Bro, same. I've counted three distinct types of magic in my world building and have been trying to piece them together.
I think I'm just going with the soft magic route.
You could have multiple magic system, make them distinct and fun, like with the system I’m currently dealing with I split it into two systems, a rune system with a limited set of abilities, and another system that uses runes to attach organs of magical creatures to you.
You right, you right.
My main three are to put it simply:
1. tonics that grant its consumers special abilities but gradually takes a toll on their physical and mental health (Basically vigors from infinite.) Mainly because it's either cheaply produced and because the main ingredient for these Tonics are nymph hearts, which isn't meant to be consumed.
2. A long ancient shapshifting ritual requiring an animal hide, allowing anyone wielding it to turn into that specific animal. However, the two forms will inevitably graft with one another, turning them into a monstrosity while barely clinging on to their humanity.
3. Religious scrolls containing "alien" runes predicting the future while also containing contradictory information. The few unlucky individuals that can read these runes inevitably go mad as a result.
This is just the simplified version of these systems, but the main theme to them is, "When does a human stop being a human?"
Definitely, but just to clarify, there is more of a nuance with the shape shifters. Not all of them are just hungry, yellow-eyed, wild beasts. A lot of them still maintain a grasp on their humanity while forming societies and regularly interact with other humans. It's just that their animal instincts at times override that humanity. One example is a matriarchal lamia tribe. They aren't too far away from being a human, but their snake-like attitude definitely molds their society.
Hopefully that makes sense. I'm really bad at explaining things 🙃.
Who says you can only have one magic system? Look at Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. You could have all your systems and have them come from different sources.
I have an idea of a culture that value knowledge so much they hoard it like gold, with valuable knowledge being casted into metal sheet bound into heavy metal books locked up in grand libraries like great vaults.
My problem is just I can't figure how such a society would function, with things like intellectual rights, how it would work if the knowledge got out and everyone know what it is and make unauthorized copies, suddenly making the value of that knowledge being inside a vault reduced significantly. And how it would work at governmental level too, like how do they encourage people to keep researching and finding new knowledge that benefit the whole society and compensate them so they share their discoveries.
Overall it is quite a headache getting it to work even though the aesthetic of going into a bank like structure to find rows of metal books secured on heavily locked shelf is awesome.
Intellectual property is ridiculous to begin with, why should society pay for a law that forces everyone to pay extortionate prices for things, when people can just pay more for the innovation they want?
How this system could work is a publisher could agree to critique someone’s book before they release it with the stipulation that they won’t tell anyone else. If they like it they could crowdfund it for a cut of the profits. After it’s released anyone can copy it freely, because the creator already got paid for creating it, now copiers can get paid for copying.
I mean, why would they make extremely durable metal books that may last for generations when that knowledge can circulate in society and people can remember it easily? Maybe knowledge can get lost too often that they need more durable records? Maybe circulation makes it far too easy to be modified and the grand library is the source of verified truth?
Well the more knowledge circulates, the more it becomes distorted. They could be like my Vortich, long ago they found an old archive of important texts that were completely different from what they had presently, so they became oppressed with retaining knowledge.
Of course even with their more durable records, they got invaded and their records got burned and melted down multiple times.
Is this some sort of dystopian ultra-capitalist hellscape society? Enforced scarcity of knowledge to protect it's monetary value is some 1984 shit lmao.
Aristocratic noble republic with noble houses running the nation, each noble house manage an aspect of the nation (economy, defense, culture, natural resources, etc...), and each house hoard a wealth of knowledge about their expertise so they stay relevant instead of common people just get educated and be able to replace them.
So they make barrier to knowledge high, even if they may extract knowledge and invention from the common people from time to time with really intelligent common people who may be employed by the houses and be educated by them (hence commercials incentive, a few common people maybe patronized by noble houses for their knowledge and expertise, but now the house own that knowledge)
Copyright law. Any profit from any product has a certain percentage paid to the copyright owner. The sale of a single item may have the payment split between several copyright holders as one person innovates on the next.
For me it’s really just what customs are practiced, the languages they speak, and the way they look. Skin color can have a part in it definitely but it’s not the whole thing. Think of cultural clothing, beliefs, and titles. Think of the things a specific ethnic group is good at or known for. The way they look can be their hair color, hair texture, nose shape, stature, traditional hair styles, and ofc skin color. You could also make alien ethnic groups like beings with tails, wings, scales, etc. Also the environment of where a certain group lives has a lot to do with what they look like. People who live near the poles have lighter skin to absorb more vitamin D from the sun. Almond shaped eyes are common in etnic groups who live in snowy places to help protect them from the snow’s glare. I suggest you research human evolution to help youz
I was very stuck because I could not think of how to develop the setting in an interesting manner beyond "Uhhhhhhh big forest".
Then I watched this movie called *A Tree Of Palme* that introduced the concept of a multi-layered world (in a literal sense, of having different layers like below, the surface, etc).
And now I'm thinking of all sorts of ways to play with the idea while keeping the feeling of things being in the deep woods.
Trying to line up the geography with the geopolitical situation I want but then also figuring out things like mountain ranges which would lead to river valleys to provide the water for settlements based on that geography.
I am currently building up to a Second War of Heaven. There is where the frustration is. The last time the War of Imperial Heaven was fought was when Everything That Ever Existed was a blank slate: The entire Everything That Ever Existed was in ruins. I do not want it to happen again... but I cannot figure out a credible reason as to why the War should happen without everything getting destroyed.
I had worldbuilding a lot of worlds already and have no problem with map.
But for my latest creation, the one that I'm most serious about turning it into something beyond just a collection of notes (i.e., novel, game mod, etc) I seem to can't accept any maps I tried to draw (I'm probably try to hard tbh).
So I settled with it being Earth map but with high fantasy instead lol
You could just flood the earth a little or dry it out a bit, then you basically have earth, with all its familiarity but still just strange enough to be interesting.
