Where the fuck do I start when it comes to unique astronomy and the logic or science behind it? Planes, flat planets, dyson spheres, living on the back of a giant turtle hurdling through the cosmos and all sorts of other junk. Are there any references or history behind examples of these types of worlds?
It's so hard trying to just find a starting point.
>>43931514
What are you even asking? If you're looking for hypothesis on how it would play out then refer back to the novels of the authors you're referencing, Pratchett, Niven ect.
>>43931514
Read classic mythologies. Egyptian, Greek, Mayan, Norse, etc. They've all got some weird neat shit in them to take inspiration from.
Have some sort of consistent forms/magic/numina thing to connect otherwise impossible ideas, and you're set.
Maybe a sketch pad for doodling maps. You can look at old cartography. Its neat.
>>43931686
I'm looking for any steps used in the process of constructing an expanded world, really. Does the solar system come first? Or the geography of the world the campaign will take place on? It's hard for me to work on something new without a reference point.
>>43931514
I once ran a one shot quest where the "ocean planet" setting was actually a fleck of saliva in a vast plume produced by the roaring Father Creator.
Of course, none of the (5) players knew that since we were a tiny baby lizard.
>>43931730
Pick some themes or images you like and go from there. Build around a few ideas that work well with what sort of game you're going to be playing.
Want high fantasy where the players are agents of the gods? Probably make a heirachy of beings/souls. Want low grit, probably don't even have to worry too much about what the different types of angels there are, more about where the peasants think the sun goes at night time.
>>43931774
All five of your players were a songle tiny lizard?
Damn son that is one smart lizard.
>>43931514
What >>43931729 said, with the addition of Hindu for that world turtle. Maybe a little Chinese, too.
You can also just skim everyone's creation myths, that usually covers things.
Also Bionicle.
>>43931730
You can either A:
Take the Top-Down Carl Sagan approach: "If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Hop into a worldbuilding thread and learn about climates and shit, make one yourself for giggles, and then try to find the logical ways life and civilization would develop.
Or B:
Take the Bottom-Up piecemeal approach. Come up with locations, characters, geo-political features, and connect them in realistic ways. Don't worry about looking up the science/logic behind anything until you need it. This is effective for DM's without shitloads of time because it's more story focused. However, you can get yourself into binds where there's no good explanation for something. Worst case scenario you just retcon it, but it's also usually viable to leave it vague and unexplained.
Or C:
The Fuck You it's Magic approach. Do whatever you want, because it's magic and you ain't gotta explain shit. Flat earth with impossible gravity? Sure. The moon is actually just a white armadillo? No problem.
Of course, some mixing and matching always possible with these approaches. You can do A, but know in advance you want a proud desert empire to rule the center of the map. Or you can resolve conundrums in B with C, ect.
>>43931730
>I'm looking for any steps used in the process of constructing an expanded world, really
Don't do that.
You will not ever make use of it.
>>43932246
it's more like i can't work without a gentle nudge in the right direction which >>43932180
has effectively done for me, my mind is definitely on track now
thanks for the advice, people
a wizard did it
>>43932289
Might not hurt to ask your players for a few things they're interested in and include them.
we worldbuilding thread now?
>>43932338
hell yes
Posted this in the other thread. I'm pretty new to mapmaking and worldbuilding. Here's my first map. I went through a bunch of paint/GIMP/Photoshop guides before finding one that actually worked. It looks like shit, but I like it. Not close to being done, just wanted to share it with someone.
>>43931514
Read conspiracy theories and crazy religious criticisms of mainstream scientific theory. I'm not talking about "the government is controlled by aliens" or "dinosaur bones are from the flood" type stuff.
I'm talking about "gravity is a lie" type stuff.
