Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Eldan]

Among the handful of core races, gnomes are very special in that they are the only inherently magical race. So, that makes them quite unique. You can easily build on that. Everyone else has to study magic or rely on the rare few sorcerers. Gnomes just have it.

[Yora]

I very much recommend not having both gnomes and halflings unless you have very good reasons to do so. They are two only slightly different aproaches for basically the same niche. Unless they can not be the same race for some rason, don't have both of them.

[Tzi]

Among the handful of core races, gnomes are very special in that they are the only inherently magical race. So, that makes them quite unique. You can easily build on that. Everyone else has to study magic or rely on the rare few sorcerers. Gnomes just have it.

An idea I had is that they are a branch of Halfling, and theoretically the same.

Kind of like in Everquest 2? Were Erudite and Human have that sort of relationship.

[aspekt]

Why not experiment with the templates thrown on to elves and others?

Desert Dwarves are master traders, caravaneers, and perhaps specialize in glass blowing (opening up an entirely new realm of magical items for you as well). They mine varied salts for trade and alchemy, and pure sands for glass. Their trading makes them far stronger in diplomacy or bluff (no gruffness) while their racial toughness and wisdom/intuition can be clearly tied to their desert home.

Maybe that's still too dwarvish?

As for Gnomes I've always preferred to play up their Fey nature as opposed to mechanical (where does that trope come from?).

Thus heavily illusion or enchantment based. Much more fairy like in appearance and just as at home in the forest as in the hills.

[Yora]

I think tinker gnomes are from Dragonlance. Just like prankster gnomes.
Nothing good ever came from Dragonlance.

[Tzi]

Why not experiment with the templates thrown on to elves and others?

Desert Dwarves are master traders, caravaneers, and perhaps specialize in glass blowing (opening up an entirely new realm of magical items for you as well). They mine varied salts for trade and alchemy, and pure sands for glass. Their trading makes them far stronger in diplomacy or bluff (no gruffness) while their racial toughness and wisdom/intuition can be clearly tied to their desert home.

Maybe that's still too dwarvish?

As for Gnomes I've always preferred to play up their Fey nature as opposed to mechanical (where does that trope come from?).

Thus heavily illusion or enchantment based. Much more fairy like in appearance and just as at home in the forest as in the hills.

Part of me even wants to have a "Short Person," race but divided up into say differing factions.

Originating from some Proto- origin the race schism took place and they spread out across lots of different areas. One simple vision stands in my head. They would have some elements of say Spanish like culture and practice varying types of sorcery. A kind of odd combination of say the Dark Iron clan from WoW, Spain and/or something like the Vinci from Rise of Legends. So Dwarves would have that maybe Merchants of Venice feel. Perhaps undergoing a Renaissance of their own as the world spins. Perhaps mountain top and rugged cities, reminiscent of the Alps and Italy dominate the Dwarves political orders.

Halflings are still a big unknown, as are gnomes other than their theoretical relationship to one another. The Halflings could remain as gypsy like wanderers.

Orc's, after some thinking, I've decided have little place in the world..... SAVE for a more advanced form. About 1/3rd of the "Orcish," people are actually Half-Orcs and their numbers have grown steadily as they take command of former factious and often easily defeated Hordes. Some theorize that the "Highborne," orcs or Half Orcs are slating their pure-blood kin for extinction. The newer breed having made vast strives, both in terms of their superior intellect to their dim witted kin and have begun building cities, vast culture. In my mind I'm picturing a vast meso-American feel? Though the savage tribes still roam, even they know the new breeds day has dawned.

[aspekt]

Part of me even wants to have a "Short Person," race but divided up into say differing factions.

Originating from some Proto- origin the race schism took place and they spread out across lots of different areas. One simple vision stands in my head. They would have some elements of say Spanish like culture and practice varying types of sorcery. A kind of odd combination of say the Dark Iron clan from WoW, Spain and/or something like the Vinci from Rise of Legends. So Dwarves would have that maybe Merchants of Venice feel. Perhaps undergoing a Renaissance of their own as the world spins. Perhaps mountain top and rugged cities, reminiscent of the Alps and Italy dominate the Dwarves political orders.

Halflings are still a big unknown, as are gnomes other than their theoretical relationship to one another. The Halflings could remain as gypsy like wanderers.

