/lit/ - Literature

Thread Questions:
>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
>Do you prefer exotic and alien worlds or more generic ones? Why?
>What are your biggest inspirations in terms of unique settings?

>>22751435
>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
southern nation has coffee beans. Northern nations, traditionally enemies make peace and negotiate trade and ultimately create a long(er then usual) lasting peace because everyone wants coffee. Peace treaty even has a specific clause for a steady supply of coffee to the northern capital

>>22751435
>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
Well, that would probably the fact that the most addictive drug in my setting, equivalent to crack in terms of addiction, is literally fairy dust. Yeah, people turn fairies into dust and then sniff it, specially mages since fairy dust has some interesting magical properties. So if someone is hooked then that's pretty much a clear sign he or she is a mage. This has made fairy hunting a very profitable business. But due to this, fairies are very rare to find nowadays since they put much effort in hiding.
Or maybe the weirded lore is the fact that mages can not only make homunculii through alchemy, but the fact that they can basically create parasite-homunculus and bond them to their bodies. They do this to gain extra limbs or organs. Basically, the homunculus grows inside its parent-mage, like a parasite, but with limbs. This is very dangerous, though, because if not controlled strictly, the mage can lost control over the growth of his parasite, making it grow and grown until there's more homunculus than mage, creating dangerous abominations.
>Do you prefer exotic and alien worlds or more generic ones? Why?
Definetively exotic ones. If the reader wanted a generic setting there's literally thousands, why would he choose yours to spend hours of his life day dreaming?
>What are your biggest inspirations in terms of unique settings?
Morrowind, warhammer, lovecraft works, and just now, the Fear and Hunger games.

>>22751449
It would be way more interesting if it was some exotic substance instead of coffee or some kind of fictional animal product, and it was addictive as fuck or something.
Idk, i'm assuming your setting is low fantasy.

I jump around quite a bit and constantly create new worlds for each story and cast of characters I come up with. I recently decided to combine a bunch of stories together and now I have essentially one world I've been putting together for like a decade. Some proto-versions of those stories existed even earlier then that although I don't consider those to be part of my main world. I'm gonna stop hoeing around become one-world-man and it's thrilling and kind of scary with all the limitations it brings.

>>22751435
>>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
I deliberately give conflicting information about my BBEG. Partly because it's a creature of nonsense that more or less operates on toon-rules, partly because it is extremely fond of lying for no reason.
>Do you prefer exotic and alien worlds or more generic ones? Why?
As exotic and alien as possible. Low-fantasy to me is barely better than non-fiction.
>What are your biggest inspirations in terms of unique settings?
Moers sensei... I will not fail you...

>>22751520
In general its great to expand a setting with each story, but to arbitrarily limit yourself to only one definitive setting to me sounds like a bad idea, idk.
Like, what if your next creative project involves spaceships?
Don't limit yourself like that, anon.

bump

Any Priest can easily destroy any Mage in my setting. This is despite how Priests are generally unarmed men and women with no real martial skills, while Mages can destroy or create galaxies while raping the laws of physics like an ugly bastard with a hentai schoolgirl.
Holy power is basically kryptonite to Mages, and can easily dispel the strongest spells.
Knights are the middle link. They can easily kill any number of priests, but are helpless against Mages.


Is that good balance?

>>22753166
Maybe if you're designing a MMO, but realistic fights don't work like rock-paper-scissors.

>>22753166
A priestly knight with a hammer could kill either side

>>22753262
Mixing the powers is absolutely an option, but it's easier said than done. Priests need to surrender to The Almighty's will, Mages need to enforce their will on existence, and Knights need to surrender to their natural instincts.
It takes a very different set of personalities and mindsets to master each of these "classes".

>>22753272
Aren't Knight and Mage just the same thing.

>>22751494
looks like the game Lisa.

>>22753166
Why do you care about balance in a fucking book? It's not a game.
Also, you should justify why priestly powers are so powerful against magic. "Balance" is not a reason, there's no such a thing within a story.

>>22753389
Kinda, yeah, now that you mention it, it reminds me of the joy mutants.
I think it's just an awesome idea in general, the fact that mages create parasites through alchemy but if they are not careful the parasite can grow inside hem turning them into monsters.

>>22753166
Is this a litrpg or a setting you're trying to pass off as organic, "believable" world?

Lately I've been fascinated with how civilizations survive through culture and how those artifacts and concepts mutate and change over centuries. How Ishtar turns into Aphrodite who turns into Venus, how Yahweh went from a local storm God to the most popular diety on the planet, or how Moloch is still a real threat to some people while thousands of other tribal deities disappear into time. It feels so illuminating to track mythology all the way back to the origins of society, that we can draw this line that continues til this day.

It makes me curious to think of how it will continue to evolve, how will the American empire be seen in a thousand years? How much information will survive and how will that story mutate? In the same way America takes influence from the Roman empire, what lessons will the next empire learn from America? Personally I think that the mythology of the Yeoman farmer will survive, the pure individualism of the American dream, of tea harbors and fighters against Tyranny. I think that leads wonderfully into our neoliberal decline of the corporate oligarchy, where the flair ups of satanism get attached to the ruling class giving people the impression that "everything was great until the Satanists came into power". But then what does Satanism become? Considering the majority of American policy makers are chrisitians but they then become attatched to satanism does that mean God then becomes Satan? That "oh it wasn't the real God they worshipped it was a false God that pretended to be Yahweh and that false God was Satan." or maybe Mormonism and the CIA gets folded into American Christianity and they become the target.

Even beyond just the royalty of the American political machine what becomes of the pioneers of the technological revolution? Will Bill Gates be seen as a great innovator? Will Amazon be heralded as the people that brought the world together? Will our next heroes wear suit and ties instead of steel armor? What mythology will come out of the computer? That we were able to communicate over vast distances with just our fingers? Will that become telepathy? Will science become magic?

To be clear I'm thinking in the vein of a post-post apocolypse, where history can become influenced by time and consciousness.

>>22753899
idk anon, I think you are forcing an ancient view of the world (as in heroes, myths and legends) into a modern world who has clearly surpassed that kind of cultural exchange of information. The modern world is globalized and interconnected. Myth and superstition is a thing of the past, it still exists bu it's not serious, mainly something t be studied.
Even in a post-apocalyptic scenario I don't think the modern world will ever be remembered in those ancient terms again. For example, you said "the American empire" when it's not an empire at all, just another entity in the international politic landscape. If society was to collapse here in the west, I think it would be more probable that we forget what America was overall rather than start thinking it was some kind of empire, and Trump a Cesar-like figure (just an example).

Is there a point to standard conlang rules when dealing with alien races from alternate dimensions who have only become aware of humanity's existence a few centuries prior? Like, NONE of the standard "build your own language" rules should apply here, right?

