I'm trying to make a setting for a potential RP, and I'd like some more suggestions and advice for me to implement. As of now, I've only got 6 things down pact that I want to keep as a main(?) thing.
1. The setting is nearly constantly raining, and when it's not it's overcast. Fog is prominent, and come winter there is snow, but not too much of it. Maybe 2 inches.
2. Every person has a sword. This sword is their name. If you die and someone picks up your sword, they take on that name. If they have more then one sword, the two names are said as one, with the initial name first until he drops one of the swords.
Ex: Brian picks up Rose's sword. His name is now Brianrose. If he trades it out or no longer has it in his possession, he goes back to Brian.
If one's sword is damaged from something other then combat, the owner is shamed.
3. I'd like an east-asian theme. I like the architecture and the weapon philosophies.
4. Magic exists, but it's highly rare. Only select few can control it.
5. I'd like it to be a dark fantasy, with monsters being super rare too.
6. I'd like water travel to be used more frequently then even horses, and travel consists of taking a boat, walking a little while, before crossing a bridge, and then another boat etc...
I'm kinda interested in basically an asian version of Berserk, compared to Berserk's Euro style.
What kind of foods would grow here?
How would the people build their houses?
Why would all the houses be on stilts? Why wouldn't they be?
How could you justify players having magic?
What kinds of problems would occur more commonly?
Would God(s) be important?
What kinds of resources would be prominent?
Which professions will be common?
How would science improve over time?
What would the BBEG be?
What are the BBEG's plans?
An answer to any of these questions would be appreciated.
>>43600894
Houses would be on stilts because floods. There may be a flooding season.
How do people get their swords?
>>43600894
>>43601648
How can you even mine the ores with so much rain? Metal would be a bitch to get. People would probably have seriously weird diets too.
Those who control the high grounds would rule all.
How does the sword thing get enforced? Why do people carry swords so religiously? How does that work for security around important people?
Travel would just stop entirely in winter under these conditions. You'd need a lot of stockpiling. People would probably value long term planning over other virtues.
Animals would be difficult to keep. Fishing would be something everyone is involved in.
>>43600894
>What would the BBEG be?
A setting implies that you're building a world, so this is an incredibly backwards question to be thinking about when you're already very plainly have trouble with basic geography.
>>43600894
>6.
This made me imagine a world consisting of small continents filled with rivers and countless archipelagos. Could be very prone to natural accidents and tragedies, so I'd say people would at least tend to have some superstitions. As the setting would be asian, maybe some animism would work.
Could see legends about the world originating from the slayed corpse of a powerful and ancient being being applied and working too. Water believed to be the blood of said being and venerated as origin of life. Rivers had as wounds caused by titanic swords of smaller deities, which caused the ancient being's downfall. Maybe it could somehow explain or relate to why this society gives so much importance to swords.
Still on religious aspects and influence of swords, maybe blacksmithing could be an much more refined art, restricted to monasteries? Could be the common way to someone receive first sword and name.
>>43601648
Flooding season sounds excellent.
Perhaps the swords are passed down? Maybe there is a large constant of swords and people are issued them by the local gvt?
>>43601838
Metal mines perhaps would be in the mountains?
Why not a sword religion? Also, I was thinking that everyone would have a sword, but not everyone would carry them. Some people would rather leave their sword at home so that it isn't damaged during the workday.
Animals could be a privilege of the rich who employ peasants to farm for them, where they sell the food at a high price.
>>43602256
Superstitions and stockpiling would be an interesting combo.
Kinda like a buddhist/hindu crossover?
Very Bionicle, but sure. This could work. Not exactly what I was thinking of though.
Blacksmiths as monks, maybe praising the sword god? (Swords for the sword god!)
it sounds like there will be lots of swamps/marshes , food would be rice , a shitton of weird mushrooms and insects as protein supply
you should google some swamp flora and fauna and you have an idea what i am talking about
a problem would be mosquitos and other bloodsuckers and their diseases , and due to high air humidity there would be growing mold everywhere on wooden houses
there would be a shitton of amphibians and crabs walking around outside the water
>>43602390
Not familiar with Bionicle. By animism was trying to refer to Shintoism, spirits of nature. The talk about water and names made me immediately remember the spirit of the river Haku (Spirited Away).
