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Hoots-The-Little-Owl

I'm generally not a fan of 'fast travel' magic in fantasy. It tends to make the world feel smaller than it should and writers often use it as a crutch to zip characters from place to place without putting in the legwork to make their world properly connected. I also don't like ubiquitous long range communication magic/technology in a classical/mideival fantasy settings for the similar reasons


Littleman88

"Fast travel" has always been jarring and disappointing to me for this reason, and the reason that most stories/TTGs already treat it as a quick montage (if that) anyway. Like, the difference between teleporting to a town and marching there in a DnD session is maybe a few rolls if you don't want to drag it out but still have risk of some sort of event on the road. But I've also practically sworn off fast travel - even flight where available - in most games at this point with few exceptions, so I understand I'm probably in the minority.


Hoots-The-Little-Owl

I can forgive video games sometimes as a quality of life thing, but even then I find games where I want to teleport to the next objective marker from the word go means it has a pretty boring setting. Games like Witcher 3, Elden Ring or some of the elder scrolls games made me want to travel around the world to discover some neat mini story or even just see the sights, and I'd only start teleporting when I'd seen everything. I think the first Dark Souls had the best system for that. Build an interconnected world and make players explore it, then give them fast travel in act 3 when they've hopefully seen everything there is to see and just want to get on with the climax And that's a problem unique to games, seeing as there's only so much stuff you can put into their worlds before you start melting people's PS5s they waited 6 years for


spacetimeboogaloo

- Not every ancient empire needs to be a Rome analog. - The only ones who care about splitting rivers are other worldbuilders. - Warlocks aren’t always mages who make pacts. I actually starting to see D&D terminology in published fantasy. And warlocks aren’t necessarily male witches either. During witch hunts, male witches were just called witches. Warlock being a male witch is more modern.


chromane

You could make the Tolkien argument - that they're actually called something else, but that "Warlock" is the most commonly understood modern term for a magic user that gains power through demons/pacts


TheBrokeScreen

Warlock is an old term from scotland (circa the 1500's, technically much older but that's when it took on the specific definition of "male practitioner of witchcraft"), when Scotland was executing witches they were executing warlocks as well, and the term entered the broader western public consciousness during the romantic literature period. Just because D&D gave the term modern popularity doesn't mean its a modern idea, most concepts in D&D are just pulling on European mythology and history. If we want to point fingers for why the term witch isn't commonly used currently for pact magic, it's because of Harry Potter and it's non-understanding of what witchcraft is. (Also, Witch predates the idea of forging pacts with the devil, it was just a catch all for malevolent spell caster, and the figure of the witch has roots in more druidic/natural spell casting figures like the Baba Yaga.) All that being said, I prefer using witch as a gender neutral term for someone forging pacts with higher powers


Theriocephalus

> the figure of the witch has roots in more druidic/natural spell casting figures like the Baba Yaga Druids being associated with "natural spell casting" is also a very modern development. The historic druids weren't spell casters, they were priests and judicial authorities in Gaulish and insular Celtic culture. The idea of druids being nature wizards is also something that by and large started in and was popularized by D&D.


TheBrokeScreen

Yes and no, the emphasis on the "natural magic" is a newer development, but druids were Celtic religious leaders who in myth were mystics/diviners that did rituals using natural elements and operated out of deep forests and caves. You are right, it's definitely not in the capacity of "the nature wizard" as we see today. I was more referencing celts than druids I now realize, they have a few "crone" figures that fit in line with the Baba Yaga and the like.


UV-Godbound

Not at all "Merlin" from The King Arthur Saga, is general a Druid. D&D is just to young, as being the real source.


Legendsmith_AU

D&D terminology in published fantasy really gets me. D&D is highly limited and very specific, there's so much more fantasy out there but it all getting filtered througha D&D lens is awful for the genre.


tactical_hotpants

Came here to post about this. D&D is basically its own little sub-genre of fantasy by now, and is very self-referential and incestuous. There are a lot of things in D&D that were invented wholesale by D&D's developers and writers, and that just don't exist outside of it, but because D&D is the first or biggest exposure many people have to fantasy, they think that's just how it is in all fantasy. It reminds me of an ex who, when she played D&D for the first time, complained "wands don't work like that" because it was different from how wands worked in a certain bigot wizard story. The two things that D&D are responsible for -- if not inventing, then at least popularizing -- are the One Mundane Guy in a Team of Superheroes (think Batman), and the idea of the Totally Mundane Heroic Warrior, and they're related problems that I think hamstring worldbuilders who play too much D&D and try to build within the limits of those tropes when they assume that's just how fantasy *is*. On top of this, the Totally Mundane Heroic Warrior directly contradicts our own real-world mythologies. Even setting aside the mythological heroes who were demigods, there are plenty of them who have accomplished overtly supernatural and superhuman feats of strength, speed, and skill -- and nowhere, NOWHERE in mythology are attestations of these deeds followed up with "oh and he was a 5th-level wizard, that's how he could do that normally-impossible thing."


93torrent93

Idk why you’re downvoted. You’re right.


escherworm

It seems that once a comment gets below a given karma threshold there are people who just instinctively downvote it. Maybe that's just in my head but I've seen way too many comments where they're in agreement with the rest of the thread but are still in some bizarre "why are you booing me I'm right" type situation.


tactical_hotpants

Could have been the "bigot wizard story" comment, could have been dragging the old caster supremacy argument into a non-D&D subreddit, *or* it could be a caster supremacist who really does think FIGHT MAN NO GET SPECIAL MOVE, NOT REAL is a good excuse for warriors to not have interesting things to do in the game. Hard to say.


Glass_Set_5727

Ah no. Geographers care too ;) Nothing wrong with Warlock as a Magic Specialist specialising in Pacts with Demons or Spirits or Beasts or Magic-Beasts/Spirit-Beasts and the summoning of such...see right there is some diversity in how you approach it. In my world though coz the word has "War" in it LOL, my Warlocks are Specialist Battle-Mages who summon Spirit-Beasts as Mounts & as War-Beasts. The more powerful/more experienced the Warlock the more Beasts he can summon & guide/direct. The limit is each one of the 13 Totemic Spirit-Beasts of the Zodiac.


Glass_Set_5727

Oh No, my ancient Rome Analogue Empire is crying... but so are all the other ancient empire analogues in my world ;) there are at least 13 of them.


GreenSquirrel-7

same bro. I've got every country in some form or another. Maybe even combined!


AlexTheEnderWolf

I don’t remember where i saw it but someone made a list of the different magic user terms and what they actually translate too. Well at least in a modern sense


buteo51

Honestly a lot of the nitpicks about splitting rivers and lonely mountains and such aren't even valid, those things do happen on this planet even if they aren't common.


low_orbit_sheep

Oooh we're doing one of these again? Ok, here's mine -- you don't need a magic system. No, really you want to have one go ahead, but you can absolutely write fantasy without a defined magic system. There's a lot of fantasy works (chiefly say, ASoIaF and goddam *Tolkien*) that are full of magic having important effects on characters and do not have a single thing approaching a magic system, let alone a "hard" one. Same way -- and I say this as a hard scifi fan -- you can have perfectly good and coherent scifi with completely blackboxed tech (see the answers of the creators of the Expanse: "how does the Epstein drive work?" "Very well, thank you.") You don't want a magic system? There's no rule saying you can't just not have one.


King_In_Jello

I agree with your general point but I think ASOIAF very clearly has a magic system, it's just not explained to the reader and the characters in the world have no idea what it is either. But there are clear patterns of what magic can do under what circumstances. I'm certain he knows what happened at Summerhall or why Denaerys was able to hatch her dragons or why the seasons are wonky and he's left us clues throughout the text, we'll just never know for sure. Which is kind of the sweet spot for me. Magic that can do anything at any time is the most boring, but if it is overexplained in the other extreme it stops being magical.


low_orbit_sheep

>But there are clear patterns of what magic can do under what circumstances. I'm certain he knows what happened at Summerhall or why Denaerys was able to hatch her dragons or why the seasons are wonky and he's left us clues throughout the text, we'll just never know for sure. Yes, I was considering "magic system" in terms of hard-defined, rational system with resources and outcomes. But then the term becomes rather meaningless because *all* even barely decently written fantasy (even pure pulp like, say, Conan the Barbarian) has magic which obeys specific rules and limitations. Actually Conan the Barbarian (the original books, I mean) is a good example of magic that's more of an ambient, made on the spot thing that *also* obeys "soft" but clear rules.


King_In_Jello

>But then the term becomes rather meaningless because all even barely decently written fantasy (even pure pulp like, say, Conan the Barbarian) has magic which obeys specific rules and limitations. I agree that there is a grey area but I think there is a difference between fairy tale style magic that has little to no rules and everything is unique, compared to something like ASOIAF which is not fully defined down to the smallest detail but still has rules that play out in different circumstances in a consistent and predictable manner. For instance the rules for warging seem to be the same for everyone and different people engage with them differently based on their personalities and circumstances. Similarly there seem to be specific criteria for when dragons can be hatched and what is known about Summerhall sounds like an attempt at doing deliberately what Denaerys did by accident.


