Tell me about your fantasy universe, /tg/
>>47259369
It sucks, and everyone wants to leave.
>>47259369
The world is flat and infinite in all directions, with ocean-sized bottomless chasms that result in continental cliffs and waterfalls.
>>47259369
It's a magical realm.
My setting works kinda like MtG in the way that "planes" are actually planets and there are no "planeswalkers." Also it's our universe, Earth is the only habitable planet in our sector of the galaxy and there are several other habitable planets in other sectors. Those planets also have civilization on them and some have fantasy elements, high fantasy elements, and no fantasy elements (like earth).
The Andromeda galaxy, however, has many many habitable planets and is my core sci-fi setting.
>>47259369
It's cold. You know how they prepare themselves because winter is coming in Game of Thrones? It's seasonal in this world.
Why would it really matter? A fantasy universe is really only useful as an individual backdrop for the same bland fantasy crap that permeates RPGs. Occasionally someone has a new idea for how to put a twist on it, but it usually turns out to be shitty and no one actually wants to play it, it just sounds good on paper to desperate fantasy nerds thirsty for a semi-original setting (see: Eberron, and Numenera).
>>47261057
This can become a good copypasta but it needs a bit more work on it. Like double the size. Can anybody even touch Eberron?
>>47261057
> fantasy universe is really only useful as an individual backdrop for the same bland fantasy crap that permeates RPGs.
Not saying you've had much competition but this is hands down the most awkward use of the word "permeate" I've ever seen.
Anyways... What are you even saying? There's not an ounce of logic to any of that.
"Why make a fantasy world? You're just going to use it for some RPG and it will have stuff in common with other settings. And it will be bland. Why? I don't know. In fact I don't know a goddamn thing about what other humans are capable of coming up with because I'm just not a creative person and I don't understand creativity in others."
>>47259369
Eh, I mixed elements of trench warfare from WW1, with some of the Roman Legion elements to create the Not!Roman Empire with Dragon Empress, surrounded by Not!North Korea and Not!Russian Empire
So far, I love the mix of trench-warfare artilllery and desperation, and Roman Legion discipline with combat tactics. Essentially the universe is in the early renaissance, with muskets & shit, but mages+cannons=ww1, and due to the fact their is constant magic being thrown between the trenches, demons, werewolves, vampires, liches, and all sorts of shit gets attracted to it, people get possessed, or turned into one of them, while the supernatural attempt to take control of the planet due to the massive mana upsurge since the beginning of the Drakonia Imperia, and in addition besides the magic fuckery, my players began a fucking religious war between Pelor and the Empress, who was being worshiped as a goddess, which may or may not involve Half-Dragon+Enlarge Person+Bull's Strength shenanigans.
>>47259369
Sure.
It has everything and lots of it.
>>47259369
It's inside a brass ring, inside a crystal sphere, in a stone angel's hand.
Heavens and Hells are artificial constructs, which exist in defiance of the cycle of reincarnation. Some very powerful beings don't like that.
There's some middle ground country with horsemen, Egypt behind a big fucking magic wall, some zombie kingdom in the north, who gives a fuck.
The world's bound for a golden age, with knowledge of magic becoming incredibly widespread, and quality of life going through the roof.
>>47261019
Do tell! How do you interweave those settings? Like what would the party do in regular ol' Earth if they could be in fucking Ivalice from Final Fantasy or something? Like what's the plotline like
Modern day setting where various fantasy races and creatures+magic exists and is treated as completely normal and used in day to day life, a lot of things are up-scaled for larger creature like dragons and such.
>>47259369
I tried to keep in mind natural geographical qualities and human migration patterns as a result of weather and environmental qualities when things formed.
That was combined with my fondness for cyclical concepts like 'empire forms in good location, builds up, declines, new empire forms up atop it, repeat' so you have shitloads of layers. Literal, in the case of some cities.
>>47262837
Well, desu, the settings don't exactly intervene.
I mean, they /rarely/ intervene.
For example, Jesus was actually a cleric that accidentally used a teleport spell. UFOs are an ancient nomadic civilization from Andromeda that just like to watch us... (the 1561 incident in Nuremberg was them having a lil' squabble)
It's all really basic stuff but it's more of a personal thing than something I actually tell my players. This is mostly because, to me at least, everything being in a different universe or a "parallel world" gets boring.