>>22753968
America is a conglomeration of 50 states taking up half a continent (a whole if you consider Canada to be a vassal, which it is) and its political fingers in dozens of nations around the entire planet, it is absolutely an empire. But this is a world building thread and I'm just a retard with a smartphone, of course I'm going to over exaggerate for the sake of creation. Who's to say that we won't be remembered in those ancient terms? We've had the exact same brains for tens of thousands of years, take computers out of the equation (and books if we say hypothetically that we move past the need for them) and we're back to square one.

Of course that's not to say you're incorrect, even with the bronze age collapse we still continued lessons from one generation to the next and to think that we would revert back to hunter gatherers is a bit absurd. But that doesn't change the fact that history will still need to go through a game of telephone which will enevitably lead to exaggerated stories and myth making.

Anyone else do pseudo-conlangs? I'm not a linguist nor do I pretend to be, I just want there to be a consistency in the names of people, places, etc from different regions, and a sense that there is a distinct culture and language there. So I create very loose rules for these languages which don't actually exist. A list of sounds the language uses, common orders for syllables, etc, maybe a short list of common words they might salt their dialogue with for flavor. I also have specific sentence structures or vernacular spellings for words to indicate an accent in their dialogue.

It's not an actual language, just an illusion of one. Actually creating languages is really hard.

>>22754059
Well. It's not absolutely related to what you are saying, but I once conceived a setting in which, after some unknown catastrophic event wiped out society, the remnant survivors became hunter-gatherers in a post-apocalyptic urban context. But the interesting thing is that tech somehow kinda still worked, and since they are basically at primal stage, they saw it as magic, basically, creating whole religions out of it.
Cellphones for example are seen as magic artifacts which allow shamans to connect with the spiritual world, hearing the voices of the dead (which is in reality just the internet). These tribes of post-apocalyptic gatherers use modern tech without knowing what it is.
>>22754090
That's the best way of doing it, yep. Like, it's what all professional writers usually do. GRRM for instance just made up some words to make dothrakii and valyrian, and then I think, when the show was popular, he hired a linguist to make a whole conlag out of those words.
Relax anon, you don't need to go full Tolkien.

>>22751435
>>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
Body Refinement is considered a primitive method, despite Body Refinement only being able to exist on "advanced" worlds.
>>Do you prefer exotic and alien worlds or more generic ones? Why?
I am doubtful of the value that "being exotic" brings to a setting.
>>What are your biggest inspirations in terms of unique settings?
Esoteric bullshit accumulate over the years that has congealed into one coherent schizophrenic though pattern.

>>22754098
Oh yeah I've had that idea too but lately I've been considering the UAP phenomenon along with it. Magic is science yadda yadda so if we take it at face value and something like remote viewing is real, what does that mean for science? Or how many parallels there are between computers and mysticism, what is math but a coding language, what is the universe but an operating system, what is a program but a servitor, what is WiFi but telekinesis? It's very interesting how recursive the universe is with the smallest cells mimicking the largest galaxies, like it's all inevitable.

>>22754324
>Body Refinement is considered a primitive method, despite Body Refinement only being able to exist on "advanced" worlds.
Could you explain more? That seems interesting. What is Body Refinement and what are advanced worlds exactly?

>>22753166
>Is that good balance?
only if mages live in cells where priests can monitor and contain them if they get out of line

>>22754777
It's a concept from Chinese high fantasy. There are three common paths people that take to grow stronger and pursue immortality: qi refinement, body refinement, and soul refinement.

In my system, pursuing immortality through reshaping the body requires a concept for what an immortal body is in the first place, and this is called a Body Refining Law. To develop a Body Refining Law, you need to study somebody who has attained the fate of an Immortal Body, or received that knowledge from a source that recorded it. To attain the Immortal Body fate, somebody needs to reach the penultimate stage of the three common refinement paths(though only qi refinement and soul refinement create new laws).

If Body Refinement exists on a world, it means the world is either capable of supporting somebody to the peak of power, or has attracted the interest of a peak power otherworlder. A world is "advanced" because there is evidence that there is an open path to immortality on it.

>>22754807
*reach the penultimate stage of ONE OF the three common refinement paths

>>22753840
To make for a setting where no one faction has taken over the planet. There's no point in telling stories about knights or clerics if they're inconsequential compared to Mages.
I don't want a Naruto Ninja situation.

And the reason for Priests beating Mages is that the former are channelling God's will, which effortlessly collapses the puny wills of mere mortals. If magic is imposing the human will on the universe, Priests impose the Universal Will on humanity.

>>22755144
Knights and priest are not factions, they are professions. Not all priest need to be in the same side, that's just stupid. Being a priest just means that you take part in a cult or church as a job. Why would they all be aligned against mages? That just doesn't make any sense. Are you telling me there's only one type of priest and only one type of mage?

>>22755156
Yeah, there's just one world religion. Other religions tend to quickly get subverted by the Satanic figure of the setting or are just inconsequential to worry about.

Think of it this way: when the Temple says that they're the one true faith, they have empirical evidence to support their claim.

>>22751514
Coffee is way more comfy and playful than some generic le epic magical gem.

>>22751514
Hahaha god you're stupid

>>22756250
Yeah but is not really fantasy, coffee is a really mundane trade material.
Also, since it's also a common substance in our world, the reader knows that it's stupid to halt a war just because of coffee.
Magical crack on the other hand...

>>22756689
>Yeah but is not really fantasy, coffee is a really mundane trade material.
It can easily be fantastical depending on choice and writing style. For example,
there could be a creature exclusive to the North whom upon consuming coffee
beans can serve as an oracle in some limited capacity. There can be guilds that war for the remaining supply putting pressure on the resources of the nobility, and maybe even
defecting to the south with sensitive information (or the aforementioned creature).

>the reader knows that it's stupid to halt a war just because of coffee
Unless the reader is given sufficient reasons not to think so.

>Magical crack on the other hand...
The coffee bean can be given magical properties if need be.

>>22757305
>The coffee bean can be given magical properties if need be.
Then it stops being coffee and it would be less convoluted to just use some made up magical substance.
Like magical crack.

>>22757330
>Then it stops being coffee and it would be less convoluted to just use some made up
It depends on how it's written. There could be a quest of sorts to find the Holy Grail of beans that will yield a magical brew that is never actually found. Who the hell knows what OP has in mind. Also, being less or more convoluted does not make something better or worse. Complex things can be made simple, and with some effort the opposite can also be achieved. This all falls on the goal of the author. Personally, I would never read a book with something called magical crack in it, but I would read one where the culture of an imaginary kingdom is forged around the consumption of coffee (a la The City of Dreaming Books). I don't see why this is so difficult to understand. Coffee can be made into an easier and unique gateway to the fantastical than some shittily named substance that no one has any attachment to.

How do you create creatures for your setting? I'm having big trouble with this, personally.
Usually, the best technique i've found is to always start with its environment, for example a swamp, and then I define how dangerous it is and its relationship with people, ie. if it's a common animal, a dangerous animal, or a terrifying monster.
It's a good method that sometimes work, but what about yours?

