Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[QED - Iltazyara]

Just tallied my campaign setting and I have over 40 pages. No wonder I can't really seem to get much help. They basically have to read a small book to digest my campaign setting in its entirety...

,,,

Let me check something

Does that include note pages? If not I'm pretty similar, though I still have several pages chapters to add in. Like locations, although that is done. Just not in the main document.
I never expect anyone to read all of it, that's not its purpose. Its for me to be able to answer questions easily, and have stories to tell and reasons for things to be somewhere. I hate improvising.
I also enjoy world building. The two go together.

Has, however, made me give up on several attempts to summarise a post to get feedback on the setting. Maybe I should make a thread for people to exchange feedback, with a word limit on descriptions.

Actually, what do people think of that idea?

(As for my notes pages, I seem to have around... ^{two hundred and eighty five} Uhh, hmm. Not sure what to think of that.)

[zabbarot]

(As for my notes pages, I seem to have around... ^{two hundred and eighty five} Uhh, hmm. Not sure what to think of that.)

It sounds like you've written a novel without writing a novel

[Roxxy]

I've been having awesome ideas for my Pathfinder campaign setting the last couple days. The basics are that it is Eberonnish technology, except alchemists produce most magitech, rather than spellcasters, and rather than emulating the 1920s it emulates the 1960s. The game largely takes place in a nation that is a fantasy version of the American West Coast rather than a fantasy version of Europe, and has many New Old West elements (D&D/Pathfinder always did seem to reskin western tropes into something vaguely medieval).

First idea I had is that the world should have a Canada expy that is Norse. That's not a new or unique idea, but I realized that New Old West can actually work well if you take away the cowboys, vigilantes, and bandits and replace them with vikings. It's not that far off thematically. We have these legends of badass vikings raiding Indians and taking what they wanted and exploring and fighting dangerous monsters and all that, but that era is over and people don't have that freedom of adventure anymore (player characters work for the government). Then again, the vikings were committing ethnic cleansing, using raiding more as a weapon than a means of gaining wealth (Indians didn't have too much in the way of riches. Vikings just wanted to cripple their lifestyle to make them easier to brush aside later on.), and using rape as a tool of conquest (I've read that vikings raped male captives to emasculate and humiliate them. Combine this with a widespread effort to use rape to breed out the Indians with Nordic blood, and you have something seriously screwed up.). So, the viking legends shared today are whitewashing just what the vikings were doing to conquer Canada. Which isn't too far off from Westerns, really. I also want to play with Scandi Cool Magitech when I get bored with my West Coast nation.

Spoiler: Rambling

Show

Which could take awhile, because that is versatile. Want to fit in British and Irish content? Sure. Chinese content? Sure. Italian? Spanish? Japanese? Vietnamese? Asian Indian? American Indian? Mexican? Polynesian? African American? All of these meld in easily enough. Also got hot desert, warm beaches, hills, mountains, foggy coasts, majestic forests (redwood and oak and spruce and pine), temperate rainforests, cold and rainy climates, dry and hot climates, snowy climates, dry rugged grasslands, big cities, small farming towns, and so on. Got room for so much stuff in one country.

Of course, there are Chinese and Japanese and Middle Eastern people in Canada. Japanese-Vinlanders sound interesting to play.

<.<

>.>

Eighth level Canadian character. Rite Publishing Japanese archetypes allowed. Create Tajiya 4/Skald 4. Half Samurai, half Viking!

The rise of drug culture is a part of the setting, given that it is supposed to emulate the Sixties, and I realized something that totally backs this up. If alchemists are the main driver of technology, that means people are experimenting with all sorts of concoctions. Well, it stands to reason that some of those might get you really high. Like, magical high. Literally. People are probably snorting some sort of magic dust. Which means the rise of drug culture meshes perfectly with the alchemical basis of technology.