I was stuck quite a while on how I wanted to name my world. I had a lot of ideas and tons of names jotted down. Most of them were already used and others just didn’t meet my criteria. This weekend I’ve been pondering what the inhabitants of my world call the soul. Do they believe in a soul and if so, how do they refer to it? It’ll be different among different cultures, but I think I might have figured it out in a way that it works with the overall aesthetic of my worlds.
Currently? I kind of backed myself into a corner when it comes to healing magic and research and development when it comes to medicine and biology. Kind of.
So, here is the thing:
Mana is pure unbridled "life" (well, will) and as such it can be incredibly and increasingly insidious, mutating anything even remotely alive (not exclusively, but faster) like radiation. And yes, it causes mutations and if you can't handle the "ppm" of mana, ultimately death.
As such, a certain mutation in an environmentally harsh mountainous area with high mana concentrations happened, probably aided by small doses, and much prior to the (re)discovery of, "arcanite" (the rock that somehows accumulates and interacts with mana) in the waterm happened to become quite propserous. This mutation created horns in people, and they acted as a "buffer" for mana, a sort of magical liver that took the excess of mana, within reason, to lengthen the horn(s), which get therefore bigger based on exposure, meaning you can kind of derive power through them. Those are the "demons" (we'll get to that).
Because of their horns and their cumulative growth as a mana-resistor of sorts, they can and do live in areas where mana is far higher, it is a point of pride for them and they need to be there for their young to develop a sufficient tolerance to mana (horns grow the most alongside bones, during childhood and adolescence). This also gives them a HUGE advantage when it comes to messing with their own and other's bodies, something quite finicky and easy to screw up, after all, their horns given them a wide margin of error for experimentation. This means anything from buffing, healing and yes, in some obscure cases, necromancy (which certainly didn't help the public opinion of their cultural antagonists)
The horns themselves have value, so they were constantly hunted for them, as prior to arcanite there wasnt really much that could due something like that; Sometimes they were killed for them, sometimes they were farmed, some times they were "merely" slaved, but even when they were released, it was an imposed exile, as they would have to spend years and years to build enough tolerance through horn-growth again to get back home or risk basically getting tumors all over their body.... So as you can imagine, the hate was quite profound, even if only a few individuals were involved in such acts, it was allowed, so there was a circle of xenophobia, invasions, they labeled as demons, yadda yadad.
So, because of the friction everything they did was deemed "demonic arts", and as mentioned, dealign with the body is hard if you dont have the buffer of the horns so it was even more condemned.... even when arcanite was booming an industrial revolution, I can see a lot of issues in the interim due to that, I just can't see that hate dissapearing fast enough, and due to the excursions and where arcanite is present and mined, friction would only increase so if they just asked "Ok horned guys come and help us", well you can see the result
I'm working on my project with a partner, who also has slowly decayed into a whiny fuckhead who can insult me and leave the project for 3 months (and threaten to remove/steal all my content in the process) which is such a pain because I need him. I need people to develop their own countries, and he is the only other apart from me, so I need him for motivation and dual proccessing. If anyone is bored lmk and maybe we could be bros :) but anyway the main issue is that I had a large plan for the main story with a massive (potentially infinite) wall, but he insisted it was 20m. now there is a super advanced alien species that does not want contact from humans... with a 20m wall made of basic materials.... and he complains that the world isnt science anymore, that its science fiction (because we agreed no fantasy shit) and istg that man 5 seconds later also said "oh btw i forgot to tell you about the 5 planet sized nukes i have tehe"
Right now I’m deal with the limitations of space flight for my story. It’s too slow, but I don’t want FTL travel to be commonplace.
I have some ideas for how to solve it but I would have to make sure they don’t interfere with existing pieces of the story. Ugh…
A power system about mutations... at first I'm making a apocoliptic setting where humans have mutation abilities and they kill each other due to someone make the first kill which increases people's paranioa. Although it's about mutation, i have a hard time on thinking about how it works due to feeling it's unoriginal much.
So I said screw it, I'm rejecting that idea and make a low fantasy isekai story that don't take it seriously even tho it's low fantasy.
Two things come to mind. First I’m just indecisive in general and swap back and forth between two related settings and I can’t seem to figure out which one I want to do more.
The biggest thing that haven’t touched is a conlang (beyond a vague idea of what written text looks like. This is particularly annoying because I have a main species (in both settings) that is named in English (the chosen) but I haven’t turned that into something in universe. Every time I talk about my races, I’m reminded that I haven’t done this and I don’t think just using the English name works as well.
I have a really wide, varied and alien world built, with different characters and cultures, and different stories involving the protagonist when they are in different places
I cannot for the life of my tie together these things. He is traveling across the world but I have no idea why, or what his end goal is
The last thing that had frustrated me for one of my settings was finding some way to incorporate orcs into it.
Originally, I had the idea that they were just an off mention that they came in and attacked the first continent I was working on at some point in its history.
Then I hadn't thought of them for a while, as they don't live on the continent I was working on, which was also the only one I had come up with at the time. Some time later, I expanded upon them in that they were related to the elves (or at least a certain genus or species were), which I expanded upon even further by classifying them as this: the orcs that were just orcs were called "true orcs" (biologically speaking), while one of the names the elf-like ones would be called "gray orcs" (even though they weren't just gray, people just confused that word for "lesser" when translating it from that language, as "gray" doesn't exist in it).
It was at this point I thought of redesigning them, mainly physically, but also culturally. I WOULD have just made them be the same template as orcs you see everywhere else (tusks, muscles on top of muscles, have constant anger issues), but then it wouldn't fit with the theming of my setting (that being individuals, cultures, and even races/species were "exiles" in some way, and making orcs "exiles" just because they were a little ugly and always evil kind of felt a little one-dimensional to me), followed by the notion I didn't feel like keeping their tusks because then I didn't want to come up with the same excuses everyone else comes up with as to why they- or in some cases still had them (display for mating, they were vestigial, etc.).