Orc's, after some thinking, I've decided have little place in the world..... SAVE for a more advanced form. About 1/3rd of the "Orcish," people are actually Half-Orcs and their numbers have grown steadily as they take command of former factious and often easily defeated Hordes. Some theorize that the "Highborne," orcs or Half Orcs are slating their pure-blood kin for extinction. The newer breed having made vast strives, both in terms of their superior intellect to their dim witted kin and have begun building cities, vast culture. In my mind I'm picturing a vast meso-American feel? Though the savage tribes still roam, even they know the new breeds day has dawned.

I like the Orc idea.

It's funny but I've never put gnomes and dwarves in the same category as Halflings.

Halflings have never struck me as Fey but just smaller Humans.

[SirKazum]

I very much recommend not having both gnomes and halflings unless you have very good reasons to do so. They are two only slightly different aproaches for basically the same niche. Unless they can not be the same race for some rason, don't have both of them.

Having seen that sentiment before (in 2E, they even shared a single racial splatbook, while elves and dwarves had one splatbook each), I don't really see why it should be that way. They're both very short... and that's about it. Especially from 3rd edition onwards, their racial abilities are vastly different. Halflings are agile rogues, gnomes are sorcerous alchemists. Again, in my sci-fi setting (which, again, completely abandons the original race concepts), the race that uses halfling stats are a breed of intelligent monkeys that like hit-and-run tactics and stealing trinkets and tech from more civilized races, while the one that uses gnome stats are more or less similar to stereotypical "little green men" aliens (except blue or purple), who use both their psychic ability and long-term strategic planning to manipulate everyone else to do their bidding.

[Yora]

My approach to most non-original elements, especially races, is to not put them into a setting unless you already have a role and purpose for them, which needs to be filled. Having halflings in a setting because some rulebook has halflings as a character race doesn't seem a good idea to get a high quality setting. That way you quickly end up with one of those cheap Middle-Earth coppies that have all the components that Tolkien used, but lacking all the reasons why they are there in the first place. And then it rally devolves into pure cliches very quickly.

[Eldan]

Doesn't that argument go for just about every new race, though? I mostly feel it with the Whatever Elves. I really don't need "Wooded Flank of a Tropical Volcano Elves". Apparently, elves adapt to any new environmental condition in about two generations.

I like variety. There's dozens of small races. Just as there are dozens of medium races.

(Also, Tolkien used the name Gnome only once: for the Noldor, one of the high elf peoples.)

[SirKazum]

Yeah, gnomes are not Tolkien at all... and halflings are pretty much exclusively Tolkien-derived (i.e. they don't come from myth, unlike most fantasy creatures out there, but Tolkien invented them). Same for goblins (IIRC just a type of orc in Tolkien, if even that) and orcs (he made them up).

[Eldan]

If I had to kick one of the small races, I'd probably kick dwarves, then rename the gnomes "dwarves". They seem to cover a lot more of the mythology of dwarves that I know from fairy tales. Or perhaps whisper gnomes, or something like that. They need to be small and stealthy.

[Yora]

That's pretty much the way I started with my short mountain race, just not using the name "dwarf". (Like almost anything in my setting, they don't have a name yet. )

[Tzi]

In terms of relations,

It has occurred to me to actually have Gnomes be a small sized Off-shoot of Elf, Perhaps even Halflings are an offshoot of Elves though less magically inclined elves.

Since in my world Dwarves are essentially shorter stalkier people related to humans.

The main reason for their inclusion in the game world is that my attempt to have a Humans only setting did not go swimmingly. Players revolted and there was a defined lack of interest. Ultimately I like DM'ing and playing so I went back to the drawing board.

[Yora]

Human only settings are a lot easier to sell than no-human settings. My setting has humans mostly because it would probably cause lots of reflexive refusal to hear more.

I believe I made some real progress with naming my sub-races today. I associated all 18 of them with an animal and used the letters of he animal names to make something that kind of sounds like it could come from the general cultural sphere by which the race is inspired.
Strangly, the only ones where I am still without any good idea are wood elves with Germanic sounding names. Those should have been the easiest for me.

[Tzi]

Human only settings are a lot easier to sell than no-human settings. My setting has humans mostly because it would probably cause lots of reflexive refusal to hear more.

I believe I made some real progress with naming my sub-races today. I associated all 18 of them with an animal and used the letters of he animal names to make something that kind of sounds like it could come from the general cultural sphere by which the race is inspired.
Strangly, the only ones where I am still without any good idea are wood elves with Germanic sounding names. Those should have been the easiest for me.

When it comes to names I'm thinking of making a sort of conlang or something like that that is allegedly the language of old or maybe the language used for magical study or science that contains all the official names for races.

Likewise I'll have a better understanding of the "Family Tree," of races.