On the other hand rivers and swords made me think about something like the Record of Lodoss ("the giant's flesh became the land, the blood became the oceans", but also with wounds as rivers). But how society could interpret the mentioned ancient being (God or Devil? To all society or different forms of belief and faith?) I left to OP.
>>43602592
Makes sense
Got it
If mold was everywhere, do you think the people would be wise enough to create something to counter that?
Ok, I see it.
>>43602696
See pic
I feel like the world being a god would explain why people would want to carry fancy swords everywhere, in support fro their god.
>>43601838
>How can you even mine the ores with so much rain?
They could do it the Japanese way by just smelting shitty iron sands because there were no particularly rich veins of iron in the area.
>>43603097
Can you elaborate?
>>43602794
There may be a lot of humidity from nearby water, but not necessarily mold. I mean, it's not like ocean-hugging jungle in islands of the Pacific from SE Asia to the Philippines are particularly fraught with mold, and they're humid as shit.
>>43603133
You don't know your basic weeaboo history on damn 4chan?
The Japanese had little to no rich iron veins to directly mine. Importing iron or steel from mainland Asia would have been egregiously expensive for most of their history post-steel weaponry adoption.
They solved this by ignoring mining for iron on the large scale and taking shitty iron sands from Tatara and smelting the shit out of it to get usable iron rather than from direct iron ore you dig up.
From the honestly pretty-low-quality-still steel they got, they put relatively high amounts of effort in to hammering out the impurities and finally ending up with the katana meme of BEING FOLDED 50000 TIMES TO CUT CARS etc.
In essence, they had to go the long, detail-oriented, shitty, arduous way to produce steel on their island simply because access to iron ore was near non-existent.
It's also a factor of why so much of their aesthetics and carpentry don't use metals unless for small vanity additions (and why they didn't use nails for wood housing and instead have freakishly difficult joinistry techniques to hold shit together). Metals, up until sea travel from the mainland became cheaper, went at an artificially high premium in Japan and thus was reserved mostly for the very wealthy for conspicuous consumption, or for government use as weapons or other shit that wasn't daily knives for people to use.
>>43603202
Thanks Anon.
Hmmm, I wonder how bullshit it'd be for iron sand to be prominent below the rivers and seas of this place...
>>43603258
I'm sorry, but I'm legitimately asking this with as little incredulity as I can muster: can you not think critically for some reason?
Where the heck do you think most sand comes from? From mountains?
No, it freaking comes from the places near water. Incidentally iron sand just can happen other places (that were once underwater in geological history), and doesn't even need water, but the fact that it's sand to begin with should tip you off that presence in water in localized areas shouldn't be overly an issue. Japan for example is already a goddamn island surrounded on all sides by ocean but iron sands are found mostly in a few prefectures..
>>43603318
I understand where sand comes from, but I mean as if Iron sand could be everywhere, or if it's rare. This I do not know about.
>>43603347
It's your setting, make it up. Geology does whatever the shit it wants, particularly when you understand that geological time is a thing, and it's fucking long.
Look at the Giant's Causeway.
Just make sure to remember to make iron sand relatively localized for "mother lode" areas, regardless of its overall abundance across the setting.
Also, iron toxicity may or may not be an issue depending on wildlife, bioaccumulation, and the form of iron the sands are if they're near freshwater (in general it shouldn't do anything bioactively because it's the wrong chemical form, but it's a consideration if there's quite a lot of it).
>>43603394
Hypothetically, if there was a lot of iron in one of these spots, what would happen?
>>43603423
It would be an area where there would be a lot of smelting/steelworking in a pre-industrial society. Steel from there would be relatively cheaper depending on the quality of the initial sands for iron (which would mean lesser smelting effort/time for better-quality iron and steel).
If it was the only place where source iron for steel could be reliably gotten, iron sand or post-smelting iron ingots for use by smiths elsewhere would be a prime export and commodity from that region.
As well, it would be a pretty good place to own, and thusly possibly expect a lot of attacks to control it. However, Japan more or less sidestepped warfare over iron sand deposits despite iron sand only being in a few areas for reasons I don't know myself. I would assume that controlling the sand areas means nothing if the smiths who put in the time and effort to get something useful from it are dead from war.
