Collaborative High Fantasy World Building

[Red Wizard]

@BingTheWing The usual races are used and reused because of the simple fact that they're fun and easily tweaked into something new and exciting. Going completely bananas will ultimately only serve to confuse and alienate people.

@Polybius Sure, but I wouldn't want to coerce you into not using a tool you find useful just because of my reluctance towards it. There will be other worldbuilding games.

[Vahir]

The piratepad is a tool, nothing more. I only suggested it as an alternative to slowly posting in this thread.

I've been pondering this setup, and I wonder if I've made it too open in scope. We all have different ideas on which it's difficult to build a consensus. If you guys are open to it, I'd propose that I cut to the chase and impose a set geographical world, a set magic system and a group of deities. We could then add features, such as physical landmarks, animal species, and different races, on a one by one basis. You guys okay with that?

My thoughts on fantasy races

I think there's a certain fallacy in thinking that any appearance of previously seen tropes - such as elves, dwarevs, magic, wizards, dragons- is an exact copy of previous iterrations and therefore completely worthless as a work. By that logic, there should not be any dragons, manticores, any angels or demons, any creature at all that come from another source, since they have been seen and done to death over and over. Why do we still have dragons? Because they are easy to relate to. They represent something which anyone can recognize. You could invent a giant horrible monster the heroes must defeat... or you could have them fight a dragon. The later may sound lazy and devoid of creativity, but it draws in the audience as everyone knows what a dragon is capable of. They know what the stakes are, while an invented monster is an unkown. You can explain what the monster is, of course; you can detail out all of its biology, its desires, its intelligence. But all that takes time, and effort, and time and effort on the part of the reader to integrate all that information. Conventions exist because they let you skip all the messy business of learning the workings of the world, and go right to the story at hand.

As you pointed out before, we need to be careful not to become mired in worldbuilding, which I agree with because if it takes too long the whole project will die a slow death as people get bored and leave, and the exponentially increasing complexity makes it difficult to keep track of other people's creations.

[BingTheWing]

But at least we should add a twist to it. Maybe this world is in the end times and all the stereotypical hur durr im an archer elves and dwarves are slowly dying out, and the appearance of one of these is rare, but gives a glimpse of what the old world was like. Maybe humans and orcs would be more numerous.

[Vahir]

But at least we should add a twist to it. Maybe this world is in the end times and all the stereotypical hur durr im an archer elves and dwarves are slowly dying out, and the appearance of one of these is rare, but gives a glimpse of what the old world was like. Maybe humans and orcs would be more numerous.

@BingTheWing

Well yes, nobody said they wanted carbon copy of fantasy races; we might as well RP in the Forgotten Realms or the Warhammer world if we did that. The idea, if we elect to have these races, would be to give them a fresh spin.

[Slamurai]

The piratepad is a tool, nothing more. I only suggested it as an alternative to slowly posting in this thread.

I've been pondering this setup, and I wonder if I've made it too open in scope. We all have different ideas on which it's difficult to build a consensus. If you guys are open to it, I'd propose that I cut to the chase and impose a set geographical world, a set magic system and a group of deities. We could then add features, such as physical landmarks, animal species, and different races, on a one by one basis. You guys okay with that?

@Vahir

That might not be a bad idea. It'd certainly give us a solid starting point other than sitting around, going "Got any ideas?" back and forth. Feel like we could use a little push.
As for Piratepad, I prefer other means of communication myself, like Discord or Chatzy.

[Vahir]

Right, well I'll be honest, I won't be able to codify some ground rules before next week; Another project will take all my time this weekend. I'll try to get that up on monday, moving this to a proper OOC while I'm at it.

What I'd suggest is that you guys, in the next few days, discuss about what sort of world you envision, and at the very least think about any races, countries, legendary figures, and so on.

[Red Wizard]

I like it when there's a story built into the world. I'm thinking a cold war between two superpowers set in a medieval fantasy world. These two powers (gods/nations/guilds/other) never confront eachother directly from fear of mutually assured destruction, but meddle in others affairs to manipulate the outcome of the political landscape in their favor.

Another thing that'd be cool is if we had real assholes for gods, not being worshiped out of love but rather demanding it with threats of doom.

[Polybius]

@Golem I think you said it right there. The two superpowers are the asshole gods manipulating mortals to their wills and whimsy.

[Red Wizard]

@Golem I think you said it right there. The two superpowers are the asshole gods manipulating mortals to their wills and whimsy.

@Polybius

Maybe... or they're just neutral forces, like nature. They do their thing endlessly (make war, make love, make stuff, whatever gods do), but aren't really part of the big conflict.

[A Man Is No One]

Greetings,

I wish I had seen this thread earlier. Quite frankly, I love world-building as a hobby. The maps, the history, the background, et cetera. So care to catch me up on what is going on and what we've concluded?

