I have the urge to make my own world, fill it with depth and unique ideas and then use it for games and campaigns, have it evolve and grow.
So tell me /tg/ do you ever get the same urge?
What do you want to create? do you have experience with hombrewed worlds and systems? discuss
I'm tired of grimdark settings (in videogames and tabletop) with "mature" themes, etc. It's rarely used in a meaningfull way.
So i often think about creating a really noblebright setting with green forests, floating islands, kind people and almost caricatural evil sorcerers, vilains, etc.
Something really optimistic.
>>45937389
So have you done anything with it yet?
its a fun idea, why not try and make something with it?
>>45937445
Partly because i have no idea where to start
But mainly because i'm lazy af
>>45937469
Apparently you weren't lazy enough to make a thread about it though.
>inb4 OP not!steals other Anon's work and suggestions.
hi hello I'm trying to DM for (pretty much (almost)) first time, and I'm building my own world for it. Anyone got any pointers or general advice?
>>45937567
Uh i didn't make this thread.
>>45937567
he didn't make the thread, and I am not looking to steal ideas, I have my own
>>45937575
awesome, goodluck, hope it goes well
I am hoping to do something similar myself at some point
>>45937183
Thinking about making a campaign based loosly on this.
bit of a mix between stars without numbers and 5e. Lots of planets inhabited by halfling, half orcs, elves ect.
>>45938071
edit*
not with furries. I'm not a idiot.
I think
>>45938089
no man definitely with furries, but make them traditionally un-sexualized animals like Badgers and Possums and Bats and stuff, so it doesn't go full magical realm
Start with Ravnica.
Make armageddon happen, and the world is reset. Wilderness now exists again, but there are still big cities with lots of identity.
some factions survive, some dont. Your choices
Throw in some Elder Scrolls flavour in the cosmogony, since ravnica is a bit low on true deities, and reshape them to suit your taste.
Add some inspiration from Herbert's Work, Dune and Dosadi primarily.
You don't know what to do with the lands up North ? Read up and play some Witcher, research a bit on slav folklore.
Know you get a flavorful and exotic starting ground, but how about the lands far away to the east and west ?
Throw in some Homeworld lore for the desert folks, add Broken Lords & Cult of the Eternal End from Endless Legend. Sorts one side.
On the other side, put the Roving Clans and the Ardent mages, mix Ardent mages lore with Morrowind's to taste, and spice up the roving clans' background with mongolian lore.
Tie all this shit together with key plot points you'll use as reveals throughout the campaign.
>>45937567
Who gives a fuck if the ideas are stolen ? People freely sharing their ideas on settings made a good bunch of tg's greatest threads, and even if it doesn't it might still be used to someone.
If someone steals my setting and runs a successful and fun campaign in it, who am to stop him?
I won't know about it most of the time and if I do I can get some of the credit.
I don't see why you'd have that attitude if you don't intend to make money out of your setting (as if that would happen).
>>45938468
That sounds really cool, I often flirt with the idea of making the ultimate generic fantasy setting by just taking races and factions from everything and dumping them all into the same world, imagine how awesome an army made from an alliance of all the elves from your favorite settings would look?
>>45938529
The key is to let it simmer for a while and make the world consistent, with recurring themes and organic interactions between each factions.
That takes work, and time, but it's rewarding to have a world that feels, you know, evolved, like it's coming from somewhere and going somewhere. A world that has a history with great people and signifcant events.
The issue I had with most run off the mill settings is that they felt more like theme parks and less like believable worlds.
>>45937183
Sure I do. That's why I'm making a homebrew game and setting.
>ITT: idea guys don't do anything
>>45937575
I think the trick is to combine some inspiration with a lot of development. You need to start with an idea some "you know what would be cool..." moment. Then the tricky part is making it playable, my advice would be look at the conventions of the genre you're doing and figure out which ones work for your idea and which ones you feel like you need to deviate from, if I'm making a fantasy game for instance I'd look at what usually gets done in fantasy setting and stick relatively close to that except for where it would conflict with the original idea. Tell anyone who'll listen about your world and answer any questions they have, if you can't answer one you know what you need to do next.
Being completely formulaic gets boring quickly, going purely on what seems like a good idea doesn't last (trust me, I've run both), starting with a interesting creative idea and then tempering that creativity with tried-and-true wisdom is what works well in my experience. Compare the star wars movies, the original trilogy, creativity (from George Lucas) tempered by more experienced writers and directors resulted in something different that still had a wide appeal, that's the trick really.
