dominate world for a several tens of thousands of years, while animals evolve, ecosystems settle, etc before proper humanoids come around, which happens around 10 thousand years ago.
So the whole history, with 3 precursor races fills 10 thousand years and at least 4 world-changing cataclysms.
I can work with that.
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Anon10/14/25, 11:49No.96750366
Angels were the first mortal race made by the Allfather, forged out of silver and pearls, and granted life and flesh. They were winged, long-lived, and so beautiful, than when the Fey entered the world, they were enthralled and took on shapes like those of angels, which is why Elves are so beautiful.
Most of them died when the Enemy sent the Blood Curse and the angels wiped themselves out in a frenzy of blood, aside from a handful, saved by Allfather to become his heralds. Since that day, silver tarnishes, when before it was as untouchable as gold.
Some say the Men of Gold were created by the Enemy, and their many atrocities lend credibility to that idea. They were forged of gold and amber.
Giants were made by the world itself, some say, or maybe by Allfather, explaining their affinity for lightning, and they were forged of thunderbolt iron and diamond. The Giants in turn forged Dwarves to aid them. Dwarves were forged from iron and rock, making them hardy and tough, but forever seeking the splendour of Giants in precious metals and gemstones.
Humans were not forged per se, but olden myths ascribe them bronze and garnet, for their early weapon were of bronze, and garnets are the color of blood they shed.
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Anon10/14/25, 16:25No.96752083
>I have this goddess of moon and night, called Luna, and I want to give her a sister
>what should I call her?
>hmmm
>uhhh
>ahhh
>ah yes, "Noctis"
>yeah, I still got it
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Anon10/14/25, 23:34No.96755113
Hm, if gunpowder is a low-grade demonic substance in the setting, what's stopping demons from rocking tons of firearms?
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Anon10/14/25, 23:49No.96755243
Kys d*scord cancer.
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Anon10/15/25, 00:02No.96755332
Wyrmsong is more about "culturebuilding" than "worldbuilding". WE, the individuals gathered here, are the speakers, not a fictional race (though we can and shall borrow symbolism from fiction and mythology).
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Anon10/15/25, 07:04No.96757109
Why is this thread so dead? Its used to be so active...
Is it because of LLMs?
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Anon10/15/25, 07:32No.96757153
Me deciding that wizards create a magical territory whenever they flex their powers, which is why the massive explosions they create don't have much collateral damage.I think it's also going to be useful to explain why the known laws of physics don't just shatter when magic is used. Technically speaking, the Wizards are fighting in a whole different universe.
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Anon10/15/25, 13:17No.96758395
What is the most common government system in your world?
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Anon10/15/25, 17:14No.96759844
I finally did it.
I finally devised a reasoning why firearms are scarce and not proliferating in my setting, despite their power, and balanced them in the grand scheme of things while keeping their individual power intact.
I deserve a cookie.
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Anon10/15/25, 19:23No.96760782
What image generation do you guys use to get illustrations for your characters, gods etc? Whats the best to use?
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Anon10/15/25, 19:55No.96760982
Which board would be the best for gathering collaborators for an invented language?
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Anon10/16/25, 04:50No.96764208
Are your worlds villains more over-the-top dark lord Sauron types or more like Cardinal Richelieu realistic human evil types?
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Anon10/16/25, 05:03No.96764271
What are the political ideologies of the different factions in your setting?
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Anon10/16/25, 05:30No.96764405
I have more than just nobles and warriors. I have artists, crafters, teachers, and healers that are well known.
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Anon10/16/25, 07:08No.96764677
>come up with distinct visual feature for the setting
>need lore to explain it, but can't write satisfying one
>write lore to explain why it is needed
>write lore about places where feature is not present to juxtapose
>develop the connections
>fill out gaps
>due to writing around visual feature, it now seems blatantly out of place
>throw it out
>get decent setting that is visually bland
>still want to use visual feature
God dammit
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Anon10/16/25, 09:55No.96765317
>the top god of the setting is a deity of light
>worshipped in three manifestations - the Sun, the lightning bolt, and candlelight.