>>47262541
A not-insignificant percentage of people who talk about rpgs on the internet don't actually play rpgs on a regular basis, which results in completely fucked opinions mutating into what people think are entirely reasonable positions.
>>47259369
The universe is a story, and the story is the universe, contained in a book written in the tears of the Void.
>>47259369
>Chaos screamed and screamed like it always did. At some point, pure chance made from the scream a word: EL. The first being possessing name and indentity, EL ordered the Chaos to silence, and only repeat what EL said. As He imagined, He created a correspondent word for it for Chaos to repeat, giving shape and substance to ideas. And the things said by EL and repeated by Chaos became objects and worlds, elements and life.
>Transforming the power of Chaos into Order, EL was the creative will that generated Creation.
It also has orcs based on apemen with scars made of bone and iron.
40 years ago, a terrible sorceror began work on a ritual that would beckon the Hell Moon, and unleash demonic hordes upon the earth. A great alliance of heroes assembled from all corners of the globe, to put an end to the sorceror's plans and save the world.
They failed. The Hell Moon rose, the demon tide descended, and a blackness fell upon the world.
40 years ago, your ancestors shut fast the doors to your home: Sunpeak, one of many dwarven strongholds delved in the roots of the Green Mountains. You have lived in the comforting darkness all your life, safe from the terrors of the surface. With vast mines for minerals, mushroom farms for food and lumber, underground lakes and rivers for water, and the deep roads for trade between the underhomes, it seems that your people need never concern themselves with the surface again.
But there is a saying: "one can fence themselves in, but one cannot fence the world out." The evil that grips the land above is now seeping down to your land below. Monsters have been sighted on the deep roads. Poison runs in the groundwater. Underhomes have gone silent, no visitor ever returning. A plague festers in the south, while an empire rises in the west, both set to conquer all the underworld.
And a visitor has come to your humble home, from the outside. An elf - the first overworlder to set foot in Sunpeak for almost half a century, and the first elf to set foot in any underhome for a thousand years. She comes offering hope: a means to cast down the Hell Moon forever, end the reign of the demon kings, and return the world to mortal hands once more.
Many roads lay before you, none of them smooth. Whichever road you choose to walk, choose carefully. For the earth that has long been a shelter to your people, may yet become their tomb.
>>47259369
Suns orbit worlds, and moons orbit suns.
Who reads these threads? Same as any worldbuilding thread, I feel like it's just an excuse for catharsis for forever GMs. Is it just OP reading the thread or?
>>47264444
I posted >>47264392 because I want validation that my ideas are smart and creative.
So... yes.
Modern-day setting, but random people across history had been (and still are) able to control two bodies instead of one. The story of Adam and Eve may have been the earliest hint to the "truth".
>>47262772
this actually sounds reasonably interesting
>>47264475
What's the point? Who is going to respond? It's just speaking to the air, that's what these threads are. Why would I post anything from my own projects, why would I go to the effort, when nothing comes of it?
>>47264546
To test your ability to persuade? If an anon goes out of his way to show interest, you must have done something right.
>>47264546
Oh, I was agreeing with you, don't worry. I find these threads completely pointless too. I was just acknowledging the fact that my motivation was petty and stupid.
(And also because I felt like my idea was better than 90% of the other crap posted in these threads, specifically because it focused on potential plotlines instead of esoteric garbage)
>>47259369
Its insanely huge as in multiple universes all interacting and old, spanning from stone age fantasy to soft sci fi. That was simply when the humans showed up in the setting and they are considered quite young(as in not having a history older then even a 'mere' million years) is far older then the 'recent' appearance of humanity. Humanity in setting has been around for tens of thousands of years and they are still considered the new guys.
>>47261019
I do something similar. Magic is like a resource some places its naturally denser then others. Which makes things interesting when places with scarce magic potential(potentially even null) run into those who actually did have some in their history or even flops between the two. As magic has been known to ebb and flow so some places go through periods where its nigh nonexistent to insanely rich.
