'I'm Projecting' Edition
On designing cultures:
http://www.frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir%27s_Ethnographical_Questionnaire
Random generators:
http://donjon.bin.sh/
Mapmaking tutorials:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48
Free mapmaking toolset:
www.inkarnate.com
Random Magic Resources/Possible Inspiration:
http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html
http://www.buddhas-online.com/mudras.html
http://sacred-texts.com/index.htm
Conlanging:
http://www.zompist.com/resources/
Random (but useful) Links:
http://futurewarstories.blogspot.ca/
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
http://military-sf.com/
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/
http://donjon.bin.sh/
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/index.html
http://kennethjorgensen.com/worldbuilding/resources
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/europe#wiki_middle_ages
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding
I'm hoping /tg/ can help me with something.
So, in my setting when the humans started to spread out from notAfrica and mess with everything the elves did as elves do and fucked off to their island refuge by ship. Said refuge is located in a large sea/small ocean centralized between notEurope, notAfrica and notAsia.
What I'm trying to decide is how far away to make these islands from the continental shores to make them, if not necessarily unreachable by, at least relatively isolated from humans with late-Iron-Age/early-Medieval shipping technology.
>>47628385
I think you can't with a sea of that size. Think about the distances Polynesians were able to cross.
You know the Saint Helena? The place where Napoleon was exiled after the Hundred Days campaign? More or less a similar distance.
>>47628927
This was meant for >>47628385
>>47628385
Maybe you should focus on the geography of the island. There can be a bunch of cliffs and jagged rocks that discourages sailors. Maybe magic can create some kind of constant storm around the island but not on the island itself.
>>47628385
Instead of distance, maybe make it about the island itself. It could be surrounded by high sheer cliffs making it essentially impossible to dock, with the civilization too far inland to see from the ocean. Otherwise, there's not really any distance that would make it "impossible".
>>47629169
>>47629243
Jinx!
>>47628385
Hold up there for a second. ALL elves fuck off to ONE SMALL island FOREVER?
Don't you wanna give them a continent or somethning?
>>47628385
Sounds like you need some Krakens.
Those who bear the blood of $elf_deity may pass, and all others find out the "Here be Dragons" is not metaphorical.
>>47629476
There might not be very many elves. Even if there are, they might be very space efficient. I think every human on Earth can fit into a space a few miles by a few miles or something.
>>47628385
would a small polar continent with a magically-not-frozen central region work?
>>47628920
Well, the idea isn't that it's unreachable, just fairly out of the way. I've been trying to use iron-age trade routes as a rough estimate.
And it should be noted that the polynesians are kind of an outlier; no other civilizations that I'm aware made anywhere near the same length of naval journey until centuries later.
>>47629169
>>47629243
As I was saying, it's not meant to be 100% unreachable, just a good distance. I'll keep the geographic ideas in mind. I'm already thinking of something from the Acacia series (if anyone else on /tg/ has read that).
I'm also considering a strong encircling current that can fuck up ships not built to age of sail standards.
>>47629476
It's a series of large islands roughly equivalent to several Japans/New Zealands.
And no, it's not all the elves; far from it. Only the 'advanced' elves and those who followed them went to islands. There are still wild elves ranging from D&D tree-huggie to outright feral scattered in remote locations all over the world for pretty much every biome imaginable.
>>47629681
>no other civilizations that I'm aware made anywhere near the same length of naval journey until centuries later.
Vikings
>It's a series of large islands roughly equivalent to several Japans/New Zealands.
Yeah that's okay then.
Press ENTER to generate the universe.
>
BASIC UNIVERSE INFORMATION:
Universe HAS realistic science.
Universe HAS realistic history.
Universe HAS low fantasy elements.
Universe DOESNT have Science Fiction elements.
Casting magic is impossible on this universe
Magic Items are impossible to be created on this universe.
magic ocurrences (monsters, magic fields.....) are impossible to happen on this
universe.