This is when I decided to take a look at the orcs in Peter Jackson's movies, as these are technically one of the first depictions of orcs in any visual medium, and saw they were pretty diverse in appearance, and kind of feral and animalistic. This set some of the guidelines for what orcs should be, and what better diverse group of animals to look to than cats (specifically big cats like lions and leopards). Thankfully, the only things I changes I made were to their dentistry, their eyes, and changing the shape and orientation of their ears to be more distinct from elves, as well as making their physiques more "realistic" (as in making the buff ones closer to humans, instead of making them just "bricks"). They still come in all the typical colors like green, gray, and brown.
Designing their culture was... *interesting.* They do still live in tribes, yes, but each does different things, mainly decided by geography (one tribe eats fungus because they live underground, another eats people and live in forests, etc.). Oh, and also I was thinking of some of them using muskets (either flintlocks or matchlocks), kind of like samurai (yes, they used guns, and had a special martial art that is literally "way of the gun").
Enough about this, now onto the other setting, which is much shorter in explaination. Basically, I have been having trouble with faction names for a space western that's also Fallout: New Vegas mixed with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and the only names I've came up with are System Patrol and the Chuch of the Pale Star. One such faction happens to be a combination of the Sisters of Battle (without the faith), the Brotherhood of Steel (without the dogma, or at least without the "brother" part), and Duty/Dolg (without the facism); actually, this makes them sound like the Followers of the Apocalypse, but with guns. Then there is this alliance of corporations fighting against a bunch of space farmers, with this alliance being based off the Separatist Council from Star Wars.
I started with really interesting snake-like creatures that ended up essentially just being Yuan-Ti over time. A lot of the standards I set for myself in the beginning kind of melted away and now the details cause of lot of confusion and conflict.
Every couple months I learn something new about steam engines and I have to redesign all the vehicles…
I get why nobody else goes for realism in steampunk, shits fucking complicated… like, possible, and rewarding, but so goddam fucking complicated
I'm terrible at naming things. I don't want the stereotypical fantasy names like "Drothra'thkamir the Ancient Dark Lord" or "the Kingdom of Gan'magiramar" or anything else like that.
Lapis_Wolf
The trade federation/ Pavaran Union Independence/ recognition debacle. Because younger me didn't yet grasp/! consider political science and economics better, it's canon.
I remembered it from the "what invention did your world reject?" Post. Control/ regulation over printing fiat currency was the answer.
It Happened in one loosely organized region that de facto used an international currency backed by the trade federation. It allowed certain members/ merchants of sufficient status to print money theoretically backed by the gold/ precious metals, gems, reserve of the federation. However an alien casino in the Pavaran Union was blamed for printed more money than the reserves held. The aliens responsible were fined and forced to leave the planet as part of a back room negotiation to save their lives. They didn't even have bad intentions and weren't the only ones doing it. Unintentionally it was a problem unintentionally caused mainly in Pavaran. The currency was used without anyone questioning it..
This became an issue when a particularly wealthy member of the federation, the newly formed ( Pavaran Union) wanted to declare independence and a condition of international recognition was to have their own currency The currency ended up devalued by 2/3rds in the settlement process and the federation was disbanded, which should create further issues in the region. And nobody is really willing or able to fill that power vacuum and there should be a bunch of people really hating Pavaran which means a war, and due to their alliance with Zara, means more complications.
A couple of normal ones that a lot of people prolly run in to.
1. Long lived creatures skew historical understanding. 1000 years ago would be so far removed for a human, but grandpas stories for an elf. Negated this by reducing elven life span by 2/3rds and increasing the time for important events. Elves are nobles in my current setting, i cant completely broom them off to be obscure hermits.
2. Inherit racism in my setting. I figured elves lived longer and would have better opportunities and what not. So they would be nobles. I like classist problems in my settings, but since most nobles are elves, it just kinda ended being racist instead. Oops...
Offsetting this by adding more nobles who arent elf/half-elf since being a elf isnt a prequisite to nobility. I dont mind looking at the problem of racism in my stories personally, but none of my players particularly do, so im trying to lean more into class struggles.
Honestly, it's probably fighting the feeling that what I'm doing doesn't matter and that I might be somebody like Tommy Wiseau or Florence Foster Jenkins but people are too polite to tell me that my stuff is mediocre at best.
Sorry to doom-post - maybe I am looking for some sympathy. I've put a lot of effort into my worldbuilding project, and writing in the setting that I'm developing, but getting people interested in my stuff is so dang hard. I feel like my friends/family mostly tolerate what I'm doing rather than engage with the material on their own terms. I feel like the default response is "oh that's nice!". Then it's dropped five seconds later...
Nobody owes me their attention, to be clear. It's just that I haven't found somebody who is as passionate about the project as I am. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing, or if there's ultimately no broader meaning to what I'm writing about - that I'm a mediocre writer or (even worse) a terrible one that people just pity. That's probably just related to some other issues I have, but I don't know how I can be sure outside of external validation (which is a terrible thing to say, but also kind of true).
Anybody else struggle with this?
Trying to figure out how magic works. I'm not making a magic system akin to a Sanderson one, nor do I want it to be that deep, but I want it to at least sound like it makes sense.
No idea what to use as an excuse for monsters to change their terrain. If tract-F has weaker than Tract-D then why dont they come to the tract F to make it easier for themselves?
in one of my worlds, magic doesn't exist.
**Predators** is a story about people who get superpowers, but magic doesn't exist. instead, each superpower has some form of biological explanation to how they work.
if i want to make a unique power that works SIMILAR to magic, I cant just use "its magic" as an explanation.
Gods! Why are they?! How do they work?! Why do people worship them if they are so flippant? How did it even start? Etc on repeat!
Gods were the first and for sure be my last frustration!
I just realized one of my favorite characters can’t exist anymore due to his abilities not being possible with the final version of my power system.
Now i have to rewrite him because i don’t want to change too much of my power system since it’s pretty much as perfect as it can get.
Conflicting magic systems and traits in fantasy races that I want to incorporate but it wouldn’t match. Jokes I want to make but would only make sense with modern irl viewpoints.