>>22757454
Typically I'll start with a "gimmick", then try to build a believable creature around it. For example, I'm a big fan of pseudo-mechas, and wanted to incorporate that into one of my monsters. 3 sleepless nights later, I've built a species of spider who webs up bones they find to make giant bone mechas to hunt their prey.

>>22757453
>It depends on how it's written
LMAO what are you on? I disagree. Mundane elements remain mundane no matter how you write.
>a quest of sorts to find the Holy Grail of beans that will yield a magical brew that is never actually found
You see, this is not fantasy at all. You want a mundane setting and pass it off as fantasy. I'm just wondering why don't you just write a fantasy setting instead.
>I would never read a book with something called magical crack in it
Faggot, it was a description. Of course you shouldn't call it "magical crackk", that's its role in the setting, not its name.
I was personally thinking about skooma, from TES. Skooma is a very addictive substance cat people love, it's made from "moon sugar" which explains why the cat people love it, they have a strong connection to the moons. Now, if it was just coffee it would be waaay more boring than that.

>>22757495
Oh that's very interesting indeed anon.
Thanks.

>>22757497
You're a low IQ retard, and your imagination is shit. Simple as. I bet if this whole coffee business were an anime instead you'd be at a convention cosplaying as a mug rn. Do us all a favor, and go back to modding your TES harem.

>>22757454
I look at where the protagonist is going, and try and create things that would make the journey more difficult (or easier). This helps to create beings that are going to be tied directly to the outcome of the story from the outset. Sometimes you may have the creature first, but the order is not more important than putting things into their proper place once they've come to you.

>>22757608
The strength of your insults show the weakness of your argument.
>go back to modding your TES harem
You should play Morrowind. A single one of its books has more worldbuilding than your "100 years of solitude" tier setting.

>>22757608
>creating the whole fucking universe around the protagonist
KYS

>>22757633
It's not an all-encompassing recommendation. Do you shit yourself when books about oranges don't have apples in them dumb fuck?

>Writing an ensemble cast worldbuilding fantasy epic like aSoIaF and Second Apocalypse WITHOUT it being full of incest, rape, and shock-value fetishes
I'm gonna fucking do it, lads.

>>22757666
Those trips say otherwise.

>>22757671
Let's just say I'm negotiating a deal with an influential broker in order to get it published.

>>22757657
you should kill yourself for making creatures around your fucking protagonist's adventures
thats terrible, like wtf

>>22757666
>WITHOUT it being full of incest, rape, and shock-value fetishes
But why? Shocking realism is the best part about those settings.

>>22757721
>protag needs to cross a swamp to reach the next town
>hmmm, maybe I should make swamp creatures?

>>22751420
https://youtu.be/XGPv66ZqlEQ?feature=shared [Open]

Women what are your thoughts on pro choice, pro life and abortion abolishinism?

https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko?feature=shared [Open]

Women what are your thoughts on veganism, factory farming and small local family farms? Like vid related https://youtu.be/8gGSmNv-8YQ?feature=shared hhdgbh

>>22757723
It's not "realism" if it's clear the author is getting off on it. "Gritty hardbitten realism" is their excuse for it, but it's very easy to discern one from the other.

>>22757747
why are you even in a worldbuilding thread?
I guess you only draw a map based on where the protagonist goes in your story too
KYS and go to the writing general or something

>>22757765
Are you saying the dark ages didn't have any incest, rape, and shock-value fetishes?

>>22757775
Of course not and if you have a modicum of reading comprehension you'd understand that.

>>22757792
Idk anon, I just think that if you want a realistic medieval setting you should go full GRRM or be even worse. I don't remember any rape in his novels (except that weird allegoric lesbian scene), but you should only for the sake of realism.

>>22757803
Nope, like I said, I will not be indulging your fetishes.
>I don't remember any rape in [GRRM's] novels
My Brother in Islam, one of the first story arc begins with a 13 year old girl getting sold to and repeatedly reamed by Conan the Barbarian. There are constant references to rape and the fates of rape-babies throughout.

>>22757811
>Nope, like I said, I will not be indulging your fetishes.
It's not my fetishes, it's something that actually happened in real life. You think that after a city was ransacked there wasn't any rape? Again, for realism sake you should acknowledge that it exists in your setting, just as GRRM does. He never shows any rape scene, he just mentions it happening because it was something common, specially in such violent times. But of course you don't know that because you actually didn't read his books, probably just watched the TV series.

>>22757811
>>22757853
forgot pic

>>22757770
You're wailing over something that was never said, but rather interpolated, and even after it's been explained you've proven to be too retarded to understand it. I'll try once more in terms you might comprehend, and with all the disclaimers necessary.


SOMETIMES making creatures that are cute and friendly or super big meanies in places that your hero is going to travel to can help you design their nature (by nature I mean the way they look, act, what they eat and more). This tip is only one of many that may help a person build their world, and although its starting point is small you can choose to make it bigger. Using this advice does not mean that you have to build every other creature in this way. Do. You. Understand?

>>22757853
>He never shows any rape scene, he just mentions it happening
>But of course you don't know that because you actually didn't read his books, probably just watched the TV series.
Bro crack open a Game of Thrones and read Dany's beginning arc where she's getting molested by her bother then raped by Drogo. The absolute irony that you think I go this from the TV show which handles the depictions of rape with kid gloves.

>>22757853
>>22757857
My issue is that these depictions are often indulgent and clearly inspired by the author getting off on it. There's a different between not skirting around the unpleasantries of life, society, and history and inserting it when it isn't essential information for the purpose of writing edgy smut. That's what I was saying in my first post and if you didn't have the reading comprehension of someone who speaks English as a fifth language, you would've understood that instead of trying to frame it like I'm trying to revise history into a PG-rated version of itself. You're a clown.

>>22757893
this is a bad advice because you imply that all settings have stories attached to them, which is simply not true
your problem is that (you) make your setting around your story, which not only is arguably a bad idea in itself, but also does not apply to most cases, it doesn't not apply to my case at all for instance
In other words, that's not a method, that's something you once did and holy fuck it's a terrible practice
so all in all, yeah, I say your advice is bad, and you should KYS

>>22757918
>make your setting around your story, which not only is arguably a bad idea in itself, but also does not apply to most cases
NTA but I'm skeptical of this assertion. If you're trying to go for a thematically cohesive setting that lends itself to the thesis of your narrative, why would you not prioritize building your world and its institutions around the themes and conflicts you have in mind?

>>22757911
>i'm gonna write a realistic medieval setting but i'll purposely avid depictions of things like rape out of fear of someone thinking erroneously that it's just fetish-material
If you didn't have the reading comprehension of a child and weren't so butthurt, you would too understand that my point is that you can mention these topics as something common and a the same time, in a non-fetishistic way; in fact, that's the right way of handling it and therefore it's what you should do.
But whatever, retard. Good luck writing your "realistic" setting.