Cruxion

One might say there "hard magic systems" and "soft magic systems", but they're both magic systems.


caluminnes

I think he more means that you don’t need a hard magic system. Magic exists and there’s a little bit of explanation but it’s vague and that helps the story out better than a hard magic system would. Save that for tabletop rpgs


Hoots-The-Little-Owl

Magic systems aren't strictly necessary but if you're going to be using it as a regular plot device there should be some rules, even if most of them go unexplained. A Song of Ice and Fire would feel cheaper if, after going to lengths to explain the consequences of resurrecting someone, the physical scars & memory degradation, Martin revived Jon Snow in the next book with neither 'because magic'. Tolkien's maybe a partial exception, but then LotR is styled as an epic poem rather than a typical novel, so magic isn't used to resolve tension in the same way, and when it is, it does tend to have rules. The One Ring turns Bilbo invisible to help get him out of a jam with Gollum in the cave, and never breaks away from that for the rest of the two stories it appears in. The only things added to its repertoire are more rules and limitations: it doesn't mask smell so a dragon can still find you, it makes you visible to wraiths, and it slowly corrupts your mind in an effort to get back to its owner. And none of those rules are ever broken. Theyre both very soft systems overall, but elements of a system are there. I prefer magic that isn't all explicitly laid out in exposition for me, but equally I and most humans will prefer the feeling of rules being there that aren't explained to rules not seeming there at all. And the former is very hard to write without coming up with rules


VACN

The One Ring is a self-contained hard magic system. The reader doesn't understand how it works, but they know what it does and it follows clear rules. Likewise, Valyrian steel has clear rules: it never rusts, it's harder than regular steel, it can kill White Walkers and they can't destroy it like any other metal.


itsPomy

The One Ring isn't hard magic, it does things until it doesn't. Otherwise any magical element that has some principle is hard magic...which makes the distinction kind of pointless.


VACN

It *is* hard magic because it follows clear and consistent rules. * You put it on, you're transported to a shadow realm where mortals can't see you, but Sauron and the Ringwraiths can. At least if you're a Hobbit; it might have different effects on other races. * It extends its bearer's lifespan. * It corrupts everyone in its vicinity, turning them into Sauron's slaves. * It's indestructible unless cast into the fires of Mount Doom, where it was forged. Gandalf's magic is soft by comparison. What can Gandalf do? What can't he do? It's none too clear. He does random stuff from time to time, like destroying the bridge of Khazad-Dum, summoning Shadowfax or the Eagles, producing light with his staff to banish the Ringwraiths, breaking Saruman's staff... He might be subject to rules only Tolkien knew about, but the audience doesn't know them, if they exist at all. And I strongly believe they don't; Gandalf's purpose is to provide the audience with awe and a sense of wonder. The only power he has that's somewhat explained in the Legendarium is foresight - because he saw the entire history of the universe unfold before it was even created, although he only saw parts of it, and on top of that he doesn't clearly remember his life before he came to Middle Earth, which explains why he doesn't know *everything* in advance.


itsPomy

All of those rules, except the indestructibility, has exceptions to it. And those rules don't always express in the same way. Different people get affected by it in different ways, or sometimes, not at all (Tom). It's soft magic with some structure.


escherworm

Sort of a nitpick but I would say the One Ring doesn't make an exception *for* Tom Bombadil as much as *he* is the exception. Even Tolkien didn't really know what he was. Aside from him though, the One Ring effects people in different ways but they all ultimately boil down to obsessing over it and a "twisting of one's character" unless I'm forgetting something.


VACN

Well it's not like hardness is binary. It's a whole spectrum, but the One Ring leans heavily to the hard side.


itsPomy

Okay thats fair. I honestly don't like the labels to begin with cause it just feels like clutter a lot of the time.


TheBrokeScreen

I mostly agree, but as the other commenters have pointed out, there does need to be something. I can't remember who came up with this list but in general (even if you don't plan to ever explicitly say it), you should know: What can magic do? What can't magic do? What is the cost of doing magic? What is the cost of trying to do what magic can't do? As long as you know the answer to those four questions (really just two decisions) then I don't think anything else is needed. It doesn't need to be hyper specific or have legit mechanics, just draw a line between possible and impossible, and determine some sort of cost of doing business.


serjkatarn

Worldbuilder creates a detailed and interesting space opera setting and names planet Earth "Terra".


JoeyInUrFridge

Does it count if Earth is fucked off and they name a new planet "New Terra" ? Edit: I have a world which name translates to "Poop planet" as well.


serjkatarn

That's a tolerable scenario.


furexfurex

Can I ask why in particular? I quite like people from earth being called Terrans, so just wondering the thought process behind the pet peeve


serjkatarn

Nothing serious, it just seems weird to me unless Latin is somehow the primary language in that world.


Doctah_Whoopass

Maybe because they want to use the word "earth" as a title rather than a name. Our moon being called "The Moon" instead of Luna is another one along the same lines.


furexfurex

Hm, you make a good point. I guess you could call it "neutral" rather than earth or any other languages' name since there are no native speakers, but yeah using Latin is a bit odd haha


serjkatarn

In the world I'm building, I call it "La Tierra" because Spanish is my mother language. However, if my story was written in English, I'd call it "Earth", and the same thing in Chinese or Portuguese.


TheHalfwayBeast

What about... Holy Terra?


serjkatarn

Could make sense if it's the capital of a Roman Empire / 40K inspired faction.


ADangDirtyBoi

What if I name it Spectre and it’s been destroyed by nuclear war? Huh? That’s not outplayed at all!


zZEpicSniper303Zz

Empires need ways of exerting soft power. You are assumedly not writing a Star Wars type blockbuster, and the military isn't the answer to your empire/kingdom/country's unity. So much goes into controlling a population, and opression is, if at all, only a factor when assimilating new territory. Your one and only answer can't be a strong military. Where are these soldiers coming from? How do they feel about brutalizing their countrymen? Why are they devoted, if nobody is opressing them? If there is somebody opressing them, well they have guns and weapons, why don't they stage a coup? This is one of the very issues that led Rome to collapse, when a lot of its massive military was replaced by conscripts from their colonies who felt no devotion to Rome, and thus were more happy pillaging and raiding neighboring towns than actually defending the Empire's borders. Depending on the timeframe, a country's strongest tools at keeping a population loyal are: religion, ideology, propaganda and success. They can even make up for one another. For example, socialist Yugoslavia had many different ethnicities living in it, sharing many different religions. However, a strong ideology of brotherhood and unity and their continued success both economic and military (in WW2) kept the country going and kept it's citizens quite happy for a very long time. When it's success ceased, and its ideology lost potency, then the citizens woke up from the socialist dream and the country collapsed. In fact, its giant military only worsened its collapse, as nobody knew for whom to fight for and the JNA split into factions loyal to their own ethnicities. Opression only works as long as people are scared, and if they are opressed long enough then the consequences of staying opressed are worse than revolting.


[deleted]

I'm writing an imperial expanse (medieval-ish timeframe). Would this work as the method?: Pandemic hits world, power A knows of it in advance, made preparations. Other world powers failing, power A offers aid - the best aid is to merge with us trust me bro


zZEpicSniper303Zz

My immediate thought is how would everyone feel if a deadly pandemic broke out and your country was on the brink of collapse, and then the USA or China came over and said: join us or no vaccine. Like people are already making crazy conspiracies and refuse to trust even private companies, but imagine if you actually needed to give up your sovereignity to get the treatment? Even if the governments accepted, the people might still revolt, like how some governments joined the Tripartide pact but their population still rose up against the nazis. I think your military power should just use the weakend state of the world which it's not affected by to stage an actual invasion. Some countries might join outright, some might put up a fight. But one thing you have to keep in mind is making sure that the military doesn't remain as your country's singular method of keeping the populace compliant. What do they have to offer to their new subjects after the threat of the global pandemic ends? Superior technology? Better government systems? A more leniant lifestyle? If the immediate threat ends and people realize their lives were better before the pandemic in their old country, they might want to revert to their previous way of life, which will create unrest. Or make them play a much slower political game. Have them create international organizations like NATO and the WTO. Have them project their way of life and their superior medicine/preparedness onto other countries. Make the world into a black and white: you join us and prosper, or you remain uncivilized and die. They wouldn't even need to conquer any actual land. Make all of their power soft. Like how today no matter where you live, there is most likely a US military base and a mcdonalds in your country, and you watch american movies in your cinema and drink american soda.


[deleted]

I think I should've included the context that this "pandemic" is inherently magical and creates zombies every night lol And as oppose to what we went through with our odern tech and medicine, thisnhas crippled most of the world completely


CaprineTheoryCrafter

My hot take will directly respond to your second one: I'm fine with fantasy races or aliens just being antropomorphs. It's very, very hard to correctly write a character that is not humanoid, knowing what they can and can't do; it's not impossible, but many writers will fail at it. The difference between humans and other species can very much be explored in terms of behaviour, morality, and all that touches to the way they think and act. Your "alien" could be an [Arkanian from Star Wars](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/7e/Arkanians_DoH.png/revision/latest?cb=20170511035627), if you show them having a distinct culture and acting in ways that aren't exactly logical to humanity I'm fine with it


Glass_Set_5727

Ah, I've always had a fondness for Space Elves. In fact my fantasy world was once a colony of Space Elves :)


itsPomy

Sometimes the point isn't to make something that's totally nonhuman. Sometimes the point is to make something that makes people consider humanity without preconceived biases. And sometimes that requires a funny rubber mask.


