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  1. - Top - End - #271
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Question....

    So, Mineralogy, Geology, Plate Tectonics...

    Does anyone spend a great deal of time on this? Especially with all the fantasy metals out there, I wonder if anyone has come up with lore reasons for say Adamentine, Cold Iron, Mithril ect Are these naturally or semi-naturally occurring substances? If I dig a hole will I find a rock of Mithril?

    How are these elements formed?

    More over, Plate tectonics? Anyone give any thought on them? Personally I had an idea that teleportation spells could cross major plate boundaries as they tended to have disruptions in the flow of magic.

  2. - Top - End - #272
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    With the semester over, I was about to get back into working on my setting, and it seems to me like I pretty much have it nailed down. The geography, the planes, the creatures, and their nature, a good outline of overall history, the peoples, and major organizations, even a bunch of major NPCs.
    Since I fancy doing a proper writeup and making it public for free, I need to put it all down into well readable text.

    But what is really a good way to do that? I'm well familiar with the 3rd Ed. D&D setting books, but I've always been wondering if that's really such a great format. It works well enough if you're already familar with the world, but I find it rather lacking as a way to learn about a world you don't know anything about.
    Depends on how you want to distribute it.

    Printed books are nice for computer-free reference, but they have distinct disadvantages compared to ebooks, websites, and fancy PDFs. The various digital-only formats have advantages like searchability and hotlinking - think of a well-crafted wiki, and how easy it is to browse among related topics. The problem, of course, is that good design for a hotlinked wiki is quite different from good design for a printer-friendly book, meaning that trying to do both would be a rather large pain.

    I'm pretty sure there are ways to split the difference with later PDF versions and at least some ebook formats. A book-style text with hotlinks to important references should be possible. I'd expect crafting one of those to be especially tricky, as you'd be trying to keep the usability high in both digital and print presentations.
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  3. - Top - End - #273
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Tzi View Post
    Question....

    So, Mineralogy, Geology, Plate Tectonics...

    Does anyone spend a great deal of time on this? Especially with all the fantasy metals out there, I wonder if anyone has come up with lore reasons for say Adamentine, Cold Iron, Mithril ect Are these naturally or semi-naturally occurring substances? If I dig a hole will I find a rock of Mithril?

    How are these elements formed?

    More over, Plate tectonics? Anyone give any thought on them? Personally I had an idea that teleportation spells could cross major plate boundaries as they tended to have disruptions in the flow of magic.
    Some 2nd edition source book or another had rules for the odds of discovering a mithril vein when prospecting. As I recall, mithril veins were 1 in 1000 - you had to roll 100 on the initial percentile roll, then a 10 on the 1d10 really-rare-metals chart. I remember this mainly because "rolling for mithril" became a running joke in my high school AD&D group back in the day whenever someone made an exceptionally unlikely roll; I didn't own the source book in question myself.

    As for plate tectonics, it's something I'd consider if I was making a sufficiently old world, but that hasn't come up for me. When I build fantasy settings, I stick with fantasy-mythic origin stories, and a world constructed by a group of gods 10,000 years ago isn't really old enough for plate tectonics to matter. The continents are all basically where they were created, mountains are wherever the gods put them, and volcanoes and earthquakes happen when, where, and if the plot calls for it. I usually try to make my geography at least somewhat believable, but that's mostly because I want my players to be reserving their suspension of disbelief for all the magic and dragons and stuff instead of wasting it all on my maps.
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  4. - Top - End - #274
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Everyl View Post
    I'm pretty sure there are ways to split the difference with later PDF versions and at least some ebook formats. A book-style text with hotlinks to important references should be possible. I'd expect crafting one of those to be especially tricky, as you'd be trying to keep the usability high in both digital and print presentations.
    Good idea. I hadn't been thinking about that but it's something that is imensely helpful in pdfs that do have it.
    And probably a LOT easier to do if you keep it in mind from the start and don't try to add it to the file after everything is written.
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  5. - Top - End - #275
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    If you are making a print version of an ebook with links, there are two ways to replace the links. Either have the URL in the book (could use tinyurl or similar, or just keep it all to one site) or print the relevant information and have the page number as a link.

    As for introducing a setting, for small ones have a story of a newcomer getting shown around to show the differences, or for a large one have a quick summary of the globally important factions with links/references to those factions for further reading.