Then I wondered what to do with Barbarians, since I don't have a lot of primitive tribes about (I certainly am not going to portray the large number of Sixties era American Indian expys as primitive). I renamed the class Berserker, and the lore about Berserkers has all sorts of drug stuff. Not sure as to how accurate the lore is, but this is fantasy, so it doesn't really matter. Now, everybody in the military is imbibing alchemical substances. I use Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder Unchained to replace the big six magic items, and the fact that soldiers are all hopped up on alchemy is the in setting justification for how Automatic Bonus Progression works. You get more powerful, you can drink more without getting overwhelmed by the power, so your bonuses get bigger.

How does that tie into Berserkers (also Bloodragers and Skalds)? They are drinking magical aggression enhancers other characters don't drink, because the aggression enhancer make people really hyperactive. Berserkers have a ton of pent up energy, and tend not to be particularly good at sitting still or focusing on things that aren't really interesting or involve intense physical activity, and a lot of them pace if kept waiting somewhere because they can't just take a seat or stand in line quietly. They can't just only take the enhancers during combat, because it takes time to build the body up with that sort of thing, and if they stop taking it they go through withdrawal, and have to slowly build back up to strength if they start taking the enhancers again. If Berserkers don't rage every day (or at least every other day), they get more and more pent up energy, and start having focus problems bad enough that they take penalties to Int, Wis, and Cha rolls and stuff like that as they get worse and worse at focusing, and they get extremely restless and such. Berserkers don't have to rage in combat to avoid these problems. They'll be fine if they rage at practice dummies for a while, or play sports, or work out at the gym, or even go dancing. It just has to be intense physical exercise.

This also explains Masquerade Revelers, also known as the greatest Barbarian archetype ever. Rather than wearing masks, they use their own custom fae-connected drug blends that have effects way beyond aggression enhancers.

Great, now I'm thinking about orcish Berserker go-go dancers, because Sixties.

[BootStrapTommy]

Does that include note pages? If not I'm pretty similar, though I still have several pages chapters to add in. Like locations, although that is done. Just not in the main document.
I never expect anyone to read all of it, that's not its purpose. Its for me to be able to answer questions easily, and have stories to tell and reasons for things to be somewhere. I hate improvising.
I also enjoy world building. The two go together.

I don't really take notes. My long term memory is eidetic, so I have most the answers to all the various questions people might have on my campaign setting up in my noggin.

But I do feel as that if I did write all the cultural, specific, and otherwise, I might begin to approach at truly intimidating volume.

Has, however, made me give up on several attempts to summarise a post to get feedback on the setting. Maybe I should make a thread for people to exchange feedback, with a word limit on descriptions.

Actually, what do people think of that idea?

(As for my notes pages, I seem to have around... ^{two hundred and eighty five} Uhh, hmm. Not sure what to think of that.)

Wouldn't hurt to keep yourself terse. I've rewritten things to conserve length before. GitP does have a ?50000? character per post limit or some sure (I've hit it a few times). So it is honestly a necessity in this medium.

[QED - Iltazyara]

I've got a pretty good memory myself, the notes are primarily due to me setting one thing up, then changing and discarding it over time. I've been working on my setting on and off since 2008, and I still have all the original files from when I first started, and my "notes" are largely just old work that isn't up to par, but gives insight on wording information later.

And for answering questions, I mostly want the written form down for consistency, as if I have no certain anchor it will mutate over time. Not really an issue, but I value consistency, don't want to accidentally rename a major player one campaign to the next.

And I actually mean a pretty short word count, as when given space to ramble I provide less information while creating larger walls of text. And I am almost certain many others who frequent this forum suffer from the same.

Only reason I ever was happy with how I described the gods in my setting is by saying "No more than three paragraphs!" keeping it short helped with their feel, and stopped redundant gushing.

So I was thinking something like, "provide insight on your setting, 300 words or less". Not sure about everyone else, but I've always found it hard to give feedback on the giant amounts of information we end up providing on our settings. Feedback on the premise, or some specific detail, would be far easier to provide I believe.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I have good memory (plus I've been working on a variation of the same setting since I was, oh, 15?), but I figured it was better to take my 40-page document and turn it into a Wiki instead.