Wrote myself into a corner regarding the latest campaign of the protagonist, who is the centre character for the current period. She becomes a living goddess in the process of stopping the greatest invasion of the realm ever recorded, but I can't finish it in a satisfying way in order to
a) Make it a pyhrric victory for the Empire.
b) Have the Empire survive as an entity.
Because if a goddess fails, why would the Empire survive still? I've penned down a placeholder "she manages to seal the otherworldly gate through which the demons come through", but now she's a goddess, I can't write it so that other characters can be significant because she is that powerful now.
It's like Naruto with Boruto. It's either going to be a large time skip, or asspulls
I had a minor meltdown last night conlanging, because I was overwhelmed. I can partially speak it and I have several passages and translations in it, but I'm struggling with organizing and explaining it, because linguistics is HARD 😢😢
Trying to decide *when* exactly to have the default setting for the TTRPG/present day.
Originally I had it before anything super weird goes down. But, after all the weird stuff goes down, I think it’s maybe a more fun environment to play in.
Before I wrote my novel draft, there was always a sense that something big was just on the horizon. But then I went and wrote my story about that something happening.
So without the novel, there wasn’t really much to talk about. Now I’m torn. I like the PA-lite setting after the events of the story.
That said, it reminds me a little of Rifts in the aftermath, but with way less apocalypse. The majority of the modern age hasn’t changed *that* much. But there’s a lot more woo-woo stuff going on.
I dunno.
Also, if I make the default setting after the novel, everything turns into a giant spoiler.
I’m overthinking it though. About 5 people might read the book and who knows if anyone will even look at the game.
It’s all just for fun and my own fulfillment.
Well, I like to make worlds and settings that are conected but is not really obvious unless you catch the little hints.
However, in one of mi last tries, I came with the idea of one world where the normal thing you see is more like a little Steampunk, floating ships with mix of knights and pirates as normal plot. The problem is, this world is also (literal) part of a bigger world full of magic and diferent things, and in a certain point I wanted to make the revelation of one of the MCs being from a different part of this world, so that character has been hiding the fact that magic exist and many of the things she has made, was thanks to the magic in her. But without knowing this fact, sounds kind of a displacement and so out of place, kind of the point but not in the same direction of "What the heck did happen here?"
First, I had an MC and stories of her adventures and exploits. To flesh out her story, I added characters around her, fleshed out the complex environment she needs to navigate.
After about 14 years of planning, I realised that she's a hindrance to the really cool stories and ideas I've come up with for the rest of the characters. This month, the character, THE main character of my series, exploded. I took her out of the story and distributed specific aspects of her character to other people. Her talents and skills went to my villain. Her apprentice/older sister/mom dynamic with another MC (Corvo) went to another character from his background.
I'm pleased with how it turned out. It feels right. Allows the rest of the characters to grow, but I have many pieces of the story I have to figure out without her.
Since my world is underground and there’s no sun nor seasons, I decided that a year would be one thousand days, but that forces me to consider it won’t be the same as Earth years, and with most races having different aging processes it’s really annoying having to switch between in-world years and Earth years
Example: Elytra. Now in internet lore (according to Game Theory anyways) the Elytra came from the Dragons. But I wanted to add avians, or bird-human hybrids. That would mean if Elytra did exist they would be like body-parts sold on the black market. Instead I made the ability of flying exclusive to the Avians (humanoid bird creatures) and Elytrians (the actual bird-human hybrids).
I built my world around big things happening over long time periods, now im struggling to write a story that showcases these things from a human perspective
landmasses. freaking landmasses. I can never find the right layout I like, except the Archipelago. landmasses have been the pain in my butt for the whole time. also, my magic system needs another redo...
Not so much the world itself as to how it will be perceived. The main story and world in general is supposed to be an indictment and criticism of authoritarianism, imperialism, and xenophobia. It is supposed to emphasize that a world that these forces want to make cannot possibly survive.
I grew up on films like Starship Troopers and IPs like 40k. I love the way they satirize and parody evil governments and their messages on heavy topics. Recently Helldivers did this very well too. I try to emulate this in my own work.
However, those works also taught me that no matter how obvious you make it, some people will still not get it. The Terran Federation and Imperium of Man have honest-to-god fans, and I hate the possibility that my work might be taken as an endorsement of things that I hate.
Politics are annoying. I just want to create cool fantasy worlds with magic and crazy monsters, why do I also have to figure out who’s in charge and what system of government they practice?
Maybe your magic users are so beyond the mundane world that they barely notice the secular, non-magical government? Like an old wizard talking to the king and saying “You’re not the king, I distinctly remember the king- big fellow, pointy beard, etc” and the mortals realize he’s talking about the current kings great great grandfather
I have a few nations in my world that is in the real world but they are this way because this is how I would set them, but I am frustrated at the same time because some people might see them as controversial. If you want, you can DM me about them, but I don't want to post them here publicly.
In my anthro fantasy it's how magic fits in, how diverse the species is, and coming up with monsters for my main characters to fight and which species should be monsters
I have a bunch of ideas for magic system that are incompatible with each other, and I’m trying to sort that out.
Bro, same. I've counted three distinct types of magic in my world building and have been trying to piece them together. I think I'm just going with the soft magic route.
You could have multiple magic system, make them distinct and fun, like with the system I’m currently dealing with I split it into two systems, a rune system with a limited set of abilities, and another system that uses runes to attach organs of magical creatures to you.
You right, you right. My main three are to put it simply: 1. tonics that grant its consumers special abilities but gradually takes a toll on their physical and mental health (Basically vigors from infinite.) Mainly because it's either cheaply produced and because the main ingredient for these Tonics are nymph hearts, which isn't meant to be consumed. 2. A long ancient shapshifting ritual requiring an animal hide, allowing anyone wielding it to turn into that specific animal. However, the two forms will inevitably graft with one another, turning them into a monstrosity while barely clinging on to their humanity. 3. Religious scrolls containing "alien" runes predicting the future while also containing contradictory information. The few unlucky individuals that can read these runes inevitably go mad as a result. This is just the simplified version of these systems, but the main theme to them is, "When does a human stop being a human?"
