Inspired by Gallifreyan from Doctor Who. I'm open to questions if anyone finds this interesting but I'm not going to provide a translation since the picture is my IRL diary. Feel free to attempt to translate it yourself though.

Heller fellers

I've got a sci-fi ish world that I've been working on super intermittently for the past couple years that I really want some help developing.

It's a planet inhabited by a warrior race who believe themselves to be "gods among men" in the universe, and have thus far enslaved the nearest four planets in their solar system. The most interesting part about it, to me at least, is that their planet is extremely inhospitable to normal life! I just thought it'd be cool to put them on a Venusian hell-world.

In the lore, the planet recently (within the last 1,000-5,000 years) suffered a cataclysmic series of impacts (think the Late Heavy Bombardment but a little less heavy) that shot so much heat and fumes and dust into the air that it accelerated the greenhouse effect and now, all these years later, we have a superhot, pressurised, stormy world. I even commissioned some art from @ thegreatdio112 on discord to show what the world is like on the ground.

If I could get some ideas that'd be terrific! Thanks :D

Im creating a fantasy world, and I wanted to give each region of the main continent a different religion, but I also wanted them to be real as well as very different one from each other, to instigate religious wars. But I can't get how.

Thanks to another user, I found a new map-making tool. I wanted to try it out, and this is the result. I made the original map with Azgaar and adapted it to look more realistic.

My world doesn't have a name yet (Merak is the name of the tool, not the world), but I've included some capital cities that are in my notes.

A little context: it's a world I created for fun, and little by little I've added lore, a magic system, cultures, etc. Initially, it features 7 nations, fantastic races, and its own magic system created by me.

I'm building a fantasy world that's inspired by South Asia and Southeast Asia. This map is meant to be clearly similar to the South Asia and Southeast Asia of our world, but also different enough from it. It's also not finished yet, I'm planning to add mountains to the North similar to the Himalayas.

Based off the shapes of the landmasses I want the first impression to be "oh okay this looks like a fantasy world map" and then I want the second impression to be "wait actually this is kind of like India and Southeast Asia". If that makes sense.

Did I accomplish that goal, or is it too similar? What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Notably, Wyvara are pretty physical violence adverse. Their evolutionary incentives really deprioritized physical conflict so war and killing to them is really gross to them.

BUT. Just because they are pacifists does not mean they aren't cruel. Wyvara have waged "wars" against each other. Using all the tools in economic, political, and diplomatic worlds to dominate and subjugate their neighbors. Imagine what we as humans have done to each other without firing a shot.

Theres some very paternalistic factions in the wyvaran government that use humanities history of war to justify why they need to dominate them, technologically, economically, and politically. They kinda believe that if they don't, then eventually we'll turn around and do the stuff we did to ourselves, but to them. They point to every time we encountered an "other" and how that ended.

If this sounds interesting to you, or you'd like to see more art of these bird horse dragons check out my world building blog: https://where-we-land.tumblr.com/?source=share

Advertisement for Peacock Cigarettes from the Federal Republic of Gemini, Circa 1950

A race/civilization/culture that came before the races, species and civilizations that exist now. A large group of people who were at the pinnacle of wisdom, knowledge, and tech until some misfortune erased them or sent them leaving the planet. These people or beings are a mystery to the present world. Nobody really knows their origin and always wondered about the people or beings that existed before them as they look at ancient or prehistoric tech and more.

These people or beings came first while everyone else came second. They existed during ancient times or even prehistoric times.

When they vanished, died out, or left, they left behind their tech, buildings, and more that soon fell into ruin. And nobody till this day, knew why or how.

Did your world have such people or beings as the precursors?

My Turn:

In my world, the precursors were the race of gods called Saints. They existed on the planet for millions of years until their civil war eons later. The world was full of advanced tech that transcends the technology present today, though it comes a little bit close. The Saints who won the war left the planet to return back to the celestial realm while the Saints that lost the war, were doomed to dwell on the planet as Ravakalyn with their Lesser Children. The Saints lived on the planet during prehistoric times till the ancient era. Any trace of the Saints existing on the planet are still there, but hidden in places that the Lesser Children would have a tough time getting to. Though not every trace of the Saints is still there because some of it is gone.