>>22755144
>>22755270
i smell someone whose main interests are video games and politics

>>22757928
>so utterly btfo he resorted to "no u"

>>22757911
>nooo you can't be horny everything has to be disney
your parents disagreed once, at least for a few minutes

>>22757923
NTA too but you can have a thematically consistent setting with clear core ideas (some people call these "pillars" or "key elements") before that setting to any kind of narrative whatsoever.
Making a setting around your protagonist's ass will just result in an unrealistic and artificial world, which believe it or not, will be very noticeable for the reader. A good story can be hindered by bad worldbuilding, but good worldbuilding can improve a bad story, somewhat.

>>22757931
Worse anon, way worse.
Anime.

>>22757918
>you imply that all settings have stories attached to them
No.
>your problem is that (you) make your setting around your story
Again, no.
>that's not a method, that's something you once did
A method does not require large scale adoption to be. Open a dictionary. It's incredible how you're literally incapable of simply reading something for what it says, and instead resort to telling me (the one who wrote it) what it "actually" says. Given your level of reading comprehension, I'm certain that even if you were in possession of the best methods available the end result will still be utter hogwash.

>>22757953
>There's a different between not skirting around the unpleasantries of life, society, and history and inserting it when it isn't essential information for the purpose of writing edgy smut.
Read it, read it again, and keep reading it until you understand. Preferably with the help of a dictionary in your native language. Foreign languages can be tough, I know learning two had their challenges for me. You'll get it eventually, anon. If you need any further assistance in your journey to mastering the English language, don't hesitate to reach out.

>>22757975
I am pro edgy smut, we need to make erotica great again, not return to puritanism
>>22757967
anime has the same problem nowadays where the influences are all the same pipeline of inbred tropes and references

>>22757990
You're not my target demo and I'm okay with that.

>>22757995
so why are you trying to write a clean version of asoiaf, who IS the target demographic for that?

>>22757995
I'm the original anon you were replying to and the fact that you are replying to two different anons shows you are retarded.
My point was clear and you didn't yet refuted it: rape was common in the dark ages and the fact that some fat man has a fetish for it (citation needed) does not mean you should ignore this fact completely.

Jesus Christ this is autistic.

>>22758037
it's a thread for people who want to write settings where everything has already happened so that they don't need a plot or characters, what did you expect?

>>22757995
Don't listen to these bums, anon. Remain chaste, tasteful, and unindulgent. GRRM is an obese, sweaty gooner with low impulse control, and you can tell always tell when those aspects of himself manifest themselves in his books.

>>22758007
>My point was clear and you didn't yet refuted it: rape was common in the dark ages and the fact that some fat man has a fetish for it (citation needed) does not mean you should ignore this fact completely.
I don't need to refute a strawman point countering an assertion I never made.

>>22758043
this post is bait btw

>>22758058
y-you too

Daily reminder to use wiki software to organize your worldbuilding projects.
The graph view is not only pretty to look at, but specially useful to understand how does your setting work and connects ideas.
Here's an example of graph view (not mine).

>>22757803
If you want to imitate the style and content of medieval chronicles, you probably should go full GRRM with extra fantasy too.
But that's because most medieval chronicles are filled with myth and fantasy, rather than because it all truly happened. I don't oppose it, it makes the story more interesting.

>>22758323
I dunno man. Maybe I'm a prude, but I don't think vivid descriptions of a character having explosive diarrhea, pissing, shitting, vomiting, and menstruating all over herself, then stewing in every manner of filth in a fevered delirium is essential to maintain a sense of realism to a story.

>>22758355
>I NEED EXPILICIT, PLAY-BY-PLAY RAPE AND DIARRHEA SCENES FOR IT TO BE BELIEVABLE
>WHAT, ARE YOU SAYING PEOPLE DIDN'T SHIT IN MEDIEVAL TIMES? GROW UP
>I NEED TO KNOW EXACTLY HOW DELICIOUSLY STINKY AND MESSY DANY'S ASSHOLE WAS AS SUNSET FOUND HER SQUATTING IN THE GRASS
>I NEED TO KNOW HOW SHREDDED HER TIGHT LITTLE VIRGIN 13 YEAR OLD PUSSY WAS THE FIRST NIGHT KHAL DROGO CLAPPED HER TENDER LITTLE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL AGED CHEEKS
>FOR REALISM
>IT'S NOT A FETISH!!

>>22758355
>nooo you can't show a person dying by illness, that's just coomer bait

>>22758355
that's what going into the wilderness to "find yourself" really is

>>22758403
lol yeah that's the exact kind of retarded logic coomers use to excuse Gurm's weird diarrhea fetish

>>22751435
>insect-based telecommunications
>more generic ones. I just like the comfiness of something familiar.
>tolkien? i also like hyperborea-inspired aesthetics and stuff, though I've never read any Conan
I've never formally sat down and begun working anything out, I just kinda have some jumble of ideas for settings.

>>22758355
Oh no. I never said that. I was more talking about rape, plots, and magic.

>>22758438
>having a single scene with diarrhea because a person is fucking dying means you have a diarrhea fetish
???
You didn't read his books. The closer there's to fetishism in his books is the constant and long descriptions of food and banquets, which is not a fetish, is called being a fat fuck.

>>22758448
Are you suggesting Gurm is killing off Daenerys by dysentery?

>>22758441
>I've never formally sat down and begun working anything out
You should, is fun. Also, when you write things down you tend to be more descriptive, not to mention that the fact that they are written means you can't forget those ideas, only add to them. So you eventually start piling up ideas without forgetting them and before you know it you have a full fledged out setting.

>writing a scene where a person shoes a horse
>look up how to do it on youtube
>now youtube is recommending me nothing but cowboy podcasts and satisfying hoof care videos and AI covers of Big Iron

>>22758459
I always interpreted that scene as her having finally contracted the illness everyone talks about for the entirety of the book. But she probably be fine, she's the dragonborn or somtin

>>22758470
It's been a decade since I've read aSoIaF, how many references to dysentery are there?

>>22758448
>skim over banquet description
>miss out on confirmation of a character having been killed
fucking gurm

>>22758459
gg thx for playin

>>22758486
I love crab rangoon

>>22758463
>several years ago
>didn't read
>didn't write
>didn't have any interest in literature as a hobby in any form whatsoever
>a friend sent me a link to a google doc of the story he'd been working on
>next day youtube recommendations are all about how to write a book, book reviews, guides to getting published, etc.

>>22758483
They don't call it dysentery, IIRC they call it the pale mare. But yeah is pretty important, literally half of mereen is infected by it by the end of the book.

>>22758511
What do you feel was the thematic purpose of the pale mare and Dany's succumbing to it 100 miles away from Mereen?

>>22758531
No fucking idea. The last two books feel like a directionless mess.

>>22758536
I have idea.

I have selected the existing piece of media I will be ripping off for my fantasy world

>>22758463
Semi related, but Hoof GP is God-tier, I can get lost for hours just watching closeups of him polishing cow hoofs and quipping about how much happier the cow is gonna be soon.

>>22758543
I doubt it's just fetish material, though.

>>22758581
Given how many fetishes Martin has challenged through her? A summer child's take.

