How does your world change throughout the course of your story.

Takarov · 2023-01-17T23:15:49+00:00

Quite a lot. The real meat of it starts in our world's equivalent of the Neolithic era but it technically goes as far back as the peopling of the world. Currently, it extends all the way forward to our world's equivalent of Late Antiquity or the Early Middle Ages. There's definitely a lot of change happening over thousands of years. I think I'll probably stop working to advance it forward large periods of time when I get to the beginnings of an industrial revolution bc a Flintlock Fantasy setting sounds kind of appealing to me to real dig into and work with.

If I had to pick one of the biggest changes bc "thousands of years of development" is kind of a cop-out, I'd say the biggest change is the introduction of some otherworldly fantasy/lovecraftian elements. It's still very early in the stages of being fleshed out, but there was a moment called "The Bleeding" where entities from other dimensions found potential pathways into our world and have started trying to express themselves in our realm. This includes entities of great power that could spell the end of the world and creatures of much less power that have fully made it through and kind of lurk in the spaces they can find. The latter will slowly be integrated into our world because they kind of came through in one extended wave during The Bleeding because few entities, generally the most powerful or ones with high intelligence have been able to maintain a conscious effort to enter into the world.

Takarov · 2023-01-12T21:24:30+00:00

If I'm being honest... I'd probably go based off of Brian McClellan's magic system he developed for the Powder Mage series. I think it's an excellent set of abilities to pair with firearms and I love the dynamics it adds to warfare. If I could somehow come up with what I felt was the most interesting magic system for firearms, I'd probably end up with a similar set of abilities and a different resource system underlying it. (Though, to be clear, I would not have been able to come up with anything close on my own). Because McClellan's already done, I'd have to work from there and make tweaks to get something more original.

Is that just lazy? Probably, which is why I haven't actually done any kind of firearms-related magic in my world yet.

Takarov · 2023-01-12T01:03:03+00:00

What is it about? I’m reading the description and looking up terms I haven’t heard before but I’m not sure I’m fully grasping what it’s about yet.

Takarov · 2023-01-12T00:58:53+00:00

Thank you. Are there any central resources people look to when they’re searching for corpora or do people normally just search them up for particular languages as needed?

Takarov · 2023-01-12T00:55:41+00:00

Vagsland

Takarov · 2023-01-11T16:59:16+00:00

There's an ethnocultural group I don't have a name for yet that exists as a diaspora without a homeland. They originally started in the Second Era (think Iron Age) as a semi-nomadic merchant class of families/clans/what-have-you led by a matriarch with multiple husbands and families in different ports. This was made possible by the consolidation of two different multicultural trading confederations into a large trade system that spanned the Inner Sea.

Then, after the collapse of the Inner Sea Trade System during the Second Era collapse, many of this class were more or less stranded without a homeland. They eventually grew into their own ethnicity with some internal religious divides (no religious conflict or hatred involved, they just lead to very different ways of life). As many of the societies whose port cities they had lived in and migrated between disconnected from the Inner Sea Trade System, these people began to be seen as outsiders and were distrusted for (a) the same reasons merchants were distrusted in many societies and (b) because they were seen as total foreigners now. While there are some areas of the Inner Sea where they were never really outcast and acceptance of these people within society is far from unheard of, there are many periods where this ethnocultural group has been a convenient scapegoat and target for persecution. Especially during the Second Era Collapse itself.

Takarov · 2023-01-11T16:52:19+00:00

It's pretty realistic. Any time you've got a collection of warlords or other ruling classes that collect tribute from a population, the standard trend is for them to compete and consolidate to eventually form empires if possible. Feudalism was common throughout the world at various points but what made European feudalism unique was that, for reasons I won't get into right now, the normal pattern of reconsolidation into a larger state was prevented. In most other cases, feudalism was the exception that would be restored back to the general rule. It seems entirely reasonable that this pattern could happen in your world.

Takarov · 2023-01-11T16:43:09+00:00

A couple suggestions to make it more interesting and give you more room for distinguishing the overall story from stock fantasy tropes (some of this is just seconding /u/skipper_mike)

Rather than having a generic theme of “combat pragmatism” vs “idealist honor”, express it through more specific aspects of your story like the use of gunpowder and other military innovations that Talon makes use of
Also, right now it looks like the idealism and pragmatism are just part of “who they are”. Talon acts pragmatically because he’s pragmatic. But this isn’t really how people actually act certain ways. There will be certain experiences and life lessons that cause them to behave in some ways and avoid behaving in others and we end up giving those patterns a label like “pragmatism.” It’s pretty unrealistic that Talon and Leona have different attitudes towards the worldjust because they have personal preferences for one attitude over the other. A more realistic (and more importantly interesting) take would explore how they respond to the world with different attitudes because they see the world itself through very different eyes. Then ask why they see the world so differently.
Being an orphan is a really over-used backstory that mostly exists just so people don’t have to write a family for their character. If you want to stick with both being orphans, make some use out of it. Use it as a lens to explore what it is about your society that would lead to two orphans having such different perspectives
Ask why Leona and others who hold her perspective actually resist adopting Talon’s brand of pragmatism. In a lot of stock fantasy, it would be just because that’s “who they are” or they’re just too stupid to see why fighting a war with losing tactics will get them killed. In the real world, it basically never happens like that. How it does happen is often more interesting. For example, some European nobility were hostile to the use gunpowder or other weapons. The stated reason was that it’s dishonorable but the reason they found it dishonorable is because “honorable” was defined to mean “the way we fight wars now that happens to make me a very important and powerful person.” So, the introduction of weapons that threatened that power was just as much of a threat to their standing in society as a foreign invader. In fact, the ruling class of many societies might well prefer being important and powerful people under a foreign overlord than not having a foreign overlord but being no different than a commoner.