[BootStrapTommy]

That is quit possibly the greatest thing ever...

[Roxxy]

I found a good explanation for anime style catgirls! Ha!

Of the core races of the setting, one is the Hengeyokai of Rite Publishing. Their appearance is described as thus:

A hengeyokai's true form is that of a humanoid with the face of an animal. The animal is that of its clan. A hengeyokai may change shape, appearing either as a human or in the natural form of her clan animal (alter self, beastshape I). A hengeyokai's human features are always the same, as are her animal features and these features are uniquely hers. That is, a hengeyokai cannot choose to take the shape or form of another person or animal in order to disguise herself without access to other abilities or powers. A hengeyokai can revert to her natural form at will. She may adopt her alternate forms a number of times per day equal to 1/2 her character level (minimum 1).

So, Hengeyokai have actual animal heads, and can straight up turn into animals. Personally, I like humans with animal ears, maybe tails. Well, it could be the case that hengeyokai go around in human form most of the time, not animal face form, because other races are more comfortable with talking to people. This is an age of flashy fashions and experimenting with appearances, though, so maybe younger hengeyokai want to look more animalistic, but don't want to straigt up look like an animal, because that wouldn't be cute. So they shift their ears into animal-person form, but keep the rest of their body human unless they feel like growing out their animal form tail. If people think that looks cool, it could become widespread, and perhaps popularise animal ear headbands among non-hengeyokai.

So, anime style catgirls are literally just a fashion statement. Which fits the tone of the setting perfectly.

[Tzi]

Okay, after an exhaustive playtest of my game world I've learned I need to find some compromise between creating the game world players want and the world I want.

The core conflict is that I want to THINK big, but players really just don't care about these aspects and its taken me awhile to get with that.

Fundamentally I want to build a world that is INTERNALLY consistent. With as few lose ends IMHO as possible.

1. I have complex languages, no Elven or Dwarven, but instead these are "Families of languages" and realistically the world has 600+ languages to know.
2. I decided to go with the idea of 4 moons the size of Earth to resolve my difficulty with "ecological niches," as in why are there so many intelligent sapient lifeforms on one little rock
3. Sci-Fantasy employed heavily and a sense of mathmatical mystery. The game world was not presented as it literally is but as they might perceive it to be.

From that, I've learned essentially that my players don't really care TOO much about a lot of these inconsistencies as much as I do. Players enjoy my horror stories, my complex local lore and my fun individual characters. Not so much the grand cosmic scale and the ultimate fact that "nothing matters," since the world isn't presented as one with vast world shaping destinies.

Thus I've decided to scale back some aspects of the world(s).

First, Astyra is once again a colony world as it was in one playtest. In this, Astyra is a Earth-Venus sized world. Has one moon and is its own planet. It is the second planet from the central star and one of several worlds. It is colonized by the "fantasy races" long ago after something befell the original world. Leaving the reason all these fantasy races live on one planet together a relative mystery of distant history. Likewise the colonial nature of the project means races and places they live can be shaped by migration. The difference between regular creatures and Aberration can be explained the Aberration are remnants of pre-colonial native flora and fauna.

Players did not like the 4 worlds, post cataclysmic aspects. That became a bit confusing and was not received well.

Many languages is a good idea, as it makes being foreign really meaningful, and helps have names have meaning. Theoretically different languages help make cultures truly unique from culture to culture and It was both well received AND added a new layer to gameplay and NPC interaction. Mainly the difficulty of NPC's that don't know exactly what your saying. It also helps explain why peoples have different sorts of names. If one area has largely Welsh place names and people names, but they speak Common, why are their names and stuff different than the fantasy Holland over yonder?

The scale and scope of the universe and the relative unimportant of the players was unnoticed but players noted the difference in game style. The players knew the world would go on without them, or with them. Part is that very few villains exited which were genuine threats to the existence of the world, but were definitely threats to their existence.

I think I need to sit down and consider carefully the future rewrite of the gameworld. OR even just how I present it. One might be a greater focus on individual areas and less of an expansive scope of a world. If I post here on the forum I might be careful to emphasis like 4-6 regions or even just 1-3 and leave the rest of the world vague except for general geography explanations.