[BlackBishop]

I'm in, if I may.

I'd also like to volunteer my services as a mapmaker. I have the Campaign Cartographer Plus program we can make use of when we get to the point of map making.

[Slamurai]

Greetings,

I wish I had seen this thread earlier. Quite frankly, I love world-building as a hobby. The maps, the history, the background, et cetera. So care to catch me up on what is going on and what we've concluded?

@ELGainsborough

We haven't concluded much at the moment. Consensus seems to favor a world in which the gods are real, but are fickle and not infallible, inspired by Greco-Roman myth. I'm assuming their feuds will extend to and greatly shape the mortal world and influence the interactions between different peoples.
I fear that such a black-and-white, 'our gods vs. your gods' outlook will make religion a more prominent factor than secular politics, limiting opportunity for political intrigue and games, if we desire it. Having an entire people beholden to particular gods might hamper their freedom of choice, limiting individual agency. Unless the gods don't care at all about mortal political or cultural divisions.

[A Man Is No One]

@Aristo

With regards to the dieties, I suppose it would matter how important would the people of the world find them to be. Do they regard them with high esteem or because they are fickle would their follows be more loose with their piety? This should shape how much influence they have over the mortal coil. So let's assume these deities are having some level of feuds; are the gods capable of harming each other? Or are they damaged only so much as their belief on the mortal plane? For example, if one god is beleived in less than another - is that god less powerful than the other? I would suggest a pantheon of few dieties given their roles may be in the background. If you fear such black and white thinking avoid it. Or take the deities and provide them with a weakness as provided in that, if it is our gods versus your gods the gods must interact and observe their people otherwise they would risk becoming nothing.

Does this make sense?

On another hand, I'm not quite sure why you are starting with dieties though. YOu might consider the land mass and how it was developed, the myth of creation. The position of kingdoms, powers, land marks etc. Things that directly influence how the dieties came to be or how they developed span of powers.

[Red Wizard]

Unless the gods don't care at all about mortal political or cultural divisions.

@Aristo

I'm more into this. Have everyone worship the same pantheon of gods, albeit by different means and names, and leave the politics to mortals. The gods can be like (super)natural forces that mortals need to deal with in order to survive and prosper, but they don't interfere with the schemes and intrigues of people unless affected directly.

[BlackBishop]

I agree. Having the Gods detached from the doings of mortals would be best, mainly because when we begin the RP, having Gods woven into our writings too much would likely open up a whole can of OP worms.

[BlackBishop]

So I've been adding a bit to the pirate pad, as well as drawing up a rough map linked on the pad.

Hider

The map is a rough draft, obviously, but with the mapmaker we can end up with a beautiful map with cities, terrain, and much more that will give our world a real living feel. That might be getting way ahead of ourselves though.

As far as my thoughts on the world, I'm kind of envisioning a bit of a dark tone, where conflict between mortals and gods is prevalent, as well as amongst themselves. Borrowing from Greek mythology, what if we have our pantheon of Gods be relatively new, having overthrown an older pantheon in a bitterly fought revolt. The war left existence in ruins, compelling the new pantheon to create a new world, where we currently reside.

The old world, perhaps since given a cursed name such as Netherworld, or some such, is akin to our version of hell. A horrific place where the old gods, or Old Ones, plot and scheme their revenge, and even send forth their minions from time to time.

I also had the thought that magic could derive from the gods. Perhaps mortals rose up against the Gods at some point, and over the course of the war were able to wound one or more god, and use their divine blood for some sort of ritual that infused them with their power, giving mortals the power of magic. Though the rebellion was crushed, perhaps the bloodlines of the rebel leaders carry the power of the arcane into our present day.

Just some thoughts, make of it what you will.

[MonkeyBusiness]

If there are not to many people already involved and this is closed off. I would like to throw my hat into the ring and present my idea for a submerged undersea kingdom.

[BlackBishop]

Here's another rendition of our map, based off the one provided on the pirate pad, including a beautified coast line and rivers.

[gorgenmast]

Googer be lurking.

[Slamurai]

Not to put @BlackBishop's map work to waste, but there's also the option of choosing a pre-generated map via Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator. It's pretty customizable; you can choose how many regions the map has, add hills and islands, select a few different views (topographical, poltiical etc.), customize location labels and it can auto-generate borders. In short, it does a lot of the work for you and you can tweak to taste, giving you more time to focus on the writing.

Anyway; it's just a possible option to consider. As far as the cosmology goes, I like Bishop's ideas of having the current reigning gods be conquerors of an ancient pantheon, who then created the world separate from the ruined one they left behind. We don't have to explain the intricacies of how the universe works - only that which concerns us in the present, with our current pantheon.
The conqueror route also gives our world a kind of classic 'bad guys' in the form of ancient races that followed the Old Gods, maybe some kind of demons that arose from their ashes, or what-have-you.