    And Pathfinder has done really well with pdf files of campaigns to supplement a wiki with the gameplay. Plus with the growth of computers, most people can have a digital reference at a gaming table with a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or shared device.
    I have returned, and plan on focusing on world-building. Issues are being dealt with.

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  6. - Top - End - #276
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Print seems very unlikely now. If it should become an entirely unanticipated success, that could hypothetically become an option, but I rather doubt that.

    I do have a wiki archive set up on my webspace, but my experience is that these are best for looking up details, but don't work at all as introductions. For that, you need some structure with additional explaination, for which pdf seems a lot more practical.
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  7. - Top - End - #277
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    I find the conventional model of publishing a setting to be pretty uninspiring, really. More often than not, it completely fails to hold my interest, and even after reading through the material I don't have any sense of what the setting is about or any great desire to play/run a game in it. At the end of the day, it's just not that much fun to read an encyclopedia of stuff about a made-up place.

    The settings that resonate with me most are the ones that come from a story, whether that's in the form of a novel, movie, or published adventure. Once the story draws me in, that's when I want to read the design docs for the setting.

    I don't know if there's a way to translate that into publishing a setting, or even if it's a majority view. But stories are powerful things, and if your writeup has elements that are narrative rather than descriptive, that couldn't hurt.

    On the topic of metals, I've always assumed that mithril/adamantine were formed and deposited pretty much the same way as other metals, but there's no particular reason for that to be true. Fantasy metals could be the residue of naturally occurring portals to the elemental plane of earth, or tarrasque feces, or pretty much anything you want. In fact, on the topic of worldbuilding through story...

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    In a cavern far below the dwarven halls, the clan gathered. The mountain shook as a dozen acolytes hammered a slow beat on massive temple drums. Four huge bonfires roared around the altar in the center of the cavern, lighting the throng that crowded close in reverent silence.

    A shirtless priest, beard hanging to his knees in thick braids, climbed upon the dais, and the drums fell silent. The crowd parted, and a hero, healthy in the prime of youth and naked save for a loincloth, came forward to lay upon the altar. There were no words - all the words had been said in the less holy places above. The priest drew a short blade and plunged it into the body of the hero. As he struck, the drums sounded again, a single deafening peal that rang on and on until the cavern shook with it.

    Slowly, the earth stilled, and the unnatural drumbeat faded from the air. On the altar lay a husk, pale and bloodless. One by one, each dwarf present approached the altar, bowed, and walked silently from the cavern.

    The cavern was sealed, and the entrance carved with the name and likeness of the hero. In a time of great need, the clan would open the cavern and carefully, reverently, mine a new vein of adamantine from the stone beneath.


    And that is why dwarves don't sell adamantine to humans.

  8. - Top - End - #278
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Aaand... Now I know how a rare metal in my world is formed, might not be Adamantite, but something. I will be stealing that.

    Story-world building is all I do now, even though I am one of the people who enjoys reading encyclopedic entries on settings.

    For how you set out your document Yora, I think you should go the pdf turned wiki route; because when something is mentioned having access to the information on it is very, very good for structure. I think, honestly, when I put my own online It'll be in wiki format, but I'll have a printable document because that's how I produce them in word.

    Inevitably, if you want a good format for a setting online you forgo it being a good format for printing, and vice versa. Maybe it would be worth the effort to make two end versions? but the amount of extra work involved would be quite extensive.

    Of course, wikis do have difficulties with introductions normally; mostly because the makers ignore the concept of making an introduction.
    Is lurking less. This is a good thing.

  9. - Top - End - #279
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Well, some cool as heck ideas.

    One thing I had going was the idea of magical geology. Or that geology can imbued rocks and minerals with magical qualities. Like certain crystals resonate latent magical powers. So for example a potent lay line nexus may have an abundance of say Onyx like crystals which when attuned to might give people at least some sort of Domain powers from say Repose and or Death.

    Adamentine I considered as a naturally occurring metal. Forming huge veins and sometimes due to erosion gets exposed as these spire like sheets of spikes depending on how they erode out of the ground. Mithril I kinda wanted to be almost spongy and wire like metal that is highly conductive and can with concentration and perhaps the use of crystals conduct magical spells. But that Mithril in the strictest terms is not naturally occurring. It has to be crafted. Perhaps from shards of magically resonating crystal and Adamentine.

