Whether it be meta tools or apps, or literal concepts like a mineral or a race, for example, a must for me is for the world to be built in a believable manner, and at the most simple, following some decent climate rules without much restraint.
my favourite would be drip plume ice worlds with hotspots that allow for rainforests in 80 Celsius steam zones, very exotic, the temperature regulated by these hotspots.
I rambled on too much…
Seeing as how this has persisted through both my longest-lasting conworld and my most detailed conworld, I’d say a race of sapient doglike creatures. While part of the appeal of of dog ownership is that, compared to humans, dogs are emotionally simple critters with uncomplicated needs, A big part of me wishes I could explain things to my dogs in a way they could understand, and that they had the capacity to unambiguously tell me how they’re doing. I also wish I didn’t have to keep burying them every 10-15 years. Ergo, sapient cynoids that live over 7 centuries it is.
Unrelated, but I would draw maps when I was a kid, just an island with blobby regions representing biomes or polities or whatever. There would ALWAYS be a lake of lava somewhere on the map.
Oh, and mechs. Big ol’ stompy walking war crimes. Combine this with the sapient dogs and you get space doggos piloting mecha-Clifford into battle, good times.
Hah! I can relate to this. I’m writing a story that includes a species of sapient magical sugar gliders that were genetically modified by wizards to be the ultimate pets.
- They live forever (not immortal, just stop aging at adulthood).
- They have useful magical abilities that would be useful to a wizard (locating things, cartography, memory enhancement, etc).
- They cannot resist dancing if there’s a good music playing and they completely lose control and go crazy dancing if there’s fancy lighting (e.g. rave/RGB).
- They can live in a wizard’s pocket and they’re super cute.
- They have fantastic hearing/danger sense and and are master hunters of bugs. If a wizard has one on their shoulder, no bug will ever be able to reach the wizard’s head 😁
Are the sugar gliders more like familiars/companions for the wizards or do they have their own society and stuff? Is dancing something sugar gliders are known for?
They have their own society… Now. All the wizards are dead. They’re living in a post-apocalyptic world being overrun by magic, carnivorous weeds (because the wizards aren’t around to get rid of them e.g. with fireballs).
The wizards made the kads (that’s their species name) dance automatically because it was both cute and a control measure: They gave the kads powerful magic and were worried that they could rebel some day. So if any ever misbehaved or rebelled they could just play music and… Deal with them while they were entranced.
Tunnels! A tavern that was swallowed by the earth but they just tunneled down to it and now its a gimmick. Ancient ruins that intersect with the surface. A shortcut between two buildings. An old mine that could serve as a base of operations. A cult’s secret underground lair. A gateway into a splinter dimension that effectively serves as a non euchlidian tunnel. A bit of the road that collapsed into a mysterious freshly-dug tunnel, taking a merchant’s cargo with it.
I build for ttrpgs (GURPS in particular) and like to run many campaigns in one world, so having some believable inter-nation politics / conflict is a must.
Also, if there are gods or super powerful beings, even high level spell casters there needs to be a good solid reason why they aren’t the ones who are saving the world. The Forgotten Realms made me question that too much, as a player I was meeting all these high level beings and they told me to go into the pit of evil bad guys who are going to take over the world.
Also, if there are gods or super powerful beings, even high level spell casters there needs to be a good solid reason why they aren’t the ones who are saving the world. The Forgotten Realms made me question that too much, as a player I was meeting all these high level beings and they told me to go into the pit of evil bad guys who are going to take over the world.
I generally solve this problem by presenting gods more like they are in IRL religions, inscrutable and unknowable. This also allows for things like crises of faith, which would be hard to pull off when you have tangible evidence of your deity lying around. As for why they’re so aloof, this is my go-to explanation.
I like it, as long as there is a why (and it does not even have to be obvious, it can be discovered as the story progresses). I like your solution, I’m always a sucker for giant cosmic space god heads.
I’m always a sucker for giant cosmic space god heads.
I based the idea on Unicron from G1 Transformers. For the longest time I called the structure in my conworld Yinrihcron in want of a better name. Now the name is used in-universe by humans.
For me, a map of an area is a must, both from a creator and audience standpoint. My worldbuilding is for DnD, and when I DM it’s very hard for me to start building up cultures, factions, histories etc without having a map of the area first.