There is more than one god on this universe.
Time travel with magic is impossible.
COSMOLOGY INFO
Setting date: 2015.0 years AC
Number of stars on universe:2128597676419148605202
Number of star systems on universe:1126236401590997697780
The average number of stars on a star system:1.8900096582
Number of planets on universe:1384934293393125933056
Average number of planets per star system:1.22970123452
Amount of planets (terraformed or not) that can support non magical life: 1
Living beings were formed on this amount of planets: 1
What the next next should be? The next generated thing?
>>47629852
>What the next next should be?
next step
>>47629561
They could roughly fit into Rhode Island, give or take a little spillover.
>>47629757
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the Vikings make their cross-Atlantic journey in a series of steps- like from Scandinavia to Iceland, Kceland to Greenland, etc?
It's still in the 1000 km range and pretty impressive but not necessarily beyond what their contemporaries were doing in the Indian Ocean and the central body of water in my setting is going to have at least a couple thousand km of open water.
>>47630171
Yeah, but the Polynesians had plenty of stepping stones too. What really fascinates me about the Austronesian peoples is that they managed to colonize all those islands from Madagascar to New Zealand to Hawaii and beyond, and it can all be traced back to tiny little Taiwan.
General question: how do you make a world feel bigger than the PCs?
I forever run into the problem where the PCs have a minor legal dispute, or want to see a prisoner and they go "let's go see the king!"
Logically the king will slap their shit for speaking to him, and they really want the... I dunno, chancellor's vice deputy or some shit, but no PC group has ever thought this way as far as I know.
How do I make my PCs feel... not insignificant, but like their story is not as big as the world. They will change the face of their lives, their neighbourhood, but not the planes themselves, yanno?
>>47631414
You could make a big deal out of the smaller guy they're going to see. So, yeah, it's just the chancellor's vice deputy, but have him come in in colourful robes and with a few of his own assistants and with some big bags of gold. Your hierarchical autism can be sated but without the players feeling like they're being handed off to some shit tier civil servant.
Alternatively, run campaigns to accomodate your players tastes. I like kind of low ranking feudalistic medieval settings and I'm running one right now, but it's become clear to me my players much prefer higher fantasy stuff where they can go to see the king whenever they want, so in future I'll be running campaigns where that sort of thing is possible.
>>47631649
I feel even a mid-ranking royal official shoukd be appropriately impressive to the average person in a pseudo-medieval setting. I think a lot of it comes down to the players ability to roleplay and see through the eyes of their characters.
>>47629681
>>47629169
As I understand, things like coral reefs just bellow the surface are even more dangerous than visible rocks. And once one or two ships reck, nobody else is going to want to come by.
Of course, the residents would know the presice route to get to safety.
>>47631414
They speak to the local administrator of the Royal Bureau of Adventurers' Affairs and Military Subcontracting.
>>47631414
I think you certainly need to include those kinds of people, if it's anything legal related than maybe they have a minister of justice of something similar.
Generally I think including people that are higher ranking or simply better than them helps give them perspective as to how they fit into the world. These characters do need to fleshed out though in order to give them that sense of greatness and grandeur, similar to what >>47631649 said.
Bump for worldbuilding.
What would be some important magical inventions?
Transportation and warfare are obvious, but what else? Medicine? Food supply?
>>47637592
Well food and water is a no brainer. Where people can find food and water is going to define where they live, so if your magic can summon water or food in sufficient quantities, your people can live just about anywhere, but will become dependent on a constant volume of magic-produced food.
>>47637687
I'd figure that magically-created food could only be in quantities of simple things; flour, rice, oats, etc.
You can create as much food and water as you want, but you still need to cook it into bread or flavor it.
That way, there'd still be incentive for restaurants and ale brewers.
>>47638128
Well, it's magic, so it works however you want it to work.
just a question on scale, how big is middle earth to westeros to real life places?
wondering because i like the size of these settings things are far away but not too far that you'd never see each side if you tried.