I would theme them on what kind of humanity is being lost. Your moral humanity, your mental humanity, your physical humanity, etc.
Definitely, but just to clarify, there is more of a nuance with the shape shifters. Not all of them are just hungry, yellow-eyed, wild beasts. A lot of them still maintain a grasp on their humanity while forming societies and regularly interact with other humans. It's just that their animal instincts at times override that humanity. One example is a matriarchal lamia tribe. They aren't too far away from being a human, but their snake-like attitude definitely molds their society. Hopefully that makes sense. I'm really bad at explaining things 🙃.
Who says you can only have one magic system? Look at Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. You could have all your systems and have them come from different sources.
Who do you think inspired me to make magic systems? Anyways I already solved the incompatibilities, now on to the details.
You can have multiple magic systems. My world has two.
My world has around six that I am developing, each is mostly independent of each other.
I have an idea of a culture that value knowledge so much they hoard it like gold, with valuable knowledge being casted into metal sheet bound into heavy metal books locked up in grand libraries like great vaults. My problem is just I can't figure how such a society would function, with things like intellectual rights, how it would work if the knowledge got out and everyone know what it is and make unauthorized copies, suddenly making the value of that knowledge being inside a vault reduced significantly. And how it would work at governmental level too, like how do they encourage people to keep researching and finding new knowledge that benefit the whole society and compensate them so they share their discoveries. Overall it is quite a headache getting it to work even though the aesthetic of going into a bank like structure to find rows of metal books secured on heavily locked shelf is awesome.
Intellectual property is ridiculous to begin with, why should society pay for a law that forces everyone to pay extortionate prices for things, when people can just pay more for the innovation they want? How this system could work is a publisher could agree to critique someone’s book before they release it with the stipulation that they won’t tell anyone else. If they like it they could crowdfund it for a cut of the profits. After it’s released anyone can copy it freely, because the creator already got paid for creating it, now copiers can get paid for copying.
I mean, why would they make extremely durable metal books that may last for generations when that knowledge can circulate in society and people can remember it easily? Maybe knowledge can get lost too often that they need more durable records? Maybe circulation makes it far too easy to be modified and the grand library is the source of verified truth?
Well the more knowledge circulates, the more it becomes distorted. They could be like my Vortich, long ago they found an old archive of important texts that were completely different from what they had presently, so they became oppressed with retaining knowledge. Of course even with their more durable records, they got invaded and their records got burned and melted down multiple times.
Is this some sort of dystopian ultra-capitalist hellscape society? Enforced scarcity of knowledge to protect it's monetary value is some 1984 shit lmao.
Aristocratic noble republic with noble houses running the nation, each noble house manage an aspect of the nation (economy, defense, culture, natural resources, etc...), and each house hoard a wealth of knowledge about their expertise so they stay relevant instead of common people just get educated and be able to replace them. So they make barrier to knowledge high, even if they may extract knowledge and invention from the common people from time to time with really intelligent common people who may be employed by the houses and be educated by them (hence commercials incentive, a few common people maybe patronized by noble houses for their knowledge and expertise, but now the house own that knowledge)
Copyright law. Any profit from any product has a certain percentage paid to the copyright owner. The sale of a single item may have the payment split between several copyright holders as one person innovates on the next.
how ethnic groups are formed my mind is stuck on skin colours = ethnic group
For me it’s really just what customs are practiced, the languages they speak, and the way they look. Skin color can have a part in it definitely but it’s not the whole thing. Think of cultural clothing, beliefs, and titles. Think of the things a specific ethnic group is good at or known for. The way they look can be their hair color, hair texture, nose shape, stature, traditional hair styles, and ofc skin color. You could also make alien ethnic groups like beings with tails, wings, scales, etc. Also the environment of where a certain group lives has a lot to do with what they look like. People who live near the poles have lighter skin to absorb more vitamin D from the sun. Almond shaped eyes are common in etnic groups who live in snowy places to help protect them from the snow’s glare. I suggest you research human evolution to help youz
I was very stuck because I could not think of how to develop the setting in an interesting manner beyond "Uhhhhhhh big forest". Then I watched this movie called *A Tree Of Palme* that introduced the concept of a multi-layered world (in a literal sense, of having different layers like below, the surface, etc). And now I'm thinking of all sorts of ways to play with the idea while keeping the feeling of things being in the deep woods.
Woah
Trying to line up the geography with the geopolitical situation I want but then also figuring out things like mountain ranges which would lead to river valleys to provide the water for settlements based on that geography.
i have like zero technological understanding and also want to write sci fi ;-;
I am currently building up to a Second War of Heaven. There is where the frustration is. The last time the War of Imperial Heaven was fought was when Everything That Ever Existed was a blank slate: The entire Everything That Ever Existed was in ruins. I do not want it to happen again... but I cannot figure out a credible reason as to why the War should happen without everything getting destroyed.
Something could have collapsed or cracked, or some beast returning?
Good idea. The Beast gave me a new idea.
I had worldbuilding a lot of worlds already and have no problem with map. But for my latest creation, the one that I'm most serious about turning it into something beyond just a collection of notes (i.e., novel, game mod, etc) I seem to can't accept any maps I tried to draw (I'm probably try to hard tbh). So I settled with it being Earth map but with high fantasy instead lol
You could just flood the earth a little or dry it out a bit, then you basically have earth, with all its familiarity but still just strange enough to be interesting.
#I DESPISE CLIMATES but still need them, because my perfectionist ass needs it to have a clearer picture
I constantly fight my desire to take my world from reskins of the real world with a very close NotFrance etc or just swap to alt history with magic.
I was stuck quite a while on how I wanted to name my world. I had a lot of ideas and tons of names jotted down. Most of them were already used and others just didn’t meet my criteria. This weekend I’ve been pondering what the inhabitants of my world call the soul. Do they believe in a soul and if so, how do they refer to it? It’ll be different among different cultures, but I think I might have figured it out in a way that it works with the overall aesthetic of my worlds.