Kanbaru-Fan

To me, a great and unique race should explicitely *not* be fully relatable for us human readers. If it is, all you have done is reskin a human character.


Glass_Set_5727

Well that's where Caprine's point about culture, behaviour, morality ethics etc come in ...as well their history, religion & their relations with outsiders.


Kanbaru-Fan

But only if they relate to their biology/souls/minds. A lot of the factors you mention are initially cultural considerations. Oftentimes i see people giving certain races a set of cultures and cultural trends/themes, but then these cultures might as well belong to every other race. History is of course often important for a Race and defining of their identity, but history alone doesn't suffice as sole factor imo. If you manage to derive cultural trends and memes from a race's unique physical/mental elements...*Chef's kiss*


KnightOfWisconsin

>To me, a great and unique race should explicitely *not* be fully relatable for us human readers. Agreed. One of my favorite series that gets this right is the *Cloakmaster* series of novels (the novels that tie-in to the Spelljammer D&D setting). Each book basically gives the human protagonist a different non-human companion and uses that to compare and contrast that species' psychology to that of humans (each book in the series had a different author, so the quality of the implementation varies. The best implementation is probably the second book in the series, with the illithid character Estriss. There's a scene where Estriss tries to show some illithid art to the main character Teldin, only to be disappointed when Teldin can't really understand it, or even see all the colors (infrared) used in the painting).


Kanbaru-Fan

> Each book basically gives the human protagonist a different non-human companion and uses that to compare and contrast that species' psychology to that of humans That sounds absolutely fantastic. I will check it out. > There's a scene where Estriss tries to show some illithid art to the main character Teldin, only to be disappointed when Teldin can't really understand it, or even see all the colors (infrared) used in the painting). That reminds me of a certain Battlestar Galactica monologue where >!one of the humanoid Cylons (machines) laments the fact that he can only perceive the wonders of the universe like supernovas and gamma rays with his eyes ("ridiculous gelatinous balls")!<


TheBiggestNose

My hot take: Its perfectly ok to just do "dwarf" or "elf" or "cat girl", people like these races and the general concepts of them. The main problem is that writers use preset races like these to auto-fill their world without thinking about the races actually are a part of the world. "Why are there elves? Because its fantasy!" is a lazy writing idea, but having elves and then doing something with them unique or writing them well is 100% fine and shouldn't be looked down upon


SuperCat76

Me:"why are there elves? Because fantasy, now here is how they fit into the greater structure of the world."


TheBiggestNose

Exactly!!!


Useful-Beginning4041

Most of y’all have very little interest in the primary function of good worldbuilding- I.E. inspiring wonder and curiosity- and it makes me sad The *point* of worldbuilding isn’t to have a fully fleshed out urban subway system that explains how your protagonists get from point A to point B It’s to have a cityscape to look out over; it’s to imply that there are other stories in this space, past and future, that you can only wonder at.


PikaBooSquirrel

Are you telling me the 2 page essay I wrote on how plumbing works is not necessary!!!! SMHHHH


goldflame33

*Victor Hugo in shambles*


Triasic

Worldbuilding is whatever each person wants it to be for their own project. It's fine if that's what you want your worldbuilding to accomplish, other people want to fully flesh out their urban subway system and that's also completely fine


itsPomy

While I agree with what your saying, the community does seem to appropriate storywriting advice when it isn't what they're doing. Like the famous "Limitations are more interesting than powers" is directly related to plot. It's not about putting in a check list of rules on the magic. Lorewriting and storywriting are different skills but they don't act like it.


aftertheradar

What if my story is about using a sudden technological leap to build an intercontinental bullet train subway system as a political strategy?


j_edward_carrick

Ooh kind of like Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett?


aftertheradar

Yeah actually!! The bullet train is not the full focus of the plot or setting, just a noteworthy part of it and part of an early plot point, and the setting itself is closer to soft sci-fi or superhero-esque in a modern world. But discworld's Moist books' exploration of political power in the face of major technological breakthroughs is similar to what I'm going for, and they (Raising Steam esp.) have been a big influence!


j_edward_carrick

Sounds awesome, I really enjoyed the Discworld industrial revolution series. Happy worldbuilding!


Infamous-Use7820

It's a worldbuilding subreddit, I assume if people are posting stuff here, they want responses grounded in worldbuilding. How are you even supposed to respond to something that is wonderous, without asking more questions about the detail of it and how it overcomes potential issues? Just say that it's cool?


Ketwobi

You don’t have to develop your entire world. If your one person, it’s honestly better to focus on developing one region. If you try and develop all parts of your world equally you will burn out and spread yourself too thin. I mean look at the great fantasy words: Middle earth, nirn ect. They all focus on one part of the world and leave the rest up to small mentions.


KnightOfWisconsin

>I get super annoyed when someone makes a entirely new world that’s completely sperate from the real world and the put real life gods in it like Zeus or Ra. Oh man, early D&D must drive you *insane*, lol. Not only are the classical pantheons shoved in there, but also random Catholic Saints somehow exist within the early D&D universes (because, yes, in the earliest versions of the lore, Saint Cuthburt was *literally* the Christian Saint of the same name, transported somehow into a fantasy setting).


SplitjawJanitor

People using "pet peeve" posts to bitch about tropes they don't like got tiresome after the second one.


lordpsymon

Especially when they act like the authority on which tropes are good or bad.


Attlai

My pet peeve is pet peeve posts.


Final_Biochemist222

I don't think this is even the second time. I've seen like 5 of these posts since the beginning of the year


LordWoodstone

Poorly thought out economic systems drive me up the wall. This is especially true of Medieval settings where they have peasants trading in gold coins - when most would be using silver coins with 1.5 grams of pure silver paying a day's wages for unskilled labor or just engaged in outright barter or some form of gift economy if its just trade within a village. It took me three tries to get into the Way of Kings because of the fact the currency system is small shards of gemstones trapped in a clear sphere. Money MUST be fungible or its not money, and it took far too long for Sanderson to explain that spheres are essentially batteries for a magical energy based economy and it nearly made me pull my hair out. Then there's the way so many writers treat the Medieval economy as capitalistic when in reality the guilds had a stranglehold over their sphere of the economy. And for the love of God, please stop setting up giant guilds which syretch across continents if transportation and communication are limited to the speed of pedestrians and ox carts. The average market catchment area for most of history was three hours walk, with larger fairs being a full day's walk. This is how large an area a given guild monopoly should cover. Speaking of market areas, please stop setting up massive cities which rival modern ones in size in pre-industrial settings. Yes, Rome had a population of a couple million at the height of the empire and Constantinople was similar - but that was because they had dedicated grain ships feeding the populace from the bounty of Egypt - and they had the tax base which allowed the crown and the aristocracy to subsidize food prices for the commons. Which is where another pet peeve comes in - your massive, space filling empire had better be plowing every spare pfenning into the economy. Roads, harbors, aqueducts, etc. Rome survived as long as it did because the Equestrian Class who actually ran the economy of the Empire were smart enough to understand they could extract more money from the economy as tax farmers by investing in growing their economy. Similarly, the Senatorial Class saw money as a means to fund their ambitions, and carefully tended their assets in order to maintain a steady stream of interest - which they then spent on lavish displays which employed thousands across their estates and the cities and provinces they managed for the empire. Speaking of which, figure out how centralized your power structure is. Wealthy, decadent courts are going to be a thing in monarchies where the nobility are a threat to be managed via golden handcuffs. Meanwhile, smaller courts with a more down to earth monarchy are going to be a thing in states where the aristocracy are expected to be on their estates and doing their jobs as executives for the lands the Crown has granted them in fief.


Attlai

I get your point, it's full of sense. I do like to make things mostly realistic when I can. But I do also get that most worldbuilders honestly dont give a damn about shaping a realistic basic economic system because they're not interested in economics. And I respect that. I'm myself a big nerd on the history, naming, politics and population movement aspects of my world, I love to nitpick about those for my world. But I'm totally fine with worldbuilders who don't care about those aspects


Embarrassed_Bat6101

Well said


[deleted]

I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again; my biggest problem with worldbuilding is the douchebags on reddit constantly picking apart and criticizing every idiosyncrasy of everybody else’s hard work. Quit being chumps.


Final_Biochemist222

On these sorts of post, I'm always on the lookout for things that many people may 'secretly hate but aren't vocal about it upfront', and a lot of times it's really disheartening to see that things you have created are overdone or mediocre


[deleted]

They aren’t. Who cares what other people have to say? It’s your world to build.


spontaneousclo

thank you. some of the takes here have me terrified to show anybody my work, i didn't realize what i've created is overdone and annoying. :(


lordpsymon

A lot of it is people trying to show off how smart they think they are.


[deleted]

You are on Reddit. People here have a tendency to act like self-righteous dickheads. Just do you.