>>47631414
you tell them: "Generally you would know that this is too high a sation for the type of complaitn you have. You have grown up in this culture so I'm giving it to you as preexisting knowledge."
And variations
>>47640964
Westeros is meant to be the size of South America, but presumably has some sort of high-speed horse network that allows people to travel across it like it was merely the size of england
>Setting is fantasy europe
>Fluff out the five countries that I care about
>Russia ends up still being Russia, but with more bears
>It's so far away I don't care, players will never get there
>Player complains about the setting's schizophrenia
>Turns out he didn't read past the first page showing country names
Anyone got that RAGED HARD pic? Thanks, that'd be great.
>>47640964
>dat fucking map
>can't unsee
I finished my Stars Without Number sector map, now to get to work on the HTML doc!
Does /tg/ & World Building General have any suggestions for planet names?
>>47643634
Depends on the kinds of culture, stars without Number assumes a continuation of existing cultures.
What's the most interesting thing in the sector?
Bump for worldbuilding.
>>47627811
>no Dymaxian Projection
TRIGGERED
>>47646395
>no Waterman
Even worse.
>>47627811
Where these map projections designed by the Wu Tang Clan or someshit?
>>47628385
Medieval ships weren't range-limited, but were strongly limited by the types of harbors they could dock in.
Make your Elf Island have really high tides and steep cliffs - the water near shore is at least 100m deep, so there isn't any shallow plateaus of water that would allow for safe docking.
Do that and you can make an impenetrable fortress that has fucking line of sight to the mainland, if you want.
Otherwise, your only real defense is making the island so damn small that ships sail past it without noticing.
It really is about the safe harbors a ship can dock in.
>>47640964
Roughly three thousand miles by a thousand at its widest point.
>>47641978
I wasn't aware it takes like three months to travel half of England on horse.
Can someone help me figure out how global temperatures work beyond the obvious of latitude and elevation?
Specifically I'm trying to figure out why western Europe stays so much warmer than similar latitudes in North America and eastern Eurasia.
>>47647719
Sea currents.
>>47646395
>>47646533
>>47646565
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/Why isn't this added to the OP yet?
>>47643621
But that's literally how the author designed it. I think Essos is Turkey or something like that.
>>47641978
Doesn't it take several months for people to travel from King's Landing to Winterfell? I remember Arya needed like one and a half years to get from Landing to Riverrun(yeah okay, she got caught and released like a dozen times in the meantime).
What really put me off is the lightning fast ravens that reliably carry news from one continent to the other.
>>47649477
Essos is entire non-knightly Eurasia.
>>47649547
I meant the shape of the continent, not its culture.
I have a question. How do I make supernatural beings and phenomenons accessible without making them mundane?
I had this idea that different types of magic are connected to different spheres of superconsciousness. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-circuit_model_of_consciousness
In short, the fifth circuit is used by bardic magic and all kinds of magic trickery.
The sixth circuit is basically arcane magic and allows to perform spells that are usually restricted to one single school.
The seventh circuit is used by druids in space, but not time, and by shamans in time, but not space. Druids connect to all living things that are currently around and shamans connect to all the ancestors and descendants of their targets and themselves.
The eighth circuit allows for a connection with divine or infernal beings and is thus interesting for priests, warlocks and the like.
Cont.
>>47650021
The thing is, in the RPGs I know, gods, demons, Great Old Ones and all that are very real creatures. They all have a body, that can be statted, encountered, and killed. I want them to be very real in my setting too - but I don't want mortal adventurers to be able to encounter them face to face, let alone just kill them for some loot. I want the divine and the infernal to remain supernatural and intangible.
But what does that imply for clerics, warlocks and others who get their power from angels and demons? How can they still be in the same party as a wizard and a barbarian?
>>47649053
I came here to post this. Fucking great tool there. Shame you can'tfullscreenit.