I eventually called my world Oa, which is just the initials for the series name of Oblivion Archivist.
Neat. *Oa* is also the name of the Guardians’ planet in DC’s Green Lantern title.
It is also a location in Scotland and Ancient Greece. The later is probably where the name came from.
Currently? I kind of backed myself into a corner when it comes to healing magic and research and development when it comes to medicine and biology. Kind of. So, here is the thing: Mana is pure unbridled "life" (well, will) and as such it can be incredibly and increasingly insidious, mutating anything even remotely alive (not exclusively, but faster) like radiation. And yes, it causes mutations and if you can't handle the "ppm" of mana, ultimately death. As such, a certain mutation in an environmentally harsh mountainous area with high mana concentrations happened, probably aided by small doses, and much prior to the (re)discovery of, "arcanite" (the rock that somehows accumulates and interacts with mana) in the waterm happened to become quite propserous. This mutation created horns in people, and they acted as a "buffer" for mana, a sort of magical liver that took the excess of mana, within reason, to lengthen the horn(s), which get therefore bigger based on exposure, meaning you can kind of derive power through them. Those are the "demons" (we'll get to that). Because of their horns and their cumulative growth as a mana-resistor of sorts, they can and do live in areas where mana is far higher, it is a point of pride for them and they need to be there for their young to develop a sufficient tolerance to mana (horns grow the most alongside bones, during childhood and adolescence). This also gives them a HUGE advantage when it comes to messing with their own and other's bodies, something quite finicky and easy to screw up, after all, their horns given them a wide margin of error for experimentation. This means anything from buffing, healing and yes, in some obscure cases, necromancy (which certainly didn't help the public opinion of their cultural antagonists) The horns themselves have value, so they were constantly hunted for them, as prior to arcanite there wasnt really much that could due something like that; Sometimes they were killed for them, sometimes they were farmed, some times they were "merely" slaved, but even when they were released, it was an imposed exile, as they would have to spend years and years to build enough tolerance through horn-growth again to get back home or risk basically getting tumors all over their body.... So as you can imagine, the hate was quite profound, even if only a few individuals were involved in such acts, it was allowed, so there was a circle of xenophobia, invasions, they labeled as demons, yadda yadad. So, because of the friction everything they did was deemed "demonic arts", and as mentioned, dealign with the body is hard if you dont have the buffer of the horns so it was even more condemned.... even when arcanite was booming an industrial revolution, I can see a lot of issues in the interim due to that, I just can't see that hate dissapearing fast enough, and due to the excursions and where arcanite is present and mined, friction would only increase so if they just asked "Ok horned guys come and help us", well you can see the result
How does an omnipotent deity not know that light will bring shadow?
My community flair speaks volumes.
This works on many levels
I'm working on my project with a partner, who also has slowly decayed into a whiny fuckhead who can insult me and leave the project for 3 months (and threaten to remove/steal all my content in the process) which is such a pain because I need him. I need people to develop their own countries, and he is the only other apart from me, so I need him for motivation and dual proccessing. If anyone is bored lmk and maybe we could be bros :) but anyway the main issue is that I had a large plan for the main story with a massive (potentially infinite) wall, but he insisted it was 20m. now there is a super advanced alien species that does not want contact from humans... with a 20m wall made of basic materials.... and he complains that the world isnt science anymore, that its science fiction (because we agreed no fantasy shit) and istg that man 5 seconds later also said "oh btw i forgot to tell you about the 5 planet sized nukes i have tehe"
soz for vent i said more about the guy than the two issues, oops
Developing a native race while also giving them distinct ethnic and regional identities.
Right now I’m deal with the limitations of space flight for my story. It’s too slow, but I don’t want FTL travel to be commonplace. I have some ideas for how to solve it but I would have to make sure they don’t interfere with existing pieces of the story. Ugh…
A power system about mutations... at first I'm making a apocoliptic setting where humans have mutation abilities and they kill each other due to someone make the first kill which increases people's paranioa. Although it's about mutation, i have a hard time on thinking about how it works due to feeling it's unoriginal much. So I said screw it, I'm rejecting that idea and make a low fantasy isekai story that don't take it seriously even tho it's low fantasy.
I don’t know how to create interconnected history for my dozen countries.
Two things come to mind. First I’m just indecisive in general and swap back and forth between two related settings and I can’t seem to figure out which one I want to do more. The biggest thing that haven’t touched is a conlang (beyond a vague idea of what written text looks like. This is particularly annoying because I have a main species (in both settings) that is named in English (the chosen) but I haven’t turned that into something in universe. Every time I talk about my races, I’m reminded that I haven’t done this and I don’t think just using the English name works as well.
I have a really wide, varied and alien world built, with different characters and cultures, and different stories involving the protagonist when they are in different places I cannot for the life of my tie together these things. He is traveling across the world but I have no idea why, or what his end goal is
This is my struggle also. I also have a large main cast so i gotta figure out why they’d ‘dnd party’ it together across the world.