Should we split this general into a conlang general and a worldbuilding general?
I would love a general in which to speak conlangs.
>t. OP

>>22758688
Thread is low activity when people aren't shitposting, so I don't think so.

>>22758461
Yeah, it could be nice. I keep thinking, "the thing I want to use the setting for, I may never work on, or if I do, it will be in the distant future." But maybe working on the setting for its own ends is worthwhile.

The last thing I need to do for my power system is assign the 64 different pre-ultimate milestones in the system to the 64 hexagrams, but I have lost all motivation on this part. The existing 64 hexagrams just don't do much to inspire me, but I can't just assign things arbitrarily, because there's so much to do that I need to find some kind of guiding principle.

>>22758792
If you write your setting down, even if you don't end up using it for its intended purpose, you may reuse it for another project instead.

>>22757931
LMAO, I've never played a videogame in my life. And this has nothing to do with politics.

I think it'll be best to have a "Balance of Power" between the world's reigning superpowers. It'll help keep a status quo of sorts and simplify things.
I don't want to deal with a world so dynamic that even I can't make out what's going on.

I once had an idea for a world that would have obvious signs of a computer simulation for the reader (or gamer), but for the characters it would all be explained by science/religion. Well, that is, the characters live in a computer simulation without knowing it. The Universe would resemble our World Wide Web, where, for example, different IP addresses indicate different planets, and travel between them would take place in a conditional “spatial corridor,” which is an analogy for our Internet cable system . The place of natural sciences would be taken there by IT, the place of “magic” would be taken by a special ability to interact with the technical and information component of the world with some kind of name (“programming”, lul). However, all this seems a little strange and cringy to me. Any thoughts?
Also, English is not my first language, so it’s difficult for me to come up with some ideas

What if I make it so that humans weren't the dominant species, and arguably still aren't, but are slowly crawling their way up?
Humanity will basically be a rising power like Rome in the 3rd century BC.

>>22759735
That's nice. My story is about that balance of power being shattered and I can keep track of what's going on through the eyes of the characters on different sides of the conflict.

>>22759197
>god is real and priests should dominate society by expressing his will
that's the message of your worldbuilding, which sounds like something a politically interested crusader kangz player would affirm

I'm reposting from the /tg/ one since I didn't realize /lit/ had a wbg now. Both of my settings I plan to write stories in so it's better to ask here.

Two questions. Because I have two settings, one far more developed than the other, to the point that I *could* write plenty of stories in the larger one by now.

1) (the less developed setting) For a space warship that uses coilguns as its primary armament (along with missiles, and lasers for point defense) what turret configuration is the best? Single, double, triple, or quadruple? I'm leaning toward quadruple for the "hero" faction (the one the protags are part of) and double for the villain faction because quad turrets are badass.

2) How the fuck do I get myself to, you know, write? I enjoy it once I just *start* but I quite often can't can't bring myself to.
Also if anyone has any ideas for keeping track of specific spells in a magic system for easy reference that would be helpful as well.

>>22760118
And I'm stealing that. Thanks.

>>22760273
Looks like someone has been spending too much time on Tumblr.

Look, bro, most people don't think about politics when we write things. We just think "wouldn't it be cool if X?", and then just get lost in the fantasy.

>>22760443
>i just think theocracy would be cool and if you disagree with me you're from a bad outgroup
>no there's no political motivation to my ideas i am just fantasizing
>no my fantasies aren't grounded in any desires i have they are just cool ideas
>no i'm not using cool to mean "things i like," cool is just cool you wouldn't get it

>>22760422
You don't need to "steal" it, friend. It's a basic narrative device.

>>22760463
>noooooo you can't just write for enjoyment there must be an ulterior motive!
Not everyone is out to harm you tranny. You're doing a good enough job of that on your own.

>>22760394
>How the fuck do I get myself to, you know, write? I enjoy it once I just *start* but I quite often can't can't bring myself to.
That's common, starting a story is easy, finishing it, not so much.
Often times abandoning projects like this may be a sign of lack of discipline, or maybe you just aren't invested enough on the story you are writing.
I always end my stories because when I start them, I already know how they end, and the ending is generally more important than the start, so if I don't end them, it's as if I hadn't written anything at all.
So my advice would be exactly just that: write with an objective in mind, write only to build up tension so that the last paragraph is more shocking.
Another method is to structure the basic outline of the story first, separate it in chapters, and the start writing each one, knowing what happens in each before hand.
>Also if anyone has any ideas for keeping track of specific spells in a magic system for easy reference that would be helpful as well.
How are you organizing your worldbuilding? Are you writing notes? That's usually the best method.

>>22760463
>>22760500
Don't you just hate losers who overanalyze the most trivial things?

>>22760547
I don't know why, but more often than not it seems to originate from anti-religious crowds who, oddly enough, will attack you for not adopting their views more than any religious person I've ever met. That said I don't hate anybody, it's more of an annoyance than anything else.

I just make whatever pleases me, and to hell with political interpretations.

>>22760529
In terms of organizing, I'm using a combination of Fantasia Archive and Google Docs for the setting I'm ready to write in, and mostly leaning just on Google Docs for the other. I was thinking the best way would be to make one giant Google Doc with all the spells listed, and categorize them by Branch (most settings would use the word "school" but "branch" fits the vibe better imo), as well as difficulty level, so I know which characters would realistically be able to learn a certain spell.

You make a good point in regards to structuring. I have the ending for one of the stories, but not the others.
I have something resembling discipline considering I've been doing OMAD for years and work out 7 days a week, so I don't *think* that's the issue.

I think the path forward for me is to uninstall Reddit again. (Inb4 "Go back") There's a scenario in a browser game I play set to release soon that I've been dying to play, and I've been lurking it's sub for weeks.
When that scenario drops, I'll delete the app. I'm screencapping this post to hold myself to it. Thank you.

>>22760500
rent free... and given your vocabulary is it so far-fetched to think the political situation in your worldbuilding is a reflection of your real-world preferences? But there is a way to be sure—who are the opponents of the priests, if any? Do they have any legitimacy or are they just evil since they are opposed to God's will? Don't tell me they are transvestites....
>>22760547
>nooo you can't analyze things in a worldbuilding thread that's so trivial of you to care about how all the little details fit together in a bigger picture
>>22760608
if you've taken it personally that someone figured out you were right-wing and religious from your world-building scenario and are now feeling oppressed/victimized you aren't cut out to be a writer

What's a good way to naturalistically introduce irregularity into my conlang? Its much too uniform at the moment and I don't want to just pick a verb and have it conjugate differently for no real reason.
>>22760894
You're kind of being a faggot man. Please stop.