  10. - Top - End - #280
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    I've been wondering lately if anyone has experience with making the D&D-style alignment system work in a more morally-grey setting. Here's my situation: one of the D&D settings I've had on back-burner status for a while now is intentionally trying to include as much of core D&D as possible while still making sense to me. Thus, it gets a plethora of sentient races, monsters, ruins of ancient fallen civilizations, gods who are less immortal than they'd like to be, etc. It's a setting I ran a few games in long, long ago when I had lower standards for my own worldbuilding, and I'm trying to update it to the point that I'd be willing to use it again.

    Part of this effort involves trying to make enough distinctly different cultures that "race" and "culture" are no longer interchangeable terms. However, I keep running into problems when I try to define cultural practices that are at odds with the beliefs of other cultures, and it's making me question the applicability of the standard two-axis alignment system to the setting, even though I'd really like to use it. The law-chaos axis works fine, but good-evil is much harder to define when you're trying to have multiple cultures' views on it being presented.

    Take, for example, necromancy and the undead. In standard D&D, willingly creating or becoming undead is an evil act, and the spells relevant to doing so generally have the [Evil] tag. But what if I want to have a people who consider basic necromancy to be not only acceptable, but a standard part of funerary proceedings? A priest reanimates the body as a skeleton or zombie, so that it can build its own crypt, finishing the deceased person's final labors so their soul can rest in peace, knowing it has not troubled its family with extra labor. Spells to contact or communicate with the dead are seen as disturbing the rightful rest of the departed, and strongly frowned upon.

    Meanwhile, the people who live across the mountains take a very different approach. They consider animate undead to be an abomination, a mockery of the life that the body once led. They perform sky burials, then collect and cremate any bones that can be recovered once the carrion birds are finished. Destroying the body is seen as a way to sever the deceased person's ties with the world so they can move on to the next phase of their eternal journey. Each family has a special urn or box where the family bone-ash is stored, and using communicative necromancy to seek advice and guidance from whichever ancestors are willing to answer is not uncommon in times of trouble.

    These two peoples no doubt have a great deal of conflict, and decry one another's funerary practices and stances on necromancy as "evil." RAW D&D would put the sky-burial people above the necromantic self-burial people on the good-evil axis, but I'm not trying to make a "good" culture and an "evil" culture, I'm trying to make two cultures that disagree on a moral point.

    Has anyone tackled this before in their games? How do you have "good" and "evil" as fundamental metaphysical forces, but still allow for cultures to disagree on moral points without one being inherently wrong?

    Also, sorry for the somewhat messy example, I was trying to come up with something that is more or less free of real-world political baggage to illustrate my point.
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  11. - Top - End - #281
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Everyl View Post
    Has anyone tackled this before in their games? How do you have "good" and "evil" as fundamental metaphysical forces, but still allow for cultures to disagree on moral points without one being inherently wrong?
    I think you can't. Which is the inherent flaw of the system and probably the reason no other game uses it.
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Well, I can't say it's a 'standard' D&D morality, but I find that in morally grey areas like that, the easiest option is to use subjective morality. If your character believes a creature is evil, they can treat it as evil, regardless of it's actual alignment. If a person sees nothing wrong with an action, their alignment does not suffer for it. However, once a character has doubts about the morality, continuing the action can cause alignment hits.

    Also, if you're looking for some assistance on culture, my brother did some great work on a culture advantage for the crossroads setting. You can see the system he made here.
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  13. - Top - End - #283
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I think you can't. Which is the inherent flaw of the system and probably the reason no other game uses it.
    You absolutely can. Those moral points just have to be something that aren't codified as either evil or good by in D&D Alignment system.

    For example, hunting animals for food is neutral. That's a big point of contention right there.

    On the other hand, if you actually stick with the definitions of good and evil and law and chaos given by alignment, it will be trivial to divide any cast of characters to various alignments. But you can have conflict between various neutral factions just as well as good and evil.
    "It's the fate of all things under the sky,
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  14. - Top - End - #284
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    This may not be the place to ask ,but I am a greenhorn DM. What type of storefronts would you put in a City of 10,000 humans. So far I have a high-end weapons and Armor smith and High-end magic shop. I have some other ideas but I'd like to see what others will think of.


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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Slayerofundead View Post
    This may not be the place to ask ,but I am a greenhorn DM. What type of storefronts would you put in a City of 10,000 humans. So far I have a high-end weapons and Armor smith and High-end magic shop. I have some other ideas but I'd like to see what others will think of.
    It really comes down to what your setting is like. For example, I tend to model towns and cities on those from where I'm from, where even a city of 20,000 people barely has anything. You could rule it as being very different.