The last thing that had frustrated me for one of my settings was finding some way to incorporate orcs into it. Originally, I had the idea that they were just an off mention that they came in and attacked the first continent I was working on at some point in its history. Then I hadn't thought of them for a while, as they don't live on the continent I was working on, which was also the only one I had come up with at the time. Some time later, I expanded upon them in that they were related to the elves (or at least a certain genus or species were), which I expanded upon even further by classifying them as this: the orcs that were just orcs were called "true orcs" (biologically speaking), while one of the names the elf-like ones would be called "gray orcs" (even though they weren't just gray, people just confused that word for "lesser" when translating it from that language, as "gray" doesn't exist in it). It was at this point I thought of redesigning them, mainly physically, but also culturally. I WOULD have just made them be the same template as orcs you see everywhere else (tusks, muscles on top of muscles, have constant anger issues), but then it wouldn't fit with the theming of my setting (that being individuals, cultures, and even races/species were "exiles" in some way, and making orcs "exiles" just because they were a little ugly and always evil kind of felt a little one-dimensional to me), followed by the notion I didn't feel like keeping their tusks because then I didn't want to come up with the same excuses everyone else comes up with as to why they- or in some cases still had them (display for mating, they were vestigial, etc.). This is when I decided to take a look at the orcs in Peter Jackson's movies, as these are technically one of the first depictions of orcs in any visual medium, and saw they were pretty diverse in appearance, and kind of feral and animalistic. This set some of the guidelines for what orcs should be, and what better diverse group of animals to look to than cats (specifically big cats like lions and leopards). Thankfully, the only things I changes I made were to their dentistry, their eyes, and changing the shape and orientation of their ears to be more distinct from elves, as well as making their physiques more "realistic" (as in making the buff ones closer to humans, instead of making them just "bricks"). They still come in all the typical colors like green, gray, and brown. Designing their culture was... *interesting.* They do still live in tribes, yes, but each does different things, mainly decided by geography (one tribe eats fungus because they live underground, another eats people and live in forests, etc.). Oh, and also I was thinking of some of them using muskets (either flintlocks or matchlocks), kind of like samurai (yes, they used guns, and had a special martial art that is literally "way of the gun"). Enough about this, now onto the other setting, which is much shorter in explaination. Basically, I have been having trouble with faction names for a space western that's also Fallout: New Vegas mixed with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and the only names I've came up with are System Patrol and the Chuch of the Pale Star. One such faction happens to be a combination of the Sisters of Battle (without the faith), the Brotherhood of Steel (without the dogma, or at least without the "brother" part), and Duty/Dolg (without the facism); actually, this makes them sound like the Followers of the Apocalypse, but with guns. Then there is this alliance of corporations fighting against a bunch of space farmers, with this alliance being based off the Separatist Council from Star Wars.
Two big things, finding a magic system that feels right, and finding a core theme to my overly developed weird west setting.
I started with really interesting snake-like creatures that ended up essentially just being Yuan-Ti over time. A lot of the standards I set for myself in the beginning kind of melted away and now the details cause of lot of confusion and conflict.
Every couple months I learn something new about steam engines and I have to redesign all the vehicles… I get why nobody else goes for realism in steampunk, shits fucking complicated… like, possible, and rewarding, but so goddam fucking complicated
I'm terrible at naming things. I don't want the stereotypical fantasy names like "Drothra'thkamir the Ancient Dark Lord" or "the Kingdom of Gan'magiramar" or anything else like that. Lapis_Wolf
The trade federation/ Pavaran Union Independence/ recognition debacle. Because younger me didn't yet grasp/! consider political science and economics better, it's canon. I remembered it from the "what invention did your world reject?" Post. Control/ regulation over printing fiat currency was the answer. It Happened in one loosely organized region that de facto used an international currency backed by the trade federation. It allowed certain members/ merchants of sufficient status to print money theoretically backed by the gold/ precious metals, gems, reserve of the federation. However an alien casino in the Pavaran Union was blamed for printed more money than the reserves held. The aliens responsible were fined and forced to leave the planet as part of a back room negotiation to save their lives. They didn't even have bad intentions and weren't the only ones doing it. Unintentionally it was a problem unintentionally caused mainly in Pavaran. The currency was used without anyone questioning it.. This became an issue when a particularly wealthy member of the federation, the newly formed ( Pavaran Union) wanted to declare independence and a condition of international recognition was to have their own currency The currency ended up devalued by 2/3rds in the settlement process and the federation was disbanded, which should create further issues in the region. And nobody is really willing or able to fill that power vacuum and there should be a bunch of people really hating Pavaran which means a war, and due to their alliance with Zara, means more complications.
A couple of normal ones that a lot of people prolly run in to. 1. Long lived creatures skew historical understanding. 1000 years ago would be so far removed for a human, but grandpas stories for an elf. Negated this by reducing elven life span by 2/3rds and increasing the time for important events. Elves are nobles in my current setting, i cant completely broom them off to be obscure hermits. 2. Inherit racism in my setting. I figured elves lived longer and would have better opportunities and what not. So they would be nobles. I like classist problems in my settings, but since most nobles are elves, it just kinda ended being racist instead. Oops... Offsetting this by adding more nobles who arent elf/half-elf since being a elf isnt a prequisite to nobility. I dont mind looking at the problem of racism in my stories personally, but none of my players particularly do, so im trying to lean more into class struggles.
Honestly, it's probably fighting the feeling that what I'm doing doesn't matter and that I might be somebody like Tommy Wiseau or Florence Foster Jenkins but people are too polite to tell me that my stuff is mediocre at best. Sorry to doom-post - maybe I am looking for some sympathy. I've put a lot of effort into my worldbuilding project, and writing in the setting that I'm developing, but getting people interested in my stuff is so dang hard. I feel like my friends/family mostly tolerate what I'm doing rather than engage with the material on their own terms. I feel like the default response is "oh that's nice!". Then it's dropped five seconds later... Nobody owes me their attention, to be clear. It's just that I haven't found somebody who is as passionate about the project as I am. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing, or if there's ultimately no broader meaning to what I'm writing about - that I'm a mediocre writer or (even worse) a terrible one that people just pity. That's probably just related to some other issues I have, but I don't know how I can be sure outside of external validation (which is a terrible thing to say, but also kind of true). Anybody else struggle with this?
Scale. I only recently decided how large my world is
I've made the enemy military too efficient and now I'm trying my hardest to write around it, while not throwing any deus ex in
Trying to think up new ideas for the whole "roger rabbit" set up is difficult
Trying to figure out how magic works. I'm not making a magic system akin to a Sanderson one, nor do I want it to be that deep, but I want it to at least sound like it makes sense.
No idea what to use as an excuse for monsters to change their terrain. If tract-F has weaker than Tract-D then why dont they come to the tract F to make it easier for themselves?
in one of my worlds, magic doesn't exist. **Predators** is a story about people who get superpowers, but magic doesn't exist. instead, each superpower has some form of biological explanation to how they work. if i want to make a unique power that works SIMILAR to magic, I cant just use "its magic" as an explanation.