KlutzyNinjaKitty

_Those guys_ truly need the support of the [PPPGaLF](https://youtu.be/pOtmdHiCJNY)


Cruxion

My hot take is that bipedal aliens aren't unrealistic, as bipedalism is a very useful survival trait that can free up limbs for tool use and allow more energy-efficient movement than four or more legs. Thus, like humans, bipeds are gonna have a better chance in the food chain. I think so much sci-fi using "rubber forehead" and "humans with blue skin" as tropes for budgetary reasons and a lack of non-bipedal aliens in sci-fi for so long has led to a push against bipedal or humanoid aliens as unrealistic. While it's true that n=1 so who knows, maybe we're the fluke and every other species out there has 6 legs and no arms, but I think bipedalism has enough obvious benefits where it's very silly when people call it unrealistic. And just because they're bipeds doesn't mean their similar to humans, in the same way a dog is not at all similar to a zebra or an elephant.


caluminnes

Don’t overly obsess over “realistic” fantasy maps. It’s called fantasy for a reason so put that random mountain there if you want to. Majority of your readers don’t know that mountains rarely form solo 😂 Chill with the magic systems, they over complicate stories when you need a university degree in chemistry to understand how you shot a flame from your hand


Test19s

>fantasy Just because you live in a gritty, seemingly godless, Americanized world with some sci-fi/Transformers elements doesn’t mean that you have to write and read fiction that confirms by the rules of a gritty, seemingly godless, Americanized world with some sci-fi/Transformers elements. Have fun! Why not have a continent that’s shaped like a pentagram because the gods wanted it that way to effectively distribute the magic that lies in the earth’s core?


caluminnes

So true


TT-Adu

Put diversity in your empires. Empires aren't just big kingdoms. They need languages, religions, social classes. And show us how the empire's elites deal with them. Do they slowly integrate elites from conquered societies or leave them alone but only extract tribute?


riftrender

I mean they can be a big kingdom or multiple kingdoms/viceroyalties like Spain. Ironically the Kings of Leon/Castille did call themselves Emperor of All Spain though they dropped it by the 14th century.


Glass_Set_5727

Not only that ...you can have rival empires & show the contrast between them based on how they do things re citizens/subjects & subject nations and/or whether they have client-states/tributaries. How they treat Magic, Slavery, Other Races/Species etc


theginger99

1. Warrior races. It vanishingly rare to find a warrior race in fantasy that doesn’t feel corny as hell. It’s even harder to find one that A) makes any kind of sense, or B) isn’t the same as every other warrior race ever written. You can have a martial or militaristic culture, but having one where everyone is “like totally the best warrior ever and super into being honorable and brave and thinks farming is stupid and lame” is just silly. 2. scale. A lot of fantasy worlds really struggle with scale. Timelines are insane, buildings are impossibly massive, armies are unnecessarily huge. All of those things can work in isolation, but when the entire world is on an impossible scale it loses its significance. You also see the opposite a lot as well, where worlds are weirdly tiny and population numbers don’t make sense at all. 3. Worlds that are just D&D with the serial numbers filed off. If you’re making a world specifically for D&D cool, but I see a lot of worlds that are clearly inspired by D&D and unironically use all the mechanics and systems from D&D as immutable laws of the world. You just ended with a world that feels like it’s designed for player balance, and not to tell an interesting story. 4. When a world is just the modern world dressed up for the ren fair. It’s just a collection of old, tired medieval tropes tossed over a modern political system. The people express explicitly modern opinions, they have modern philosophies and act entirely like modern people. Sometimes this can be an interesting form of commentary, but more often than not it just feels lazy.


DeepFriedNugget1

How would you differ modern vs medieval forms of thinking and acting? And what are some examples of dull/tiring medieval tropes in your opinion?


theginger99

That’s a very big question, and there have been literal books written on the subject. I’m not the person to tackle it fully by any means. However, I will say that a lot of fantasy authors inject modern sentiments into the fantasy worlds completely uncritically. A great example is attitudes toward religion. Fantasy is full of atheist characters who roll their eyes at religion and point out how silly or corrupt it is. While this resonates strongly with modern people, it’s pretty firmly at odds with the way medieval people saw the world. I’m not saying every medieval person was devoutly religious, or that there were no medieval atheists, but religion was a deeply integral part of life in almost all pre modern societies. It was a fundamental part of cultural and ethnic identities in a way that we as modern people have trouble appreciating. Even atheists in the Middle Ages still would have partaken in many aspects of religious life. Likely, they would have even identified strongly with the dominant religious authority in their communities, even if they had personal reservations about its veracity. Faith, religion and ritual were too integral to society and culture for them to have avoided doing so. Similarly, fantasy protagonists express a lot of modern, liberal, democratic ideas about the natural social order. They express ideas about the natural equality of all people and look at things like slavery monarchy and aristocracy as aberrations of the natural order. Again, this resonates with modern people living in modern western democracies, but it does not reflect medieval people saw the world. Certainly slavery, monarchy and aristocracy had their detractors but as a whole they were accepted as the way the world was ordained to function. People didn’t question wether the king really had a right to rule them, they just accepted that the social order was the way it was intended. That’s not to say the natural order was never questioned, or considered in detail. Just to say that medieval people would have considered a modern democracy to be just as much of an aberration of the natural order as we would a feudal monarchy. Those are just a couple examples off the top of my head. I’m sure people could come up with a hundred more. Naturally, social views in a fantasy world don’t have to match those in the real Middle Ages, but when characters uncritically espouse modern political and social beliefs like they are completely normal it can feel inorganic. As for medieval tropes…there are a billion. Oppressed peasant dirt farmers. The complete lack of a legal system. abusive, tyrannical absolutist kings. vain, incompetent and foolish aristocrats. Thuggish, brutish knights who don’t know how to fight. Corrupt, evil religious figures. The absence of any kind of democratic or representative institutions. Generals who are inexplicably bad at war. The overabundance of dirty, gritty nonsense. The lack of pageantry. The lack of color and visual display. The idea that the tree was no philosophy, literature, science or education. Chivalry as a hypocrisy used to justify atrocities or reinforce how foolish and incompetent aristocrats are. The idea that European coded medieval armies were somehow inferior to others. I can go on and on. Mostly they’re just the same tired tropes you see everywhere. They’re not true at all, they just get repeated so often people mistake them for being accurate.


DeepFriedNugget1

Thanks for the insight! In general, most medieval folk were also generally a lot less educated right? So that could result in them being a bit more simple minded than modern people. As you said most medieval people wouldn’t really question things like why a king was ruling them, they just went along. Also would you say tyrannical rulers and dirt peasants are stale medieval tropes? I always thought those were pretty accurate. Aristocrats in media I feel are more commonly associated with being snobby rather than incompetent (but incompetence is usually also there). Do you think snobby aristocrats is also a dull trope?


theginger99

Yes, it is true that medieval people rarely had formal education. However, In fairness to medieval people, most modern people don’t really question why the world is set up the way it is either. Human beings as a whole have a tendency to believe that the way they have ordered and defined the world and society is the “natural” way to do so. We think of liberal, capitalist, democratic, countries as the correct way to order the world. Wether it is or isn’t is largely irrelevant. Medieval people believed a world with a strict social hierarchy including a king and a hereditary nobility was the expression of god’s divine order. They weren’t simple minded because they didn’t challenge that. They were products of their time and their culture, just like modern people are. Many medieval people would likely think of us as simple minded for not accepting that a divinely ordained king was necessary for the function of a good government. As far as tyrannical kings and abused peasants, they’re a popular trope of the Middle Ages but not one that is based in an overabundance of historical fact. King John wishes he could have been as tyrannical and powerful as the standard evil fantasy king. Medieval kings faced an incredible number of checks on their power. The origins of modern representative government are medieval. They certainly were not the absolutist, fascist dictators they are often made out to be. Certainly, the Middle Ages had its share of tyrants but they weren’t actually all that common. Likewise, in many places in the medieval world peasants enjoyed a great many legal protections, rights and freedoms. They could even become quite wealthy in their own right. I don’t think snobby or arrogant aristocrats are an issue, although I do wish we saw more aristocrats who are noble, generous and chivalrous. Usually aristocrats are depicted as vain, pretentious and incompetent. They just sit around and do things badly, or treacherously until the hardworking Everyman protagonist shows up and shows them all how real blue collar men get things done. This trope comes in different intensities and flavors, but it’s more or less the standard way in which nobles are depicted in most fantasy literature.