Human is tied to Dwarf, Human is tied to Tiefling

Half Orc inherits a legacy of Orc and Human. Orc is tied to Hobgoblin and Goblin

Elf is tied to Gnome, Elf is tied to Halfling

All three core branches, Human, Elf, Orc all hail from some common proto-ancestor.

So you have a family tree with three core branches and some tangling.

For Elves I've got the name Tyr.... Tyr then having different subvarients. So Scathtyr for say Dark Elves or Drow.

Dwarves, Idk, and Humans I have nothing so I have 1/3rd of the Branch names done.

EDIT: Further thoughts, Tiefling might constitute its own branch and I might homebrew say a 5e Fey'ri and some Tiefling variations.

[aspekt]

Human only settings are a lot easier to sell than no-human settings. My setting has humans mostly because it would probably cause lots of reflexive refusal to hear more.

I believe I made some real progress with naming my sub-races today. I associated all 18 of them with an animal and used the letters of he animal names to make something that kind of sounds like it could come from the general cultural sphere by which the race is inspired.
Strangly, the only ones where I am still without any good idea are wood elves with Germanic sounding names. Those should have been the easiest for me.

What about Wealden. From the Old English weald or forest.

[Yora]

I really, really hate naming things. It's extremely difficult and at the same time you reach a point where you simply can't progress at all without having names for stuff.
Really makes it understandable why there's always all those wood elves, mountain dwarves, cave goblins, sun-blessed, and other races.

[aspekt]

I really, really hate naming things. It's extremely difficult and at the same time you reach a point where you simply can't progress at all without having names for stuff.
Really makes it understandable why there's always all those wood elves, mountain dwarves, cave goblins, sun-blessed, and other races.

I actually enjoy puzzling it out. Admittedly after a certain point I have to stop and set it aside for a while.

[Yora]

I now have at least the 18 cultures named. They are not good names, but if I keep using them long enough they might hopefully improve to become simply lame names instead of bad ones.

Spoiler

Show

Lizardmen: Mayaka (civilized city builders), Gandju (tribal jungle people), Kulaka (savage man-eaters), Sujai (servants of the naga)
Wood Elves: Falden (common wood elves), Neshanen (cultured supporters of dark magic), Keyren (insular sailors), Eylahen (small population in the far north)
Dark Elves: Takari (small kingdom that trades with goods from the jungles), Yagashi (tribes of the jungles), Ruyaki (tribes of the plains)
Kaas (beastmen): Vashka (hill people), Dakka (reclusive forest people), Brana (nomadic plainsfolk)
Humans: Vreya (basically Huns), Katra (hill people), Mari (taiga hunters)
Skeyn: The weird monstrosity that resulted from my gnome/goblin fusion.

Good thing I decided to abandon the idea of a detailed world map. Aside from the major mountains and seas, places will get named when they appear.

Character names are actually much easier.

[SirKazum]

Hey, I like the names. I like how they keep a common theme across sub-races of the same race.

[Roxxy]

Human only settings are a lot easier to sell than no-human settings.

I took the approach that Humanity is the only playable species, and races are different variants of humanity. So Elves, Drow, Dwarves, Orcs, Catfolk, and the like are all humans, as are Magni (basically Earth people). Makes it easy to explain how interbreeding works. Humans can naturally conceive normally with other humans. Your race determines what you look like and grew up as but there are very, very few people who don't have ancestors from another race. An Elf looks like an Elf and grew up as an Elf, but somewhere along the family line a couple people are probably Magni or Dwarves or something. Most other racial features are dominant over Magni features, but not to an overwhelming degree.

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I've been working for a magic/religion system for my Pathfinder campaign setting, and this is what I have:

Divines

These are powerful beings that exist on a separate level from humanity (whether this level is a separate dimension, plane of existence, region far off in space, or otherwise is a matter of much vigorous debate). Precisely what they are is also a matter of debate. They have powerful magics and wished worship from followers, but whether or not they created the world and why they wanted worship is a mystery. They were commonly called Gods, though nowadays many scholars dispute the accuracy of such a term. There were once hundreds of them, who organized themselves into pantheons that looked over specific ethnic groups and organized religions among them. They had some sort of council among themselves to keep each other in some degree of check, but it didn't seem to work very well considering the wealth of conquerors this world has had. The council ended up completely fracturing during the Colonial Era, because the divines of colonial powers had so much strength compared to other groups that those groups felt threatened enough to start some sort of cosmological war. The sky darkened around the world and the most horrendous storms in history raged, and when the clouds finally dispersed the divines were gone. That was over a century ago, and nobody knows what happened in the war, where the divines went, or how many are still alive (assuming they can die).