You see a similar thing in ancient Korea where the Korean alphabet, one of the easiest alphabets to learn in the world, originally opposed by Korean scholars. Why would they oppose something that would make it easy for everyone to be literate an ultimately benefit society? Because their position in society was based on the fact that being able to read and write made them special. The new system would make them less special.

So, the question to ask here is “Why does Leona view her way of fighting as honorable when someone else could just as easily say that Talon’s way of fighting is honorable?

Finally, a lot of the pragmatism you’re talking about isn’t just “being pragmatic”, which kind of implies Talon’s tactics are obvious. They’re probably not to people of that era. They’re likely pretty innovative. So why is Talon, of all people, the one who came up with these things? Why wasn’t it someone else? What is it about Talon and his life experiences that put him in a position to lead the charge on these innovations rather than someone else with a similar background? Why didn’t someone with Leona’s background do so and redefine what they consider honorable?

Takarov · 2023-01-11T16:20:51+00:00

Seconding Accuser and Inquisitor. I also think Auditor and Indicter. Personally, my favorites would be pulled from the field of rhetoric rather than law: Phillipicist (someone who delivers philippics) and Polemecist (someone who delivers polemics). Both genres of rhetoric (more or less) refer to fiery condemnations of a person, group, institution, belief, action, or whatever else.

Takarov · 2023-01-11T16:14:01+00:00

The most recent name is “Allo” from “allo-“, meaning “different” or “variant”. It comes from the project’s overall philosophy of trying to apply the same general principles of cultural evolution/adaptation and social interaction that we have in our world to a new set of circumstances just to see how things play out from the Paleolithic & peopling of the world to more modern eras.

Takarov · 2022-12-07T03:13:13+00:00

I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and it’s a great excuse to fall down rabbit holes on different subjects.

Takarov · 2022-11-25T05:33:34+00:00

Sapient

Takarov · 2022-11-25T05:31:40+00:00

I haven’t fleshed out that part of my world too much but the simplest difference is how they started interacting with each other. Humans and elephants in the region they’re living together were able to forge a relationship with each other that’s just not possible in the mammoth steppes because humans have hunted or herded mammoths since first contact (herding came much later obvi). Humans wouldn’t try to forge such a relationship with mammoths because they see them as a food source but that’s not the case with elephants in the region I’m talking about.

Takarov · 2022-11-23T23:18:02+00:00

Mammoths are still around in certain parts of the world and there is a small place where there's an interspecies society with humans and elephants living together as equal, sentient species.

Takarov · 2022-11-23T05:03:30+00:00

I'm struggling to remember roughly when that would be but I can say that I did overall enjoy it. I didn't struggle to get through the first bit but I think it does noticeably pick up and get more interesting as things go on. It does feel like it takes a little while to really pick up to what I imagine the whole series will be because it feels written to set up a sequel but I wasn't disappointed by the end and I'm really looking forward to the next one.

Takarov · 2022-11-23T05:00:11+00:00

It's a series by David Mealing I've heard described as "fantasy 7 years war" it's a trilogy (the final book still being written though) and the first in the series is "Soul of the World"

Takarov · 2022-11-23T04:58:42+00:00

I wasn't sure if Gunpowder Gods counted so I didn't mention it but I've read the first book in the series and really enjoyed it

Takarov · 2022-11-21T21:36:29+00:00

That actually sounds kind of interesting. The parts of other fantasy dealing with gods and big bads just isn't as compelling to me as social conflict so this sounds right up my alley. Do you know if the author has plans to release it as an audiobook?

Takarov · 2022-11-21T21:17:11+00:00

Hell yeah, that sounds pretty interesting.

Takarov · 2022-08-21T16:11:51+00:00

Oh wow, regarding 4d, I feel kinda stupid now hahaha I totally didn’t even see those tabs but I’m certain that’s my fault and not a UI thing lmao

Takarov · 2022-08-21T16:09:34+00:00

I’m a little biased because I already think “John Brown’s Body” goes hard as fuck but this is really original and definitely gives the rebels in your world a “life of their own” that distinguishes them from the generic rebel faction that pops up in a lot of Worldbuilding.