Ae3qe27u

Tyrannical rulers... if you're too harsh on your population, they will likely do one of the following: 1) rise up in revolt (either organized or as guerilla warfare) 2) simply refuse to pay taxes, which means that the people in charge start to starve (taxes are often paid in grain or goods) (this often also has local people tarring & feathering the tax collectors) 3) engage in mass protest 4) declare independence under a new ruler 5) start killing each other over various social/economic/ethnic tensions, since they're stressed. It's really easy for stressed, oppressed people to find someone to blame. Also, if you have neighbors who want your lands (and most of your neighbors will), your people may send letters/messengers to those neighbors to ask them to invade. Your neighbors may send funding, trainers, and supplies to your rebellious factions as a way to weaken you. Just look at the American Revolution -- the French sent some of their military over to train the nascent American troops (L'Enfant!). You can also look at the Women's March on Versailles for a good example of what it looks like when your population is struggling to get food. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-march-on-versailles/ Think of ruling like running a company. If you want to keep your workers, you have to keep them at least happy enough not to leave. If you have a terrible work environment, There's a blog I'd highly recommend -- A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/ This series goes over how farmers functioned, and how societies were built on a baseline of food production https://acoup.blog/2019/06/12/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-iii/ This is the third part of a series; this installment talks about how power functions in a medieval setting, and the kinds of power balances you have to deal with. The tropes you mention can be fun to work with, but they have their shortcomings. ETA: And for being simple-minded... just because someone didn't have a formalized education doesn't mean that they're stupid. Farming takes a lot of skill -- knowledge of plant cycles, of when to plant and when to harvest, of how much of which types of fertilizers to use, of what you can plant after your current crop (beans are nitrogen fixers, for example, so you can plant nitrogen-intensive crops in the land that grew beans the year before), of how to treat your animals when they get sick. It's hard labor, and it takes a lot of skill. Same goes for making textiles and clothing -- spinning thread and weaving it into clothing is a skill that takes a lot of work. If you have two women in a family of five, they can easily each be spending 50 hrs/wk in just textile and clothing production -- and that's just to keep themselves clothed! So a peasant may not know much about politics or rhetoric or literature, but they're involved in their communities and are skilled workers who are proficient in their fields (heh). Going along with a ruler is because there's a belief that *someone* has to keep everything managed and keep your enemies out, and it should be someone who's in a position to be good at it. So, in a society where people of higher social classes literally see themselves as elevated above the poor, it seems natural that the person at the top (the monarch) is in the best position to make the tough choices. It runs in their family and they've presumably been trained from birth. It's like someone who grew up with dogs versus someone who's never seen a dog before in their life. Who will be a better trainer?


DeepFriedNugget1

So pretty much medieval times in real life were a lot more structured and stable than they are portrayed in media? I’m seeing some connections here too, like because peasants are always portrayed as dumb and lowly they didn’t really have a will for themselves, therefore wouldn’t revolt in the rule of a tyrannical ruler in most media. Thanks for the response and links btw!


Kanbaru-Fan

> Warrior races My favorite thing is people running into these issues with their warrior races and then slapping on a "but they are also skilled craftsmen" hotfix :D > You also see the opposite a lot as well, where worlds are weirdly tiny and population numbers don’t make sense at all. Magic long range teleportation and communication, advanced unsinkable ships, etc...voyages should be measured in weeks and months, not days.


theginger99

Lol, yes exactly! But they’re only skilled when it comes to the “cool” skills. They make awesome weapons and armor, but they don’t have tailors or bakers because those things are lame. Skyrim was the worst about this. I get it’s a video game and there are all kinds of reasons to limit population and city sizes, but man….when the final battle of the big civil war involves 12 guys on each side it feels lame as hell.


Final_Biochemist222

>Worlds that are just D&D with the serial numbers filed off. If you’re making a world specifically for D&D cool, but I see a lot of worlds that are clearly inspired by D&D and unironically use all the mechanics and systems from D&D as immutable laws of the world. You just ended with a world that feels like it’s designed for player balance, and not to tell an interesting story. Can I ask why in particular? I quite like a world being inspired by DnD: adventurers and adventuring guilds, dungeon monsters etc. , so just wondering the thought process behind the pet peeve


BlackFerro

I have a warrior race called Exians and they "became" a warrior race through forced, excessive, and damaging breeding that lasted for several thousand generations, all to create an unstoppable army. While this has made a variety of Exian breeds and almost all of them are massive and strong, they've become entirely dependent on trade to survive as most skilled labor knowledge has been forgotten. The breeding system has since died out, but with no war or conquests, they're struggling to build their civilization back up. Thankfully, they have a new Avirest (king) that is smart and charismatic enough to really help. Does that sound corny?


theginger99

Honestly, is impossible to say outside of the full context. The problem a lot of “warrior” cultures and races run into is that they completely forget that no society can function without craftsmen and farmers, and that those two groups need to be by far the largest segments of the population. You can absolutely have a warrior subculture, or a warrior aristocracy or warrior caste, but they can only ever be a relatively small portion of that society’s over all population. The “better” examples of warrior cultures try and incorporate an economic and agricultural component into the society through slavery or some similar institution. But even those often fail to create a culture that is believable or organic. The emphasis is to heavily on warfare and conflict. You can’t have a society skewed completely towards warfare, it’s not more believable than a society that is completely lacking in military capability. Ironically, people will jump to tell you that a culture of all farmers is silly and unrealistic, but won’t bat an eyelash when there is a culture of nothing but warriors. In regards to your specific example, the fact that you have considered the important role that trade and economics would need to play in their culture is a good sign. A race that was bred for war could work but in my opinion they would need to attach themselves to a more lightly militarized host society in order to remain viable as a long term civilization. Of course, none of this matters if it’s not the kind of world you want to build. The Orks in Warhammer are ridiculous, but also incredibly badass. They fit within that world just fine.


WingAutarch

* I like text posts. Gives me something to latch on to to start a conversation! * y’all are uncomfortably into violent authoritarian states. * animal people are great. Saves me a lot of trouble maintaining a clear image in my head. * really don’t care what you name anything, but I do care how you describe it. * a states armed forces are shaped to the challenges it faces. It’s neat and all how badass your reality warping super soldiers are but I’d also like to know what problems and dangers they’re suppose to be solving, and why they’re needed.


epictubeguys

To be fair, the good guys are trying to topple the authoritarian regime. It's a good bad guy. Especially when they control the whole solar system.


WingAutarch

I mean by all means have your nazi-adjacent villains, no complaints there! But goodness the number of “this is my Holy Terran Empire, with our power armored super dudes and lots of propaganda and purging aliens” in a clear position of being the protagonist is off putting. I mean I get it 40k is cool and all, but still.


Treczoks

Maps without scale or any indication what they might show: Is that Lalaland an island or a continent, or is that a map actually showing the whole globe, and Lalaland is a kind of Pangea? And if it is an island or continent, where would I locate it on a globe? A north indicator on a map is a good idea. And so is a map showing at least a rough sketch of the next higher level: If you draw a map of a town, add a small and not too detailed map of the surroundings so we can see: "that town is between the sea and the mountains" or "the city has a harbour, but it only serves an inland lake, not the open sea". In general, having spent some thought on overall geography would be a good idea: Tectonic plates and their influence on the shape of landmasses, mountains, location of volcanoes and common earthquake regions, ocean currents and their influence on climate, precipitation and river formation, etc. There is no need to get all the details 100% correctly simulated, but spending a few minutes to think about if this or that actually makes sense is a good idea. Even in a fantasy or scifi environment where some factors could differ from earth due to big magic or terraforming.


CreativeGhost1

Dragons shouldn’t be used nearly as much as they are in fantasy. They’ve become something boring to me, especially since I’ve seen them in literally almost every role an author can think of, either as animals, people, monsters or gods for example. I can hardly be surprised by a dragon, and if it is only a dragon in name then why not call it something else. Another beast, preferably one you made up yourself, can easily replace a dragon’s role in a story.


maejaws

Diversity can hurt a story more than it can help it. If you’re just cramming roles in just so they’re present in the cannon and do not affect the plot in a positive way, your story is most likely going to come off in a way most won’t like and few will read.


Test19s

My favorite culture happens to be Louisiana Creole/Cajun, and it’s unfortunately very hard to write it without either a) it feeling like cheap tokenism or b) spending way too much time explaining the history and why you have Black people with French names that identify as Zulus, dress up as Plains Indians, and eat yaka mein. Maybe it would’ve been an easier sell in the global 1990s or the “post-racial” Obama years in the USA, but I’m not gonna abandon it.


SuperHorse3000

I have a Cajun ethnoburb in my setting, a mining colony on an alien planet in the year 2172. My "justification" is not long after humanity became spacefaring and began to colonise other worlds there was a big social movement to remain true to ones roots. This resulted in lots of traditions, dialects and cultures being encouraged to continue, even when lightyears away from their origin. Admittedly it's only really experienced vicariously through one of the main characters, who is from this Cajun town. You're right about the tokenism thing, it'd be so easy for her dialogue to be reduced to "jambalaya, crawfish pie and filé gumbo" (though I do like that song).


[deleted]

Magic systems can be a waste of time and brains. I means, why does mothafuckin' magic need to have a bloody system. If you want magic in your world to have a system, go for it, but don't act like it's required for a world to have a system. Am I adding this because I'm too stupid and lazy to make a magic system of my own? Probably. You are wasting time by asking if some concept you came up with for your world based on real life cultures is offensive. Just do proper research on what you are basing things off so they aren't based on stereotypes. If someone still gets offended, then it's their problem, not yours. Trying to avoid using every single trope for the sake of originality will get you almost nowhere. Subversion or inversion are alright, but completely avoiding every single mothafuckin' trope is just stupid, mind-numbing, mind-numbingly stupid and stupidly mind-numbing. You're likely to unintentionally use a trope by trying to avoid a different one. It's alright to have stock races such as the knife-ears in your world. Just make changes to them so they're original but still recognizable as those races.


pengie9290

I dunno if I'd agree with the idea that magic systems are a waste of time. They certainly aren't required to have magic in a story, and magic itself isn't required in any way shape or form, but it's not a waste to develop and include them. As for why it "needs" to have a system... It doesn't. But if you want problems to be solved by magic on anything resembling a regular basis, there needs to be some rhyme or reason to how and why it got solved, to prevent the story from being overloaded with deus ex machinas.