Divine Magic

A form of magic taught to humanity by the divines. It taps in to the power of Gaia or spirit realms, and requires a great deal of spiritual self discipline to use. For some reason, all the hundreds of divines worldwide had strict rules that only priests, shamans, holy warriors, druids, or other servants of the divines should ever be allowed to learn divine magic. As a result, the use of this magic has a strong relationship with religion, even though the magic itself does not come from the divines. Supernatural ki abilities are a form of divine magic.

Witchcraft

Witchcraft is technically divine magic, since it also taps into the power of Gaia or spirit realms, but most people distinguish between the two because the divines almost universally opposed witchcraft, seemingly because it existed outside the religious structures they had control over. It has historically been something of an underground movement as a result, with witches being hunted and killed, though modern day sensibilities generally oppose that now. Witchcraft is often still controversial, but now that you can openly practice it without being executed the number of practitioners is increasing. A lot of the old guard actually find this vexing, and don't like the way their traditions are changing and new witches don't always seem to fully appreciate those traditions.

Arcane Magic

Arcane magic is the manipulation of the magic of Aether, that which rests above Gaia. This is something humanity has understood how to do for less than a century (before this discovery, Sorcerers were a massive danger to themselves and others that nobody understood, and they couldn't much control their powers), but it was such a groundbreaking discovery that the world has changed massively. Industrialization, urbanization, mass communication, railroads, and the beginnings of global economic structures are revolutionizing how people live, all because humans now understand something of how Aether works. By far the most common arcane magic user is the alchemist (who are the single most common magic user in the world), as it is the easiest and safest way to use Aether, but Wizardry and the like are up and coming traditions and Sorcerers can learn to control their powers now.

Common Religions

People are fairly torn on whether the divines were or are actually gods or not. Some common religions believe:

They are gods, and left the world because humans deeply angered them by starting a gigantic cosmic war over colonialism and genocide. Humans have to be good and follow strict rules if they are to calm down and come back.

Whether they are gods is irrelevant. The divines started the cosmic war and inflamed colonial attitudes, were kind of jerks, ruled over humans unfairly, and we are glad they are gone.

There is a supreme god who ruled over the divines, and the cosmic war the divines started over colonialism angered this god so much that it smote them. We should all pay homage to this god and avoid angering it.

The divines are now irrelevant. God is the energy that resides in all things.

The divines are now irrelevant. The spirits of the world and Gaia are much better allies, and we should honor them instead.

The divines were not gods, and they were killed by God. God is Aether, and to use arcane magic is to touch God.

There is no god, and the divines were oppressors. Humanity now controls its own destiny and must do so with benevolence towards all.

Atheism and Agnosticism are fairly common.

[Tzi]

Giving more thought to the idea of "Family Tree's," for races.

The only real misfits are Half-Elves whom Don't properly fit into either category, and my idea of a Half-Giant race, but they at least can be considered more in the Human branch than any other. Tiefling/Assimar might be their own category or branch.

[Yora]

Roxxy, you probably should take a look at gnosticism, that might have some interesting ideas that might work for your setting. Particularly the idea of the demiurge seems quite similar to that of the divines.
The way you phrased it, it sounded a lot like the divines are people in some kind of "divine burocracy", and not beings on a completely different level of existance. Is that your intention? With people having divided oppinions about the divines, I think it would probably work best to have the "official" explaination very unclear and ambigous. Maybe just "there was a war in heaven and when it was over the divines were gone". Councils sound pretty ordinary and human-like and not mysterious.
How long ago was it, that th divines disappeared anyway? Was it in the mythic past, or a recent event in living memory?

Hey, I like the names. I like how they keep a common theme across sub-races of the same race.

Yeah, I think that was really the part that made it so tough.
I don't bother with languages, but I make basic phonologies for each group of closely related cultures. I hope that this way any new name I introduce will automatically raise associations with a culture, giving an estimate what ethnicity a character is and in what region a place is located. You don't have to speak French to know that a name is probably French, or you can recognize a name as sounding Chinese, African, or Central American. Dragon Age does that very effectively. It's very easy to know that Orlais (a country), Val Royaux (a city), and Marjolaine (a person) all belong to the same culture. It doesn't have to actually mean anything.