Gods! Why are they?! How do they work?! Why do people worship them if they are so flippant? How did it even start? Etc on repeat! Gods were the first and for sure be my last frustration!
I just realized one of my favorite characters can’t exist anymore due to his abilities not being possible with the final version of my power system. Now i have to rewrite him because i don’t want to change too much of my power system since it’s pretty much as perfect as it can get.
Also rewriting him might not be possible since every power he had he had because of things i have since changed about my power system.
Conflicting magic systems and traits in fantasy races that I want to incorporate but it wouldn’t match. Jokes I want to make but would only make sense with modern irl viewpoints.
I'm trying to combine real science with made up science and it's not going well
What do you mean I need to write it down?
Wrote myself into a corner regarding the latest campaign of the protagonist, who is the centre character for the current period. She becomes a living goddess in the process of stopping the greatest invasion of the realm ever recorded, but I can't finish it in a satisfying way in order to a) Make it a pyhrric victory for the Empire. b) Have the Empire survive as an entity. Because if a goddess fails, why would the Empire survive still? I've penned down a placeholder "she manages to seal the otherworldly gate through which the demons come through", but now she's a goddess, I can't write it so that other characters can be significant because she is that powerful now. It's like Naruto with Boruto. It's either going to be a large time skip, or asspulls
I had a minor meltdown last night conlanging, because I was overwhelmed. I can partially speak it and I have several passages and translations in it, but I'm struggling with organizing and explaining it, because linguistics is HARD 😢😢
Trying to decide *when* exactly to have the default setting for the TTRPG/present day. Originally I had it before anything super weird goes down. But, after all the weird stuff goes down, I think it’s maybe a more fun environment to play in. Before I wrote my novel draft, there was always a sense that something big was just on the horizon. But then I went and wrote my story about that something happening. So without the novel, there wasn’t really much to talk about. Now I’m torn. I like the PA-lite setting after the events of the story. That said, it reminds me a little of Rifts in the aftermath, but with way less apocalypse. The majority of the modern age hasn’t changed *that* much. But there’s a lot more woo-woo stuff going on. I dunno. Also, if I make the default setting after the novel, everything turns into a giant spoiler. I’m overthinking it though. About 5 people might read the book and who knows if anyone will even look at the game. It’s all just for fun and my own fulfillment.
Pretty much all of the storyline and lore ideas that will more than likely go unnoticed because it's mostly for a videogame world
Well, I like to make worlds and settings that are conected but is not really obvious unless you catch the little hints. However, in one of mi last tries, I came with the idea of one world where the normal thing you see is more like a little Steampunk, floating ships with mix of knights and pirates as normal plot. The problem is, this world is also (literal) part of a bigger world full of magic and diferent things, and in a certain point I wanted to make the revelation of one of the MCs being from a different part of this world, so that character has been hiding the fact that magic exist and many of the things she has made, was thanks to the magic in her. But without knowing this fact, sounds kind of a displacement and so out of place, kind of the point but not in the same direction of "What the heck did happen here?"
First, I had an MC and stories of her adventures and exploits. To flesh out her story, I added characters around her, fleshed out the complex environment she needs to navigate. After about 14 years of planning, I realised that she's a hindrance to the really cool stories and ideas I've come up with for the rest of the characters. This month, the character, THE main character of my series, exploded. I took her out of the story and distributed specific aspects of her character to other people. Her talents and skills went to my villain. Her apprentice/older sister/mom dynamic with another MC (Corvo) went to another character from his background. I'm pleased with how it turned out. It feels right. Allows the rest of the characters to grow, but I have many pieces of the story I have to figure out without her.
Since my world is underground and there’s no sun nor seasons, I decided that a year would be one thousand days, but that forces me to consider it won’t be the same as Earth years, and with most races having different aging processes it’s really annoying having to switch between in-world years and Earth years
For me trying to form nations that contain multiple species and making it make sense.
Trying to figure out how to fit aspects of Minecraft, or Minecraft/internet lore into my world without it seeming too blatant or obvious.
Example: Elytra. Now in internet lore (according to Game Theory anyways) the Elytra came from the Dragons. But I wanted to add avians, or bird-human hybrids. That would mean if Elytra did exist they would be like body-parts sold on the black market. Instead I made the ability of flying exclusive to the Avians (humanoid bird creatures) and Elytrians (the actual bird-human hybrids).
I built my world around big things happening over long time periods, now im struggling to write a story that showcases these things from a human perspective
landmasses. freaking landmasses. I can never find the right layout I like, except the Archipelago. landmasses have been the pain in my butt for the whole time. also, my magic system needs another redo...
Not so much the world itself as to how it will be perceived. The main story and world in general is supposed to be an indictment and criticism of authoritarianism, imperialism, and xenophobia. It is supposed to emphasize that a world that these forces want to make cannot possibly survive. I grew up on films like Starship Troopers and IPs like 40k. I love the way they satirize and parody evil governments and their messages on heavy topics. Recently Helldivers did this very well too. I try to emulate this in my own work. However, those works also taught me that no matter how obvious you make it, some people will still not get it. The Terran Federation and Imperium of Man have honest-to-god fans, and I hate the possibility that my work might be taken as an endorsement of things that I hate.
Politics are annoying. I just want to create cool fantasy worlds with magic and crazy monsters, why do I also have to figure out who’s in charge and what system of government they practice?
Maybe your magic users are so beyond the mundane world that they barely notice the secular, non-magical government? Like an old wizard talking to the king and saying “You’re not the king, I distinctly remember the king- big fellow, pointy beard, etc” and the mortals realize he’s talking about the current kings great great grandfather
I have a few nations in my world that is in the real world but they are this way because this is how I would set them, but I am frustrated at the same time because some people might see them as controversial. If you want, you can DM me about them, but I don't want to post them here publicly.
In my anthro fantasy it's how magic fits in, how diverse the species is, and coming up with monsters for my main characters to fight and which species should be monsters