>>43932338
God I hope so. I'd love to talk about my setting thatis actually a giant decaying lovecraftian space whale
I recently did a flat world setting. I'm the type of person who has a hard time with saying "fuck you it's magic," so this took effort. I established that the world was a disk. It had a constant spit, creating ocean/air currents, as well as slowly rotating, creating seasons. The sun and moons orbited around the planet. I spent weeks poring over worldbuilding guides, climate guides, geology and physics textbooks, etc. in order to make an internally consistent world. The absolute fundamentals of the world (gravity, astrophysics, source of water) were magic, and the rest was the logical result of that magical foundation.
>>43932180
>The moon is actually just a white armadillo
One day, when the stars are right, the armadillo will wake and do battle with the coyote of the sun to decide the fate of the world
>>43932386
>gravity is a lie
It's a well-known fact that the phenomenon referred to by the brainwashed slaves of the king as "gravity" is actually the side-effect of the actions of a god known as Gik-Kang whose gentle pushes ensure that Ezorath, its moons, and the tears of Sela don't suddenly fly in all directions, shredding all life to bits. We must appease Gik-Kang with constant sacrifices, for without his intelligent pushing we are doomed.
>spoilers
Come, friend, I've found a rich vein of white-matter down this fissure. Just a little mining and our lamps will burn for another year!
>>43932630
Don't listen to the college of wizards! Their claim that the world is flat is only a theory! The world is actually round!
What do you guys use to make maps? I'm having a hard time putting geography on my map.
>>43931514
The image here really triggers me; what is Arkay orbiting exactly? Also, how long before Akatosh is either torn apart or flung into interstellar space?
>>43933087
I've always fallen back on a random fractal world map:
http://donjon.bin.sh/world/
Overlay a hex grid and you have manageable sized regions to trace and make slightly more artsy hand drawn maps.
Work out the climates by adding key lines of latitude and looking at the relief of the fractal map.
I find the original fractal map stops be from going crazy with planning coasts and bays. As well as mitigating rainshadow splerg.
>>43933527
> what is Arkay orbiting exactly?
It isn't orbiting anything; it's simply moving in a circle. Planets in the Elder Scrolls are not planets-as-in-giant-balls-of-rock-or-gas, and they're certainly not moved by Newtonian gravity.
>>43932366 here
we updated map now. I know it looks fucking awful. It's my first go at an actual map. The brown stuff is a rainshadow. I've yet to draw mountains separating the two areas. Any tips/advice?
>>43933527
"In the Elder Scrolls universe, a "plane" and a "planet" are one and the same; that is, there is nothing in the mortal plane of Nirn except for the planet Nirn. What mortals see as the moons and planets are nothing more than the mortal brain's attempt to interpret the presence of the divine planes surrounding Nirn."
Also, interstellar space isn't. The blackness is the plane of Oblivion, and the "stars" are the holes punched in it to Aetherius when various beings ascended to godhood.
>>43933834
Oh boy.
Is there a mapmaking thread up right now? If there is, you should go there.
If not, well,
You need mountains separating that desert from the green. From the ocean as well. The mountains stop the rain from traveling to the desert, keeping it dry.
After that you can have rivers feeding from the mountains to the green area.
Do you want your map to kind of glow like that?
>>43934623
Oh, I know about the mountains. I just haven't gotten around to adding them, the rivers...etc. I'm kind of re-thinking the glow. It wasn't supposed to look so...shit. Picture related is what I have now as the ocean. Stick with this or solid color light blue?
>>43934742
You should probably match whatever style you have going for the land.
You can also use it to show water depth.
In a fantasy setting I am working on I have three planets. Two are relatively easy one is earth-like (two major contentment groups relatively mild temperatures, mostly water) and the other is a smaller, warmer planet covered in mostly shallow sea, island chains, and archipelagos it has a short year and fast day night cycle.
What I am not familiar with is the last planet. The basic idea is that it is a larger, colder planet with a single massive landmass. I have looked at models of Pangaea, but Im still not sure exactly what to do with it. My current understanding is that the the center of the landmass would be an arid desert with wild temperature swings across the seasons and massive monsoon and drought seasons. Also having a bunch of continental plates pressed together mean there would be wild mountain ranges with tons of active volcanoes across the planet. Most of the planet would be uninhabitable because of a lack of food and water so only small populations exist.
