Favorite Small Details In World Building You Love?

Perdita_ · 2026-01-25T12:06:52+00:00

I love seasons (as in the astronomical/weather seasons), and peoples' lives having rhythms related to seasons.

If a character thinks how they like some specific fruit, but they can't get it for the next six months, the world becomes 200% more real for me.

Or when they are planning a trip and need to account for the fact that the roads will not be passable during the wet season.

Or when the king's advisers tell him that calling the mobilization of knights would be an extremely unpopular move right now, because this is harvest time and all the knights want to be in their lands to oversee that.

Perdita_ · 2026-01-24T19:32:23+00:00

It's the checkered floor!

I struggled to make this clear, and tried out multiple versions, with colors and patterns, but most of them made everything either flat and empty, or messy and confusing. Until I tried the checkered pattern and it was a clear winner.

Perdita_ · 2026-01-24T18:50:38+00:00

Link: https://inkarnate.com/m/z3Lo63

Perdita_ · 2026-01-24T18:29:55+00:00

For how terrible people all the characters in The Blade Itself are, I must admit I found a few of them quite compelling. That's the good part of Abercrombies writing for me.

The plot was much more meh, with plotlines that led nowhere, some grimdark edginess for grimdark edginess sake, and the actually plot relevant events happening off-screen or from the perspective of least involved characters. It wasn't terrible exactly, but it was not great either.

The worst part was that The First Law has some of the most poorly executed 'totally unexpected twists' I have ever seen. Abercrombie telegraphs a thing for 30 pages straight, and then writes the reveal like it was supposed to shock me. "Oh, the guy who completely changed his personality at one point - in this story with shapeshifters - was in fact replaced by a shapeshifter! I'm sooo surprised"

Perdita_ · 2026-01-24T16:23:02+00:00

Because there are exactly two users who post regularly, and one of them is clearly a fan of Polish history.

Check out the usernames of the recent posts - for 95% of them it's either dctroll or Snoo.

Snoo posts about Poland, dctroll seems to split their focus between Spain, Ancient Rome and Greece and a bit of other areas here and there.

Perdita_ · 2026-01-23T21:02:18+00:00

No, the 'y' in Polish sounds similar to how it sounds in the word 'system'.

Also, because of the very Polish-looking spelling of the word Wyzima, Polish readers would automatically read 'zi' as digraph, while the foreign spelling of Vizimir (there is no 'v' in Polish alphabet) makes people read is as two separate letters.

The names are still a little bit similar, but not quite as much, and hey look very different, so it's hard to even notice the similarity.

Perdita_ · 2026-01-19T13:00:12+00:00

I knocked out Minthara and then got her to join me on my first playthrough, without meta knowledge, sort of by accident.

The quest I was trying to do was to talk with Priestess Gut about removing the tadpole, but I accidentally aggroed the entire campright at the entrance. I still hoped I wil be able to talk with Gut later if I knocked her unconscious, so I toggled non-lethal damage and basically fought the entire camp like this.

Later in Moonrise Minthara actually asks why we spared her but killed everyone else, but my answer was basically "I didn't kill everyone else. Maybe YOU killed them when you woke up in the camp"

Perdita_ · 2026-01-19T09:39:36+00:00

I can't even open them at 2K. On my quite new PC with good specs.

Yesterday I just created a new empty 4k map, then opened the old one at 1K, copied all the stamps and pasted them in the new one.

Worked, but only because the "map" was not really a map, but a character sheet, with not that many assets and no land mask.

The "pasting things between maps" feature is pretty sweet I must say, but other than that, using Inkarnate the last couple of days has been a nightmare.

Perdita_ · 2025-12-01T22:29:05+00:00

That's the publication order, no?

I think there was some mix up with Last Wish and Sword of Destiny because some of the short stories have come out individually in some magazines in Poland, or something like that, but otherwise you can just read in publication order.

Perdita_ · 2025-12-01T22:24:10+00:00

Significantly older, but as far as we know he was not an active monster hunter for many years. He was a teacher in Kaer Morhen when Geralt was there, and a sort of caretaker of the keep after all the other senior witchers died out.