Futuristic Soft science-fiction game. The game engine or world is essentially supposed to support this line of thinking; show me the picture of a creature or alien you want to play. In 3 minutes we have stats for it and you have a character.
As for the world itself, not that much is actually hammered out beyond a few broad concepts.
Most people are called BICOs- or Biological, Intelligent, Communicating Organisms. This is the basic criteria for galactic citizenship. Nobody really supports this citizenship though, there is a load of empires and random pirate kings out there, the universe isn't always a nice or fair place. But some of the people who try to make it that way exist on a council known as the Council of Sentients, or CoS. The CoS basically protects the rights (somewhat) of many BICOs, but mainly is about the protection of primitive planets and worlds as well as the employment of Enforcers. The players are Enforcers.
Enforcers are essentially low grade cops with few rules and fewer morales that try to apprehend or eliminate criminals of local systems or planets.When they do, they can simply check in with whatever authority and the authority is basically forced to pay them for the help, due to the rules of the CoS. Essentially this creates a kind of smash and grab style police work; kill criminals, take their shit, collect the reward and move on. Does it matter you just left a huge power vacuum for younger bloods to move in? Does it matter you just left several low level gang members out on the streets hungry for new crime? No- that's not your concern.
Other than that, the setting is supposed to be more gonzo with combat being extremely open ended; for example most people use laser guns but you can use bionic swordsmanship or cybernetic ninja-stars as primary weapons and it won't really effect anything. Also a weird form of Jedi/space monk is another proposed class.
Mostly just a collection of thoughts, but it's my first sci-fi and I'm enjoying it.
>>47259369
It's a fantasy version of Earth circa ~1500, the PCs are part of a traveling troupe of gypsy-like mercenary-but-don't-say-it-out-loud mages. They're known simply as "The Caravan", and they travel the world in a large house on the back of Rosie, a terrapin (aka gigantic turtle). We like to indulge in the archetypes of every culture, and since the Caravan picks up people from all over the world, the party and main NPCs end up being a lot of fun. Currently the characters are in the caribbean looking for the fountain of youth.
The world is flat, but more disc shaped really. The middle is thick enough for there to be an underground to both sides, you can dig from one side to the other.
The sides are called the overworld and the underworld. Overworld is just generic fantasy land with some ebin twists, like corpses that aren't buried or destroyed turning into undead automatically, fuckhuge kaiju monsters that hunt and devour mages and keep human civilization from advancing, and maze forests where time-space is distorted populated by uncanny valley "elf" slenderman monsters.
The underworld is ruled over by an enormous sapient black cloud that blocks out the sun for that entire side of the world. It is one of the few tangible gods in the setting. It enforces cartoonish stupid evil in everyone who lives there and helps cackling mustache twirling villains rise to power.
Planescape as written by Pratchett with the aesthetics of Kill Six Billion Demons.
>>47264546
I personally love reading these threads and stealing slivers of ideas or entire concepts for use in my own games or stories.
but hey, if you don't like these threads, the best use of your time would be to read these threads and post in these threads trying to convince other people that they shouldn't try to get anything out of these threads because you don't.
>>47259369
Everything is elves.
>>47259369
Everyone is dead and nothing actually matters.
>>47264664
What system? Sounds like it could be a good bit of fun for a short campaign.
>>47270906
Hey!
That's my setting.
>>47271304
I haven't made it yet. Hence it's a work in progress.
The world is a novel being written by its creator god, senile and dribbling in a dilapidated hovel at the edge of the universe. He has good days and bad days, but he never stops writing. Some of his penned works created golden ages that lasted decades while others have allowed the horrors beyond the hovel to seep into the fictional world. These horrors are a blight upon the novel and thus, the world within it. Black ink-stains obscure history and mar the unwritten future, all that touch it are consumed.
The author hopelessly tries to recall a family, if ever he had one. Longing for the love of these figures, he has created his own. Figures of legend, reoccurring characters who attempt to fend off the stains in the name of their great God, crop up throughout his current novel. Acting as figures of his changeable will, they inspire hope and terror based on the tides of the creators illness. On the bleakest of days, the Author gives up hope and casts aside the novel in a fit of despair. He will rage for a time before starting a fresh novel, determined that this one will fulfil him in some meaningful way.