>>22760394
>1)
Depends on realism. Are you hardcore and working under the Tsiolkovsky rocket equations? Ignore the mass of the weapon housing. How do you justify carrying all that ammunition?
Quad mounts imply you are fighting at world war two visual air defense ranges. That's kinda iffy to anything pretending to be scifi these days. Speaking of visual, where is the A.I.? Even an Apollo era flight computer can calculate interceptions, error correction, and highly efficient allocations of ammunition. And, it does all this better and faster than any human.
If your system is more along the lines of: push lever to make ship go whoosh, push harder to make more whoosh, etc., well.
In both cases it's probably better to stick close to the characters and describe how they see the weapons, or experience the weapons. I've been entertained by authors who are vague about how some ship weapons work until, more than halfway through the series, a main character operates one.
In my own 'verse ship weapons don't have firing triggers. They have safeties. You power it up and consent to letting it do its thing. And, I consider my 'verse to be closer to the lever pushy soft end of the scifi scale.
>2)
Save the erotica scenes for when you get stuck. Or:
>>22760529
Yeah. Avoid outlining. Have the characters figure out what to do and where to go for the goal and write what they come up with.
Or, you know, divert them with some drive-by hawt alien perversion.

I want my setting to be inspired by the paintings of Bosch, but it's so hard.
Nothing coherent can come out of his work.

>>22761446
>Nothing coherent can come out of his work.
why not?

>>22761446
That's like saying nothing coherent come out of trying to write about fey or eldritch abominations that are unknowable to mere human minds.

>>22761474
Because his paintings are pure surrealism, they are very visually impressive, but aside from some basic symbolism and religious overthemes and iconography of the age, they are absolute nonsense.
Anyways, I like how he, for example, associates fruit with sin in such a visual way. And his association between music and lust is also interesting. Maybe i'll use that.
He's truly a master in his use of imagery, he does it so subtlety and yet so impactfully.

>>22761434
>realism
I have FTL in that setting, so it's soft sci-fi by default. The guns have targeting AIs, so at combat ranges of tens of thousands of miles (beyond visual range even for a mile-long ship), there's still very good odds of scoring a hit.
The packaging of guns in turrets mostly boils down to aesthetics for me. I wanted to know whether there was some huge disadvantage I was missing.

You make good points on character emphasis, though. In the short stories (and 1/4 of a novel I was doing for a friend that I eventually lost interest in) that I've written before, I was good at not info-dumping, and only giving info to the reader that was useful and/or necessary.

Interesting perspective on outlining. I'm pretty sure I'm more of a planner than a pantser but character motivations do have to drive things in the end. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you.

>>22760107
Interesting. Would most of the protagonists still be humans or would there be more of a focus on the dominant species?
It may be useful to highlight biological differences between humans and the dominant species when the two interact. For example, let's say classic fantasy Dwarves are the big bosses of the world. Humans may get a lot of metaphorical flak for not being able to fit through short doors. Human men with well-developed beards are treated better than their clean-shaven counterparts, etc.

>>22761541
I may only be speaking my ideas out loud here, but maybe what I like about him is that he associates ideas in ways that don't strictly follow logic. It's depictions seem made to captivate and impact the unconscious mind only.
Like, in his depictions of hell he represents lots of musical elements as a way of establishing a relationship between music and lust, but the way he associates those two ideas in the painting itself are incredibly erratic and random. The point, I think, is that it doesn't matter how they are related to each other, only that they are related.
Maybe I could also do something similar:
Say, if in my setting crystals are linked to greed, maybe a curse casted upon a greedy person could be turning their eyes into crystals.

>>22761541
>pure surrealism
that's a rather retroactive way to describe him... he is working in a tradition of Christian religious iconography and symbolism that goes back to illustrated manuscripts and bestiaries

Do these definitions from my setting seem like they still fit with what people usually expect from the terms?

>Spirit
The "true" substance of something, encapsulating its history, context, and potential.

>Soul
Two or more conflicting spirits that are confined together and create an emergent being as they slowly resolve their conflicts.

>>22762249
>Do these definitions from my setting seem like they still fit with what people usually expect from the terms?
Not really. To me the word soul is inextricably linked to the concept of what happens after life ends, e.g. reincarnation or an afterlife.

>>22762249
"Spirits" usually are living beings, not only in the sense of ghosts, but for example, the Romans believed everything had its own spirit; a shrine, a lake, or even people had spirits. The biggest of them all were the Gods themselves.
In general, the term "spirit", no matter the cultural context, implies something with a will on its own.
If you want o refer to the "substance" of something, just say that or "essence".

>>22762334
But spirits CAN be living. If somebody in my setting talks about a lake having a "spirit", it means that the lake has a tendency to "manifest" by interacting with nearby spirits and forming a temporary soul. Spirits can be anything between inanimate data, and a mind fragment that is at all times on the verge of coming to life.

>>22762378
>a soul is an amalgam of spirits
That doesn't make any sense anon, get better terms.

>>22760894
He's not the OP, I am.

And the enemies of said priests? Well, literally Satan. Or rather, a Satanic figure. Though to be honest, it's not a 1:1 analogy. There are elements of Ahriman (the Dark God to contrast the Good God) and Demiurge (False God that thinks it's the real thing) that somehow sneaked in.

It's true that I am a Conservative, but it has nothing to do with this. I don't bring politics into my hobbies.

>>22761608
>Interesting. Would most of the protagonists still be humans or would there be more of a focus on the dominant species?
Humans, of course. The entire point is to make humanity an underdog that fights its way up the totem pole. Like Rome did.

>>22758285
Is that Obsidian? I've been using Fantasia Archive for one of my settings.

>>22764000
Yes it is.
I think is way better than fantasy archive, much more flexible and less convoluted. More convenient to take notes in general. But hey, as long as your workflow works...

>>22764046
I have run into some issues with FA, I'll admit. It's clearly designed for TTGs, while I plan to write a novel. It also seems built specifically for fantasy, which is fine since I'm using it for a fantasy setting, but I have a sci-fi one I'm also tinkering with.

I'll look into Obsidian the next time I sit down for a worldbuilding session. I presume switching a project over would be as simple as a copy/paste job, no?

>>22762249
Your meaning for "spirit" works well enough, but almost every reader is going to think of consciousness and life as a whole when they hear "soul".

>>22764073
>I presume switching a project over would be as simple as a copy/paste job, no?
I'm not sure. Don't know how FA stores its text and links, but probably you can just copy the plain text, though maybe you will lost your links and most of the format.
Also, one adventage of using generic note-taking apps is that you can write your story in the same enviroment as you do the worldbuilding. I also reccomend doing a folder of inspiration and resources.

>>22754059
A big part of why people have such vague ideas of ancients is the lack of any primary sources - stuff just wasn't written down that much in the first place, or if it was written it was rapidly lost. Moderns write shit down constantly, often on quite durable mediums. There might be some errors creeping in (especially errors people commonly believe, e.g. myths), but people living 1,000 years hence will have at least a good idea of who Donald Trump was as they have of Cicero or Caesar.

>>22757803
ASoIaF isn't actually realistic for the middle ages. The wars are way too catastrophic in scale and almost nobody believes in God. It's the early modern period with medievalist gloss at best.

>>22766147
Scorching take: Fantasy fiction has no obligation to conform to every facet of medieval europe to be called "realistic" or "believable".