>>45937183
I understand your feels. I myself have a strong love of worldbuilding, but never really get to see it through for 2 reasons:
>1. I'm a hopelessly top-down designer that can't stand imperfections, so I rarely ever lock down the details most relevant to an actual story. (Think Encyclopedia vs. Novel.) Most significantly, characters. I just don't understand people.
>2. Even if I could, I don't have anyone to share it with (i.e., run a game for)
That said, I'd love to talk about/share my ideas, critique others', provide suggestion, etc.
>>45940046
Do it man. Thread's inactive as it is and god forbid we let it sink in favor of a quest/cyoa/shitposting thread.
Also for people, have you considered looking at history? How people and congregations of people managed to change the situation of their country, and sometimes of the world, forever?
Or you could take a look at Greek Tragedy, since the plays are mostly light reads, and characters tend to have exagerated traits that drive their point across more clearly.
>>45940147
>Also for people, have you considered looking at history?
I've found the best place to look for nation ideas is the 16th century, because nobody cares about the 16th century.
>>45940147
>Or you could take a look at Greek Tragedy, since the plays are mostly light reads, and characters tend to have exagerated traits that drive their point across more clearly.
That might help. The problem isn't that I don't understand how people (as a group) act, it's that I don't understand how individuals think (other than strongly logic-driven ones, like Spock).I chalk this up to an Asperger's problem.
>Do it man. Thread's inactive as it is and god forbid we let it sink in favor of a quest/cyoa/shitposting thread.
I'll try. It may be difficult: I'm a big fan of stripping away common-sense assumptions on the nature of reality and things that are by definition undefinable. It'll help a lot if you've got a firm grasp on abstract math and quantum physics.
Don't read this next part unless you get what I'm talking about:Like, imagine the traditional concept of a "setting" as a single point on a line, where the line is the setting's history (and future) and that point represents a 3-D 'snapshot' of that universe at that time. Now lets say you have multiple parallel lines representing parallel universes. Now expand the point, and you've got a 5-D picture consising of several 4-D membranes; THAT is closer to how I think of my "setting".
But thankfully, none of that is necessary for a player to understand, any more than you or I need to understand string theory to live our daily lives. So, I'll try bringing up a specific instance to frame some of the greater concepts that pervade much of my work.
>>45942050
So, one of the closest things I ever made to a complete campaign involved the invasion of an island as part of a longer series of wars, inspired by the Hundred Years' War between France and England.
>First problem: Magic Level.
So, in my setting "magic" is kind of a vague term. It boils down to subjectivity trumping objectivity. Gunpowder is magic because nobody understands why it explodes. Common beliefs can "become reality" because a shared subjective observation is indistinguishable from an objective one. Speech is magic because it is understood subjectively yet convey meaning, and the right words can change someone's point of view. "Illusions" CAN kill you if you believe in them, but since there's no way to tell the difference between a shared illusion and reality men of strong faith can move mountains (at least in the minds of others which is all that matters).
What all this means is that magic pervades the entire setting down to its roots. Any person can do magic, real magic, simply by pulling a coin from behind an ear. This could be a trick, or the coin may spontaneously appear, there's no difference until the performer shares his secrets with the observer.
But there are greater rules that organize the world, since it isn't an ever-changing realm of chaos - at least, we know that certain portions aren't since multiple people have observed and agreed on what it is they have observed, and others that believe their observations have observed the same and concur.Yes, the logic is getting circular here. It has to be. It has nothing to base itself off of but itself.
Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is: truly understanding the systems of the world can give one enormous power, if one eschews sharing experiences and devotes one's life to the pursuit of that power. That's why sorcerers lock themselves away in towers and avoid applying their skills to anything practical. (Also, they generally have/need/gain a strong ego.)
>>45937183
There are two parts to making a compelling setting. The first is the setting itself, and the second is the stories that you tell in it to inform the world from the ground level.
That may seem obvious, but it clearly isn't because nobody does it right anymore. Example:
Conan the Barbarian, if you've ever read the big black anthology, began with the concept of the Hyborean Age. This was a fantastic version of our own prehistory. In his outline of the age, Howard focused overwhelmingly on the races of men, and how they came through the ages to occupy various lands and to develop various nations, and how they warred with each other and developed, finally linking this to the history we know today. The story of the world as he told it was compelling for the same reason that reading actual history is compelling.
But that by itself is not enough. Simply telling the history of a world is novel, but you don't want novelty. You want compulsion.