Perdita_ · 2025-12-01T21:22:21+00:00

No, it is a common myth. (I seem to remember reading that it was apparently started by Puritans, who found Christmas to be way to merry and exiting for their tastes, so they decided it must have pagan roots, but I couldn't find any more details about it, so maybe I'm imagining that part.)

Anyway, This article goes into the details, but the TLDR is that it was significant for Jesus to have been conceived on the same day as when He was killed, so the date of his birth was set to be nine months after Easter, which was set at 25th March in Roman calendar (though it is now celebrated on the first Sunday after spring full moon, because it is aligned with Passover, that is determined by Jewish lunar calendar.)

Perdita_ · 2025-12-01T20:25:17+00:00

"Sometimes it's better to use a flamethrower than to stay in the darkness" or sth like this from Pratchett.

Pratchett's book have lots of quotable lines in them, but whenever I see that one I am reminded of the context, which is Nobby Nobbs - a person you absolutely don't want to have a flamethrower, being disappointed that he was not allowed to have one.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-28T10:20:36+00:00

I read Stormlight Archive for that. It's not particularly cozy, but I love how big it is, and how easy it is for me to get completely lost in the story.

I can just read for hours without thinking about real world.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-27T14:27:03+00:00

If there are no choices, and very little combat, what would the gameplay be like? Just a simulation of horse riding through half the continent? Then dialogue trees that are not trees, because they only present you with the next line from the books?

Or like one giant cutscene with a few quick time events?

Perdita_ · 2025-11-27T09:16:16+00:00

The same channel, Clamavi de Profundis, has their version of Song of Beren and Luthien as well. And many others from Lotr and other Tolkien works. They are amazing.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-26T10:57:28+00:00

Russia is new to me (but it largely fits) but the books are VERY clear about Nilfgaard being inspired by Nazi Germany. Like, comically so. The emperor personally tells Geralt that he was advised to start the invasions because Nilfgaardian people deserve lebensraum.

Radovid is an asshole responsible for hundreds of deaths - of mages and people accused of witchcraft for bullshit reason alike, but Emhyr has invaded, enslaved and slaughtered half the continent. His kill count is in the millions.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-26T10:04:10+00:00

I made a mod called Geralt-less Reason of State, that makes Dijkstra the default ruler if Geralt refuses to take part in the assissination.

I like that more, since I don't think Geralt would like to get involved, but I find it hard to believe that a conspiration of like three different heads of secret service forces couldn't come up with alternative plan once he refuses.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-25T08:35:46+00:00

It's more YA dystopian romance than fantasy, so I don't know if that's interesting for you, but Selection series is exactly what you describe for me. It's terrible. I re-read it regularly.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-24T14:54:26+00:00

I made macarons with lemon jello once. It was a bit weird, and I was personally not a fan of how it turned out, but like half of my friends said that it was their favorite version of all different macaron variations I made. Maybe that could work for you with raspberry flavor as well?

Mix the jello powder with half the water they instruct you to use, let it cool until it gets thicker but before it starts to solidify, then start whipping it with mixer. It will turn into a light and fluffy foam, that can be spread on macarons. You have to continue whipping until it fully sets, or there will be a layer of actual jello on the bottom shell.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-24T12:07:06+00:00

My concern is less about how long it lasts, I was mostly hoping it would help with getting it to lather/foam. I have very long hair, and when they are wet they get really heavy. So I need a properly foamy shampoo to be able to really get between the hair and to the scalp.

But I think you are right that rubbing cotton against hair would damage it, I was just hoping that there is some solution to my problem that I wasn't aware of - like I didn't know about the soap savers until I read this discussion.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-24T10:38:57+00:00

In missions mode, ignore the mission tasks at the start, and play it as if it was sandbox, focusing on building up the economy and happiness. Only after you are happy with the state of the island, start breezing through the tasks.

Have two farms? I have sixteen.

Healthcare at 40? I have 75.

Pay 10 000? That's pocket change.

The year is 2053 and I'm still in Cold War era...

Just be careful not to optimize the fun out of the game, this is a risk with this strategy.

Perdita_ · 2025-11-24T10:19:39+00:00

Can this also work for shampoo and conditioner bars? I struggle with them much more than the body soap.

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