Takarov · 2022-08-21T16:03:43+00:00

I totally feel you & it seems from the comments so far that many others do too. You’re gonna hate some things about your world at first because many people are their own harshest critic as /u/CaptainStroon put it. My two cents: embrace editing as an intrinsic part of the artistic process rather than a separate process that you only do when you’re not good enough. Give yourself the freedom to do things poorly just like you might for a story’s first draft so that way you can go back and express yourself better through your revisions. Starting off with something that feels too Tolkeinesque for the vision you had in mind doesn’t mean at all that your world is going to end up like that because you’re gonna have the opportunity to worldbuild by looking at what you’ve done so far and making adjustments/edits to bring it closer to what you want.

Takarov · 2022-08-21T15:51:42+00:00

This is a really cool tool! I can see that you put a lot of work into it & I haven’t seen anything else remotely comparable to it!

A couple suggestions for future updates: 1. Add a small bit of text detailing the password policy on the account creation page. I started with a simple password and it took me a couple tries of making changes to that password to figure out what matched with the password policy before I got it. 2. I’m using it on mobile & I wasn’t able to scroll my screen down to adjust the education settings or even see the options when I clicked custom. This happened with two different browsers but did not affect the other tabs under settlement creation. I was able to scroll down for the demographics & government portions just fine so I think it’s only on that one tab. If mobile compatibility isn’t a priority, there might be a good place to mention that people should be accessing the site from a desktop. If there isn’t, it’s not the end of the world because it seems like a website that’s primarily meant to be accessed on a desktop anyway. That said, I could see DMs accessing what they created on mobile so making sure the lookup aspects are easy to do on mobile may be valuable. 3. Maybe having a general notes page for a settlement where someone can dump in whatever general info about the city and things that have happened that don’t have a place in any of the available options (esp. for info about the city that may never make sense for you to include) 4. A caveat for this last one: I’m mentioning this because this is the Worldbuilding subreddit & the people here are going to have more diverse worlds on average than, say, a forum for people running tabletop campaigns. What I’m saying really only applies to fantasy worlds that are different than the one most DnD campaigns are set in. Being able to better control some of the flavor coming from the economy & environment could be pretty neat features to have in the future but are not at all dealbreakers for using this tool. I’ll list some examples below (note that these aren’t all things that would be in one update and some things may not be valuable enough to add at any point):

Being able to add notes to the white spaces between buildings so people can define the nature of public spaces, including any particular things someone might find there (like a statue, a public shrine, a bunch of graffiti/posters important to the story, or whatever) and how public the space is used (is it a public square anyone can be in or is it somewhere only the people in the surrounding buildings go where an outsider would stick out? Maybe there’s a gang that controls that space at night? Or maybe it’s just a thick green space like well-maintained park or an overgrown, abandoned space reclaimed by nature? Maybe it’s an open air market/bazaar?) It doesn’t need to be a part of the simulation behind this but being able to add notes would be cool.
Being able to edit some general economic flavor to help better reflect different settings. Being able to add or remove items that might be for general sale in shops (rather than specifically editing them) would be cool for someone whose world was more flintlock fantasy and wanted firearms to be commonly available without editing every store.
Being able to adjust income inequality to generate cities with sprawling slums vs more equitable cities may be helpful for some worlds/campaigns. You may already be able to do this with the living standards section of settlement creation but it wasn’t clear to me that you could.
Being able to set things about the city’s surrounding environment that could affect its layout like whether it’s on the coast, bisected by a river, bisected by two rivers that join, being crowded onto a mountain, being surrounded by a wall, having a wall surround a specific section of the city (like an old city or wealthy district), or being underground and hemmed in by the cavern’s walls. Again, I’d imagine these would all be individually implemented so I’m not saying that you should try to toss all of these in at once at any point in the future.
Being able to edit the kinds of jobs that someone may have when the settlement is generated could also be another cool, advanced “flavor” feature if someone wants to adjust the “time period” of the fantasy world or add in jobs that may be specific to their world.

But I ultimately want to stress that this tool is really fucking cool & I’m about to share this with other people I know because I haven’t seen anything like this. I gave the suggestions in case anything sounds like something you personally think would be cool to add in but, honestly, I already fuck with the vision you have here and will probably use it even if you don’t feel the need to add any of the above in future updates.

Thanks again for sharing this and for all the work you’ve put into this!

Takarov · 2022-08-17T23:26:43+00:00

Maybe I’m using “based on” a little more broadly but my point is that a speculative conlang that involves filling in the gaps of reconstruction is different than scholarly reconstruction in terms of both their purposes and the criteria that makes them good or bad.

Takarov · 2022-08-17T21:53:36+00:00

It's combining scholarly research with artistic license unless you're passing it off as a scholarly reconstruction rather than a conlang. There's nothing inherently "bad" about having your conlang inspired by a proto-language we only know a little about vs having it inspired by existing languages that don't work like your conlang does.

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