    I'd personally say a city of 10,000 people has a "high end" weapons and armors shop, but only a mid-range magic shop.

    What kind of feel are you trying to achieve with your games? (High magic, low magic, rustic, etc etc)

  16. - Top - End - #286
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Trying to model D&D economics in a way that makes sense leads down an endless rabbit hole. Every few months, there's a lengthy thread on the RPG board here about things like whether magic shops are at all "realistic," how much GP in stuff the average shop should just have lying around as inventory, whether a village blacksmith should even know how to make a sword, the exchange rate between GP and modern currency, or whether the GP is even a viable unit of exchange in the first place. Trying to answer these questions will hurt your brain, and you're unlikely to come up with a satisfactory answer.

    Luckily, you don't really have to. The vast majority of players don't care about these things. They just want to buy and sell gear without a major hassle. Somewhere in the DMG is a list saying what the price limit for gear is in a city of X size. So if you're unsure about it, just assume that anything under that limit can be bought in the appropriate shop with a minimum of fuss.

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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Thank you for the advice. The city in question is the home to A count also 1000 0f the population are the Kings Army. My first few quest will take place in the city. I have a list of about 17 points of intrest and a lot of room left on my map.perhaps it is larger than 10,000


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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    A secret of D&D cities is that size is mostly irrelevant. That's because the PCs won't deal with more than a fraction of the population. Think about what PCs do in cities: stay at an inn, drink at a tavern (often the same place), buy weapons/armor/magic items. Maybe visit a handful of important NPCs. Maybe there's a palace, and maybe they'll go to it at some point. Maybe a few in-city quests, if you're in the mood.

    Everything else is basically window dressing, designed to tell the PCs how big or significant the city is. But the numbers don't really matter - tell the PCs there's a crowded marketplace filled with the clamor of merchants hawking their wares, and that the streets are packed with people and crowded with wagons and palanquins fighting through the crowd, and they'll get that it's a big city. If instead there are just a few streets of storefronts surrounding a town square, they'll slot it in as a mid-sized town. If the sound of the hammer from the forge rings across a village green with a cow grazing in it, they'll get that point too.

    Another thing to think about is the portion of the average city that's just residences. Most cities have a relatively small downtown area, and streets and streets that are just houses, apartments, maybe the occasional business, etc. Which means you can block off decent-sized neighborhoods and forget about them beyond a few notes about their character. Medieval (or faux-medieval) cities probably also have large areas of surrounding farmland and villages - that's an aspect that I think gets overlooked too often.

    I find that trying to map out an entire city is frustrating and time consuming. Much like worldbuilding in general, you're better off focusing on the parts your players will interact with.

  19. - Top - End - #289
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    I'm thinking I have a good number of points of intrest then I will build the rest as neighborhoods. A few more taverns an inns an the guild that the pc belongs to but Im going to have to have to map out an underground area were the first real quest starts.


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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    TheStranger's point about a marketplace is a good one. A shop specializing in magic items would contain tremendous amounts of wealth, by standard D&D item prices. But canny traders moving exotic goods over long distances would be unlikely to pass up a chance at purchasing a magic item that they could expect to resell at a profit. Potions are small, light, and valuable. Even a simple +1 weapon is, in theory, about 2300 gp of value packed into maybe 3-4 pounds of cargo. Other magic items, like Rings of Sustenance and Bags of Holding, are of great immediate use to the traders in their daily business; the merchants no doubt know where to go and who to talk to if they need a new one, so they can probably be talked into parting with one they have now at the right price.

    I guess, what I'm getting at is this: you don't need a "magic item shop" to have magic items be available for sale in a city, even if that city is fairly small. Just narrate the shopping trip as involving asking around and haggling in a bustling marketplace instead of browsing the inventory of a dedicated storefront.
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Thank y'all for the help an ideas.


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    Default Important Sites

    Hi guys... I'm working on my campaign setting and am currently going through and writing up each nation. I want to get at least 2 or 3 Important Sites for each one, but am having trouble coming up with those. For example, one of my nations is a rural farming nation. Aside from a few major cities (which are part of Major Settlements) and a large fort on the southern border, I can't think of any important sites... There's a lake and 2 forests, but this is a tame land -- there aren't famous dragons or terrible monsters in these locations. So... any ideas?