>feel content until I realize that the trinity can be summed up as the Lightning, the Sun and the Holy Fire, and it sounds like a bad punny pastiche of christianity
>English has no synonyms for the Sun
Fuck. What do?
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Anon10/16/25, 15:04No.96766696
I always run into problem of "what they do day in and day out" especially for warrior and long-lived races. Let alone long-lived warrior races.
Take Giants, for instance. They are these mighty sages, who created Dwarfs in ages past. They don't farm, don't hunt, don't really build anymore (Dwarfs serve their needs, basically). They ponder the orb, guide the dwarfs (but not rule) and fight great evils. But that leaves them with zero hobbies or activities. They don't even have to train, due to their nature.And then there are Sky Giants, who don't even eat, and don't hang out around Dwarves most of the time.Of course I could just leave their activities a mystery, but I want to know for myself!
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Anon10/16/25, 15:48No.96766937
>Tell us about any great painters / composers / writers in your setting. Do you have descriptions of their great works? Or even, for madlads, examples?
While I have done some pictures of in-universe artwork for my SF setting, that's really been the case of me being lazy and excusing a more stylized picture as the result of the art style used. I've only actually named one famous artist, singer and songwriter John "Junior" Vainio Jr., who wrote some of the best-known spacer songs. But that's really just my tribute to Heinlein's Rhysling and a famous songwriter from my father's hometown. Aside from naming some of his songs ("The Smuggler's Lament", "My Friend, the Old Spacer", "Sons of the Eagle"), I don't actually have any examples of what he's supposed to have written.
I did, however write a military march/national anthem to one of my alien civilizations. Granted, that's another dumb in-joke where I took a famous military march from my native country, altered some words, and translated the result to English. Not exactly high-effort work, though I did at least ensure that the original (non-English) version fits the original meter and mostly rhymes as it should. I did a similar thing for a short clip of what was supposed to be a longer song, but that was just a part of a Kipling poem with words altered and removed from the original context.
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Anon10/16/25, 20:50No.96769016
What ways are potential heirs to the throne tested in your settings? I’m looking for ideas for that myself and I’ve hit a block.
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Anon10/17/25, 08:36No.96772751
Its exciting to invent new biomes
>great mountain ranges are 12-15 km tall
>highest known peak is 21 km tall
>mountains are snow-free to about 4 km altitude outside frozen lands (the world is flat so there is no gradient like on Earth)
>snow caps stretch from there to about 10km altitude
>above that snow disappears
>air there is warm-ish (~5-10° C) and thin enough that humans become lightheaded and cannot exert themselves too much, but still breathable; it doesn't get thinner with altitude after that
>sky is deep and very dark blue, almot black
>aside from towering cumulonimbuses rising from lower atmosphere, the only clouds there are thin silvery plumes and wisps, barely visible from the world down below
>despite lack of clouds or precipitation, there are powerful lightning storms, as power flows up the mountains and is discharged into the atmosphere
>due to quirks of atmosphere there, there are rainbows, but they are gold, rimmed with purple and silver; they are invisible from the world below
>there are rare minerals and ores, such as orichalcum, found almost exlusively this high up, due to processes that created these mountains, and the lightning storms
>the only below-world beings that live this up high are geese, mountain goats, eagles, and variety of jumping mice, but there are also entirely local creatures, that I haven't made up yet
>the height of the tallest mountains is about the same as the lowest branches of the World TreeNow I have to figure out the implications
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Anon10/17/25, 08:46No.96772789
I dislike AI because it looks very obviously generated and bad. And when players bring AI art to my table ("This is what my character looks like!" "I generated the image for the magic item you gave us!") my reaction is "No, nothing in my world looks like THAT"
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Anon10/17/25, 17:21No.96775157
I need inspiration to build the initial story of my group of PCs.