Four races live on the planet
Dark Elves who who I figure would have a fairly traditional empire, maybe based on India because of their monsoon agriculture?
Dark Dwarves who hold up in strongholds over underground lakes and cultivate giant fungus, have giant lungfish/mud-skipper things as cattle, and breed cave fish in the lakes. Each would have varying levels of xenophobia and act as city states, with exceptions.
Small populations of orc raiders. Most have moved off planet because of the hostile conditions making building a civilization difficult and bad blood between the other races.
Finally Gnolls that live in small tribes that have adapted to desert life. Unable to really leave there grounds, they would attack any and everything that passes through. Conquering other tribes and abandoning old territory so it can regrow is common as well as cannibalism.
Its in a very early stage, and I don't have a map yet, but I am just looking for some help brainstorming and refining ideas.
>>43933834
The spur at the bottom right looks like it could be the heel of a mountain chain projecting past the coastal relief. Perhaps instead of having a straight north-south mountain chain (as seems to be indicated by the rain-shadow), you could follow the spur inland to create the line.
How large is the island? The main pentagon shape with its jagged coast and multiple points looks like it could have two or three mountain/hill chains going across, while the peninsula to the bottom left looks like it could be a separate landform, maybe a highlands massif, connected to the rest of the island by a lowland. The arc of the bottom coast, to me, looks smoother and more gradual than the others, so perhaps those are the lowlands where the sediment is deposited from the mountains, meeting the ocean as flat beaches or marshland?
Depending on what direction you're having rain come from, and what sort of terrain you populate the island with, you might get another less intense rainshadow from the peninsula in the bottom left corner. As a rule of thumb, the larger the landmass involved, the greater the effect of rainshadows.
>pic related, just my immediate (amateur) thoughts
>>43934742
I'd suggest sticking with a flat color, especially since test5 looks like it's showing bathymetry that doesn't match the coastline.
>>43935126
Setting is fairly low magic, with the exception of artificial portals between the three planets. Other than the portals the height of technology is comparable to early Renaissance, Wheellock and matchlock firearms, plate armor, lenses, ect. Most major technological breakthroughs were lost when a continent was destroyed in the wars that followed after the planets were connected.
>>43935159
Really useful, thanks anon. It's going to be an Earth-like planet, and my little continent is going to be in the northern hemisphere, so winds coming in from the west.
>>43933877
>the mortal brain's attempt to interpret
Ah, I can live with that. Any rage and anger has once again dissipated.
bempo
RE: history of concepts:
ringworld came from looking at dyson spheres and being like, "that whole sphere sure would take a lot of material. it wouldn't even all be usable real estate anyway- generating gravity anywhere but the equator sure would be a bitch, just don't build the tops and integrate power collection into the ring design. It'd still dwarf plaent-side power collecting."
discworld's turtle-ride setup came from mythology.
dyson spheres came from a desire to find a way to utilize the largest possible percentage of a star's power output.
so i guess, the options are neat story inspiration, neat science idea to explore, or asking"what kind of setting is needed to justify the game or story i want?"
Anyone know good alternatives to elves? I have asshole fairy elves already, and I don't want to toss in a carbon copy and call them something else. Just need some inspiration.
>>43939389
Atlantean ubermenschen
>>43932386
>that picture
Dominions 4 map when?
>>43939780
At the center of the Earth.
Honestly, we need more fantasy settings that take inspiration from Jules Verne.
>>43940063
> Space ship base to and from other galaxies
> Space ships
> Going to other galaxies
> From the middle of the fucking Earth
The hell is this
>>43935159
>>43934623
>Is there a mapmaking thread up right now? If there is, you should go there.
That thread died, but it's still in the archive.
Read it. Completely. It's very good.
>>43898547
>>43931514
>dyson spheres
>not having a carefully developed dyson swarm locked in perpetual orbit via radiation sails
Get creative motherfuckers.