[Solaris]

Snips the Awesome

Well, now there are dinosaurs everywhere in the campaign setting, and I'm thinking the Pale People don't have horses because they already have tarrasks. This will help them hunt/herd mammoths and dino-yaks. Thanks for the suggestions.

Due to the assorted difficulties with getting sentient Troodons, I'm shelving the idea for now.

[AceOfFools]

Group world-building even by dedicated, seasoned professionals is incredibly hard. Bored players engineering a setting (and inevitably trying to skew the background in a way that advantages their character personally) they probably haven't even read are almost guaranteed to screw things up.

It has not been my experience that players always go overboard on tweaking back world building to their advantage. Most want to create interesting conflicts and hooks to give their characters depth and conection to the world.

This is a very good thing.

Players who are going to add unbalanced stuff to their back story will try even if you don't invite them to add to explictly aid in the world building.

I has a player who once insisted his lvl 3 fighter was in command of an exiled force of 100 men. It was literally the only thing in the back story he submitted (which was also the only back story submitted as I did not ask people to do so for that game).

[Milo v3]

I has a player who once insisted his lvl 3 fighter was in command of an exiled force of 100 men. It was literally the only thing in the back story he submitted (which was also the only back story submitted as I did not ask people to do so for that game).

Taking an "Exact wording" stance on such a backstory could be interesting

[AceOfFools]

Taking an "Exact wording" stance on such a backstory could be interesting

Funnily enough, that's actually why that game broke up.

The player got extremely disruptive ic and ooc when I added a plot development that removed from command of the fighting force. In the end, he was no longer welcome at my table, and decided not to continue with only 2 pcs.

Moral of the story: invite people to contribute to world builfing, but don't play with people (including GMs) who refuse to accept reasonable limits on their contributions.

[ShadowFireLance]

What do you guys consider the most important aspects of gods?

[DixieDevil]

What do you mean by aspects?

[ShadowFireLance]

Like, to explain what they are, what would you describe about them? If you were trying to tell someone of your god, what would you tell them?

[Vrock_Summoner]

What do you guys consider the most important aspects of gods?

It depends on the system, but here's something I've always considered important about gods: If they aren't essential, don't let yourself think they're essential. Religion can be a fabulous enhancement to almost every setting, but gods aren't a naturally evolving and relatable part of society that can push lots of stories forward. Combine this with the fact that religions are based mostly on faith (thus, empirical proof of the existence of gods removes some of their effect) and my lesson should become apparent: if you don't already have a different good reason for your gods to provably exist, don't go to lengths to make their existence provable. It is, in fact, okay for people in a setting to have faith in something they can't be certain exists without them being irrational for it, or for people to believe in some gods but not others even if both sets end up being real.

Beyond that, it depends on the types of gods your setting has. Are they gods because people worship them, or do people worship them because they're gods?

In the first case, they'll likely fit in with the descriptors they've been given in order to maximize focus on themselves, and you're not going to be able to avoid God of X; people love assigning names and positions of power to the things that hold power in their life, so you don't get to just say "these gods all do X as a group," you'll end up with two or so gods sharing the mantle of war, three or four sharing the mantle of the hearth, and all of them getting various important roles in making the world work. This sort of system demands a bit more fakery and compliance from the gods; if people say Loki and Thor fight all the time when they actually get on just fine, they'll raise an eyebrow each, sigh at each other, and make natural events that feed on that belief of opposition and antagonism even though none is there.

In the second case, you have more freedom with them. People will still attribute these roles to the gods, but the gods don't generally have to give a carp. (They prefer salmon anyway.) Gods, if encountered, will often be very different from how their religious texts describe them, and in this case it's usually pertinent to evoke mixed feelings of otherworldly intelligence and childish snobbiness in the gods, though the latter is optional. If the gods aren't dependent on the feelings of their ostensible worshipers, they likely won't care about them, and will thus act however they act. Feel free to let cosmological realities disprove certain tenets of worship; the fact that, say, the moon is actually a source of negative energy and thus undead are more common/easier to raise on nights of the full moon won't stop people from thinking that the moon is some benevolent goddess, and that's okay too.