>>22766240
Sure. But I was responding to somebody suggesting a "realistic medieval setting" would be like GRRM or even worse. Actual medieval wars mostly didn't look like those of ASoIaF, and when they did, it was because they were religious wars in a time and place where people believed in God in much the same way you believe the Earth goes around the Sun or that the elements are composed of tiny protons and neutrons and electrons, and the other guys were heretics (Albigensians) or infidels (Muslims).

>>22751435
>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
I aim for pretty consistent weirdness levels, but probably the weirdest bit so far is the island where all the native animals are actually synthetic critters produced by an ancient underground factory and look kinda like Warframe suits (but in animal shapes, not human ones). They maintain the local biosphere, and if you kill any, the others become increasingly hostile the more you kill.

>Do you prefer exotic and alien worlds or more generic ones? Why?
Exotic and alien, for sure. It means every detail can be more interesting, though I vastly prefer grounded to vague.

>What are your biggest inspirations in terms of unique settings?
Arnold K/Goblin Punch's Centerra, by a country mile. That feel of a place that's strange (to us) yet ordinary (to its people), where even basic assumptions we have about how the world works aren't necessarily true (hollow earth, race by birthplace rather than heredity, etc). It is soooo fucking nice, I want to capture it in my own work.

Then real history, animal behavior, science, anthropology, and mythology. I think most worldbuilding is copy-of-a-copy and it becomes lesser for that. Then, mm, probably Veins of the Earth, since it's got similar vibes to Centerra and is dense, but at that point I'm just grab-bagging, tracking down books in the right genre and mining them for ideas, etc. Been making my way through Jack of Shadows and Disco Elysium, most recently.

(Disco Elysium also has that strange-yet-ordinary and questioning-basic-assumptions vibe of Centerra, but it's way too modernist for my setting to use that much of.)

>>22758808
1. Randomly assign them.
2. Go through the list.
3. Separate out the hexagram/milestones combinations you like/are evocative/interesting, so you have a smaller list.
4. Go to 1 until complete or the task is small enough to do manually.

>>22760394
>2) How the fuck do I get myself to, you know, write? I enjoy it once I just *start* but I quite often can't can't bring myself to.
1. Close all windows/programs other than whatever you write in.

2. Sit there and do nothing until you are so bored you want to start writing. (This won't take that long, desu.)

>>22758808
>The existing 64 hexagrams
What are these 64 hexagrams?

>>22767125
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagram_(I_Ching)

After creating my four "refinement paths", I realized there were 64 milestones total among them, so I thought that I could create an additional "meta path" by assigning each of these milestones to a hexagram and attributing extra significance to sets of milestones that had similar hexagrams.

>>22767147

Thought about a borrowed-power magic system wherein mages use their belief in and faithfulness to something to cast-- which is how a lot of settings work but I wanted it to be an early/high modern setting where one could as easily channel a god's power as they could an ideology or some other strong worldview. Fascist mages that channel their belief in their nation, communist mages that channel their belief in the world revolution, things like that. When I talked about it with some friends the things that came up the most were the questions of "where the power comes from"-- like is there a form of revolutionary socialism that's kicking around in the ether and that's what gives you power? Does it depend on what other people think your belief is? Does orthodoxy give you power? Zealotry?

I ended up settling on this idea of states that train combat mages to be incredibly fervent zealots for the state ideology (whatever that ideology is, liberalism fascism calvinism whatever) to the point that they have a threat response to anyone who challenges them because that's the only way to reliably get powerful mages-- though they might have to be babysat by mundane political officers who will just shoot them if they start getting dangerous. Doing things that are perceived (by oneself or by those around you) to be against the belief or experiencing doubt, weakens the magic which could lead to, for example, a mage's powers faltering if he believes that retreating is morally wrong but he has to retreat to save himself.

There was also something that appealed to me about the idea of a caster thinking he's casting from one thing and having a crisis when he realizes he's casting from an older belief that he tried to suppress, or if the sources of power actually exist in a realist sense, learning that was channeling something other than what he thought (the old "you thought you were praying to Tash but you were praying to Aslan" thing). Or of someone experiencing a crisis of faith and losing his power and having to redevelop it in the context of whatever new understanding of the world he arrives at. Possibly becoming stronger because his new ideas are more "natural" to him or better put together or something.

"Mundane" people in this world can probably heal scrapes by praying if they're religious.

I probably won't ever do anything with this but it seems like the seed of something interesting to me if it were worked out more.

>>22767602
If a fascist mage channeled his faith in his ideology, what would the resulting spells be like?
Does he have the power of eugenics or something?
Or a communist mages, what does he do? Impart the power of collectivism?

>>22751420
Besides the obvious choices of bone, and other parts of humans, what materials and reagents make sense as being good components for necromancy-aligned magical items or rituals, and what might they do? There’s stone from a tombstone, which could be used to bind and seal rogue undead for instance, but what else might work?

>>22766045
Unless in 500 years the method we use for mass data storage is wiped and we've moved past the use of paper. Its improbable but not impossible for a vast swathe of human knowledge to be wiped out in an instant.

>>22751420
Have you ever used the Tarot in your writing and worldbuilding? If so, how did you use it?

>>22769107
Initially it was how I sorted the hearts of my BBEG, but eventually I changed it to them just representing costs of war.

>>22751435
>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
demi-plains of high order and demi-plains of high chaos are functionally the same despite basically everyone in the setting who knows about them willing to fight multi-plainer wars to say otherwise.
At the end of the day they are 3 things in extreme abundances in a pocket reality that can be tapped into by certain magic users at great personal cost.
Those three things being "mana", some theme/substance/consensus/whatever, and a eldritch being that sort of manages/rules over it.
So the demi-plain of darkness and the demi-plain of light are basically the same. They don't themselves effect the central conflict between the avatars of order and the agents of chaos. They can even be used by people from ether side without compromising their values. If they tap ether without utmost care shit will go bad very quickly for them both personally and everyone around them regardless of how it's labeled.

But this is something that no one I have written so far knows about. Just background information.

>Do you prefer exotic and alien worlds or more generic ones? Why?
Honestly prefer generic ones because it's easier to write as I don't have to stop the pace dead to give detailed descriptions of everything every scene.

>What are your biggest inspirations in terms of unique settings?
Video game levels. Especially from the 8 bit and 16 bit era. Back when in the same game you could go from a jungle, to a weird lava world, to a world of hyper industrialization, to a flying city falling apart, to space, and no one bats a eye at it.

>>22768876
Poisonous botanical and chemicals.
Stuff where the dose can be the difference from being at the edge of death, to falling right over the edge, so it takes high levels of knowledge and attention to detail to walk that razor's edge in their formulas.

Stuff taken from execution sites and grave soil both appear in folklore and as historical charms.
So rope from a hanged man, nails from a crucifixion, water taken at the time of a punitive drowning, bullets from a firing squad, etc.
And I probably don't need to explain grave soil as it's so entrenched in fokelore and history as being a magical component.