Nobody in any of the many worlds he's written knows they exist in this medium, the pipe-dreams of a demented God. But they are born by his hand and will die by his misguided wrath. Tone is Nobledark, everything in the world starts out grand and optimistic. But as the Authors hands tremble, ink is spilt upon the pages and the darkness manifests itself in the world as blights upon the land, slowly expanding and consuming all it touches.
>>47264392
I like this one.
9/10 would play
>>47259369
It's half political intrigue space opera, half semi-shonen-tier space opera. Painfully unoriginal. Players love it.
Humanity discovered a source of near-infinite energy, allowing them to bend the world to their will like never before. Monolithic skyscrapers as wide as a small town stretched miles into the sky, holding hundreds of thousands of people in total self-sufficiency. A titanic ring encircled the Earth, serving as a colony and port in space. Explosive population growth lead to idyllic cities being built beneath the waves.
But this energy was nowhere near clean, though it didn't matter. The poisonous effects could be easily kept at bay by the godlike defiance of thermodynamics they wielded. Then something happened. A solar storm, polar shift, vast malfunction, it doesn't matter, but the enormous machines cleaning up after the reactors generating the same power they ran on, failed. A miasma covered the surface of the planet, killing millions. Infrastructure collapsed, and plunged the world back into the dark ages. The only ones to survive were either too high or too low to be killed by the plague, and eked out a miserable existence preying on the ruins of the old world and each other. After millions of years, very few could still be identified as human. Those trapped in the towers evolved into hunched feathered winged creatures. The flooded underwater cities are filled with blind amphibious horrors. The surface is inhabited only by barely ambulatory beings living off whatever organic molecules they can filter from the air.
Dont sleep on acid.
Im thinking of blatantly ripping off this one setting from a book Im reading. A star fell into the ocean near a large island, and when the seers foretold its explosion after thousands of years of sleeping, the king sends out an explorer to find his people a new home. He lands on a continent on the other side of the ocean, and meets a dragon who's taken on the form of a woman. After he leaves, she gives birth to three daughters, each of which can only see the past, present or future. The king builds a fleet of a thousand ships and sails his people across the ocean. By sailing across the prime meridian from one magic place to another, they all stop aging. Their descendants also live extraordinarily long, but are not immortal. Their children live even less long, and so on. The king marries the seer of the past, to cement his rule over the land that was once the domain of the dragon. Their children are human, but have the compulsion for treasure of a dragon, and the power to sense anything within a five mile radius of them to the minutest detail. Then theres a race of guys who are basically Daredevil, swords made of primal elements, dead kingdoms in the mountains, a sleeping dragon that makes up a sixth of the earth's mass, bards are seriously OP, scales that can weigh ideas, some asshole with a machine that can edit time, fire spirits bent on watching the world burn possessing people, so much cool shit.
>>47259369
There is a Town, and half a days rode from the Town is a Dungeon.
I'll get to the rest when it comes up.
>>47259369
Metal helps spellcasters focus spells, making all the best casters superpowered knight
Its pretty much the Edge Chronicles. Thank god nobody playing read those when they were kids.
>>47271741
That sounds pretty fun
>>47259369
Industry and progress is making great strides for humanity but the forest's aren't holding up well.
Meanwhile, the PCs have found gainful employment as guards in a town along a now mostly abandoned trade route that is right in the middle of what is left of the magic wilds.
>forest is getting pissed
>town and the PCs have to deal with the consequences
>townfolk actively deny anything weird is happening, cuz the king REALLY doesn't like unregulated magic and might burn the forest, and their town with it, to the ground
>>47259369
Gods are waging war across the planes and the PCs are working to ruin it all by unleashing constructs that seek to destroy all of reality in return for magical weapons and armor. All the while the planar aberration police are trying to save the multi-verse and are failing.
>>47259369
Everyone is born good as a rule, but the world is dicks and people become dicks to avoid being dicked by it.
I have a bunch of settings, but I have one that's my 'main' setting.