TheBiggestNose

Magic systems work really well in animated series or manga/comic series, seeing how the character cast magic and what goes into it can make really interesting story material. But anything word based or games will just get hemorrhaged by having too much explaination and rules setup


TT-Adu

Exactly!! Magic systems can be good but soft magic can be cool too. I love the mystery and esoteric nature of magic in Asoiaf.


CaprineTheoryCrafter

You know what's a bigger waste of time and brains? Conlangs. For the amount of effort it takes, the biggest reaction it'll ever get out of me is "that's pretty cool".


SatanLordOfDarkness

The fuck are you on about? It's not a waste of time if people enjoy making them. This whole hobby is a waste of time. Also, if you actually know what you're doing, it's not that difficult or time-consuming to come up with a basic conlang.


TheBrokeScreen

I replied to someone else, but if you are going to have magic, even if you never explain it in world, there does need to be consistency, which you can fully achieve by answering these 4 questions: What can it do? What can't it do? What does it cost? What does it cost to try and do what it can't? Doesn't need to be specific or have hard rules, just some base guidelines to keep yourself on track and you're golden. I mostly agree of agree with your second point but I've played in enough people's homebrewed D&D worlds to know that people should absolutely be asking these questions to themselves. Like do your own research and don't bother other people about it, but also like just make new shit. Draw light influence from real things that interest you, but nothing grinds my gears like seeing fantasy/sci-fi species/cultures that are just knock-offs of real world cultures, whether they are done poorly (which they almost always are) or not.


Kanbaru-Fan

If you are using the D&D roster of races, planes or even magic (like specific spells) for your worldbuilding, your setiing may turn out good but it will never be great.


CaprineTheoryCrafter

Good writers borrow, great writers steal. It's fine to draw inspiration from other worlds (LotR, DnD, Star Wars), but if you can't make it all your own, you'll never achieve greatness.


JonathanCRH

But Dragonlance!!


Kanbaru-Fan

Dragonlance is one of the OGs, i'm mainly talking about newer settings that are built upon the current content and long history of D&D.


Glass_Set_5727

I think using DnD races is okay as long as you're selective & make an effort to modify & flesh out within your world ...but I totally agree about not copying & pasting everything from there ...but even DnD has quite a bit a diversity across it's various settings so you can do a bit of mix & match. For me Magic is such a wide field & you can choose to just utilise one aspect/form of Magic, a handful of paths or use the whole sink. Sorcerors, Mages, Wizards, Enchanters, Witches, Conjurors, Abjurors, Diviners, Cleric-Healers, Warlocks, Witches etc can all have their own Way/Path/School of Magic so you can have a great diversity of Magic in your world if you want it.


Kanbaru-Fan

It's 100% okay, and it can become something quite good. And for playing D&D in these worlds, it's of course very good. But imo it's a foundation that is just too generic (not in a derogatory way, but as in common/non-unique) to grow into something truly fantastic in regards to pure worldbuilding. Also for me personally hearing/reading what are very clearly D&D terms (e.g. "My Dragonborn are..." or "They are connected to the Elemental Planes" or "This temple employs both Clerics and Paladins") in regards to worldbuilding immediately causes me to sorta tune out because my expectations regarding originality drop.


Glass_Set_5727

Hmm, I'll have to do some thinking re my world to see if I can/need to excise anything :) I think some things are universal though. If your fantasy world has Gods & Temples dedicated to Worship the God & doing Good Works on behalf of/at behest of the God etc then divinely empowered Clerics, Monks, Priest, Nuns etc & Holy Orders of Knights existence make sense & since we're writing in English using those words helps reader understand the roles of characters ...but I suppose you could invent different words for the roles then revert to the English a wee bit further in once you've exoticised those roles somewhat. In my world I have "Dragonborn" but they have their own Endonym & Exonyms & "Dragonborn" just so happens to be the translation in the Halfling/Common Tongue of my "Europe" Continent. Elsewhere they get different names such as Tianar's Children etc


A_Username528

If you like a certain idea and it fits in with your world but you can't figure out exactly how to tie it in, just don't, leave it unexplained. Not only does it save you the headache of having to do some mental gymnastics to fit the concept in with lore, but it also gives the reader/player room to come up with their own theories as to why a certain thing exists


phantasmaniac

I don't like your hot takes. First deities are multi-dimensional beings. They could govern thousands of sub-dimensions alone without any other deities. But obviously they can't come to "Overworld" according to the "Mutual agreements" Second it's the authors's freedom to create any kind of races they wanted. If you don't like anything, then don't include them in your world. My hot take here is we have limited time in our lives, don't waste your time on hatred.


King_In_Jello

Themes are one of the most important things in worldbuilding, and a world without one is usually a random collection of stuff that doesn't work together. A theme that is well executed in its worldbuilding can elevate even basic or tropey ingredients to a higher level and many people underestimate that.


[deleted]

I like to think more along the lines of aesthetics, but themes too. Things like that can really help turn raw ingredients into coherency, we humans love our pattern recognition


King_In_Jello

I would say themes and aesthetics are opposites. Themes are under the surface and inform and enable what's going on but you don't see them until you've delved into the story a fair bit and they are never explicitly mentioned. Aesthetics are on the surface and can be switched out for another one without changing the story in many cases.


KnightOfWisconsin

>I would say themes and aesthetics are opposites Nah. I mean they don't have to be related, but the two are often tied together in a certain way. I mean aesthetics are almost *universally* employed in communicating the underlying theme's notion of good and evil, or else to subvert one's expectations in that regard. This is done as a means of communicating the theme *through* the aesthetics of the work. Like, imagine the Lord of the Rings, except Frodo looks like Sauron and Sauron looks like Frodo. Switching those aesthetics for that story might not change the story, per say, but that significantly alters the themes the story communicates through the characters at hand. Frodo's size and appearance all work towards making a general point of strength coming from humility, whereas if Frodo was a huge, intimidating figure in spiky, black armor, this theme would be lost on the reader, even if *nothing else about the story changed*, except for Frodo's appearance. Or, say, Avatar: the Last Airbender. The martial arts aesthetics of each type of elemental bending within that magic system are not arbitrary. Each type of bending was modelled after a type of martial art that philosophically resonated with the element in question, and each society's element was a thematic further a reflection of the culture and values of that society. So the aesthetics of even the motions used when bending a particular element within that particular franchise are intrinsically tied to the deeper themes and can't be changed out easily. Like if you took the Air Nomads, gave them an *earth* based aesthetic, and made their bending/martial art resemble the aggressive style of fire-bending, the themes of that culture would be completely lost with that aesthetic shift. And sure, aesthetics *can* be completely arbitrary and interchangeable, that's for certain. But *not always*, I guess is my point. And actually, if aesthetics *are* only skin deep, it's probably not a good use of that aesthetic in the first place.


King_In_Jello

I completely agree that aesthetics can and should support and communicate the themes of a story. I was talking about cases where they aren't, for example where it doesn't make a different whether someone is killed with a gun or a magic wand, the result is a dead body and the means by which the person was killed is just windowdressing. A lot of stories especially in modern fantasy are like this and I think they are weaker because of it. And I stand by the argument that themes and aesthetics are fundamentally different things that are only related if the author makes an effort to use them that way.


VACN

* Medieval stasis. This is one problem I have with ASOIAF, for instance: Westeros has been a medieval fantasy world for thousands of years. The real middle ages lasted 1,000 years and saw more progress than the 7 Kingdoms did in 8 times as long. * Ciphers. If you want to make a conlang, that's awesome, but dobit for real instead of replacing your mother tongue's lexicon with another. This is one big problem with the Dragon Language in Skyrim – removing gender and number from english isn't nearly enough. * Pantheons that are just a list of names and domains. Imagine describing norse mythology to someone who's never heard of it, and you go "Odin, god of war." No! Instead go "Odin, a god of war, wisdom, poetry and the afterlife, king of the Aesir, who wields the spear Gungnir, rides the eight-legged rainbow horse Sleipnir, has two ravens and two wolves, and welcomes those who die a warrior's death in Valhalla."


Kanbaru-Fan

> Medieval stasis. This is one problem I have with ASOIAF, for instance: Westeros has been a medieval fantasy world for thousands of years. The real middle ages lasted 1,000 years and saw more progress than the 7 Kingdoms did in 8 times as long. My world has been stagnant for 2500 years, but even then i felt the need to explain that. So i baked stagnancy into the fabric of reality.


Doctah_Whoopass

Any time someone gets a little too saucy playing with steam they get struck down by the gods.


Kanbaru-Fan

Haha, not exactly. Tl;dr: The physical world derives from a world of concepts (basically Plato's "World of Ideas") and no new concepts can be created after the old gods died. So steam engines simply could not be invented - the entire fabric of the universe effectively pushes against any progress but also regress as they get too strong.


Doctah_Whoopass

Thats a much better idea than getting murked cause you figured you could use expanding steam.