Lastly, one of the most important things about gods is that they must have purpose. Not just story purpose for existing, as I already pointed out, but personal purpose. Gods don't just sit there doing nothing unless they're sealed away or slumbering or something. Gods must have goals, more than most intelligent beings, and because they're so powerful and vast in scope, "surviving" isn't usually an applicable goal unless worship is both necessary to them and a very tenuous thing to hold on to. They need to want to do something, and this doesn't have to have anything to do with what their worshipers think they want to do.

[Milo v3]

Like, to explain what they are, what would you describe about them? If you were trying to tell someone of your god, what would you tell them?

Very setting dependant, but in general I'd say describe the religion rather than the god. A god is distant, and alot of information that religion has are metaphorical, meant to pass on the lessons the god wants to give. So say what that religion can do, what things it has domain over, what it does to help people, what are it's views on the afterlife?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Depends on whether you're running an active-god or passive/hidden-god world. Passive-god, the larger religion is more important; do we worship a single creator god? Do we worship multiple high-personality gods? Do we worship two gods forever locked in battle? What is the structure of the religion? Is there an organized church?

If not, the bigger question is portfolio; If there's not doubt that my God exists, I'm going to explain what they control: "Oh, Kord is a god of strength and sport, and courage, he really helps out whenever I feel too weak for a task, he reminds me what real strength is."

[Vrock_Summoner]

So. Working on a setting. Posted a bit about its cosmology a couple of days ago, but it's neither here nor there for this question. I'm here on the talk thread to ask, what circumstances would lead to an academically-structured government, and what stipulations would the system need to make it function? When I say "academically-structured," I mean where one's spot in government is generally directly tied to how far they've progressed in their education, basically.

[Milo v3]

So. Working on a setting. Posted a bit about its cosmology a couple of days ago, but it's neither here nor there for this question. I'm here on the talk thread to ask, what circumstances would lead to an academically-structured government, and what stipulations would the system need to make it function? When I say "academically-structured," I mean where one's spot in government is generally directly tied to how far they've progressed in their education, basically.

Well a magocracy is the first thing to come to mind.

[BladeofObliviom]

So. Working on a setting. Posted a bit about its cosmology a couple of days ago, but it's neither here nor there for this question. I'm here on the talk thread to ask, what circumstances would lead to an academically-structured government, and what stipulations would the system need to make it function? When I say "academically-structured," I mean where one's spot in government is generally directly tied to how far they've progressed in their education, basically.

Barring Magocracy (which is also a decent idea), you may be interested in taking a look at the History of China under the Han Dynasty, where a complicated bureaucratic system developed, with placement based on education (actually a test, but a very academic one).

[Solaris]

Well a magocracy is the first thing to come to mind.

Barring Magocracy (which is also a decent idea), you may be interested in taking a look at the History of China under the Han Dynasty, where a complicated bureaucratic system developed, with placement based on education (actually a test, but a very academic one).

Or combine the two!
Honestly, it kinda surprises me that most D&D (especially 3.5E) settings aren't Ancient China-type Magocracies, even without the Oriental feel.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Or combine the two!
Honestly, it kinda surprises me that most D&D (especially 3.5E) settings aren't Ancient China-type Magocracies, even without the Oriental feel.

The usual explanation given for this is that magic is too hard to learn (and thus its users too rare) to form an entire magicracy.

I have rather the opposite thing going, though. Most of the world is indeed magocracies of some flavor, but only because "magic" is quite accessible. Magic itself isn't terribly powerful (or even terribly magical by usual D&D standards) except at the high ends because all the magic is Incarnum.

Thus, the whole "magocracy" thing doesn't actually have scaling education as its logical conclusion. A meritocracy based around education would need to come about under its own merits, most likely. I'm trying to figure out what those merits would be and how I can accentuate them so the society makes sense.