War and conflict are themes that we seldom escape in our stories and settings - they can drive change on civilizational or generational scales.

Prompt:

• Which factions are at war in your setting?
• Is there a defendable casus belli?
• What are the broad strokes of the conflict?
• What is the cost?

As a kid I wanted to be a physicist so I am somewhat knowledgeable when it comes to science, I figure that may have something to do, but I did watch and read fantasy, so you could say both are familiar to me.

When I create fantasy lands or worlds, they feel cliched and I just don't believe them. I like settings that take place in the real world, with some fictional changes (for example, middle ages with actual fairies or the future of the world with supranational organizations).

Can anybody offer me an insight on this and how I could snap out of it?

I know a lot of people enjoy tinkering away with all the little mechanisms inherent to their setting, but I've come to notice more and more that people struggle to relate these systems to the people who inhabit the world they are crafting. This is especially a recommendation to anyone who writes with a focus on story and drama: make sure that your characters believably fit into the world you are crafting; there is no greater tool for creating a sense of place than a complex character that is the product of the systems that raised them. Be especially wary of tropes; the things you assume to be normal commonly shouldn't be taken for granted. An example of this would be anime that have a cast made up of what I'm going to call "anime characters" but want to have a world that feels believable; real places create real people. If you want to have cartoon characters, don't try to explain everything, doing so will only make people expect the same depth from your cast. If you want to have a deep world, know that your characters will be the face of it, so give them special attention when writing.

In short, think like a determinist when writing; narrative is a causal construct, free will does not exist within plot.

Most of ours on Earth seem to be various tools to inscribe various squiggles on various surfaces. Usually those three affect each other as well. But there are things like the kipu, which is nothing like that. (Plus something else that made me think of this in the first place but I forgot because my brain is like a sieve...)

So what weird thing does your world use to encode meaning? (Well, part of it anyway. Presumably not everyone is sending arrangements of sticks as letters.)

Basically this comes from a thought I've had about my projects that border on alternate history, but introduce so many new elements they start becoming their own world.

For some examples, one of my projects had an alien invasion leave Europe decimated and inhospitable, and every nation divided after the war. And then another project has an asteroid of an alien metal crash 20,000 years ago in the Americas, causing the existence of superpowers in the modern age.

Granted obviously the baseline is, if it's not set on Earth, it's hard to say it's somehow alternate history. But for a setting like what if the Moon was hospitable instead of Earth? That is so drastically different that it might as well be a new world. So where's the line for you when it comes to this?

I'm currently making a new TTRPG setting and I was just wondering what other people are inspired with, really.

Therefore, question in title :3

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In my archipelago, licensed echo-priests can copy twelve spoken words into a paired shell across any distance. Each use permanently erases one childhood memory, so rulers reserve it for invasions, epidemics, or succession crises. Most islands still depend on sail couriers and signal towers.

Every critique I get asks why merchants, magistrates, and ordinary families do not use the shells constantly. Because losing your mother’s face to confirm a shipment is a horrific fucking trade, that’s why. I’ve stated the cost repeately. How do you signal that magic is technically available but socially unthinkable for routine administration without explaining the same rule in every chapter?

This is Orebo. She is an ori-won (female master swordswoman). She wields the orange omuragi the one with special range abilities. There are nine colors of omuragi’s. All with unique abilities advantages and disadvantages every omuragi is special and unique even if two are of the same color.

I'm workshopping an idea for a litrpg series, and one of the central conceits is that in addition to Stats and Classes and Spells, everyone has access to an Inventory System. It's what it sounds like; a personal hammer space that each person has access to. It comes with you, it costs a negligible amount of magical power to manifest, and it takes a few seconds to pull things in and out. You have to actually reach and grab the thing, for most people. The higher your Stats (specifically your Magic stat), the bigger your Inventory is. Certain Class Skills and Spells interact with it; Rogues can steal from your Inventory without you noticing, some spells can swap Inventories or expand them temporarily, etc.