In all seriousness I guess if you wanted to you could experiment with some different planetary orbits and ways to affect the seasonal changes on your homeworld.
>>43940380
Theosophy.
>>43933877
>when various beings ascended to godhood.
>When various beings said "fuck that" to creating Nirn and fucked fucked off to Aetherius
Ftfy
>>43931730
Honestly, the sky is the limit. The better you are at compelling your audience, the more outlandish the shit you can get away with.
>>43931730
the 3e manual of the planes has a lot of good info on creating cosmologies.
i assume the other editions manual of the planes would be good to.
>>43931514
>flat planet
I've been toying around with the idea of a fantasy setting that's basically a Minecraft-like infinite plane.
Putting aside the cosmology and physics (there's going to have to be a lot of 'gods did it'-handwaving), I'm getting a little bogged down trying to imagine how cultures would develop if people always have have somewhere to go after a schism, what with there being a theoretically infinite amount of land.
>>43933877
oh god that explains so much i have never been able to make sense of the elder scrolls cosmology until now
A world the size of Jupiter but hollow.
The rocky skin is amalgamations of rock around a skeleton of hyper dense matter constructed like the scaffold skeleton of God's own football.
The worlds bones are not still. The friction causes heat and movement. Which is were we get volcanoes.
It is theoretically possible to dig into the vast hollow space in the middle.
I wouldn't recommend it.
>>43933527
Lagrangian point, I believe.
>>43943689
If you adopt the now discredited belief that people and animals generate spontaneously from the earth(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation)then you don't have to worry soooo much about their being infinite empty land: actually, there isn't necessarily places for people to go because those places may have spontaneously generated their own people and creatures.
>>43943904
I had based my thinking around the notion that life or at least intelligent life had been created at one point by a divine entity.
In your example, I would have a decent reason for human cultures to behave the way they do in a general fantasy setting.
I've just been getting a bit of enjoyment over picturing different stages in the development of human culture if one important variable is changed: the value of all resources.
Depending on how isolated the different landmasses in the infinite plane are, the relative value of resources will vary wildly.
If nearly every imaginable resource is practically worthless because you can always, -always- find more if you travel far enough, it puts a whole different spin on the development of cultures and the conflicts and interactions between them.
>>43931514
Well, to start out with, there's no such thing as unique astronomy. So you can have that, or you can have logic and science. Which is more important?
>>43943955
>>43943965
Use your words. What do you mean by unique astronomy and what do you take offense with by my saying that there is a limited amount of phenomena and the vast majority are mundane and the ones that aren't you can bet you won't find life clinging to it.
>>43931514
>Only eight celestial bodies apart from Nirn
I bet the Elves did this.
>>43943955
That's a pretty interesting conclusion anon. Care to explain why you think a process for determining truth through rigorous experimentation, and reasoning would be non existent in a universe with a different cosmology?
>>43944021
There's only a limited amount of settings you can tweak on a universe, most modifications result in places where atoms can't form, so it's kind of moot. Places where they can form and life can form will be almost identical to our own, with no real special outliers. Life requires stability on the timescale of billions of years.
>>43944085
You do realize fantasy and the suspension of disbelief exist, right?
>>43944006
Talos isn't an aedric god, he is a shadow of Shor whom is a shadow of Lorkhan, why would he have a planet when he is working towards unmaking reality?
>>43944085
>magic
>gods
>random chance accelerating evolution drastically after literally uncountable universes before it.
None of which forbid either reasoning or the pursuit of truth through rigorous experimentation.
>>43944098
Not for autists it doesn't.
>>43931514
Does this mean Mara is a slut?
>>43944006
It was made before Talos ascended to godhood, but yes elves did it.
>>43944006
Well yeah, elves literally did make it. Long before Talos was born.
>>43944085
But what about all the universes without atoms, where the basic substance is Aether, or Soulstuff, or Slood?