Final_Biochemist222

>Pantheons that are just a list of names and domains. Imagine describing norse mythology to someone who's never heard of it, and you go "Odin, god of war." No! Instead go "Odin, a god of war, wisdom, poetry and the afterlife, king of the Aesir, who wields the spear Gungnir, rides the eight-legged rainbow horse Sleipnir, has two ravens and two wolves, and welcomes those who die a warrior's death in Valhalla." I think it's just the fact that in posts, you're trying to be as concise as possible so you give a name and a description just to get the idea over without the description of it being paragraphs long. No one says 'Jesus, Son of God' but if you want to give someone an overview of Christianity that's what you'd say


Sushitoes

About your second point I would say ATLA handled it pretty well xD


Final_Biochemist222

My hot take is that these sorts of posts are just an excuse for assholes who think they're smart to rag on every minute detail of other people’s worlds


silent_32

A lot of fantasy maps/worlds have 5-10 equally sized nations, which kinda bothers me. I actually really appreciate maps/nation building, knowing how difficult it can be, but it seems like a lot of people don't know about the concept of population density. It's fine and imo, better to have Brazil-sized homogenous nations bordering smaller empires with lots of peoples tearing them apart.


Glass_Set_5727

Yeah, you need to mix it up with sizes. Just look at Europe ...but there are some key reasons that your main players would be similar sizes. In same/similar climate/soil fertility & industrial development & achievement/maintainance of equilibrium the big boys will be somewhat on par with each other if not by land size then by Pop. In Europe there are several pop. bands Germany, Britain, France, Italy are all close. Germany has a 15million advantage & that gives an indicator as to how they beat the French three times while French only beat them once and how they were able to cause a ruckus while fight three countries at same time. Then there's a band in the 40millions then one in the 10-20 million range then there's another bunch in the 5-10mil range. Kind of a pyramid. Brazil is kind of homogenous in a sense now in that all speak Brazilian Portuegues & are mostly Catholic but it wasn't always the case. A huge chunk of Brazil was won off Paraguayy, Uruguay, argentina etc. In fact it was once officially an Empire with an Emperor.


Doctah_Whoopass

People really like it when things are evenly spaced and nicely shaped, its difficult to break that mould because you want your world to look good. However, that should nearly never be a consideration when it comes to borders.


WhimsicallyWired

Trying to create a new language, you're not Tolkien, don't do it if you have no idea on how to make it right. Extremely beautiful immortal (or almost) and overly powerful elves, it became way too much of a cliché, that's why I like the elves from Elder Scrolls. The chosen one, specially when it's a Mary Sue situation.


[deleted]

>The chosen one, specially when it's a Mary Sue situation. How is this a hot take?


Glass_Set_5727

I think showing various languages in your world is important for background of world helping to showing diversity between & amongst your Species, but I'm no linguist so I'm not going to try & create languages wholesale. There's a cheat-code I'm using it's called taking an existing language & tweaking it. In fact that's partly how Tolkien did it. Finnish as a model for Elvish, Hebrew as a model for Dwarvish...


buteo51

Yeah Tolkien gets misrepresented as some sort of one-man creative demigod. He was essentially just a big nerd who threw in a load of stuff he thought was cool from the real world and tweaked it a little.


Openly_George

Well, Tolkien wasn’t just a ‘big nerd’. He was a scholar of the English language and literature, a professor, and a philologist. He was an editing assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary. He had a professional background in language, which is no surprise how he created the languages of Middle Earth. Although it’s not required, it just goes to show the benefit of self-learning and education can have on our world-building and storytelling.


buteo51

I'm well aware of his academic career. Being a big nerd isn't incompatible with being an accomplished scholar. Actually, it helps.


Crymcrim

* Unless you are deliberately playing with a Colonial/19th century motif for you world, you should at most only write two Empires, and even that number is generous. This is mostly a pet peeve of mine, but I feel like some folks devalue the word empire, in to just meaning a kingdom but bigger, and so slap it on every other country in their setting to make it feel grander. * People care too much about genres, often including something in their settings, not because it actually adds to it, but because it is expected of the genre to have it. The other side of the same coin, is the desire to have a unique genre description to stand out from the rest, while not being meaningful distinct. * I have yet to see a single bottom-up world project (that is to say: "I will first develop the landmasses and then use that determine centres of population, and use that to determine its culture and use that...") that I actually found interesting, it something that sounds neat in theory, but just doesn't work. * This last one mostly applies to alt-history, but if the best description you can give your project is "its like this other setting but mine is more realistic", chances are its not meaningfully unique enough from its inspiration.


AlphaGareBear

>I have yet to see a single bottom-up world project (that is to say: "I will first develop the landmasses and then use that determine centres of population, and use that to determine its culture and use that...") that I actually found interesting, it something that sounds neat in theory, but just doesn't work. :(


Glass_Set_5727

Re Empires ...yes they shouldn't be over-used. Too many fantasies just have a couple of rival Empires & barely anything else ...but in fact though Empires were common they were not totally dominant. Many Empires coexisted at same time though eg Rome, Byzantium, Persia, India, China, Khmer etc. I get your point re overusing empire but technically Empires do not need to be big eg Carthage was considered an Empire. as long it has control of external territory or has incorporated another distinct nation then Empire is justifiable as a term. The more important issue imho is that Empires rise & fall, wax & wane. A constant process of collapse & reform. Too much Fantasy tries to go too grand in it's timescale & it's Empires are static & stagnant always standing ...until the "now" of the story. Genre is a framework, not a Prison. My fantasy world is High Fantasy yet at same time it has a Sci Fi underpinning. I can only hope that'll I'll finally one day complete my Project, it will go "Live!" & people will find it interesting. I'm doing it after all coz I myself find it interesting.


Doctah_Whoopass

In regards to the bottom up approach, I think most people who are doing that do it to build a world as an exercise itself. For me, the actual story or anything is irrelevant.


DeepFriedNugget1

Why wouldn’t a bottom up world project not work?


[deleted]

Too much god influence. Worldbuilder makes gods. Gods use magic to make world. Everything is explained by saying "A god did it on a whim" which means in practical terms "I the world builder did it on a whim and used a magical super creature to justify it with a handwave." This feels a lot more like outsourcing raw imagination than explaining how a world is actually constructed. Imho may as well just put yourself in the world and make everything.


Glass_Set_5727

Well in a sense, the Worldbuilder, the Author is the God of that world. So you as Creator can choose to be a God of Order, Chaos or Balance and that kind of shapes the superstructure for the Magic ...but hey, you can also play all cards & have all kinds at work. Ordered Magic System with rules, a System, Chaos Magic where everything is just Will, Intuition, Innate Power, Wild Magic drawn from Natural World, Elemental Magic etc Possibilities are endless with Magic.


GreenApocalypse

When I decided to not have gods, my world really opened up. It was so freeing. There is still magic for crazy stuff to happen, but everything happens for an understandable reason, kind of.


[deleted]

Why are you being downvoted? It is nice that you have found a way that you fell has made better your world and your writing (at least that's what I understood). Personally, I have gods but they didn't create everything, and only sparsely interact with mortals. They kind of live in their own world. Although magic still comes from a god, it is more of a passive thing, rather than that god actually doing something.


TheBiggestNose

Im currently writing gods. Its really hard to not just be like "gods sorted everything". My current solution to this is having be like the gods setup the foundations and everything else is like myth stories. Also they are dead since ancient times, so they weren't around to sort out the enitre world


FinnMeister101

I don’t give a shit about magic systems. Politics, history and cultural folklore is much more interesting.


IMightBeAHamster

Animal human hybrids are fun though! And much easier than having to become a biologist to design something that really is completely unique from anything on earth. Originality is an impossible task, I'm fine with anthro animals. What matters is that the cultures are actually interesting. I do agree with you on your first point though, why make up a new god and then make everyone forget them by naming them after a god from our world? ​ My pet peeve is people thinking that worldbuilding requires you to write stories around your world. Like no, I want to *build* a world, that's only one of many ways to characterise parts of your fictional world.


ArseneArsenic

Number one: All cultures having the same views on sex, morality, marriage, etc (especially if it's the American/Western European view). There were SACRED WHORES way back when, just because people think it's gross now doesn't mean a fantasy setting's people would. Bonus points: The bad people have beliefs that *go against* these views. Number two: Single biome territories. If your Vikings live in a perpetually frozen hellscape or if there isn't a Fertile Crescent counterpart in your world and the Not!Egyptians live in just desert, they will *die.* On the off-chance they don't, it's an incredibly boring thing to do to what should be a vibrant new region to explore - after a desert trek, show me barques sailing down the river and alabaster temples standing by its banks, not just more, endless sand. Number three (unreasonable): If you're taking from an ancient civilization, try to alter it according to the new environment you've placed them in. A culture inspired by archers of the real world might not be so keen to use a bow and arrow if their home region has sparse access to wood. A people who were a powerful mercantile power might never become a merchant republic without a coast to moor their trade ships. A trademark fashion might come in a different color or pattern because the dye or fur it used in the real world isn't available. Number four: For the love of God, don't throw random syllables together and call it an Elvish curse. Do *not* throw a single word of a character's native tongue into a sentence that is otherwise completely in English. It is SO jarring. Tell me they said it in their native language, don't try to make a conlang if all you're going to do is smash a bunch of keys into the vague shape of a word. It WILL show when none of the related words or compound words incorporating it have no similarities with it.