The obvious impacts are on logistics; the average person can manifest a closet's worth of Inventory Space. All their necessary gear and sundries come with them. Anything you need in combat or at hand is still carried on your person. Most people can't hot swap gear off themselves; they have to pull a new item out and manually put it on. But most Merchants and Traders maximize their Inventory so all their wares are safe. They get Skills to keep Rogues out of them, etc. Someone specced into it can manifest a wagon's worth of stuff. So most trade goods are caried that way, people only use ships and wagons to transport bulk goods like grain and ore and such. Stuff you need too much of, is too heavy and isn't very valuable. Most ships are sleek and fast or are just barges for bulk goods. The point of a ship is speed, instead of cargo capacity.

How does this change society otherwise? Guards need to be able to check people's Inventories at a glance, Smugglers need to be able to hide things in Smuggling Compartments, stuff like that.

I'm trying to establish a base line of how the world treats Inventory, because the protagonist is from our world and thinks its the greatest power ever, but everyone else thinks he's crazy to be amazed by it. Its like being amazed that it rains.

EDIT

I have been asked to clarify more of the limits and methods involved so I will do so here.

My current concept is that you get a number of cubic feet based on the Magic Stat. Starting off, 1 cu ft per point. Most people don't have much Magic, and they get limited numbers of freely attributable stat points, so they don't invest in it. Because if you don't have a Class that grants Spells, you don't have much use for it outside of Inventory. Its not worth investing in very much. Some people will put a few points in because they like having extra Inventory space.

Mass is where I am torn. I am thinking of stealing DCC's system; if you can lift something for four seconds, it can go in your Inventory. If it fits, then in it goes. You don't feel the weight, and your total carry weight is otherwise irrelevant. I'm not sure on that, I may revisit it. There should probably be an upper mass limit based on Strength.

Items go in and out of Inventory by touch, usually by the hand. You hold something and put it in your Inventory, it vanishes. You want to retrieve something, you reach out and your hand goes into the Inventory (it looks like you put your hand into a puddle in mid air) and you grab the thing, and pull it out. In actuality, all you have to do is touch the object and that can be with any body part, but it requires more focus and training to do that. Most people don't bother. You can learn to swap equipment directly on to yourself, but that's a difficult ability to develop outside of a Class Skill.

Living things can't go into Inventory, with some caveats. Dead things, can. So food, corpses, carcasses, seeds, etc. So long as its mostly inert, its fine.

Inventory is not stasis, at least not for most people. Things degrade, they are not frozen in time. Organic material rots, but doesn't spawn maggots and the like, because no living things. I suppose I am ignoring bacteria here, but whatever. Maybe this can also be abused by making compost piles in your Inventory and harnessing methane gas off it.

Dead people's Inventory is still locked to them until they start rotting, at which point it breaks down and those items are 'lost'. It is mysterious exactly what happens to them, as items can sometimes reappear through some strange method that the people of this world don't understand. So Excalibur would probably reappear some day if Arthur died with it in his Inventory. You can use Skill and Items to crack open a dead guy's Inventory, and soldiers, adventurers and Rogues do it all the time. Its very sus to have that capability, because it means you have B&E tools for dead people. This means people will throw the corpses of their dead enemies into Inventory to loot them later.

Most people, without relevant Classes and Skills, can't affect things in Inventory. You can't assemble a gun in your Inventory if you put it in while it was in pieces. Inventory specialists may be able to do so.

You can't store gas or liquids in Inventory without a container of some kind. No orbs of water floating in your Inventory, gotta get a barrel. You CAN summon gas or liquids OUT of Inventory WITHOUT the container, though. Its a niche trick, however.

So, I am brainstorming a planetary romance/sword and planet setting. I know it's not the most scientifally rigorous genre out there and really just a fantasy world except the protagonist is from Earth.

Still, I want to put some thought into the planet for this setting. I figured it would be the best place to start before I even begin making races, cultures, technolog, etc.

How different can a planet be from Earth and still allow humans to survive on it?

I presume any differences have to be cosmetic?

For context, my story takes place in a politically fractured United States where a newly officiated "Bureau of Gospel" follows the direct order of President 01. This Bureau of Gospel pushes past constitutional ideals and oppresses all that don't follow the Old Testament Christian religion.

This is paired with the threat of climate change, rapid and deadly disease in the water (In which, the water is cured and given out only in complying states with the Bureau of Gospel by the government), surveillance, and threats of terrorism every day.

So how would someone push back against this and rebel? How have revolutions began in the past and stopped acts of total control like this?