  23. - Top - End - #293
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    What about a holy site to the god of Agriculture? Like a Stonehenge.
    Last edited by Slayerofundead; 2014-02-25 at 04:59 PM.


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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    That's a great idea! The modern people of that land are basically monotheistic (dualistic sort of religion) so an ancient pagan temple would be cool

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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Hera's Shrine – In the plains north of Tarnae is an ancient structure of unknown origin. The structure is relatively simple, no more than a huge slab of stone with a smaller slab atop it; yet this simple structure has very special properties. The slab of stone is about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide and nearly ten feet tall; a set of rough gaps in the side of the slab allow a man to climb up the side of the slab. On top of this unremarkable structure is a much smaller slab of stone with similar proportions. The entire structure radiates strong magic of unknown origins, and farmers in the nearby area have, through trial and error, discovered that the slab has some unique properties. A reasonable sacrifice of a certain crop or domestic animal during the spring is thought to cause a marked increase in the harvest of that crop or creature the next year. The locals have dubbed the shrine Hera's Shrine, after a pagan goddess that was once worshiped in the area. The clergy of the Duality takes a dim view of this practice and discourages it, but the perceived rewards incentivises the locals to make the sacrifice anyways.

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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    I see some plot hooks alread..very cool discretion.


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    Default Re: Important Sites

    Quote Originally Posted by Whitersnake View Post
    Hi guys... I'm working on my campaign setting and am currently going through and writing up each nation. I want to get at least 2 or 3 Important Sites for each one, but am having trouble coming up with those. For example, one of my nations is a rural farming nation. Aside from a few major cities (which are part of Major Settlements) and a large fort on the southern border, I can't think of any important sites... There's a lake and 2 forests, but this is a tame land -- there aren't famous dragons or terrible monsters in these locations. So... any ideas?
    Perhaps a noble set up a farm and manor but it was mysteriously abandoned a few years ago and and has become well known due to the fact that its fields seem to have remained well tended to?

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    Default Re: Important Sites

    Quote Originally Posted by Whitersnake View Post
    Hi guys... I'm working on my campaign setting and am currently going through and writing up each nation. I want to get at least 2 or 3 Important Sites for each one, but am having trouble coming up with those. For example, one of my nations is a rural farming nation. Aside from a few major cities (which are part of Major Settlements) and a large fort on the southern border, I can't think of any important sites... There's a lake and 2 forests, but this is a tame land -- there aren't famous dragons or terrible monsters in these locations. So... any ideas?
    You mentioned that the nation is fairly religious, perhaps there could be a major monastery somewhere? Possibly in an isolated place, with a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside, and serving as a pilgrimage destination for the devout. The monastery itself doesn't need to have much of actual value at it, its importance could be primarily social/spiritual, but it would be an important location to the people of the nation, and perhaps other nations that share the same religion.
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  29. - Top - End - #299
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Apr 2012

    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    I was wondering what other people's thoughts were on goblinoids (particularly hobgoblins) as characters. I'm currently working on a setting where the goblinoids have a large Roman style empire, and it's proving difficult to color them with an interesting culture without falling back into the MM hobgoblin fluff of militaristic jerkfaces.

    I thought about integrating aspects of Celtic culture and religion into them, but I'm finding it mildly difficult to reconcile this with the highly strict militaristic aspect.

    Was wondering how others go about integrating goblinoids into their campaigns as either PC races or simplly an important race?

    Oh, another thing forgot to mention. The setting is mildly steampunk (have gunpowder (better than normal guns for the referenced time period) and are just starting on steam powered transport). Part of this is also why im finding it difficult to reconcile the fluff with how I want/need them to be.

  30. - Top - End - #300
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    I always try to make sure that there's no 'purely evil' race in the worlds I make. One thing I do with goblins is I ramp up their rate of reproduction. They have litters of children in a few mere months. They're sentient K-strategists. Their rapid reproduction and maturation allows them to spread aggressively and rapidly. The problems only arise when their expansion is checked by some force, such as human communities or environmental factors. In these situations, the villages rapidly overpopulate. The villages struggle to feed all of them, the populations grow rapidly, unable to move out, and it gets grim fast. Soon they live in extreme poverty, having to raid other groups to get the food and goods they need to survive. It adds a layer of depth to goblin raider problems when that goblin is raiding to feed a family of 20 starving children.
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