[LudicSavant]

Like, to explain what they are, what would you describe about them?

The beliefs and practices of their faithful, and why players should care about them. The true nature of the actual god is almost entirely irrelevant unless people are regularly meeting with the gods directly.

[Tzi]

So, I'm debating how many of you guys use non-standard classes for campaign settings? One thing I'm considering is radically altering magic, but for me this seems to require a degree of refluffing and even redoing a lot of core mechanics and lore.

One Idea I had was to try and use nothing but custom classes Or classes homebrewed into the sorts of classes I would want in my setting. I am unsure if this would.

Part of it is the confusion of the fact that classes in the standard book have names that imply and shape lore. So the class Druid, strongly dictates what a Druid can be in a cultural sense in a game world? If that makes sense. So is a druid a sage close to nature? A priest? Say I want to have a strongly Celtic themed setting, but Druid is literally a priestly person, the closest I could come to is maybe an Archivist but with a domain power. So what do I do?

Has anyone tried mechanically operating with just homebrew classes or at least as homebrew as possible?

[BladeofObliviom]

So, I'm debating how many of you guys use non-standard classes for campaign settings? One thing I'm considering is radically altering magic, but for me this seems to require a degree of refluffing and even redoing a lot of core mechanics and lore.

One Idea I had was to try and use nothing but custom classes Or classes homebrewed into the sorts of classes I would want in my setting. I am unsure if this would.

Part of it is the confusion of the fact that classes in the standard book have names that imply and shape lore. So the class Druid, strongly dictates what a Druid can be in a cultural sense in a game world? If that makes sense. So is a druid a sage close to nature? A priest? Say I want to have a strongly Celtic themed setting, but Druid is literally a priestly person, the closest I could come to is maybe an Archivist but with a domain power. So what do I do?

Has anyone tried mechanically operating with just homebrew classes or at least as homebrew as possible?

I've generally found that moving too far away from the core assumptions on which a system's rules are built throws people off. A little bit can be done; I once ran a game where I set out "No Vancian Casting" as a rule offhand. One of my more creative players wanted to be a Priest, and opted to run a Bard with a missionary flavor instead of the Cleric class. If you go too far, it's likely to be more difficult; Once, I pitched a game without any of the Core casting classes, and it didn't make it through the planning stages. People were only lukewarmly interested, no doubt because they didn't really want to learn the Binding Subsystem or Incarnum or whatever.

It could be done, but to be honest if you diverge too radically from "standard" D&D, you're probably better off with a different system, perhaps a modular one like GURPS or something rules-light.

[Jendekit]

I think that it would be easier just to refluff the various classes than homebrew an entire d20 system which is basically what you'd be doing. For example: the Herbalist class in my Dawn of the Humanoids setting (assuming it stays Pathfinder) is mechanically Alchemist class. Same mechanics, different feel.

The Ebu Gogo (one of the races in the above setting) have a tribal historian that can strike such a cord with his audience that they can see the events of his stories right before their very eyes. Very somber, and treated with as much if not more reverence than the tribe's shaman. Mechanically a bard.

One noble character I made with an ego the size of a mountain would go into a righteous fury whenever someone below his station dared to strike him. Mechanically he was a Barbarian. What's more surprising is just how well the class fit the character.

Changing the Summoner's spellcasting from Arcane to Divine turned them into the primary priest class of a homebrew race.

I could go on for an hour, but I think these four got my point across: you don't need to build a class from the ground up to get a completely different feel.

[Solaris]

To add on to what Jendekit said, people tend to like what's familiar. If you take away everything that's familiar and replace it with wholly new classes, there's going to be a significant learning curve as they familiarize themselves with the new classes, a learning curve that wouldn't be there if they were playing their familiar old favorites. I've observed that players will tend to shy away from anything that's new, and instead cluster onto the standard stuff in the setting. By extension, if you take away all of the standard stuff...

[Milo v3]

I've done games where it was 90% homebrew/third-party classes. As long as the players understand the new mechanics, it works fine in my experience.