[SirKazum]

I know what you mean. I "cheat" by using the name generators in this site. It lets you choose by culture (i.e. Sumerian, French, Arabic, whatever) or fictional race (elves, dragons, elementals etc.); the resulting names do have a common theme. Historical/real world names don't always mesh with what real names from that real culture are like, but in my case that's a feature rather than a bug, so to speak, because I want certain cultures in my world(s) to sound, say, vaguely Sumerian or Russian or whatever, but they're not actually Sumeria or Russia, so I'd rather have them be distinct from their real-world counterparts in subtle ways. Also, I don't always get my names from the random generator; I've been using it mostly as a springboard, to generate the first few names I'll use, and then when I "get" the common theme, I'll come up with names on my own.

I rather like the idea of conlangs, being something of an amateur linguist, so maybe one day I'll create the fictional languages in my setting. I do have an idea of how they relate to one another, and of a few features in each language that I've been making up as I go along. For instance, in Semkashan (vaguely inspired by Sumerian and Babylonian), I decided that a particular creature (the brain of a deceased, powerful individual given a "second life" so that it floats and can interact with the environment around it through psychic powers; it corresponds to D&D's lantern archons) is called Angulkinnar. I don't remember how I got that name; maybe the random generator helped, but I guess most of the word was made-up by me. So, given the creature's concept, I decided the name means "elder immortal". Since there are three archon types, I realized there had to be two other creatures related to the Angulkinnar, one of them combat-oriented and one more oriented toward spells and social skills (Hound and Trumpet Archons respectively). So, wanting to keep a common theme with Angulkinnar, I decided to call them Shakminnar and Gulpakminnar respectively. The second part of the names is the same, or at least very similar - kinnar, minnar and minnar. So I decided that means "elder", and the m/k difference is attributed to phonetics or maybe some weird etymology. The ending or some other part of the word might have been modified for grammatical reasons (such as case, number, or something like that), but I decided not to think about it too much right now. I decided Shakminnar means "elder knight", and Gulpakminnar means "elder gentry", to keep with the traditional, aristocratic themes. I decided there should be a name for "archon" as a whole, which reflects the fact that they're the upper crust of the society; I thought something along the lines of "elder master", which I decided would be Ghalkinnar in Semkashan (notes it has similar phonetics to Angulkinnar). Finally, I decided aasimar probably should come from the same culture (reflecting human lineages modified by psychic intervention, first originating in Semkash), and should have a related name. Maybe something like "lesser master"? Not an "elder" like the archons, but related? I came up with Ghalkiluk, called just Kiluk in common usage. Kiluk in this case would mean just "lesser", and grammatically is meaningless by itself - it should be a suffix. But the name caught.

[Yora]

Within that extend, I think the effort is worth it. Patterns in naming is something that the audience will notice and recognize, and does a good deal in making the world seem more coherent and real.
But beyond that I think dealing with language is really mostly an idle pleasure, but not actually relevant for a setting. Whether you go through all the trouble or not, the audience won't be able to tell the difference. It's gibberish in either case. It can be entertaining for the creator, but I wouldn't consider it "progress" in developing a setting. In RPGs it can't be used to communicate between characters; in books it doesn't make sense, as readers either will have it translated into English in the characters thoughts, or it comes down to "one of the strangers said something in his language"; and in movies you might probably get three or four lines of dialog at the most. The only important part is that names sound like they come from the same language, grammar and etymology have no real impact.

[SirKazum]

Oh, creating the languages would most certainly fall under "idle pleasure", which is why it's very low on my list of priorities. It's just something I like

[Yora]

I like to make maps with propper water drainage and wind patterns. That's equally pointless.
But it allows me to determine what kinds of ships can go upriver on specific rivers during different seasons of the years.

[SirKazum]

I've heard that, when they filmed the movie Blade Runner, they had details on the movie sets like stickers and posters that could not be seen at all from any angle that was shot, and were never intended to. There's a specific example, I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think it was a set of instructions for some equipment that characters use. Anyway, it's something that doesn't show up in the finished product, but was there just so the actors and crew felt more immersed into the movie. To me, stuff like this serves a similar function. I decided to take a step back and develop my setting's history since the earliest antiquity, not because it will really show up anywhere, but because it makes the setting more real to me. And, if I really believe in what I'm creating, I think I'll be in a mindset to create it better. Maybe some of that immersion will "leak out" to the players/readers/what have you... maybe not. Still, I think it's worth it.

[redwizard007]

because it makes the setting more real to me. And, if I really believe in what I'm creating, I think I'll be in a mindset to create it better. Maybe some of that immersion will "leak out" to the players/readers/what have you... maybe not. Still, I think it's worth it.

+1

World building requires an absurd degree of interest. If determining some obscure lore makes things more "real" for you then it's never a mistake to delve in... Unless of course your players are already on their way over...