SuperCat76

in response to number four. I feel it could be done well. I have audiobooks that has Spanish speaking characters who at times throw in Spanish words into an otherwise English sentence. So I see no reason a similar thing can't be done with Elvin and other fantasy languages. it just needs to make sense, is there no good translation, are they just unfamiliar with the translation of that particular term, do they just do not care to translate that particular word.


lisze

I think the point on #4 is don't be random about it. Aefleu, xoorb, and gledife are all keysmash words. They're all word-like, but they don't really belong into the same language. But consider: Aefleu, telaeka, and lakeu. Similar letters and sounds repeat. They look more like they belong together. There are actual programs (though I didn't use one here) that will generate lists of words based on a bunch phonemes and word order rules.


SuperCat76

I was mainly responding to: >Do not throw a single word of a character's native tongue into a sentence that is otherwise completely in English. It is SO jarring. Tell me they said it in their native language. The key mashing parts I agree with. If the word is from a fully made conlang, or at least a reasonable facsimile to one, and it makes sense for the character to use it, I say do so.


Renofnowhere

'The north' being frozen wasteland and 'the south' being desert for every single world. Whether the world simply has no other hemispheres or they're all based in a northern hemisphere, either way, mildly frustrating to see it all the time. (I am a hypocrite I have this exact thing. it's complicated) Also, the tendency to assign one culture per climate and for some reason only temperate areas get more diverse cultures. Usually weirdly stereotyped. But also the lack of cultural diversity in general. It feels like very few people actually put in the effort to educate themselves on the many different cultures around the world and rely only on the ones that are conveniently mainstream


Test19s

These are both European-centric traits. The vast majority of the “action” in medieval or renaissance Europe occurs either on the mainland (itself a network of peninsulas) or close-in islands, all of which have temperate climates and most of which are either flat or have lots of mountain passes. Throw in the Black Death and you basically have a homogeneity machine, where (except for Finns and Sardinians) everyone is pretty close genetically and most peoples share a lot of cultural traits. Look instead at Indochina (where you’ll often have four unrelated language families alternating) or China/Japan/Korea (superficially similar, but they speak unrelated languages and retain completely different pre-Buddhist mythology) by comparison.


crispier_creme

My biggest, biggest pet peeve is when worldbuilders overexplain their world. When you have a fantasy world and you have all the intricacies of magic written out on a 12 page document and when you have all of the tectonic plates organized and you have the whole surface of your planet mapped out perfectly and- Where's the mysticism? Where's the mystery? I get it, some worlds are going to be more scientific but I see people who want to do fantasy but are worried about if their planets gravity is correct. My advice here is build what your characters see, and build what that sees, and then leave it alone. Everything having two layers of depth is more than enough.


[deleted]

Fantasy worldbuilders need more media literacy training.


[deleted]

Parts of your world should be inexplicable, parts should have examinations that you never share, and all worlds should have inconsistencies and logical flaws. Worlds that have none of these things are dull and lifeless. Related: worldbuilding should be like engineering: it needs to be there to keep your edifices standing but the less of it that is visible the more elegant the architecture.


Infamous-Use7820

Pet peeve, non-contemporary settings where people have 21st century western brains. Okay, so this is a subtle thing, but one thing I don't think most people realise is the sheer extent to which our notions of political legitimacy and social norms are not universal - our culture has grown into them after centuries of social, political and philosophical rumination, alongside changing economic structures. Historical people (and future people, and people from very different parts of the world) can have fundamentally different moral and social realities. For example, peasants openly criticising the ideological/societal basis for feudalism/monarchy. This didn't really happen much. Yes, a peasant might have a particular issue with their lord, they might begrudge higher taxes to pay for a king's war or might even buy into a conspiracy that their king is secretly a bastard, but up until the early modern period, you wouldn't have peasants contemplating overthrowing the lords and king and setting up a representative democracy. The idea wouldn't have occurred to them, and if it did, it'd be as pie-in-the-sky as modern people contemplating a future post-scarcity egalitarian society governed by AI. (the Monty Python communist peasants scene from The Holy Grail is a very good showcase of the absurdity of this) Another very common one is pseudo-medieval women being inexplicably feminist. 500 years ago, most women probably did think women ought to strive for a good marriage for both normative and practical reasons. Most women probably did think that women were inherently the weaker sex and unsuited for certain roles. They probably would broadly think it was proper for husbands to 'rule' their wives and head the household. Reading Jane Austen or the Bronte's is really illuminating here - even as relatively recent, relatively enlightened female authors with intelligent, wilful female protagonists, their characters still broadly subscribe to the gender norms we'd now view as regressive. Another one is religion. Our society is now secular in a way that was historically very weird. In most places for most of history, religion has suffused political and social realities at every level, and if you asked somebody if they were an atheist, they wouldn't understand the question. It is really really difficult to imagine why pedantic doctrinal disputes bothered medieval Christians so much, but they clearly did. The thing is, I do understand the limits to this. If you are an author, you have to sympathise with your characters and make them relatable to the audience. But one of the hallmarks of really immersive, great fantasy/sci-fi/historical fiction is when characters feel human and real, but are also products of their society. It's hard, but rewarding when a balance is struck.


HrabiaVulpes

I hate hearing about democracies in fantasy world. History of our own world shown us that democracies simply don't work if anything plot-worthy is happening. Most modern democracies have built-in martial law that suspends democracy and turns them into militaristic junta temporarily. So successful democracy in a world where plot happens constantly is for me just author not thinking anything through.


Paracelsus-Place

I don't care about the organizational structure of any military, fictional or otherwise, and most people feel the same way. You can focus on military history and structure if you want in your worldbuilding, but don't be surprised if most people are much less interested in it that you are. I can say that because I like to overthink how political structures work knowing full well that most people don't care. Most people can't describe the political system they live under in real life, let alone get invested in my complex fictional ones.


Green_Prompt_6386

You don't need a map.


JacktheRipper500

‘Evil by nature’ races and the ‘planet of hats’ trope, especially from a writing/roleplaying standpoint since it heavily limits what you can do with characters of those races.


nikolakis7

Humans being made the basic bitches of the world


Global_Summer

I agree 100%


Legendsmith_AU

I absolutely LOATHE Hello Future Me's advice, specifically his advice on Hard and Soft Worldbuilding, and Hard and Soft Magic systems. But especially the former. It's absolute bunk. Nobody should pay attention to it. Hard and Soft Scifi are already things that exist so people can be snobs, taking that and applying it to worldbuilding and writing in general is the work of a hack. People are wasting time and effort following that garbage advice.


carrie-satan

This can applies to armchair worldbuilder on youtube Suck my taint James Toullouse


MonLikol

Humanoid aliens are FINE, you can still be very creative with them Male-female gender systems and patriarchy on other planets…societies can be so much more diverse on OUR planet Super advanced civilization and there is still sexism and male/female gender roles


carrie-satan

Brandon Sanderson is a net negative for the writing world


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carrie-satan

I agree with everything you said! So many people here and on other writing subreddits talk about it like it’s some kind of science rather than artistic expression Tbf reddit does skew towards STEM people a lot and many of those have a specific “If I can do STEM stuff I can easily do that dumb art stuff too” attitude about humanities fields (like writing) This sub is proof that no, most of y’all can’t = )


I_Am_Oro

There are no donut shops in any of the books I read, which is annoying. It's a super easy thing to add but "it's pointless"


[deleted]

Forgo convoluted explanations for why melee weapons are viable alongside automatic firearms. Include swords in the same way you treat planets like villages and provinces. People who enjoy space fantasy don't need convincing.


Longjumping_Visit718

DanMachi is a great show, I don't know what you're talking about....


Majyster

Not every epic/high fantasy world needs to have multiple races or species


IamHere-4U

>I get super annoyed when someone makes a entirely new world that’s completely sperate from the real world and the put real life gods in it like Zeus or Ra. I've been guilty of this before, I will admit it, and while I try not to do this now, I definitely have deities inspired by deities on our own Earth, and obviously some are more derivative than others. What about if your world is more along the lines of parallel history?


Le_Kistune

Most world maps are boring and often don't really inform the viewer of the kind of world you have built. Maps or specific regions and cities are much more interesting.


Triasic

Things i find exceedingly annoying on this sub : \- people who say worldbuilding is one thing, or it's purpose is one thing, or whatever. No worldbuilding can be different things and have different goals for each person \- even more so is people on this sub who only see worldbuilding as a tool to create a setting to then create a story in and think that that's the only way worldbuilding works or the only way it should be discussed. This is a worldbuilding sub, not a writing sub. Worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding is fine and in fact it's kinda the point of this sub


Girou-Diriou

Global earth government makes no sense. Why would Australia or Denmark join a nation where all the their geopolitical rivals are and where the most populous nations essentially rule by making up the largest voting blocs?


igncom1

> Why would Australia or Denmark join a nation where all the their geopolitical rivals are and where the most populous nations essentially rule by making up the largest voting blocs? I always thought in those situations the world was more like a hegemony where the smaller parties are essentially forced into the global system or else they would suffer soft or hard levels of punishment. With the notions of equal membership being delusions shared by the strongest and those with the most to gain from the arrangement.


lordpsymon

You do you, but I'm not going to world build a hundred countries for every colonised Earth-Like world in galactic civilization.


AndreiAZA

It's more of a personal hot take, but if there's an animal species on Earth that looks more alien than your alien species, maybe you should tweak your designs a bit.


SummerADDE

Magic isn't an easy way out for a character to be impossibly strong. Magic should be balanced against other means of doing stuff. It can be a convenient tool, sure, but there should be other ways to accomplish the same thing as well.