Slood-based universes produce inteligent life automatically, and fractaly along all length scales. You generally have to take precautions that any jar of Slood in your fridge doesn't just wake up and start demanding to vote before you can eat it!
http://io9.com/what-would-the-earth-be-like-if-it-was-the-shape-of-a-d-1515700296?trending_test_two_a&utm_expid=66866090-68.hhyw_lmCRuCTCg0I2RHHtw.1
>>43944355
Oh snap, lore-slapped!
>>43944120
Not unmaking, ascending and making a new one.
You're thinking of Aldmeri Dominion or whatever those Nazis name is.
>>43931514
If you are going to have magic in your setting, determine the rules of that magic and then determine how the universe works from there. A creation myth is a good starting point.
>>43946072
i disagree creation myths just cause unnecessary complication
>>43946980
I don't know.
On one hand, yeah creation myths are a pain when making the world at the beginning, but the shit adds depth and stuff to the world so in my opinion unless the world is RL+supernatural, one should add some kind of creation story if only for your own notes
>>43949321
i should clarify its not that i dislike making creation myths i just prefer settings not to have them but its not really a big deal to me if they do.
>>43944622
No, I'm not. Lorkhan is a split of Sithis, whom is a split off PADOMAY, the universal apex spirit of dissolution and entropy. Lorkhan is the divine mutant that tricked the Aedra into creating reality prematurely and leaving it faulty and thus eventually fade back into liberating nonexistence.
How about a cubic world, where one side has a single, circular lake in the center of it, and the other five have two, three, four, five and six similarly-sized lakes on their surfaces?
>>43949567
I've found it works pretty well if you have several different ones that no one knows a lot about in day-to-day life but have clearly linked themes and variations on the story. If one city has X be a betrayer and another has X be a rebel, but all the stories be about as vague as most people's understanding of classic myths it seems more part of the world. Basically if you remove the player's meta knowledge.
>>43931514
>unique astronomy
>logic or science behind it
My advice? Stop trying to mesh those two together. All other things being equal, the most logical model will always be the one which is mathematically simplest. And simple things are rarely interesting or unique.
I suggest that you start by coming up with some contrivance on the mechanics of the system – it doesn't matter exactly what – and expound upon what that would logically entail. If you don't like how it ends up, then just come up with a new one and start again. Eventually you'll get a hang on what twists will make things interesting.
>>43949625
Sithis/padomay/whatever other gobbledygook kirkbride shits out is change, not non existence. So if existence is a thing, Sithis wants to change that, but he's also a creative type when nonexistence gets too stale. His counterpart is stasis.
>>43952841
Occam's razor isn't a rule of existence, so I have no idea why you think the simplest models are the most logical.
Whatever you even mean by that.
Quantum mechanics and the standard model is vastly more complicated than Newtonian physics, yet it also had more predictive power.
Occam's razor is just a logical triage tool: all other things being equal, simpler is usually better, bit not always so.
>>43955962
>>43952841
The simplest models are in fact the least logical, since they run on the least amount of logic. That's what simple means.
>>43949321
>creation myths are a pain when making the world at the beginning, but the shit adds depth and stuff to the world
Only if there's a meaningful or sensible way to make references to it in your actual game.
I prefer to just get cracking with things the players can interact with. Just listening to me tell a creation myth that probably isn't all that original to begin with isn't very rewarding to players.
>>43931514
Does it serve any purpose for the game?
If no - why bother
If yest - create only the parts that play certain, specific role
Nobody gives a fuck about made up astronomy, no matter how accurately it will be done.
>>43949625
>the universal apex spirit of dissolution and entropy.
What are you smoking?
Sithis is Change, to Anuiel's Stasis.
>>43961223
it's for a very large universe to be reused many times across all sorts of mediums, not only roleplay
i'd like to thank everyone for their replies by the way, it's been a big help
>>43944377
>taking steps to keep Slood from articulating its natural rights
That's a hate crime, citizen. We're going to have to revoke your Slood license.