After framing the Hyborean Age, Howard began to write in it. The stories of Conan were not written chronologically, and many of them were at clearly different times in Conan's life, sometimes with characters who you may come to like, but never see again. Some of them ended with him getting the girl, who is never seen again. Some of them ended with him in a seemingly untenable position, but obviously he gets out of it because next thing you know he's a king.
The reason that Conan the Barbarian is so compelling is those gaps. You are left to imagine how the old boy got from X to Y, and Y to Z. What you see creates the context whereby you describe to yourself what you don't see.
When making a setting, what you see is important, but it is also important that things go unseen, but implied, so that the storytellers you are making the setting for can fill in those gaps for themselves. It is for this reason that you must not seek to answer questions, but to create them.
>>45943062
So, in game terms:
>People's faith can matter a lot, a man can inspire friends and dismay enemies, and these can manifest as more concrete benefits. (Perhaps not enough to affect the true skeptic, but nobody is ever 100% sure...)
>Cloistering one's self is the key to producing effects that defy belief. This means such events are rare. (For if they were not, would they defy belief?)
>Oh yeah, there's science too.
So... Effectively low magic, yet having magic everywhere. Does that make sense at all?
Am I a hack if my worldbuilding consists of mashing NotGermany and NotCountryX and then building around it?
>>45943062
>>45943327
Okay, so the world at this point is at an dawn of an enlightened era. Rationalist movements have formed, which objectify the world... Meaning that the world is actually becoming more objective in nature. Or at least it seems that way...
From the viewpoint of the Author, they are merely making the world more dualistic. Legends fade into a realm of chaos, at this point in time taking the form of a dream-like mirror world.As progress marches on, the world of the rationalists will become more like the real world, while the chaos will become more formless. But it will eventually snap back together, most likely catastrophically.
A good example is of the island I mentioned. Its border, cities, and trade routes are well-mapped, but in the wild interiors things change. (Although, who's to say it exists at all when nobody's looking?)
>That was cause of the second problem; difficulty in map-making.
>>45943652
>>45943327
>>45943233
>>45943062
I like it a lot! I went with a similar approach of magic in my setting, although not as developed.
What about "gods", or greater beings in general ? Anyone with a bigger mind to navigate to tides of this magic ?
>>45943448
My Beastmen races is basically not!Ancient_Greece + not!Traditional_Japan, with a dash of xenophobia.
It's not what you draw inspiration from, it's how you do it.
In your experience, how open are people to homebrewed settings and systems?
think it could work with randoms on Roll20?
>>45945733
>What about "gods", or greater beings in general ?
Well, there are beings born of the chaos. Whereas man generally has a given form but freedom of thought and will, they are the opposite. Although, that is a spectrum and none are purely at either end.
There are certainly beings of a more abstract nature, and some may have great power. Whether or not they can be called gods is a matter of open debate, though several are certainly worshiped as such.
Other religions worship different interpretations of abstract "Divine Force" that holds the world together. (And there's certainly *something* that does that; otherwise is reality not swallowed up into the chaos, which would pop into nonexistence without it?) The most popular sees an unknowable creator of all. An old, nearly dead one sees a cyclical pattern of recursion. A minority more popular in distant lands sees a dualistic meeting of forces. There are cults which believe that the chaos actually is the natural state of the universe. All are true to some extent.
>Anyone with a bigger mind to navigate to tides of this magic ?
It's not all about intelligence, although that usually doesn't hurt.
There are legends of ancient wizard-kings which ruled over man and nature alike. But in the modern age, skepticism of such things unknowingly makes them unlikely to reoccur (if people know that, though, it paradoxically might). There are still some sorcerers living in the untamed wilds, but since sharing their secrets lessens their power, they're a dying breed.
>>45948372
>sharing their secrets lessens their power
It's worth noting that this is a non-causal relationship, meaning its effects propagate backwards in time.
This means that the mightiest sorcerers are the ones least likely to share their secrets because the ones that never will are mightier from the start.
I made a diverse world with a fallen black men mesopotamic-like empire, with elvish society being a capitalistic society, white man a feudalistic one and dwarven being a communist one. It works at my tabletop and it's fun, but I don't feel my players too much excited about it. I also think sometimes I shouldn't use black people (even if their empire was as generally nice as the Elder Scroll's one - which means barely better than their horrendous enemies) because I'm not black and I feel I could step over some friend's toes. I just went with blackmen because I thought I could make fantasy less white-only (by 2010, that was very vanguardist), but, right now, Idk, I was thinking about make 'em all nonhumans and create OC donut steal races.
But yeah, I constantly feel the need to build my own shit.
/blog
>>45948258
Depends on how good they are, really.