There's an infinite realm of energy in which pockets of denser or more intense energies form and react, these often result in universes. The All, this particular universe, is one of these. It's a highly reactive place in which the world formed naturally, as well other things, like vast intelligences. The universe was connected to that infinite outer energy, but the world wasn't - it was cut off from that. As it fell in the chaotic universe, it created a trail of empty space behind it.
Life filtered down from the stars onto planet surface, but many died on the way down. Their corpses created Wells from which the first life sprang. The first life on the world was a race of pygmies who built a vast tower in which they all lived. But the now people were dying, and their souls drifted towards that empty space in the sky. Soon, so many died, that space, the Wake, burst open. Outside energies came in and reinvigorated the dead inside that Wake, but also lent the world a faint drift of energy.
The pygmies spread across the world and evolved into humans. The setting itself is one section of a vast, vast world and is a refined bronze/iron age in tech level, but there's some people out there still using stone and bone. Civilization is centred around a great bay inhabited by two races of humans, Earthmen and Greymen. Earthmen came from the vast open east, along the river and beyond. Greymen lived around the bay first. Both get along very well. Along the river and Rivermen, an older strain of Earthmen. To the north is scorching desert and the sinister, isolationist, tyrannical Sunmen.
In the wilds are Beastmen, a totemic barbarian race, Orcs, a horde of monsters of all shapes and sizes, the dreadful and unnatural dragons and wyrms, there are races of men not of the Bay, too, plus remnants of the ancient Pygmy race, and more things yet to be discovered.
There's magic, but that's several posts unto itself.
Its a lot like Mount and Blade. Not like the factions and people, but that the nobility is made up of unkillable men with fighting skills and endurance far above the normal person, who exist only to fight constant, meaningless wars. Most are hedonistic fools, but there are some with the intelligence to go with their strength, who are working for good or ill. The peasantry are dirt poor from the constant warfare, yet still go off to die in hope of a better life. The merchant class are all subservient to their lords, and are mercilessly attacked by rivals and bandits. The countryside is filled with criminals numbering in the thousands, made up of deserters from the uncountable smashed armies.
Basically, unless you are a lord or are working for a currently winning one, you are fucked.
>>47264379
...I kind of like this. Similar to, but not quite the same as, an idea I've been fiddling with for how Creation started. Plus, the idea of Chaos randomly generating entire bits and pieces of reality by virtue of incoherently screaming is about as metal as it comes.
>>47276448
Isn't that like a corrupted Valhalla?
>>47259369
I'm actually trying to slowly stitch all of my previous campaign maps together into one giant fantasy world, but sadly I lost a bunch of them, have no motivation to see it through and I'm absolutely horrible when it comes to photoshopping anything.
>>47264444
Can't speak for the rest of the reprobates here, but as far as these and similar, 'How does [x] work in your setting' threads go, like as not I'll find something that catches my attention and either comment on it, or build on it, as the mood strikes.
Eh, it's something to do. Plus, I've gotten some useful ideas (or seeds for ideas) from these sorts of threads sometimes, as well, so I'm not about to complain.
>>47274831
Thats weirdly similar to the last fever-dream-like book that /lit/ collectively wrote.
>>47259369
First there were dragons.
The dragons were pretty self sufficient for a while, then one day they noticed some of their food was penning in some of their other food. Determining that the one type of food was actually seemingly intelligent they had an idea: What if they made their food work FOR them?
Dragons domesticated humans and used them as worshippers/slave labor to feed the dragons and find shiny things for them. Eventually they bred the other races, elves for attractiveness, goblins for use as shock troops, ogres for elite combat units. The dragons used their toys for entertainment as well, bloodsport and other such things.
Eventually the people realized that the dragons they worshipped weren't actually gods and began to work against them, culminating in a massive rebellion that killed most of the lizards. The dragons had become complacent and weak as the humanoids had been doing everything for them for centuries and thus fell easily.
The elves were the closest to the dragons and had the most loyalists, so their numbers were depleted and they were made second class citizens. Humans took charge because they were the second most numerous and the goblins couldn't run shit. Since then they've been building a new society for themselves from scratch.
>>47262772
>>47264392
>>47267105
>>47271741
>>47275152
These all sound fun.
>>47259369
typical fantasy medieval era, except not-africa was wiped out by a meteor before it was discovered by not-europe
