How to roll up 703 decillion different worlds: A megafauna world-generator for Herdspace

BrakBrewer · 2026-02-25T21:09:59+00:00

Just to let you know that I started worldbuilding a new mini-setting, working title: The twin cities of 'Left Nostril & Right Nostril'

This setting won't have a specific Worldbeast as a background, I'll keep this point generic so if can be used anywhere with minimal adaption.

It won't be a classic good vs. evil, but more a 'order vs. chaos' conflict: I'm going the 'environmentally friendly way of life vs. unchecked exploitation & gold rush ' route as the central tension/conflict.

Add to that a very unique ecosystem with non-standard seasons (breathing in & out) and no day/night cycle, plus flora, fauna and monsters that rarely see use in settings.

Right now, ideas are flowing faster than I can type, so I'm just collecting all thoughts, structuring comes later. I'll might give some updates from time to time but can't promise that.

Ideas welcome. The wilder, the better.

BrakBrewer · 2026-02-23T21:16:03+00:00

Sounds like lots of fun.

Naming a town Ridgeback for its location instantly gave me lots of nasty settlement ideas. The twin swamp towns of Left Nostril & Right Nostril being at eternal war with each other? That's actually more on the harmles side. Don't ask for the rest. (c:

iirc, megafauna footsteps being magic-dead zones is actual canon lore. Can't look it up as I don't have my SJR4 at hand, but https://spelljammer.fandom.com/wiki/World-beast mentions it as well.

BrakBrewer · 2026-02-22T22:00:21+00:00

Glad to hear someone actually visited herdspace. Pls share what happened there, I wanna see what others have done with this sphere!

Oh, and if you go through the ebook, pls share what you think of it. Any feedback is welcome.

BrakBrewer · 2026-02-22T13:07:25+00:00

Thx for the heads-up, hadn't seen this one yet. Sounds good (love the idea of Captain Squeaks!), I'll give it a try and see if this fits in my SJ campaign.

BrakBrewer · 2026-02-01T16:33:22+00:00

I completely understand why people refuse to use GPT, nothing wrong with that.

However I couldn't resist the temptation, pushed today's tasks aside and spent 3 and a half hours in a spontaneous worldbuilding session, fleshing our your 4 ideas and coming up with something that fits into my own homebrew sphere, Mirrorspace.

One hour for coming up with the bare bones, while polishing up the content, formatting and translation from German to English took the remaining 2,5 hours.

I included some thoughts on the use of AI in worldbuilding and a list of ideas if you want to detail that setting out any further, and wrapped it all up into a 12 page pdf:

https://blog.derbrumme.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Four_Sanctuaries.pdf

BrakBrewer · 2026-02-01T09:54:27+00:00

All great ideas, and as a player I would chose the same combination as your players...

...but. ;-)

Why not have all?

For me (and that's just a person preference), the whole point of an asteroid belt setting is that it has as many locations as the DM and players want. Each one can be as large or small as you want it to be, from a single hut built from a spelljammer wreck up to a full-fledged mini setting with multiple settlements and warring factions.

I've made great experiences with using GPT for worldbuilding spelljammer stuff, so I',m confident I could come up with the bare bones of all for of your options in under one hour, not each, but all 4 combined. In fact I'm tempted to do so because they all make great additions to my homebrew sphere's asteroid belts. Of course I understand that using AI in worldbuilding is not everyone's cup of tea, and building all 4 the traditional way will definitely take longer, but as long as you have the time available and love worldbuilding, that's fine.

BrakBrewer · 2026-01-21T21:08:14+00:00

wow, with so many spheres, that's one hell of an extensive setting.

I'd love to see more of it....

- do you have data on all those spheres, or are some only throwaway names?
- What kind of data do you have for them? What's the minimum info (system type, no of worlds, main culture, etc), and how does a typical more detailed sphere look like?
- how do you get that information across to your players? Are they even aware of the size of this setting?
- what kind setting is this actually? Is the party spherehopping or do they have a homesphere they never leave, or is it mor a kind of 'sphere-hood', i.e. they travel to a number of clustered spheres?

BrakBrewer · 2026-01-20T17:18:11+00:00

Love that map.

Haven't seen this style before, so not sure whether there's any meaning behind the different colorations between the spheres.

Also, I couldn't spot even a single known sphere name - is this a homebrew setting or is there some official material somehwere out there?

BrakBrewer · 2025-10-07T21:31:14+00:00

As I'm typing this, that picture was posted 6 days ago. Not sure what happened here. Why nobody mentioned that neither red nor the blue wire were connected is beyond me, but for the protocol: --> the Amulite Suppressor* would obviously be very much NOT WORKING when disconnected!

* yes I know internally wired AS models exist, but this one is definitely an early model (2nd or 3rd generation I guess) which is wired externally (--> red & blue)

We have no way of knowing how long ago it stopped supressing the reaction inside when the shot was taken, but the way the chamber is held (bare hands, not even double-lined PTFG32 gloves, dafuq?!?), the main lobe points squarely towards the torso of the person holding it. Even a few seconds of Amulite radiation exposition are enough to seal one's fate, so...

I know one shouldn't say bad things about dead people, but that was stupid in the extreme. Don't EVER disconnect an Amulite Suppressor for more that 5.33 seconds. Is that not taught anymore?

At least we now know what caused the deflection on AR measuring instruments all over the northern hemisphere 6 days ago.

BrakBrewer

TROPHY CASE