The unmutable premise is:
they are unarmed with street clothes
they have no money
they have skills in different weapons and spells so will try to aquire weapons, armor, magic items
they start in a peaceful town but will embark on a ship to some quest when they are done getting gearedMain question I need inspiration for:
Why are they all together, what were they doing right before that explains why they are broke and why they are already skilled in weapons and have good starting attributes like strength, dexterity, etcI thought maybe they could have just graduated from the University of Peaceful Invasion Arts and shared a class and became friends, or something.
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Anon10/17/25, 17:38No.96775272
I need ideas of names/titles for the Satan figure
Ideally two of them, because what mortals universally perceive as the Devil, what cultists worship, what angels warn prophets about, is merely a herald.
True Satan is an Azathoth-like entity that almost immediately corrupts anyone even aware of it, unless they are blessed by God, usually shattering their mind into vegetative state, and on occassion breaking reality. Even lesser demons aren't safe.
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Anon10/17/25, 18:14No.96775463
"On the Solidarity of Man and the nature of economics and Governance."A book that created two vastly different counties post a imperial civil war that resulted in two major overseas holdings to break off. The book wasn't meant to be revolutionary or anti imperial but was made as an examination of different economic and government/social styles to help Imperial Scholars navigate different cultures as they planned to assimilate them.
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Anon10/18/25, 07:17No.96780043
The conflict between the two Great Powers of my setting can best be described as Nation vs State in geopolitical terms.The Union of Tripura is the State. Their idea of world domination involves making a UN with teeth, except with just one hegemon: themselves. It would mean an entire world run by the same laws, the same institutions, and the same groups of officials.In other words, they are trying to make a World State.The Ellysan Empire is the Nation. It wants to make a world dominated by Elyssan people. They want everyone to speak their language, worship their god, and carry on their culture.Their idea of world domination is basically that all states are dominated by Ellyssans, even if they have different rulers and borders.
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Anon10/18/25, 13:27No.96781299
I just found out that furries only attracted to disney-fied animal, so as long the head lf the beastmen are realistic, i can avoid the furry community.
Now, anyone knows how to avoid the animal fuckers community?
I think, as long as below the neck of beastmen is just normal human body, it would be enough to avoid the animal fuckers.
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Anon10/18/25, 13:46No.96781389
>Tell us about any great painters / composers / writers in your settingI had one plot hook about a famous painter being assasinated. She was famed for making portraits of many noblemen and was killed by an impostor king after being forced to paint his face over the old king's portrait, in order to silence her. Her name was just Emerald,. her assistant, Jade, was able to flee but was captured and imprisoned in a brothel in the setting's Las Vegas, from where the PCs found her and found this story.
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Anon10/18/25, 18:47No.96782945
What are you guys using to organize your notes? I hate all the options in pinned links and I am slowly losing myself in all the folders.
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Anon10/19/25, 01:02No.96785470
I just got redpilled on introducing guns into my fantasy game. Not just for the PCs, but having arquebuses into armies as a common thing, let's say its a XV-XVI century parallel.The implications on warfare are easy to infer from real world history; though I intend to make heavy cavalry still viable through new armor materials (alchemy is a very important part of the setting. So much, actually, that I had to introduce gunpowder as it was ridiculous that nobody had ever found it yet; but I want to introduce fantasy alchemy too)Gunpowder can also be nerfed in magical ways, such as summoning fog to impede aiming (but match light still giving away the gunmen position), rain, etc; mostly so the world doesnt evolve into trench warfare anytime soon,I think I can use ideas on the monster aspect, as in; What monsters are less and most impacted by humans having access to guns and cannons? cont.
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Anon10/19/25, 03:12No.96786323
When worldbuilding a species, is mention of neoteny as a reason for a feature evolving inherently uncomfy?
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Anon10/19/25, 10:39No.96787901
Where do I read people's worldbuilding works?
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Anon10/19/25, 11:26No.96788001
https://www.tomassanchez.com/gallery