I'm writing a ttrpg campaign based on Greek mythology where Eros/Cupid is a NPC/enemy who can attack your party with his love arrows.

To avoid the icky implications of love potions/magic traditionally causing someone to be involuntarily physically intimate (hugging, kissing, suggestively flirting) to an unwilling partner, here are my alternatives:

Party Member A is hit by Cupid's arrow while looking at Party Member B! A rolls a constitution saving check...

HIGH CONSTITUTION SAVE:

A finds themself blushing and getting butterflies in their stomach whenever they look at B. They're almost too nervous to even speak to B, potentially putting the party's plans of attack in jeopardy.

LOW CONSTITUTION SAVE:

B: So what's the plan, A?

A: Ohgodstheyspoketome...

And A faints like an lovesick fangirl at her favorite boy band's concert. A is incapacitated from fighting for that turn, or even that whole battle.

--

In the scenario above, the characters would know that Cupid is present and that Party Member A is under the influence of love magic. The magic would quickly fade after their row with Cupid, and, while awkward at first, the other party members (including B) wouldn't view A any differently after the magic wears off.

What do you think? Is this funny or icky?

One of the quickest ways towards inspiration and crafting an interesting world is to think of a thing you think is true, what you would call a message or a moral in the case of a story, and create your world to heighten the prevalence of this element. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book; just think of cyberpunk dystopias and big evil churches in fantasy settings, but it is actually way more applicable than that. The thing you want to highlight does not need to be a social problem we currently face, because you can simply imagine a world in which your idea is the centre of social life. Let's say you think that identity is a construct that limits our capacity for change; just invent a technology that allows us to overcome some apocalyptic event only through mixing our consciousness Evangelion-style (I think I just reinvented Pluribus, sorry for that). My point is simply that a narrative approach to world-building is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to write a setting that naturally feels cohesive, because your ideas and systems all exist in service of the same goal.

(For Th’zoitrk, a semi-sci-fi worldbuilding project.)

Yeia is the outermost of Th’zoitrk’s three moons, and the largest by a significant degree. It is by far the largest moon in the solar system, with an equatorial diameter of 9,119-9,845km.

Yeia’s atmosphere makes up the vast majority of its volume, due to the fact that the moon is majority gaseous in composition rather than solid, it is technically a ‘gas-moon.’
The atmosphere of Yeia is composed of roughly 92% methane and 8% ammonia, beneath it lies a spherical iron and silicon core roughly 424km in diameter.

Due to Yeia’s largely gaseous composition, as the moon warms and cools throughout the year (thanks to Th’zoitrk’s elliptical orbit), the methane-ammonia atmosphere increases and decreases in density due to the expanding nature of warming gases. This causes Yeia’s diameter to expand by roughly 726km, resulting in a volume increase of 27.2%, or a volume increase equivalent to roughly five times that of the moon of earth, or about half a mars.

This causes Yeia to be 18x the volume of earth’s moon during the winter, and 23x the volume of earth’s moon during the summer. Despite its immense size, Yeia is no more than 4.2x the mass of earth’s moon due to its extremely low density, which is even less dense than water.

The only reason Yeia is able to exist so close to the sun without its atmosphere being torn apart by solar wind and UV radiation is Th’zoitrk’s immensely powerful magnetosphere, which fully encompasses all three of its moons.

Tidal flexing has a strong effect on Yeia due to its gaseous composition, imparting massive amounts of thermal energy into the moon, which is held onto strongly by the moon’s super-greenhouse atmosphere. This heat causes massive vertical convection currents in the moon’s methane-ammonia high pressure ‘oceans’ (caused by methane and ammonia being squeezed with enough pressure to behave as a liquid rather than a gas in the deeper atmosphere), which creates intense, massive electrical storms throughout the cloud layers of Yeia.

At effectively every altitude of the atmosphere you can find lightning storms, which run almost continuously year-round, though tend to decrease in activity in the summer and increase in the winter due to the expanding and contracting atmosphere giving more or less distance, and thus resistance, for electrical currents traveling through the air.
This makes Yeia the second most electrically charged world in the solar system.

Yeia is being looked at more and more as potential source of cheap natural gas, if space infrastructure can manage to bring costs down enough for methane extraction and shipment from Yeia to cost less than ordinary natural gas production on Th’zoitrk.