>>22768876
Predatory animals, especially those which prey on humans (e.g. crocodiles). Mosquitos, vampire bats, leeches, and similar parasites. Animals which are exceedingly poisonous or venomous.

Components of religious rituals like last rites. Death poems in the samurai tradition. Suicide notes. Hangman's nooses, executioner's chopping block, weapons that have killed people, sacrificial knives that were used to kill animals.

A simple jar or other container that's been intentionally depressurized so that it's nearly vacuum.

>>22769107
Only in the most literal sense.
In parts similar cards are used in card games, with a few who use them for divination/fortunate telling, and secret society mages who hides occult information in the cards printed from a particular city as a advertisement for their secret order.
I don't make storylines or world building elements based on the cards conceptually.
They just are a thing that sort of exist within the world.

>>22768284
I imagined that each power source would be able to conjure similar results. A fascist/liberal/communist plane can drop a bomb-- a mage of whatever persuasion can likewise nuke a grid square or revive a dead soldier. Though maybe it would be harder for people in this world to heal people they perceive as enemies and easier for them to harm them.

It'd be a very "don't think, feel" kind of magic which ties into the original genesis of the idea: I wanted magic to operate at a higher conceptual level than mundane technology, and therefore to be less precise and less reliable but more powerful. A mage casts revive on a dead man and it might just not work because the dead man is a class traitor or the mage isn't in good with the race-soul. Or it does work and the mundane doctor who was working on him watches his patient's brain knit itself back together. Casting fireball isn't what some rationalizing rule-magic systems do where there's a combustion reaction going on, the mage is just making ideal fire. Etc.

>>22761446
Look at The Owl House. The Boiling Isles were partially inspired by his work. Two of the characters are even named after him, Principal Bump’s first name is the same as his, and then there’s Boscha.

How do you introduce the culture aspects inside your world without forced infodumping? Things like poetry, literature, music, celebrities, philosophy, botany.

>>22751531
>same world but x years in the future
It's that easy

>>22758285
I get some people prefer the looser look, but if you haven't yet, try playing around with the force settings, it can make your graph look much better

>>22773009
The deuteragonist of my story is a foreigner who knows little about the region besides the basic stuff, most of my exposition is my MC explaining things to him.

bump

>>22773119
Do you think just putting dialogue tags around infodumps somehow solves the problem?

I just have an extremely complicated system, but state absolutely nothing about it, so when a character reaches the unstated list of requirements for something, it just happens with no explanation.

>>22775278
Yes. Nobody minds an info dump if there's a reason for it.

>>22773119
Sounds like that gets annoying quickly.

>>22775510
I do mind info dumps when they are not subtle and it totally feels like an info dump.

What do you think about replacing horses with other animals as mounts?
Say, giant birds.

what tropes are the worst in sci fi? What should I avoid at all costs?

>>22775777
Psychic powers. They're super-zeerusted at this point. ("Pseudo-psychics," like Mass Effect biotics, Star Wars Jedi, or Eclipse Phase's Watts-Macleod, are fine IMO.)

I honestly like force fields and blasters less and less as I get older, just because they're so "made up," but this is obviously extremely my taste, and even then, it can be done pretty well - I like Affectors from VergeWorlds, which are an attempt to make these techs "scientific": http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Settings/VergeWorlds/VergeTech.php#Affectors

>>22775787
I'm trying to avoid anything like mind reading or emotional manipulation because it creates opportunities for a lot of plot holes but yeah great suggestion thank you. My world is near future (next 100 or so years) so I don't think I'll be going down the force fields or blasters route. There is an element of mysticism/spirituality like Dune has in there, which is the main thing people might dislike if they are looking for hard sci-fi.

>>22775761
>>22775763
>"How do you do ___ in your story?"
>"I do ___ like this"
>"NOOO DON'T DO THAT I DON'T LIKE THAT"
Whack.

>>22776534
I was not that anon lmao

Bump

>>22777920
Ah you're someone with the exact same opinion as the other poster with the same typing style but also you neglected to comment on the original post for some reason, okay I guess that's possible.

>>22777929
Also strange how I never said you were, but that's the first place your brain went to. Also whack. Maybe I've just been watching too much Columbo lately.

>>22777929
Both posts were me, indeed, but i was not the anon who asked the question originally (>>22773009), retard.
I just find your shit tedious and, overall, I can assure you is not as original and clever as you think it is.

>>22778058
Literally what the fuck are you talking about? Are you well? At no point did I say it was clever or original. Those are details you literally just made up.

>>22778076
Ah GODDAMMIT I'm getting trolled again, good job anon you got me.

>>22769107
I'll do a tirage en ligne for some creative writing fodder or when I have a situation that I need to see with fresh eyes and get at the fringes of what I'm doing with it.

>>22773009
Just write references to them in scenes where they would come up organically.

>>22778076
>At no point did I say it was clever or original. Those are details you literally just made up.
I'm glad we agree. Could you act like a normal person instead of making a scene now (>>22778079)?

>>22751420
What are some good ways to biologically justify humans and/or other near-human races like elves having hair colors like you see in picture related? What about for skin colors, like all the depictions of orcs with green skin?

>>22779104
Basically, mammals don't come in those colors. Animal hair is basically human hair colors. Skin colors do sometimes come in red (e.g. mandrills) or blue (e.g. whales, dolphins, Blue Fugates), but not green among mammals. If you want to justify them, you'd need to introduce distinct, novel ways of coloring skin/hair, such as those used by reptiles or birds.

>>22779104
Nano structures are how the majority of animals produce blue without pigments, and green animals use iridescence. Feathers and scales have a lot more options because the larger structure is predetermined, but it might be possible for hair and fur to do something similar.

I rather stop contributing than keep posting in a board where nazis recruit.

Good luck to all those still coming.

>>22779104
When did GRRM justify valyrians having purple eyes?

>>22780548
People have purple eyes; it's just insanely rare

>>22780556
That's not really true. People with albinism can have "pruple-ish" eyes but they aren't actually purple. Not like the book anyways.
My point is that nobody cares if people have impossible features like those.

>>22775766
Bumping this question.
I want chocobos in my setting.

>>22751435
>>What's the weirdest piece of lore of your setting?
The setting takes place on a continent in the southern hemisphere. The far south is a frozen continent centered on the south pole. The far north is bordered by a massive cyclonic storm, maintained indefinitely by ancient technology from a long forgotten civilization.
>>Do you prefer exotic and alien worlds or more generic ones? Why?
I like worlds that feel similar to our own but subtly alien. Human characters, lesser-scope conflicts, but embedded in a mysterious world that's unfamiliar to us.
>>What are your biggest inspirations in terms of unique settings?
Tolkien for his use of conlangs to add verisimilitude to the world, create character names, and craft a subtle history. Clarke's Third Law for an ancient technology that few understand and that often bears a strange resemblance to our world's ideas of magic. Nausicaa and Future Boy Conan for the post-apocalyptic world.